About Us
Torq Capital Management is an alternative asset manager focusing on equities in Asia Pacific markets.Headquartered in Hong Kong, with an additional advisory office in Singapore, Torq was established in 2016 by Avinash “Avi” Abraham, the former Head of Asia for Balyasny Asset Management and a former Portfolio Manager at Citadel.
Strategy
Torq Capital Management manages an Asia-Pacific equity market neutral strategy that seeks to maintain low levels of net exposure to equity markets generally as well as country, sector, and factor betas. Each investment team member is responsible for a defined coverage universe tailored to his/her experience, and uses fundamental equity research methods to search for perceived mispricings and rerating catalysts.
Portfolio construction at Torq is designed to maximize the amount of idiosyncratic risk in the portfolio, in the process minimizing systematic risk. The result is a broad portfolio constructed to hedge and mitigate unintended systematic risk arising from each investment. The strategy seeks at least 75% idiosyncratic risk contribution, achievable by using single stock shorts as both hedges and stand-alone ideas. Positions are dynamically resized on the basis of perceived risk/reward output, with highest conviction ideas making up the bulk of portfolio risk.
Risk Management
Torq’s investment philosophy relies on fundamental, bottom-up stock specific research to identify long and short equity investments, which are then constructed within a disciplined risk managed portfolio in an effort to isolate stock specific alpha and minimize unintended systematic portfolio volatility.
Torq’s risk infrastructure, overseen by a dedicated Chief Risk Officer, leverages multiple risk models and in-house database programming to produce customized real-time risk and performance attribution reporting. This risk infrastructure provides Torq’s Investment Committee and investment team with the required tools to ensure capital is deployed in pursuit of alpha. In the process, various beta drivers of risk are mitigated, including equity market beta, country, industry, and style (i.e. value vs growth) betas.
Firm Leadership
Avinash Abraham
Chief Investment Officer
Avinash Abraham is Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Torq Capital Management. Mr. Abraham was previously Managing Director & Head of Asia at Balyasny Asset Management (“BAM”) where he was responsible for managing BAM's overall Asia business, leading the relationship with sell-side counterparties, recruiting talent for Asia, participating in the Asia books’ capital allocation process, and marketing with BAM's marketing team. In addition to his role as office head and Responsible Officer, he ran the Asia Industrials & Energy portfolio. Avinash joined BAM from Citadel, where he was a Portfolio Manager responsible for Pan-Asian Industrials and Energy. Prior to Citadel, Avinash worked at Och-Ziff Capital Management and in Merrill Lynch's investment banking division. Avinash graduated from the National University of Singapore in 2000 with a Bachelor of Engineering (Hons).
Kendall Johnson
Chief Operating Officer
Kendall Johnson is the Chief Operating Officer of Torq Capital Management and a member of the firm’s Investment Committee. He has been involved with the financial and operational activities of broker/dealers and asset managers since 2005. Most recently, as Chief Operating Officer of Keshik Capital, a hedge fund manager licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, he was responsible for all non-investment related activities including Finance, Operations, Legal and Compliance, Technology, and Business Development. Prior to that he was a Vice President in the Prime Brokerage department at Morgan Stanley, where he was responsible for origination, service, and relationship management of prime brokerage clients. Kendall supported numerous hedge fund strategies and asset classes for both the Global multi-billion dollar firms as well as Asia headquartered managers. Prior to Morgan Stanley, Kendall held the role of Examiner in the Member Firm Regulation Division of the self-regulatory organization New York Stock Exchange Group, a predecessor firm to FINRA. Kendall graduated cum laude in Finance and Economics from Auburn University in 2005 and was awarded a CFA charter in 2012.
Josh Cherian
Chief Risk Officer
Josh Cherian is the Chief Risk Officer of Torq Capital Management and a member of the firm’s Investment Committee. He has over 13 years of experience as a quantitative specialist covering Asian equities. Most recently, he was a Director at Société Générale, where he was responsible for developing and managing their equity quant and index research platform for Asia. Josh had previously worked at Citadel where he was responsible for developing the risk models, risk management tools and protocols and the hedging solutions for their Asian equities portfolios. Josh also worked at Citi and at Daiwa in their quantitative research teams. Josh graduated from the National University of Singapore in 1998, with a Bachelors of Engineering (Honors) and was awarded the Certificate in Quantitative Finance in 2015.
Jeffrey Wong
Head of Trading
Jeffrey Wong is the Head of Trading at Torq Capital Management and a member of the firm’s Investment Committee. He brings over 15 years of trading experience across Asian markets having worked in several of the world’s leading financial institutions. Prior to joining Torq, Jeff was the Head of Asian trading at TPG-Axon Capital Management based in Hong Kong where he was a Responsible Officer and member of the Investment committee. Before TPG-Axon, Jeff held trading roles at Citadel Investment Group and Och-Ziff Capital Management. Jeffrey started his career at Goldman Sachs in the equity and equity derivatives desk both in London and Hong Kong. He graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in Economics.
Contact Us
Hong Kong
8 Connaught Place
Suite 2606-07, 2 Exchange Square
Hong Kong
T: +852 3701 9500
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Singapore
Level 6
Six Battery Road, Singapore
049909
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T: +65 6277-6900
E: ir@torqcap.com