14 Oct 2020
Our mission at Vanda is to be actionable, responsive and differentiated.
With that in mind, I want to update you with some exciting developments at the firm.
People
We have engaged Mr David Claydon as our Senior Policy Advisor. Many of you will know David: he has a long established reputation for delivering concise and actionable policy-advice, and was previously the co-founder and co-CEO of Macro Advisory Partners. He has also served as the economic advisor to UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband, and was an MD at Morgan Stanley and UBS.
Within research, we have hired Mr Viraj Patel as a UK based macro strategist. Viraj was previously Head of Macro at Arkera, a fintech start-up specializing in AI-powered macro insights, and prior to that was an FX strategist at ING.
To add to the Firm’s quantitative effort, we have hired Dr Morgan Evans to aid in the buildout of our alternative positioning datasets and our Vanda Analytics platform. Morgan recently received his PhD in Mathematical Science from the University of Bath.
We are also excited to expand our distribution capabilities in both North America and Europe with the additions of my former colleagues, Ms Elizabeth Young and Mr Eric Travis. Both join us from BCA Research.
Product
With all of these new hires, clients can expect to see a number of exciting new research products rolled out in the coming weeks. The first to debut will be a new weekly policy piece from David; look out for his Vanda Policy Brief later this week.
We will also be adding a new monthly asset allocation product from our Head of Research, Eric Liu. The Tactical Asset Allocation Monthly (TAAM) will distil our three-month outlook across assets and geographies into a single, concise report.
Finally, expect to see continued improvements and tweaks to our quant team’s Daily Positioning Update. Distribution of this report is currently by request only, so please reach out to me or any member of the sales team if you’d like to begin receiving it.
Data
Data has always been an integral part of Vanda’s DNA. Accordingly, we are excited to announce that Vanda Analytics 2.0 is in the works. Among other enhancements, this new and improved web-based platform will allow clients to directly integrate Vanda’s positioning data into their models via an API (see – we are listening).
In these challenging times, rest assured that we continue to invest in Vanda’s product offering and client servicing capabilities. We look forward to sharing other exciting initiatives with you in the near future and, as always, don’t hesitate to contact me directly if you have any questions.
Best regards,
Angus Hume
Chief Executive Officer