Auspice

The Auspice portfolio managers are seasoned institutional commodity traders. Their experience, trading one of the most volatile asset classes, forms the backbone of their strategy for generating profits while preserving capital and dynamically managing risk. <br><br> The AUSPICE Team<br> <br> Tim Pickering<br> President and CIO<br> Tim Pickering, Founder and President of Auspice Capital Advisors (Auspice), is lead portfolio manager and CIO with 15 years of commodity and financial trading experience. Prior to founding Auspice, Tim was Vice President of Options Trading at Shell Trading Gas and Power in the Houston and Calgary offices. Tim also held the position Senior Trader for the energy derivatives portfolio at TD Securities in Toronto. Here he traded in a wide expanse of capital market products including foreign exchange, bonds, money markets and exotic derivatives. Tim has extensive experience trading OTC and exchange traded options, futures, swaps and quantitative trend following systems. <br><br> With partner Ken Corner, Tim has built Auspice to go beyond a traditional CTA (Commodity Trading Advisor), offering strategies in active managed futures, passive ETFs, indices and custom commodity strategies. Most recently, Auspice launched the Auspice Broad Commodity Index and the Auspice Managed Futures Index (NYSE published) that support two new Claymore ETFs on the TSX. Additionally, Auspice is launching the Auspice Energy Program, a multi-strategy, multi-time period quantitative approach to investing in the global energy futures markets.<br> <br> Ken Corner<br> Portfolio Manager, Director of Research and Operations<br> Ken Corner is a founding partner of Auspice and a limited partner. Kens professional career began as a design engineer (Mechanical) for the ATCO group of companies and then evolved into financial modeling and commodity trading. Following his time with ATCO, Ken traded natural gas derivatives for Shell, and then went on to become the Vice President of Options Trading for TD Securities in Calgary. Ken leads the research effort at Auspice, and oversees the trading operation.<br> <br> The AUSPICE Philosophy <br><br> Trade with the trend. We don't believe in fighting the market. Our research has shown that it is more profitable to trade in the direction of the prevailing trend. We buy markets that are strong, and sell markets that are weak. Diversification improves returns and lowers volatility. As an investor, it is beneficial to pursue diversification through asset allocation. As portfolio managers we achieve diversification within the asset class by: <ul> <li>Trading a broad selection of commodities and financial futures.</li> <li>Trading across multiple time frames.</li> <li>Trading multiple systems.</li> <li>Trading long and short.</li> </ul> Systematic trading methods improve consistency and lower risk. We use systematic methods for trading and risk management. There is no second guessing trade entry or exit. The approach removes all emotion from trading decisions and allows us to apply our knowledge to the markets broadly and efficiently. <br> <br> Markets evolve so trading methods must adapt. We design systems that automatically adapt to changing price and volatility conditions. Also, we are continuously engaged in research and development, to improve system performance, and ensure robustness and scalability. <br> <br> Capital preservation and risk management are the foundation of our approach. Our systematic approach to risk management is integrated into our capital allocation model. Before a trade is executed, we evaluate the risk/reward possibilities on a portfolio, sector, and individual market basis, to ensure ideal position sizing. Then, when a trade is entered, a stop loss order is entered simultaneously, to ensure that the risk to the downside is limited to a predetermined level.