Alternative Investment Awards 2017

www.wealthandfinance-intl.com 29 Capital Company: Catana Capital Contact: Holger Knauer Email: [email protected] Address: Friedensstr. 7, Frankfurt am Main, 60311, Germany Phone: 496925617005 Website: www.catanacapital.de AI170025 Catana Catana Capital is an innovative German asset management company based in Frankfurt. We spoke to Holger Knauer to find out more. Founded in 2015 in Catana Capital has launched the first liquid alter- native fund (retail AIF) that is managed with a quantitative approached solely based on big data. Holger outlines how this unique approach ensures strong returns for clients. “Here at Catana Capital, via natural language processing, we collect more than 5 data sets every second that were published in the web in German or English in 6 countries on 25.000 stock listed companies and markets. With that unique information, we build a concentrated portfolio that invests in German large cap single stocks and major large cap stock indices. Investments can be either long and short. “To ensure that we are as risk averse as possible, we run certain BIG DATA and trend following sub-strategies in our portfolio which are minimum volatility optimized. In addition, all positions were secured with stop losses. Around mayor events like Brexit vote or US presidential election for example, the portfolio is neutralized in order to avoid risks. On top of this, we are monitoring core KPIs such as exposure levels all the time.” Overall, the financial industry, especially in German and Europe, is facing strong headwinds due to regulation and negative interest rates. The Asset Management industry in particular enjoyed a couple of great years as almost all asset classes performed well on the back of quan- titative easing. As a result, the performance of long only products that dominate the markets were positive on absolute levels. As fees are based on volume, revenues increased and often perfor- mance fees especially of absolute return funds were drivers of rising revenues. On the other hand, active Asset Managers are facing increas- ing competition from ETFs that have significantly gained market share within the last couple of years. This adds tremendous cost pressure on traditional players. The trend of factor ETFs puts further pressure on active Asset Manager. While Catana Capital understand the relative at- tractiveness of ETFs in the longest bull market in history, the firm are ex- tremely cautious regarding their future, and as such are focused on big data and developing their strategies in order to continue to offer clients the very highest standards of service and support, as Holger concludes. “Moving forward, while we are always developing our big data trading strategies further, we are currently strengthening the A.I. know-how of our company based on the proprietary big data source we have.” Best Quantitative Asset Manager 2017 - Germany & Best Public AIF (5 Years): Catana Big Data