John Moody

摘要

Ideas form academic disciplines such as physics and computer science have long been appropriated into trading strategies, and financial firms have made a habit of hiring experts in these fields. But that wasn't necessary for commodity trading adviser J E Moody & Co. because the company's founder already had a handle on those academic pursuits. John Moody posseses a rare combination of theoretical expertise and hands-on financial experience that led him from the halls of academia to a full-time focus on asset management. That career shift certainly has paid dividends - his quantitative fund, the JEM Commodity Relative Value Program, boasts a compound annual return since inception of 40.2 percent (through October 2007), with assets under management already north of $63 million. Moody received a Ph. D. in physics from Princeton before serving as a faculty member in the computer science department at Yale. He then returned to his roots in the Pacific Northwest to serve as a computer science professor at the Oregon Graduate Institute (OGI). In 1996, he founded a computational finance program at OGI, for which he served as director until 2003. Around that time, he says, his interest in trading began to take on a greater role in his life. "While I was at Yale, I did some consulting for JPMorgan Securities, and over the years I did projects for some major investment banks and hedge funds," Moody recalls.