Horton Point fills gap for emerging systematic managers through seeding platform

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva for New Managers:

Horton Point recently launched the Soundview Emerging Managers Fund I, L.P. to provide seed and acceleration capital for up to 20 external managers.

Tarpon Trading LLC, a global macro FX manager, was the fourth one to launch its program on the Horton Point incubation platform last month. A fifth one is being on-boarded right now, and the incubation fund may have around ten emerging fund managers by the end of the year. It specializes in short-term systematic managers, (i.e. very liquid strategies) including futures traders, currency traders and equity traders.

Horton Point LLC, a proprietary systematic trading firm based in New York, was launched in 2006 as a family office. It went into the seeding business early this year. "This is the seventh year that we have been in operation," Dimitri Sogoloff, founder and CEO of Horton Point, told Opalesque. "We've built a very significant infrastructure both on the execution side as well as the risk management, operations, and pretty much everything else."

He realized that there were a lot of talents out there coming from large banks and large buy side institutions, trying to start their own businesses; "They were really having a very difficult time doing it while they have the ability to generate alpha pretty consistently."