< The 2016 Trading Technology 40

After Tradeworx founder and former CEO Manoj Narang left the Red Bank, New Jersey–based high frequency trading firm in January 2015 following a disagreement with its board over strategic direction, he devoted a lot of time to something he’s enjoyed since he was a math and computer science major at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1980s: software development. “I wrote a lot of code this past year,” says Narang, 46, who designed all of Tradeworx’s hedge fund strategies during his 16 years at the firm. For his next act he has teamed up with former Goldman Sachs Group colleague John Holena to launch financial technology incubator and quantitative trading firm Mana Partners. Narang is building on his success at Tradeworx, which commercialized its matching engine and research infrastructure through its Thesys Technologies affiliate. “I would like to take that experiment, which went very well, and fully embrace the notion that you can take intellectual property and incubate it with multiple business models,” he says. New York–based Mana Partners will develop technology and trading strategies for its own use and then build products and services around them. Initially, the firm is focused on options-trading strategies, especially those with a positive exposure to volatility, which Narang expects to be elevated for extended periods in the next decade. “I feel that the options market is a prime area to better service traders in terms of bringing tools and products into the marketplace,” he says. Mana Partners will be developing analytical decision support tools for both the stock and options markets, including next-generation transaction cost analysis tools that will help equity investors estimate their market impact and better understand market microstructure.

 
2016 Trading Technology 40

1. Raymond Tierney III Bloomberg 2. Richard Prager BlackRock Private Markets Investment Outlook Q2 2025: Opportunities Amid Uncertainty Sponsored by Schroders Capital May 1, 2025 3. Chris Isaacson BATS Global Markets 4. Jonathan Ross KCG Holdings 5. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq

6. Brad Levy Markit 7. Dan Keegan Citi 8. Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional 9. Raj Mahajan Goldman Sachs Group 10. Ari Studnitzer CME Group

11. Mayur Kapani Intercontinental Exchange 12. Gerald O’Connell CBOE Holdings 13. Nicholas Themelis MarketAxess Holdings 14. Gil Mandelzis EBS BrokerTec (ICAP) 15. Bill Chow and Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing

16. Rob Park IEX Group 17. Philip Weisberg Thomson Reuters 18. John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT 19. Robert Cornish International Securities Exchange 20. Paul Hamill Citadel Securities

21. Eric Noll Convergex 22. Tyler Moeller and Joshua Walsky Broadway Technology 23. Rishi Nangalia REDI Holdings 24. Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology 25. Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange

26. Manoj Narang Mana Partners 27. Gaurav Suri Arcesium 28. Robert Sloan S3 Partners 29. Anton Katz and Stephen Mock AQR Capital Mgmt 30. Stu Taylor Algomi

31. D. Keith Ross Jr. PDQ Enterprises 32. Donal Byrne Corvil 33. Alfred Eskandar Portware 34. R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group 35. Masayuki Hosaka Rakuten

36. Peter Maragos and David Karat Dash Financial 37. Amar Kuchinad Electronifie 38. Jennifer Nayar SR Labs 39. Dave Snowdon Metamako 40. Dan Raju Tradier