Michelle Beck - Palomar College

Michael A. Izhaky
310 Devon Drive, Burr Ridge IL, 60527 Phone: +1 312 404 5323 Email: mike@izhaky.com
PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
Hedge fund and proprietary trading executive with extensive trading, management, and business development
experience with a specific focus on trading and risk management technology. Possess very strong quantitative and
analytical skills with a deep understanding of derivatives, including experience with exotics and structured products,
volatility market dynamics, application design and coordinating technology implementation for trading businesses.
Extensive experience producing commercial software for financial services businesses and have been directly
involved in several large contracts for joint marketing, source code licensing, and other intellectual property based
transactions. After starting my career gaining valuable experience at global investment banks I have changed my
career focus to entrepreneurial ventures that combine my leadership and strategic vision with my financial services
expertise.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
FT OPTIONS, LLC, Chicago, IL 2008-Present
Founding Partner. FT Options is an equity options and volatility arbitrage proprietary trading firm. I am responsible
for running operations, technology, quantitative research and setting strategy.
• Led the formation of our new trading entity including establishing clearing and execution relationships, as
well as technology and operational infrastructure for launch.
• Work with quantitative research team and traders to refine analytics that drive our strategies.
• Manage key external relationships with vendors, prime brokearage, execution and service providers.
• Participate in capital allocation decisions.
• Share responsibility for investor relations.
FT PROVIDERS, LLC (FORMERLY OPTIONVISUALS), Chicago, IL 2003-Present
President/Founder. FT Providers develops and markets real time Risk Management and Volatility analysis tools for
the equity options market. Clients include major banks, hedge funds, and proprietary trading firms.
• Set strategy, interface with clients and investors and supervise operations.
• After shifting the focus of the company from deployed white-labeled software to a virtual proprietary
software service in March 2009 we have quadrupled revenues and profits.
KCM MANAGEMENT, Chicago, IL 2005-2008
Managing Director. KCM management is a hedge fund that focuses on a variety of volatility-based equity options
strategies. My role was combined CIO/COO. As one of the earliest employees of the company I had an opportunity
to build large swaths of the business from the ground up.
• Designed and supervised the creation of the entire equity options trading platform.
• The platform we built initially supported a single trading group of 4 traders and I was instrumental in growing
this to 50 traders spread across 5 different trading groups all under a fund of funds hedge fund structure.
• Haircut grew from $5 million to $80 million and trading revenues from $2 million to $50 million.
• Built the systems used by the parent fund of funds and the brokerage company to manage multiple hedge
funds and trading groups; while I was there assets under management grew to over $150 million.
• Oversaw creation of a remote market making business of four traders, including deploying the systems and
exchange connectivity.
• Developed key components of the platform including realtime risk management, volatility analytic and
scanning tools, volatility backtesting framework, proprietary OMS with multiple execution venues and high
frequency spread and gamma hedging systems.
FULCRUM INVESTMENT GROUP, Chicago, IL 2001-2003
Senior Manager. Managed the development team at an equity options proprietary trading firm where I was
responsible for developing risk management applications and building opportunity generation and scanning tools for
the equity options market, while sitting on the trading desk.