a platform designed
to be dynamic

by the numbers

2
core platform funds

founded in
2005

300+
Employees

100+
Underlying Strategies

9
main offices

$5 bn+
Firm AUM

2
core platform funds

founded in
2005

founded in
2005

300+
Employees

100+
Underlying Strategies

9
main offices

$5 bn+
Firm AUM

2
core platform funds

about us

a nexus of

people &
technology

Walleye Capital is a multi-strategy platform hedge fund headquartered in Minnesota. The firm manages approximately $5B of investor capital predominantly through two core multi-strategy hedge funds.

We seek to build talent density across all areas of our business and provide our team with world class resources for optimal results.

investment
strategies

Walleye’s robust infrastructure and breadth of investment expertise enables the funds to maintain exposure to highly differentiated strategies that trade across the globe and in multiple asset classes.

strategy
groups

Walleye was initially formed to manage an electronic and floor-based options market making operation. Today, the firm’s Options/Volatility strategies include macro volatility arbitrage, systematic FX volatility, convertible bond arbitrage, index market making, equity volatility arbitrage, and interest rate options market making.

Walleye has a preference for niche, fundamental market neutral strategies with demonstrable edge in a specific sector or sub-sector.

Walleye is able to leverage its robust technological and operational infrastructure to trade a wide range of systematic strategies across the globe and in asset classes including Equities, Futures, and FX.

Walleye’s Tactical group is predominantly focused on capital markets strategies, both in traditional IPO’s/Secondaries and SPACs trading. Walleye is uniquely positioned to succeed in capital markets-based strategies given the firm’s relationships across multiple bulge-bracket banks and ability to gain exposure through both internal PMs and external mandates. The latest strategy added under the Tactical group is Index Event and Rebalancing.

Walleye’s Fixed Income group typically consists of strategies focused on relative value opportunities within corporate credit and sovereign or pseudo sovereign interest rate markets. Strategies are generally fundamental in nature and trade both listed and over-the-counter cash and derivatives instruments.

Options/
Volatility

Equity
Long/Short

Quant

Tactical

Fixed Income

Walleye was initially formed to manage an electronic and floor-based options market making operation. Today, the firm’s Options/Volatility strategies include macro volatility arbitrage, systematic FX volatility, convertible bond arbitrage, index market making, equity volatility arbitrage, and interest rate options market making.

Walleye has a preference for niche, fundamental market neutral strategies with demonstrable edge in a specific sector or sub-sector.

Walleye is able to leverage its robust technological and operational infrastructure to trade a wide range of systematic strategies across the globe and in asset classes including Equities, Futures, and FX.

Walleye’s Tactical group is predominantly focused on capital markets strategies, both in traditional IPO’s/Secondaries and SPACs trading. Walleye is uniquely positioned to succeed in capital markets-based strategies given the firm’s relationships across multiple bulge-bracket banks and ability to gain exposure through both internal PMs and external mandates. The latest strategy added under the Tactical group is Index Event and Rebalancing.

Walleye’s Fixed Income group typically consists of strategies focused on relative value opportunities within corporate credit and sovereign or pseudo sovereign interest rate markets. Strategies are generally fundamental in nature and trade both listed and over-the-counter cash and derivatives instruments.

walleye’s
edge

Experienced Leaders

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The team is led by experienced partners that, in many cases, have been at Walleye since the firm’s inception. Walleye’s success is largely derived from the quality of its people, as the firm has continued to add high quality talent density across all areas of the business over the last 15 years.

Strategy Sourcing

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Walleye’s business is predicated on sourcing high quality strategies. The firm’s sourcing team is comprised of highly experienced individuals continuously seeking to add new and complementary sources of alpha through both external managed accounts and internal portfolio managers.

Complementary Strategies

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The platform model allows Walleye to efficiently combine dozens of highly uncorrelated strategies in an effort to maximize the benefits of diversification and achieve an attractive Fund-level Sharpe Ratio.

Idiosyncratic Returns

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Walleye aims to generate its returns in a manner that is not attributable to market or common factors. The firm’s focus on a bottoms up approach and preference for alpha-oriented strategies has consistently driven results since its founding in 2005.

