When Global Advisors was founded in 1999, our promise of Professional Asset Management in Commodities set us apart from the commodities crowd. Through more than a decade, we’ve invested in the talent, teamwork and technology to deliver on this promise, which is more important than ever in today’s investment environment. In a world where the average lifespan of a hedge fund is less than two years, our stability and performance have attracted some of the best minds in the industry to work with us.
Leadership Team
Global Advisors’ leadership team has worked together since the firm’s inception, building a strong performance record on a rare continuity of experience and collaboration. Our systematic approach benefits from the team’s decades of commodity trading experience and contacts with key market participants.
Through ongoing research and relationships with major players in the commodities world, leadership team members have the best possible access to relevant information, which they synthesize from a wide range of sources—before it makes the headlines. They know where to look for profitable strategies and how to direct the quantitative team in testing them, providing the market intelligence and research guidance that leads from theory to reality.
Daniel Masters
Co-Principal and Portfolio Manager
Director of Trading & Execution
Daniel Masters started out in 1985 at Royal Dutch/Shell, where he was responsible for managing a portfolio of North Sea Crude. Moving to The Phibro Energy Division of Salomon, Inc. in 1987, he pioneered the firm’s entrance into the electricity markets. He structured groundbreaking natural gas deals and was an original participant in the “Contract for Difference” (CFD) market for physical oil in Europe. J.P. Morgan hired him in 1993 to add trading expertise to its array of financial capabilities. Based on Danny’s success in establishing a proprietary trading program, Morgan promoted him to head its global energy trading business in 1997.
Russell Newton
Co-Principal and Portfolio Manager
Director of Systematic Model Research & Development
Russell Newton began his career as a crude oil trader for Royal Dutch/Shell in 1986. As head of Shell’s futures and forwards trading, he was one of the original developers of pricing models for the Brent CFD market. Rus also worked for The Phibro Energy Division of Salomon, Inc. and Rhein Oel Limited before joining J.P. Morgan in 1993. At Morgan, he served as global commodities strategist, covering base and precious metals as well as energy. He developed a new derivative trade structures and new techniques for researching, analyzing and modeling markets.
Dwayne Drexler
Chief Operating Officer
Dwayne Drexler has played a key operational role at Global Advisors since its inception. He joined us from the Commodity Operations group at MGT in New York. In his middle office role at the global energy derivatives desk, he was responsible for position and profit/loss reconciliation and reporting, maintenance of risk management tools, and resolution of operational issues. He was also instrumental in implementing a new trading and risk management system. From 1995 to 1998, Dwayne worked in the Internal Audit department at J.P. Morgan, where he brought new risk management and operational controls to its trading businesses and used his technology auditing skills to review the firm’s major trading and risk management systems.
Quantitative Team
Our systematic program benefits from a quantitative team that brings together accomplished and visionary specialists in the realms of quantitative research analysis, statistics and signal processing, machine learning and advanced programming.
Team members come to Global Advisors with illustrious records of groundbreaking academic scholarship, publication, and professional achievements in their respective areas of focus-blazing new trails in fields of importance to our systematic approach. Among them, team members have: developed analytical methods and tools for large, noisy heterogeneous data-sets; created novel Bayesian Monte Carlo statistical algorithms; developed a methodology for statistical learning; and pioneered advances in machine learning.
Working closely with Russell Newton, the firm’s portfolio manager and director of systematic model research and development, the quantitative team tests and translates our most promising theories and research into investment opportunities through the proprietary models and technologies.
Trading Team
Our trading team brings decades of experience and skill to monitoring our proprietary trading models and executing all orders via electronic trading platforms and executing brokers. The team also monitors all futures markets and fund positions for real-time and end-of-day performance reporting.
Led by Daniel Masters, our trading team embodies deep experience in individual market nuances and histories across commodity markets. Team members are well versed in the evolving dynamics of the electronic trading technologies and common ’phone broker’ execution practices across all commodities.