Carlos Salas Najera
Verified Expert in Finance
Finance Expert
London, United Kingdom
Toptal member since February 26, 2020
Carlos is an FCA-regulated investment professional with an excellent track record of managing equity strategies. He helped raise AUM—from $200 million to over $1 billion—while the head of equities at LCAM. He is keen on projects that allow him to utilize his investing and machine learning background to add value. Carlos has extensive experience working with institutional investors, family offices, as well as UHNWI investors.
Career Highlights
Education Highlights
Certification Highlights
Case Studies
Expertise
Work Experience
Freelance Investment Research Consultant | University Lecturer
University of London
- Managed investment research and machine learning projects with clients, including investment banks, asset managers, and pension plans.
- Delivered lectures to university students on coding, data science, and machine learning using Python, VBA, and R programming languages.
- Built syllabus content and materials for data science and machine learning lectures using R and Python. The syllabus included advanced coding, supervised and unsupervised ML, and RL algorithms.
- Conducted corporate training for hedge funds, investment banks, and asset managers on behalf of the University of London. This helped secure critical contracts with large financial companies by leveraging machine learning and investment background.
Value Investing Modeling Expert
DYFInvesting INC
- Reviewed DYF's website to upgrade the user experience regarding GUI and content provided to users.
- Performed valuation model review, particularly identified weaknesses and proposed solutions to enhance it, including a new approach to using revenue consensus figures. A new WACC calculation methodology was introduced, among many others.
- Gave scoring model recommendations: outlier treatment, data normalization, ML model selection, and cross-validation, among many others.
- Provided ideas to enhance the DYF model in the future, e.g., EVA, sector-specific model, etc.
Portfolio Manager | Equity Analyst
Jefferies
- Involved in analytical and portfolio management, as well as the executive duties of Jefferies International's proprietary trading desk.
- Enhanced stock screening, strategy, and back-testing proprietary tools to shortlist long and short ideas (e.g., using conventional and alternative data to construct systematic screens and filter ideas more efficiently).
- Built proprietary tools using Python to enhance the desk workflow (e.g., developing a Python app with a user-friendly GUI to monitor and screen short positions and opportunities in real time).
- Performed regular portfolio management tasks (e.g., rebalancing, net and gross exposure risk management, derivative hedging, performance attribution analysis, and order execution) using discretionary trading and algorithmic order routing.
- Authored concise market comments daily for distribution to the head of sales and trading, which covered asset class moves, top stock movers, and a brief overview of hot topics that drove headlines.
Head of Equities
London & Capital
- Led a team of two junior analysts responsible for long-only and absolute return long/short equity mandates, delivering compounded annual growth of 15% to 18% and achieving Sharpe ratios of 1.8x to 2.0x for an institutional client base.
- Increased AUM from less than $200 million to over $1 billion. Attained several industry awards, such as the "Alternative Investment Awards - Best Global Equity Strategy distributed in the UK" in 2015 and 2016.
- Built the investment process for multiple in-house equity strategies using a 3-pillar approach: an ML-powered stock screener, a systematic "quantamental" scoring pillar, and a disciplined, bottom-up analysis pillar.
- Conducted an in-depth analysis of thematic basket trends that resulted in superior returns from investing in secular trends, such as cybersecurity, obesity, robotics, IoT, or renewable energy.
- Involved in the origination, due diligence, negotiation, and execution of private deals. The due diligence conducted was praised by investors as multiple fraudulent corporate cases were successfully detected, including Powa Technologies.
- Developed ESG criteria to launch a long-only portfolio in 2013, which allowed the firm to attract substantial new assets and jump ahead of competitors before the inception of the current ESG bull market.
- Delivered training to junior staff and seminars to clients, including family offices, pension plans, and UHNWI. Some of the topics were applied AI and ML, financial statement analysis, forensic accounting, corporate finance, and quantitative methods.
Investment Analyst
BNP Paribas AM
- Performed in-depth sector and industry analysis. This included interviewing stakeholders and examining macro drivers, supply chain, supply and demand dynamics, and degree of competitiveness (HHI, competitors, new entrants, and structural threats).
