James Chen, Founder and CIO, Ovata Capital "The nice guy on the verge of making it big..."

My guest for today's podcast is James Chen, Founder and CIO of Ovata Capital, a $600mn+ multi-strategy, market neutral equities hedge fund headquartered in Hong Kong. James takes us on his journey from being born in Mongolia to growing up in Long Island, NY through his formative years as a proprietary and customer trader at Credit Suisse, Bear Stearns, JP Morgan and Barclays. In 2014, James made the decision to join Bluecrest where he established their equities business in Hong Kong. Following Bluecrest's decision to convert to a family office, James made the decision to start Ovata Capital, personally funding and underwriting the business hiring many of his former Bluecrest equities team members in Hong Kong. James shares many lessons he learned over his career, providing valuable insight to portfolio managers who aspire to launch their own independent firms. Joining me on this podcast as guest host is Christophe L'Ahelec, who most recently was a Senior Principal in the External Managers group at Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, one of the most widely respected allocators in the business. I leave it to Christophe to ask all the hard questions! Without further a due, here is my conversation with James and Christophe.