Herman Brodie -
Director, Founding Partner

From the very start of his professional career, Herman Brodie became painfully aware that financial markets could often bear little resemblance to the economic models that he studied at university.

After graduating with a business degree from the University of Manchester, his initiation into the financial markets came just in time for the October 1987 stock market crash. Since then, he has gained experience trading soft commodities, stock and fixed-income futures as well as foreign exchange. And, in each of these markets, he observed similar price behaviour as well as some very smart people doing some very un-smart things.

His preference for mathematical precision and a desire not to find himself victim of the crowd, nourished his search for a systematic approach to trading.

In 1992 he joined Deutsche Bank with the mandate to develop quantitative trading models for the currency markets. The product of this work has been systematic strategies that are today in use by traders, fund managers, monetary authorities and corporate treasuries around the world.

His plunge into the world of Behavioural Finance began in 1996 and has permitted a huge leap forward in trading model development. Most model-builders try to determine the characteristics of a given time-series before developing a strategy.

Cognitrend first makes a hypothesis about the market participants in order to conceive a strategy; data is the last thing that is introduced.

Herman Brodie co-founded Cognitrend GmbH in 2000 and has spoken on the subject of Behavioural Finance to professional audiences on five continents.