Risk Management

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Walleye’s leaders utilize their experience as practitioners and the firm’s robust technology to develop a network of interconnected processes that efficiently and, in many cases, systematically monitor quantifiable risk corridors for both individual strategies and the fund. The firm believes in allowing its portfolio managers to play to their strengths, but within reasonable yet well-defined constraints that collectively help mitigate unwanted portfolio-level risks.

Operational Alpha

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Operational infrastructure, if utilized appropriately, has the potential to generate significant alpha in a platform model. Walleye’s operations, finance, accounting, treasury, compliance and counterparty management teams are constantly striving to maximize their respective abilities to extract value and build upon the firm’s core infrastructure that has powered Walleye for 15 years.

custom-built technology platform

Core aspects of Walleye are supported by a custom-built database engine and automated trading platform, managed by a highly skilled development team.

Supporting every aspect of the system is Deephaven Data Labs, which was originally built to accommodate the enormous data challenges posed by modern equity options market making. Walleye spun out Deephaven Data Labs as an independent technology business in 2016.

leadership

Will England's picture

Will England is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Walleye Capital, a multi-strategy hedge fund founded in 2005. He joined Walleye in 2013 and was named a partner in 2017. Will plays an integral role in setting the strategic direction of Walleye and oversees all aspects of the firm’s investment processes, including strategy allocation, risk management, and talent recruitment.
 
Will began his career as a Quantitative Researcher for the AHL division of London-based Man Group plc, researching and implementing algorithmic trading strategies across global futures and equity instruments. He also spent time as an investment analyst with Valor Equity Partners, a leading growth private equity firm.

Will earned a BSE in Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton University (Academic All-Ivy honors) and a Master’s degree in Mathematical and Computational Finance from Oxford University. Throughout his time at Princeton and Oxford, Will was an accomplished rower, appearing in multiple World Championships for the U.S. National Team and winning the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race.

Andrew Carney's picture

Mr. Carney has been with Walleye since 2006 and a Partner since 2015. He is a member of the Investment Committee.  He has been an integral part of building the Investment Manager’s US options market making business since its inception. As President and Co-CIO, Mr. Carney oversees all aspects of the firm’s activities, with operational responsibility for monitoring and maintaining firm-wide risk levels and controls.

Prior to joining Walleye, Andrew was an actuary at Willis Towers Watson (formerly Towers Perrin).

Andrew graduated Magna cum Laude from Luther College with a BA in Mathematics/Statistics. Additionally, he is an Associate in the Society of Actuaries.

Irvin Kessler's picture

As a founding partner of Walleye, Mr. Kessler is primarily involved in setting the strategic direction of the firm. He is a member of the Investment Committee. Mr. Kessler was also the founding member and Chief Investment Officer of Provident Advisors LLC.

Prior to co-founding Walleye in 2005, Mr. Kessler was CEO and CIO of Deephaven Capital Management, a multi-strategy hedge fund he co-founded in 1994.  Mr. Kessler founded and co-founded several other companies in the past. In 1995, he co-founded Arbitrade, a global market maker in exchange traded derivatives. When Arbitrade and Deephaven were sold to Knight Trading Group in 2000, Mr. Kessler joined Knight’s executive oversight committee. Mr. Kessler also co-founded Kessler-Asher Group in 1986, a firm that offered clearing, training, and financial backing to professional traders.  The firm was sold to Spear, Leeds & Kellogg in 1998.  He also founded Provident Real Estate Advisors to invest in distressed real estate.  PREA began purchasing and managing single family homes for rent in 2009.  These portfolios morphed into a public REIT, Silver Bay Realty Trust Corp. (NYSE: SBY), of which Mr. Kessler was one of the founders and served as Chairman of the Board of Directors until SBY’s sale for $1.3B to another public company in 2017.

Mr. Kessler began his career as a floor trader in 1978, trading and making markets in equity and index options, treasuries, foreign exchange and grains on the CBOE, CBOT, and CME until 1990.  He was elected to the Board of Directors of the CBOE and Cincinnati Stock Exchange in 1988.

Mark Zeldis's picture

Mr. Zeldis has been with Walleye since 2005 and a Partner since 2015. He has been instrumental in designing and developing the firm’s competitive technology infrastructure as well as some of its trading strategies.  As a Partner, Mark continues to manage the infrastructure and support needs of the trading groups.

