A brief Introduction: Hello everyone! My name is Brandon. As an undergraduate history major, I took a class in econometrics and was intrigued by how data could be used to find relationships between variables. Finance seemed like the perfect field to dive deeper into data, so I continued my education by completing a Master's in Financial Economics. In my current job with Heximer Investment Management, I have progressed from naïve analyst to a less naïve and humbled Portfolio Manager.

Why did I take up the FDP challenge? My firm has always been fascinated by how our technology stack can save us time and money. As we got past the operational infrastructure items such as CRM and trade rebalancers we stumbled into the open-source world of R for our investment processes. I chose to take the FDP exams in order to get a higher level view of how other asset managers have been using programming and data science to generate alpha!

What is great about FDP: The FDP curriculum provided me with an entirely new framework and robust set of questions to ask when evaluating academic research that uses less traditional statistical techniques such as machine learning as well as traditional techniques like standard regression analysis. I am increasingly skeptical today!

Having the FDP designation has sparked interesting conversations and friendships with other industry professionals. The opportunity to engage with the FDP community is important, which is why I enjoy webinars and look forward to meeting new Charterholders.

My advice for aspiring industry professionals: Whether you’re building backtests to present to investors or trying to stick to a sell discipline -  one of the growing subsets of finance is the art and science behind decision-making.  My advice to young finance professionals is to study up on behavioral biases that are common in making investment decisions. Try to think about the ways in which you can implement systematic approaches to investing and research to avoid the common biases.

A one-sentence quote explaining the value your FDP Charter holds for you. The FDP charter has allowed me to communicate more succinctly and credibly with academics, data scientists and technologists.

About Brandon Kremer

Brandon is a Portfolio Manager for Heximer Investment Management in Columbus, OH. The firm offers investment advice that includes discretionary management of multi-asset portfolios along with financial planning services. Brandon is a voting member on the firm’s investment committee with responsibilities ranging from portfolio construction and trading to client education and security research. Brandon joined Heximer Investment Management full time in 2016 after completing an internship with the firm in 2015.

In addition to the FDP designation, Brandon is also a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Charterholder and CAIA Member. Brandon is a board member for the CFA Society in Columbus where he enjoys networking and stepping outside of his comfort zone as the programming chair.

He attained both his undergraduate in Economics and his Master’s in Financial Economics degrees at Ohio University. Finally, Brandon is the 61st Charterholder in the Financial Data Professional Institute (established by the CAIA Association). He looks forward to the future of data science in investment management.

Webinar only: 

Or... create a free FDP profile and gain access to the project page: Learn how to use a database. 

How to use a hedge fund database, based on open-sourced hedge fund return and how to gain access to the data and a slew of interesting examples. How do you efficiently clean and manage semi-structured data? Alex and Linus demonstrated the opportunities with the NilssonHedge database, with examples based on factor analysis, correlations, and dispersions and explain why they probably should have picked a different programming language.

Guest speakers: Linus Nilsson, Founder NilssonHedge; Alex Lostado, Quant Analyst, NilssonHedge
Guest moderator: Brandon Kremer CFA, CAIA, CIPM, FDP, Portfolio Manager Heximer Investment Management 

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