WHO WE ARE  -  Welcome to VISUAL QUANT

VISUAL QUANT is a company aimed at providing Visual Finance Solutions making quant finance 'fascinating' and easier to understand based on the principle that a picture speaks a thousand words; it's about connecting the dots in the world of quant finance. By using state-of-the-art and engaging graphical representations, we enable the investor to better comprehend sophisticated mathematical components of a Quantitative Hedge Fund, and to facilitate and expedite investment decisions from an Allocator. With this in mind our goal is to help Quantitative Hedge Funds to significantly improve their communication and marketing of their strategies to existing and potential investors.

MISSION  –  Our Mission Statement

Our reason of being is to bring quant finance closer to the public by providing you as a professional the ultimate tools to make an indelible impression to your existing and potential clients. Therefore, our mission statement is formulated as follows:

"Making quant finance fascinating and easier to understand for everyone, and as a logical consequence helping to capitalize on that in a robust fashion."

PHILOSOPHY  –  How We Think

We believe in quant strategies as they have embedded a systematic approach to investing. Systematic investing overcomes certain shortcomings. A human brain is prone to cognitive biases and skillfully programmed computers can process much more information than the human brain can and can ensure consistency of thought by using rules instead of relying on ‘gut instinct’. This motivates our focus is on quant finance. We also do believe quant finance can contribute significantly in more traditional investment approaches.

We believe in visualizations as the way to communicate quant finance in a comprehensible way: a picture speaks a thousand words, which enables us to communicate easier, quicker. We believe it’s important to visualize in the right way, which means it is objective and based on facts. The visualizations should be fresh, clean, original, clarifying and beautiful all at once, to be able to accomplish optimal communication.

Based on our extensive experience as a quant in the Global Financial Markets, the Visual Quant has come to believe that there is a vital missing component which is to exploit the full potential of graphical representations and visualizations to efficiently and effectively communicate quant finance.

By using powerful and engaging visualizations, we believe we can reduce the barrier to have prior quantitative financial knowledge to understand quant strategies and their huge potential as (downside) risk protection and return enhancers.

“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says 'I'm possible'!” – Audrey Hepburn

Quant finance is often seen as elusive and complex by outsiders but we believe that if it becomes easier to understand the logical consequence is that it becomes fun as well. On top of that, we believe that by using visualizations, which are original, clarifying and beautiful all at once, we can contribute significantly in making quant finance fun and easier to understand and to remember.

We believe that it is vital for the commercial success of quant funds to communicate and explain their quant strategies in a clear and transparent way, as these are often seen as complex black boxes. In our view succeeding in doing so would result in full understanding, trust and confidence. Following on from this we believe we can help remove skepticism regarding the innovative character these strategies often have.

Design is at the core of our business. In our view it is more than just a color or the use of some materials: to us it’s all about the total concept. With respect to the solutions we provide, we see design as the total concept, consisting of consistent, smart and functional use of colors, shapes, sizes, metaphors, its emotional engagement, intuitive power, navigation, speed and ease of use and attractiveness that will reach its ultimate objective when optimally combined and streamlined. We believe that it will undoubtedly bear fruit to be keep our visualizations clean and simple: ‘less is more’.

“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains or the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.” – Steve Jobs

“Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler.” – Albert Einstein

SUMMARY

• We believe in quant finance on its own and in addition to more traditional approaches as this embeds a systematic approach to problem solving;

• We believe in the right quant visualization as the way to communicate complex matters in a comprehensible way;

• We believe the potential of visualization in finance is not fully exploited based on our experience;

• We believe we can remove the barrier to have prior quantitative financial knowledge to understand quant strategies and their huge potential;

• We believe that if quant finance is (1) easier to understand it becomes (2) fun. Furthermore, using visualizations, which are original, clarifying and beautiful all at once, contributes in both.

• We believe that in order to be successful, communication of ‘black box’ quant strategies should be transparent, which will also help removing skepticism about their often innovative character;

• We believe in design as the core of our business, where it is seen as a total concept instead of just a color of the fabric for example. Part of that is to keep the visualizations clean and simple.

GLOBAL REACH  –  Where We Are Located

We want to be as close as possible to where our clients are, to be able to serve their needs in the best way possible. On top of that, we want to be as close as possible to where it all happens and to have a global scope. Therefore, as we are a financial technology firm we are physically present on a very regular basis in the financial and FinTech centres of the world among others. Our head office is based in Amsterdam.

MANAGEMENT  -  The People Part 1

BOB HAGEMANS, Chief Executive and Founder - bob.hagemans@visualquant.com

Bob’s life passion and fascination has been devoted to the application of visualization using quantitative finance techniques as a pursuit of analyzing and understanding the dynamics of financial markets. The ultimate objective is to intuitively benefit from this, according to his principle: analyze, visualize, capitalize.