Prior to joining Walleye, Mr. Zeldis was Vice President at Lehman Brothers in Equities Technology.  He was responsible for reengineering the company’s Position/PNL/Risk system and providing assistance in platform and logic development behind Lehman’s execution strategies. Early on in his career, Mr. Zeldis founded SeekImage.  Here, he was able to invent and develop algorithms behind content-based image retrieval and recognition on a large scale.

Mr. Zeldis graduated from Brown University with a BS in Computer Science.

Jonathan Brenner's picture

Jonathan joined Walleye in 2018 as Head of Marketing & Investor Relations and was named a partner in 2022. He is responsible for the firm's fundraising and investor relations activities. Prior to joining the firm, Jonathan was a Vice President in the Capital Strategy Group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Before Bank of America, Jonathan spent four years as a Senior Analyst in the Investment Research Group at Ehrenkranz Partners, a New York-based Multi-Family Office. Jonathan began his career in the Consulting Group at Cambridge Associates. Jonathan graduated with a B.A. from Bucknell University. He was also a member and 2009 co-captain of the Bucknell Men's Tennis Team.

Markus Rauser's picture

Mr. Rauser has been with Walleye since 2013, joining full-time in 2014 following a collegiate internship. In his role, he plays an integral part in the design and management of Walleye’s proprietary technology as well as the integration of any external trading platforms. In particular, Mr. Rauser focuses on the interaction between Walleye’s trading and non-trading functions, including back and middle office operations, compliance, accounting, and risk.

Mr. Rauser graduated from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities with high distinction with a B.S. in Mathematics.

Mark Tusler's picture

Mr. Tusler joined Walleye in 2005 and is responsible for accounting, finance, operations, tax and regulatory reporting requirements for each of the firm’s domestic and international entities. 

Prior to joining Walleye, he had spent more than eight years in accounting capacities for multi-strategy hedge fund EBF & Associates, NRG Energy, and Ernst & Young.

Mr. Tusler graduated Magna Cum Laude from University of Minnesota at Mankato with a BS in Accounting and Business Administration. He also earned a full scholarship to the University of Denver, where he received a Masters in Taxation.

walleye
history

Walleye is established to manage an electronic options market making operation

2005

Sensing a paradigm shift in the environment for options market making, Walleye partners begin to evolve the business away from pure market making by focusing on alpha-based strategies within options and equities

2011

Initial software is released and WIF is formed to capitalize on Walleye’s models

2006

Walleye launches its second platform fund, WOF

2018

WIF accepts outside capital after the firm successfully accelerates its participation outside of capacity constrained options/volatility strategies, including equity long/short, quant, and tactical strategies

2017

Walleye surpasses 300 employees and builds out internal Global Macro & Fixed Income, and RV Commodities strategy groups

2023

Walleye opens up its first international office in London and surpasses 200 total employees across seven main offices

2022

 

2005

Walleye is established to manage an electronic options market making operation

2006

Initial software is released and WIF is formed to capitalize on Walleye’s models

2011

After five strong years, sensing a paradigm shift in the environment for options market making, Walleye partners begin to evolve the business away from pure market making by adding a focus on alpha-based strategies within options and equities

2017

Walleye successfully accelerates its participation outside of capacity constrained options/volatility strategies and decides to accept a limited amount of external capital in WIF

2018

Walleye launches its second platform fund, WOF, largely to take advantage of its non-options strategies. The firm adds resources to its business development team as it continues to institutionalize the sourcing process

2022

Walleye reopens WOF for additional capital

2023

Walleye surpasses 300 employees and builds out internal Global Macro & Fixed Income, and RV Commodities strategy groups

contact us

For Internal Portfolio
Manager Candidates

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Account Candidates

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For all other hiring inquiries, please click here

walleye offices

Minneapolis
2800 Niagara Lane North
Plymouth, MN 55447
952.345.5200

New York
315 Park Ave S, 18th floor
New York, NY 10010

Boston
One Financial Center, Suite 1500
Boston, MA 02111

San Francisco
6001 Shellmound Street, Suite 810
Emeryville, CA 94608

Chicago
1 North Franklin St., Suite 650
Chicago, IL 60606

Stamford
200 First Stamford Place, Suite 205
Stamford, CT 06902

London
MOSS HOUSE
15-16 Brooks Mews
London, W1K 4DS, United Kingdom

La Jolla
888 Prospect Street, Suite 200
La Jolla, CA 92037

Houston
24 Greenway Plaza, Suite 806
Houston, TX 77046

walleye offices