The following extract is a Top Traders Unplugged summary of a conversation between the podcast hosts Niels and Alan with Russell Korgaonkar, the Chief Investment Officer at Man AHL.
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Click on this link to hear the Podcast
Man AHL is one of the most recognisable names in systematic investing, and Russell Korgaonkar, who joined the firm as a researcher in 2001 after reading Physics at Oxford, has been at the centre of its evolution for over two decades. As CIO, he oversees a research operation that spans trend following, quantitative equity, and machine learning, all bound together by the discipline of systematic execution.
Korgaonkar is a precise thinker about the nature of edge. He has seen first-hand how strategies that appeared robust in earlier periods can decay as markets become more efficient and capital chases the same inefficiencies. His work on trend following is anchored in a belief that the strategy’s persistence is tied to something more durable than a statistical anomaly: the enduring reality that human participants create trends through their own behaviour, and that systematic processes can capture that structure over time.
The TTU conversation covers the tension between making trend following more palatable for investors, through smoother return profiles and reduced volatility, and preserving the core characteristics that make it work. Korgaonkar also addresses the role of carry, CTA replication products, and how dynamic position sizing shapes outcomes across different market regimes. This is a conversation from one of the industry’s most experienced practitioners, and it repays close attention.
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