In our new blog series, Automating Alpha, we interview the quantitative trading firms and hedge funds that subscribe to our Alpha Streams project. In our first installment, CEO Jared Broad sat down with Chris Udy, CEO of Tibra, a quantitative research and investment group. 

Broad: Who is Tibra? What is your role at the company? And what is your trading strategy at a 30,000-foot view? 

Udy: Tibra Capital is a quantitative research and investment group that utilizes its shareholders' capital across various investment strategies. Started in 2006, Tibra Capital has grown to be a global firm with offices in Sydney, Wollongong, Hong Kong, London, and Dubai. Our mission is to facilitate liquidity, price fairness and efficient allocation of capital in financial markets, leading to growth in our investors' wealth. Our investment philosophy focuses on a scientific approach to investment using a range of systematic and diversified trading strategies across all asset classes and superior risk management techniques to manage the exposure of our investments. I am Tibra's CEO, and my role is to ensure that we are constantly evolving our investment process with the best people, platforms, and resources. 

B: How did you come across QuantConnect? What were your original thoughts on the platform? What led to your partnership with QuantConnect? 

U: Tibra is proactive in identifying emerging technologies and trends that can assist in the evolution of our investment process, and quickly identified QuantConnect as a stand-out platform due to the sophistication of its technology and its vision for the future. It was also important that QuantConnect shares our focus on innovation, being a technology-led firm with a passionate and motivated management team. 

B: How does Tibra utilize QuantConnect? What business problem(s) does QuantConnect help you solve? 

U: One of the most challenging aspects of running a successful trading company is the continued evolution of its investment process. Being able to crowdsource investment alpha via QuantConnect's unique and open-source technology to provide an opportunity for great quant talent to monetize and derive value from their ideas is very exciting. 

B: As the first Alpha Streams customer, please share your views on the project and how you see it as revolutionary? U: Tibra feels that QuantConnect is unique because it provides a true source of alpha without needing quants to create and sell a fully-baked strategy. Instead, quants interested in selling their alpha on Alpha Streams provide only a "signal" that includes metadata on their strategy. The investment objectives of Alpha Streams clients will naturally differ, so being able to select and curate bespoke alpha-generation ideas for inclusion in an existing investment process gives Tibra maximum flexibility and maximizes the quants' ability to see their alphas deployed in trading strategies. I think, over time, Alpha Streams will become the platform of choice for quants. 

B: How does Alpha Streams supplement your investment process? How does it make your business more efficient? U: While it's early days, Tibra is excited to see Alpha Streams develop into the core industry conduit that links alpha to the broader market, enabling a whole new generation of quants to monetize their ideas for the first time. As Tibra is the launch client of Alpha Streams, our team is excited to leverage QuantConnect as a disruptive force in traditional market structures through the first genuine alpha discovery platform.