Westpeak Global Advisors Supports the New Crossing Networks Trend Toward Pooling Liquidity

Westpeak Global Advisors
470 Walnut Street
Boulder, CO 80302

Assets under management:

$3.3 billion.

Fund(s) for which you trade:

Westpeak Capital Growth, IXIS Value Fund, IXIS Westpeak U.S. Equities Index Plus and IXIS Westpeak U.S. Small-Cap Growth.

Types of products traded:

U.S. and non-U.S. equities primarily. We also do some futures trading and some currency trading. Our quantitative equities strategies include large-cap enhanced, core and growth; small-cap core and growth, all-cap core; EAFE core, EASEA core, MSCI Europe Enhanced and MSCI Japan Enhanced.

Daily volume in equities:

More than 1 million shares.

Structure of trading department:

There are three traders, and all three of us are cross trained across all the markets that we trade in. We don't have any special traders that just do night trading. We feel that it's better for the firm as a whole if everyone is capable of handling orders in any market on any given day, because you never know when someone is going to be out and you have to fill in.

Previous Positions:

I worked at BT Alex Brown as an OTC market maker. Pretty much my whole career has been spent between Alex Brown and Westpeak.

Education:

I have a B.S. in business administration from the University of Colorado. I'm also a CFA charter holder.

There seems to be a new trend in the area of crossing networks toward pooling liquidity. For example, ITG has gotten together with Pipeline and NYFIX Millennium to pool their liquidity in their dark server. I think this is a good thing for everyone. Also, I think you're going to see, in the next 6 to 8 months, a lot more algorithms come out. Here at Westpeak we would like to see some of these algorithms get a little more sophisticated. More-dynamic algos, which incorporate a market proxy such as the S&P 500 as an input, would be welcomed.