Bob has a systemic approach to problem solving and strong ability to think conceptually and scientifically. By designing vivid (data) visualizations he contributes significantly to communicate complex matters in common sense; making it more accessible to the public and help exploit its commercial value. In the light thereof Bob is always devoted to invest in the quality of the organization. Moreover, given his very high aspirations and continuous strive for perfection and improvement, he enjoys to expand his programming skills and study financial literature, all with the aim to design & implement innovative concepts/techniques in his research, models and analyses.

Bob has more than 12 years of extensive experience as a Quant Analyst, Strategist and Researcher in the Global Financial Market place. Throughout his career he was involved with Risk Management, Quantitative Investment Strategy Development, Performance Attribution,  Statistical Models and the creation and design of Investment Reports and other materials. He worked for Merrill Lynch and UBS Wealth Management among others. Bob has a post-doc CQF (Certificate in Quantitative Finance) from Fitch Learning and a Master’s of Science in Investment Theory from Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Recently he decided to follow his true passion and founded the VISUAL QUANT, offering Visual Finance Solutions to make quant finance fun, fascinating and easier to understand. He believes the possibilities of visualization are limitless and that their opportunities in (quant) finance are not being fully exploited.

BUSINESS PARTNERS  –  The People Part 2

In order to be able to serve you as a client in the best way possible, the Visual Quant has an extensive global network. We work together with several business partners, which are highlighted below.

BARTT C. KELLERMAN, CEO and Founder Global Capital Acquisition, Initiator The Battle of the Quants

Bartt is currently the Founder and CEO of Global Capital Acquisition (GCA). GCA, founded in 2002, is a consulting firm assisting Investors to find smart, innovative and sound investments ideas in the alternative investment space. Global Capital Acquisition also manages the Battle of the Quants meetings in the United States, Western Europe and Asia. Mr. Kellermann is a regular speaker at hedge fund conferences internationally and has appeared on MSNBC and Bloomberg TV reflecting on the current state of the hedge fund industry. Mr. Kellermann has an MBA from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and an undergraduate degree from Gettysburg College.

HEICO WESSELIUS, Relationships and Relevance

Heico Wesselius is a former member of the Visualizing Finance Lab (VFL) in New York City. He currently holds an affiliate membership to this Research Lab at Parsons The New School for Design upon emigrating to Melbourne, Australia.

The mission of the Lab is and will be to explore the different ways in which complex economic situations — and its associated dynamics can be explained through visual, metaphorical and narrative representations. Heico assisted with the VFL Symposium held at Parsons in October of 2010. Upon deciding the core focus of the Lab, it excluded data visualization of complex data. This is however an established but still emerging field. This is currently explored through the VISUAL QUANT by developing the right software tools. VISUAL QUANT assists both finance businesses like Quant Hedge Funds, Wealth Managers, and (indirectly) consumers to understand decision making through a visual language. It has the capacity to uncover complex mathematical and statistical relationships in an extremely visual way. The software also has narrative explanatory powers that otherwise only sits within the mathematics and statistics. The difficulty does not reside in understanding the differential equations but the comparative and simple human capacity to trace simple lines, view comparative charts that trace individual decision-making processes and provides accurate information.

THE BRAND  –  The Story Behind Our Logo

The logo represents a Capricorn, as the founder of the VISUAL QUANT is a Capricorn himself, which is standing ready to ‘climb the mountain’ and reach higher heights. This represents a couple of things. First of all the Capricorn bears various positive aspects, for example described below:

“The sign Capricorn signifies stability, balance and wisdom. The Capricorn natives apply their intelligence and logic and take into account all the facts before making any decisions. The Capricorn natives are self-confident, have big goals and put in their best efforts to achieve them.” – Anonymous

Secondly, the fact that it is looking to the right and standing upwards is symbolizing to reach the skies being considered as ‘one can reach anything, because the sky is the limit’. So the philosophy is to join us on our travel up to the sky, and make ‘the impossible’ happen.

Thirdly, if you look carefully – and with some imagination – you can see that the logo has some symmetry in it and represents an ‘S-like sign’, referring to a $ symbol. This in turn represents wealth creation, in terms of capital but also in terms of ‘knowledge wealth’.

On the homepage we see a Capricorn that is looking out over the world at the top of the mountain, which symbolizes to have overview, oversight, transparency and control; we have a helicopter view of the world and see anything that is relevant in the financial world in particular. This is exactly what we want to create by providing our products and services. Furthermore, it represents that the Capricorn is capable of reaching the highest points, i.e. the top of the mountain, which represents that ‘when going with the Capricorn’ you will reach this height as well. You will be helped to increase your financial knowledge and enhance your investing and finance skills.