User talk:WWB Too/Winton Capital Management

Draft review

As requested, here are a few thoughts on this new draft. I also included some suggested style edits. Where I make suggestions for replacement, please remember that I come at this from an editorial perspective, not a financial one, so please adjust as necessary for precision.

Lead

1. Is a UK "authorised investment manager" a term-of-art? Or does it mean it is just a firm licensed in the UK (in which case "UK-authorised", including the hyphen, might be more clear)?
2. "trades... in everything from... to..." should be less inclusive (it can't possible trade in everything). Maybe "in various equities, including..."

Founding

1. What is a "systematic" fund?
2. Help the lay reader by explaining what a CTA is and how it differs from, say, a brokerage that might be a more familiar to the reader.
3. I'll assume all the sources are correct, but does (6) specify how "highly educated" the employees are? This could read as a peacock term to some readers.
4. The parallelism in: prefer to invest "in conventional stocks" rather than "with a CTA". It would make more sense to say that they "prefer to invest with a conventional brokerage", or alternatively, "rather than in the funds offered by a CTA". Only change one, and only if supported by the source, of course.
5. "clients began to come on board" -> "the fund secured investors"

Early returns

1. Does "the firm grew significantly" refer to holdings, employees or something else? Quantify if available ("significantly" is OK if used with a quantifier, otherwise it sets off a red flag when I read it).

Expansion

1. In "Early returns" it was established that Winton expanded into Asia in 1999, so how did it open its first office outside the UK in 2008?
2. Link trend following; this seemed like another peacock term to me until I got to the Funding section.
3. Do you know the other strategy that was profitable? You don't need to explain it, but an appropriate wikilink would be helpful. Since there's only one other, the question presents itself to the curious.

Investment strategy

1. In the second paragraph, I'm not sure I understand "and the firm's trading decisions are based wholly on research." If that's the statement in the source reference, what is the context? I'd think that most firms would make the same claim. As it is, the first clause seems perfectly reasonable, and I'm not sure the second part really adds anything. The remainder of the paragraph serves to explain what research is being done and how it distinguishes Winton from other firms.
2. "According to industry commentators" should instead pair the claims with the actual commentators so the reader can better evaluate them; this also avoids attributing the same opinions to all industry commentators, some of whom may not agree.

I'll be offline for a few days to attend a wedding, but feel free to let me know what you think or if you have other questions. Cmprince (talk) 23:57, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Draft revision

Thank you very much for taking the time to review my draft; based on your suggestions, I've made a number of changes. These can be most easily seen by comparing the first version with the current one, and specific changes are explained in detail below

Lead

1. Adjusted the punctuation in the lead and included a wikilink to make clear that Winton is "authorised" by the FSA.
2. Second, I followed your advice and included a pre precise description of the range of futures in which Winton invests.

Founding

1. Alas, there is no Wikipedia article for "systematic funds", but the concept is explained in the Hedge fund article, so I've included a wikilink to that particular section. Basically a systematic fund is one that uses a trading system designed by humans but implemented by a computer. The alternative is a fundamental fund in which humans make all the final investment decisions. But I think that's probably too much detail for this article.
2. I understand that lay readers might be less familiar with what a CTA is, which is why I've wikilinked that article. To say much more I'm afraid would become rather wordy. I did tweak the wording around the early issue Winton had attracting investors so that it's clear they were choosing other hedge fund strategies, not that it was a choice to invest in mutual funds instead. And here I've stated that other strategies were focused on equity trading, rather than futures trading.
3. I've changed the wording regarding Renaissance, so that is now states that the engineers etc "typically hold Ph.D.s". In the source material it is described as "a company founded by Jim Simons, based in Long Island and brimming with Ph.D.s, statisticians, engineers and physicists."

Early returns

1. There was significant growth in the firm's assets under management in 2004, I've clarified this sentence a bit so that it's more obvious that "significant" refers to the AUM reaching $1 billion.

Expansion

1. The expansion into Asia in 1999 refers to the company raising assets there, but they didn't have a physical presence there. Amended.
2. I've added the two links that you suggested: to "trend following" and the other profitable strategy, "global macro".

Investment strategy

1. I've deleted the statement "and the firm's trading decisions are based wholly on research"—I agree that this statement doesn't necessarily add useful information.
2. I've also added in the names of the two publications where you suggested doing so.

With all of these changes made, I plan to move the draft over in a short while. Thanks, WWB Too (talk) 12:55, 17 October 2011 (UTC)