What can you expect?
In this episode, CARL’s Jamie Uppenberg speaks with Stephen Wu, investment manager for Carthage Fund II now available on the CARL app.
Carthage's primary objective is to achieve a weekly profit margin of +0.5-1% through the sale of options, collecting premiums, which is expected to compound to an annualized return in the range of +30-60%. Notably, our strategy yielded impressive returns of +194% in 2020, +149% in 2021, +30% in 2022, and +41% in 2023. At Carthage, our approach diverges from attempting to predict market direction or whether a stock will go up or down. Instead, we focus on evaluating the likelihood of specific stock price movements within defined timeframes. Leveraging this analysis, we strategically engage in the sale of both weekly and monthly option premiums to secure profitable outcomes.
More info about the Carthage Fund II: Carthage Fund II
Episode Highlights
- 0:00 - Intro
- 1:32 - Overview of the strategy and what has made it so successful
- 6:33 - Technology and making investments more accessible
- 9:50 - Risk management and how the strategy works
- 12:53 - Final thoughts
Our Guest
Stephen Wu
Stephen Wu, portfolio manager, was an AI Software Engineer at Amazon and Microsoft for 6+ years, where he used statistical modeling to build the Amazon Alexa music recommendation system. Over the past 4+ years, he used statistical modeling and analysis to trade options, which eventually became the basis of this trading strategy. He partnered with several of his closest friends at Citadel, Point 72, Millennium, Neuberger Berman, Balyasny, etc to combine statistical modeling with financial analysis to create this trading strategy. After running it for 4 years and returning +31% in 2022, one of the worst years for tech with the Nasdaq -33%, he decided it was time to launch the fund. Stephen now runs it full-time with 100% of his liquid net worth invested and aims to grow it to the best hedge fund in the world. He named it “Carthage” after one of the greatest cities in history, known as a center for trade. Stephen double majored in Computer Science and Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University with honors.
OUR HOST
Jamie Uppenberg
Jamie has 15+ years in digital payments, banking and financial services software development. She’s held several executive management positions in digital product software delivery, working various digital payment projects with big tech such as Apple and Google. Jamie brings extensive compliance, regulatory and KYC product and process management.
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