Winton Group, Ltd (which includes Winton Capital Management) is a British investment management firm founded by
David Harding. In the United States, Winton is registered with the
Securities and Exchange Commission
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...
as an
investment advisor
A financial adviser or financial advisor is a professional who provides financial services to clients based on their financial situation. In many countries, financial advisors must complete specific training and be registered with a regulatory ...
and with the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an independent agency of the US government created in 1974 that regulates the U.S. derivatives markets, which includes futures, swaps, and certain kinds of options.
The Commodity Exchange Ac ...
as a CTA, and is authorised by the
Financial Conduct Authority
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is a financial regulation, financial regulatory body in the United Kingdom, but operates independently of the UK Government, and is financed by charging fees to members of the financial services industry. The ...
in the UK. The company trades on more than 100 global futures markets in a wide variety of asset classes and on global equity markets. The firm was launched with $1.6 million in 1997,
reached a peak of $28.5 billion in assets under advisement, before dropping to 7.3 billion by late 2020. Winton Group has seven offices around the world: London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
, Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
, Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
, Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
, Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
, and Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi (, ; ar, أَبُو ظَبْيٍ ' ) is the capital and second-most populous city (after Dubai) of the United Arab Emirates. It is also the capital of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and the centre of the Abu Dhabi Metropolitan Area.
...
.
History
Early years
In 1996, physicist and investment manager David Harding left Man AHL (formerly Adam, Harding and Lueck), a systematic managed futures
A managed futures account (MFA) or managed futures fund (MFF) is a type of alternative investment in the US in which trading in the futures markets is managed by another person or entity, rather than the fund's owner. Managed futures accounts inc ...
fund and created Winton. Using Harding's middle name, the firm began trading in October 1997. Winton employs statisticians, engineers and physicists, to pursue investment strategies based on scientific research and analysis. According to Harding, Winton had difficulty attracting clients as a commodity trading advisor
A commodity trading advisor (CTA) is US financial regulatory term for an individual or organization who is retained by a fund or individual client to provide advice and services related to trading in futures contracts, commodity options and/or ...
(CTA), because investors preferred hedge fund strategies that focused on the equity market
A stock market, equity market, or share market is the aggregation of buyers and sellers of stocks (also called shares), which represent ownership claims on businesses; these may include ''securities'' listed on a public stock exchange, as ...
rather than futures contracts
In finance, a futures contract (sometimes called a futures) is a standardized legal contract to buy or sell something at a predetermined price for delivery at a specified time in the future, between parties not yet known to each other. The asset ...
. However, using fees that were different from industry standards, the firm was able to secure investors.
Company milestones
* In 2005, the firm launched the ''Winton Evolution Fund'', which was designed as a multi-strategy fund investing in a variety of financial instruments
Financial instruments are monetary contracts between parties. They can be created, traded, modified and settled. They can be cash (currency), evidence of an ownership interest in an entity or a contractual right to receive or deliver in the form ...
and securities
A security is a tradable financial asset. The term commonly refers to any form of financial instrument, but its legal definition varies by jurisdiction. In some countries and languages people commonly use the term "security" to refer to any for ...
.
* In July 2007, Petershill Fund, a private equity fund set up by Goldman Sachs Asset Management International, acquired a 9.99% stake in Winton.
* In 2007, Winton was ranked as the third largest CTA by the industry journal ''Absolute Return''.
* In 2007 it became founding member of the Hedge Fund Standards Board
The Standards Board for Alternative Investments (SBAI), formerly known as the Hedge Fund Standards Board, is an international standard-setting body for the alternative investment industry and sets the voluntary standard of best practices and pra ...
, which sets a voluntary code of standard of best practice endorsed by its members.
* In 2008, Winton was named ''Real Business'''s "most profitable" company and was ranked the third largest private finance company in Britain by ''The Daily Telegraph''.
* In late 2008, the company opened offices in Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
, their first outside of the UK.
* In 2010, the company launched the ''Winton Global Equity Fund'' which received UCITS
The Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities Directive (UCITS2009/65/ECis a consolidated EU directive that allows collective investment schemes to operate freely throughout the EU on the basis of a single authorisation fro ...
approval in Europe.
* In September 2012, Winton became research consultants with Fortune SG Fund Management of Shanghai to help develop China's first managed futures fund.
* In 2013, media coverage reported that the firm's founder had paid nearly £521 million in British taxes since 2006, including £133 million in 2011 alone.
* In 2014 the company opened offices in New York, Sydney, and Tokyo. Shanghai offices followed in 2015.
* In 2016, Winton's San Francisco office opened.
* Also in 2016, Petershill Fund sold its stake in Winton to Affiliated Managers Group
Affiliated Managers Group, Inc. (NYSE: AMG) is a strategic partner to independent investment management firms globally, with equity stakes in a number of partner-owned traditional investment managers, hedge funds, and specialized private equity fi ...
