Capital Context (CAPCON) was formed to offer individual investors a decision-making toolkit previously only available to sophisticated Wall Street and hedge fund investors. Simple-to-understand (and utilize) content is created thanks to a unique blend of unparalleled credit market data, cutting-edge model development, and real-world trading & research experience. Envisioned by two of the credit derivative market’s best known and most successful analyst/strategists, CAPCON provides unique color and insight across the bond and stock markets. Investors benefit from exceptional analysis of daily market movements, unique intraday insights, strategic & tactical asset allocation decision support, and simple buy & sell signals across the capital structure.

Additionally, a powerful and intuitive scenario analysis tool, built on the framework used by the CAPCON team, enables investors to identify macro and micro opportunities based on their own assumptions. As credit derivatives become more regulated and transparent, understanding the growing interdependence between the credit market and other asset classes requires new tools, new ideas, and new frameworks – CAPCON provides this in a simple-to-use package tailored for the individual investor class.

Mitigating risks to enhance returns is the approach that CAPCON’s two Founding Partners have employed throughout their careers to successfully generate superior returns (alpha) for some of the most sophisticated and profitable hedge funds and trading desks in the world. The move to offer these services to a broader audience of the investing public is reflective of growing investor knowledge and a clear demand for better understanding of risk management and contagion around the world. As the events of the last decade proved, index-tracking mutual fund managers offer little value at great cost. Hedge-fund-like returns are unavailable to most of the investing public and are also costly. Alternatively, CAPCON’s process and C-RANKs bring actionable insights to retail investors at low cost.

Tim Backshall, Founding Partner

With over twenty years of experience in the modeling, management, and trading of risk across all instruments, Tim Backshall is a recognized authority on capital structure arbitrage, credit derivatives, and global macro inter-linkages. A world-renowned author, Tim has written for many of the best-known fixed-income ‘bibles’ and is frequently quoted in the financial news media and blogosphere, and appears regularly on financial news TV including CNBC, FOX Business, and Bloomberg TV. Tim founded Credit Derivatives Research (CDR) over five years ago and successfully grew this unique independent research and analysis business to a large market share of the institutional derivative trading community. Tim enjoys riding ultra-distances on his yellow bike, playing soccer and dancing with his two young daughters, and watching England rugby team win.

Dave Klein, Founding Partner

Fourteen years of experience in software development roles including developer, project leader, and founder/Chief Technology Officer set the background for Dave Klein to utilize his quantitative and machine-learning expertise in the financial services business. After co-founding web personalization start-up ‘AbilityWare’, Dave focused his attention on financial engineering, earning the MFE from UC Berkeley in 2006. Hired as CDR’s first employee, Dave focused on the interplay between the credit and equity markets leading CDR’s capital structure arbitrage and equity-focused research efforts.. In his role as Manager of CDR’s credit indices, Dave designed the first exchange-traded credit derivative futures contract for the CBOT and is regularly quoted among the mainstream media thanks to his ability to reduce complex issues to their critical actionable point. Dave spends his weekends shuttling between multiple sporting events and coming to grips with the fact that the eight-year old soccer players he coaches already have exceeded his skill level.