News

FlexTrade Integrates MSCI Risk and Factor Analysis

October 15, 2019 | By: Iain Smith

Investment Firm Woodline Selects MSCI’s Barra® in FlexONE OEMS

GREAT NECK, NEW YORK, October 15, 2019 – FlexTrade Systems (@FlexTrade), a global leader in multi-asset execution and order management systems, and Woodline Partners, a San Francisco-based investment firm, today announced the integration of MSCI’s Barra® real time portfolio risk and factor analysis solutions into the FlexONE OEMS.

MSCI Inc.’s (NYSE:MSCI) industry-leading factor models are used to help investment managers understand portfolio and market risk, enabling them to build portfolios based on objectives and risk tolerance. With this integration, portfolio managers using FlexONE can model orders more efficiently and better understand pro forma risk before staging the order for trading. Additionally, risk managers using FlexONE’s pre-trade compliance engine can now set thresholds to be observed in real-time.

Aaron Levine
Aaron Levine

Aaron Levine, Vice President, OEMS solutions at FlexTrade noted: “Our clients, such as Woodline Partners LP, have been demanding more real-time risk and factor analytics”. Levine added, “What used to be an end of day report is now available upstream in the investment life cycle, both for portfolio managers constructing their trades and risk managers taking proactive control of the firm’s active factor exposures.

Matthew Hooker, Chief Operating Officer at Woodline, stated: Our goal has been to integrate factor analytics with institutional grade position, performance and trade management. This partnership delivered the full capabilities of MSCI’s covariance modeling within FlexTrade’s configurable user interface.  As a result, our Portfolio Managers have the operational simplicity of real time risk, performance attribution and pro-forma analysis in one solution, which empowers the Woodline mission of idiosyncratic portfolio construction.”

Jorge Mina, Head of Analytics at MSCI stated:Our world class factor and risk analytics content can now seamlessly be accessed through the FlexONE OEMS platform. The integration can simplify workflows and improve communication, leveraging our industry leading factor and risk models. Working with FlexTrade aligns with our strategy to provide flexibility to clients in accessing MSCI solutions for portfolio risk and factor analytics.

Levine continued: “It was a pleasure to partner with both MSCI Barra and Woodline to integrate these next generation workflows into our OEMS. Whether a firm is modestly factor-aware or running explicit factor-driven strategies, our easy integration makes it possible for any manager to monitor real-time portfolio risk.”

About FlexONE

FlexONE, FlexTrade’s all-inclusive order/execution management system (OEMS), is designed to facilitate and streamline the demanding trading requirements of global hedge funds and quantitative investment firms. A multi-asset platform handling equities, FX, options, futures and fixed income, FlexONE facilitates hi-performance throughput of orders, compliance checking, real-time P&L and position management.

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About Woodline Partners LP

San Francisco-based Woodline Partners LP (“Woodline”​) is an investment firm implementing a market neutral equity strategy, focused on the global Healthcare and Technology sectors. Woodline’s sub-sector Portfolio Manager model enables a focus on generating idiosyncratic alpha and avoiding systemic risk factors.

About MSCI Inc.

MSCI is a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community. With over 45 years of expertise in research, data and technology, we power better investment decisions by enabling clients to understand and analyze key drivers of risk and return and confidently build more effective portfolios. We create industry-leading research-enhanced solutions that clients use to gain insight into and improve transparency across the investment process.