, and Winton changed the name of its holding company from Winton Capital Management to Winton Group.
*In 2018, Hivemind Technologies Ltd., a software company that specialises in creating structured data, spun out from Winton.
Organization
Operations
David Harding is the company's founder and chief executive officer. Approximately 70% of the firm's employees own shares or share options in the company. Winton employs approximately 175 staff members.
More than 100 of the firm's employees are academics doing mathematical research and studying statistical relationships and trading patterns. These highly trained specialists are organized into research teams, which peer review
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
and test new strategies, gather data and identify trends. While quant hedge funds broadly have struggled for several years just following the 2008 financial crisis, Winton remains a top recruit of quantitative minds.
The majority of the firm's clients reside outside the UK and many are from the United States.
Investment strategy
Since its inception, Winton has traded as a commodity trading advisor
A commodity trading advisor (CTA) is US financial regulatory term for an individual or organization who is retained by a fund or individual client to provide advice and services related to trading in futures contracts, commodity options and/or ...
(CTA). It is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an independent agency of the US government created in 1974 that regulates the U.S. derivatives markets, which includes futures, swaps, and certain kinds of options.
The Commodity Exchange Ac ...
as a CTA and by the Financial Conduct Authority
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is a financial regulation, financial regulatory body in the United Kingdom, but operates independently of the UK Government, and is financed by charging fees to members of the financial services industry. The ...
in the UK. Winton is also registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...
as an investment advisor.
The firm refers to itself as a "modern investment management company" and employs managed futures
A managed futures account (MFA) or managed futures fund (MFF) is a type of alternative investment in the US in which trading in the futures markets is managed by another person or entity, rather than the fund's owner. Managed futures accounts inc ...
strategies using data analysis and modelling to follow trends in global futures markets
A futures exchange or futures market is a central financial exchange where people can trade standardized futures contracts defined by the exchange. Futures contracts are derivatives contracts to buy or sell specific quantities of a commodity or fi ...
such as commodities and bonds. After establishing the Winton Evolution Fund and Winton Global Equity Strategy, the firm began offering multi-strategy and equity
Equity may refer to:
Finance, accounting and ownership
* Equity (finance), ownership of assets that have liabilities attached to them
** Stock, equity based on original contributions of cash or other value to a business
** Home equity, the dif ...
investment programs that invest in equity markets around the world.
Winton uses research and quantitative data analysis to identify favourable trends in the market and its focus on research differentiates it from its industry companions. In recent years, Winton has further developed its statistical research, focusing on big data
Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...
; according to the ''Financial Times'', in 2013 its machines processed "the equivalent of 30m King James bible
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...
s' worth of information every day". In April 2013, Winton was featured in the BBC2
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...
program ''Horizon: The Age of Big Data'' for its use of scientific analysis of data, particularly for its capture and processing of large data sets including historical data for the markets that it trades in and newly produced data from thousands of companies.
Winton's trading is automated and systematic and uses computer algorithms
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...
to trade futures in financial assets including equities, currencies, bonds, commodities, livestock and energy in over 100 futures markets worldwide. Winton uses a mix of long-term and short-term trading as part of its strategy and combines uncorrelated
In probability theory and statistics, two real-valued random variables, X, Y, are said to be uncorrelated if their covariance, \operatorname ,Y= \operatorname Y- \operatorname \operatorname /math>, is zero. If two variables are uncorrelated, there ...
strategies to maximize their risk-return ratio. According to the firm, it uses the same mathematical tools, for research, statistical data analysis, stock selection, and futures
Futures may mean:
Finance
*Futures contract, a tradable financial derivatives contract
*Futures exchange, a financial market where futures contracts are traded
* ''Futures'' (magazine), an American finance magazine
Music
* ''Futures'' (album), a ...
investments. From around 2008, the Winton Fund has increased its allocation to cash equities.
Assets under advisement
When Winton launched in October 1997, it held $1.6 million in assets. Over the next 3 years the assets held by the firm grew to over $150 million at the end of 2000. By 2004, the firm's seventh year in operation, its assets under advisement reached $1 billion. In the mid-to-late 2000s, the firm experienced large inflows of capital, leading to its assets under advisement increasing rapidly from $4.8 billion in mid-2006, to $12.4 billion in 2009. Between 2010 and 2012, Winton's total assets under advisement increased by almost $15 billion, from $13.7 billion in June 2010 to $28.5 billion in February 2012. As at December 2017, Winton's assets under advisement totaled $28.5 billion. Following a year of significant losses, including more than 20% in their main fund, Winton's assets under advisement dropped to 7.3 billion by late 2020.
References
{{Reflist
External links
Winton official website
Hedge fund firms in the United Kingdom
Alternative investment management companies
Financial services companies established in 1997
Hedge funds
Privately held companies of the United States