Chessica's fund, run by two chess masters, is up 2.62% in January after gaining 28%+ in 2012 Alexander Rabinovich

Chessica Asset Management's Genius fund was launched in January 2010, although the strategy itself is around 20 years old. It is up 2.62% in January after gaining 28.9% in 2012, -0.01% in 2011 and 14.6% in 2010.

The $1m fund uses a market and delta neutral strategy; it exploits inefficiencies in underlying indices and their options with a proprietary model, making use of the most popular and liquid indices like NDX, Russell and similar ones. It is featured in Opalesque Solutions' Emerging Managers database.

Chessica, which has offices in New York and in Toronto, Canada, was founded by Victor Plotkin and Alexander Rabinovich, two Russian nationals and chess masters, and entrepreneur A.J. Caro. The name of the fund refers apparently, to their high IQ levels. Plotkin, who studied mathematics and theory of probability, had been running the strategy for almost 17 years before that in a managed account format. Rabinovich, who has a software engineering degree, joined Plotkin to develop the hedge fund offering of the strategy that is featured in this article.

"The strategy in general is market and delta neutral," Rabinovich told Opalesque. "That is the overall approach. Now with all these trends on the market, one cannot just ignore them. And sometimes we take ......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.