- Conducted intensive financial modeling, which included financial statements, adjustments and projections, fundamental ratio analysis, forensic accounting analysis, and valuation.
- Covered companies within the industrial, technology, consumer, and telecommunication sectors in North America, UK, and Europe, with the capacity to provide monitoring and regular model updating of approximately 40 to 50 live ideas in portfolios.
- Performed idea generation for derivative strategies for hedging and directional purposes using a proprietary model. The model considered multiple inputs (moneyness, implied volatility cheapness, etc.) and was backed by scholarly research.
- Built a pair trading surveillance model for stocks under coverage using a quantitative approach, including vector autoregression (VAR), the Engle-Granger approach, backtesting, and daily surveillance of the significant pairs with automated signals.
Education
Master's Degree in Data Science and Machine Learning
New York Data Science Academy - New York, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Applied Mathematics - Game Theory
London School of Economics and Political Science - London, UK
Master's Degree in Finance
AFI Business School - Madrid, Spain
Bachelor's Degree in Business & Economics
University of Alicante - Alicante, Spain
Certifications
Certificate in Quantitative Finance (CQF)
CQF Institute
CF30 - Portfolio Management and Investment Analysis - Controlled Function
FCA - Financial Conduct Authority (UK)
Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)
CFA Institute
Investment Management Certificate
CFA Institute, United Kingdom
Skills
Finance
Equity Research, Equity Research Analysis, Investment Portfolio Management, Wealth Management, Valuations, Financial Modeling, Fundamental Analysis, Due Diligence, Fraud Investigation, M&A (Buy-side), Chartered Financial Analysis, FP&A, Accounting, IFRS Adjustments, Corporate Finance, Stock Trading, Equity Derivatives, Valuation Modeling, Discounted Cash Flow (DCF), Value Investing, Investment Return Scenario Analysis, Credit Analysis, Exchange-traded Funds (ETF), Market Research Analyst, Asset Allocation, Three-statement Modeling, Fund Management, Forecasting, Data Analysis, DCF Valuation, Revenue & Expense Projections, REITs, Private Equity, M&A, Fund of Funds, M&A, Credit/Debt
Output Software
Microsoft Word, Excel Development, Microsoft Outlook
Data & Analysis Software
Bloomberg, SQL, R, Tableau Development, FactSet
Industry Expertise
Food & Beverage, Financial Services, Capital Markets, Macroeconomics, Retail & Wholesale, Technology, Industrials, Energy, Asset Management, Banking Consulting, Semiconductors, Software Development, Public Companies, Venture Capital, Oil & Gas, Mining, Healthcare App Design, Renewable Energy, Insurance, Real Estate
Geographic Expertise
Asia, European Union (EU), United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Asia-Pacific (APAC), China, Africa
Other
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), Startup Development, Business Modeling, Financial Forecasting, Movies, Video Streaming, Financial Analysis, Data Science, Coding, Investment Research, Portfolio Management, Quantitative Analysis, Mentorship & Coaching, Analysis, Stock Analysis, Equity Investment, Investments & Risk Management, Trading, Industry Analysis, Competitive Strategy, Deal Execution, Scenario Analysis, Pairs Trade, Company Research, Investment Analysis, Esports, Investor Presentations, Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPAC), Investor Reporting, Reports, Hedge Funds, Investment Banking, Research Analysis, US GAAP Accounting, Consumer Marketplaces, Data Science, Financial Data Analytics, Alternative Data, Investments, Forensic Accounting, Machine Learning, Python, Excel Development, S&P Capital IQ, Financial Statements, Excel VBA, Public Speaking, Lecturing, Training Workshops, Financial Training, Tutoring, Derivatives Consulting, Hedge Funds, Arbitrage, Investment Ideas, ESOPs, Business Plan Consulting, Business Planning, Family Office, Family Office, Quantitative Development, Fintech, Business Strategy, Equity Markets, Investment Funds, Research, Management Consultants, Quantitative Research, Alternative Investments, Data Science, Backtesting, Backtesting Trading Strategies, Financial Software Development, Options Trading, Algorithms, Investment Strategy, Biotechnology, Risk Management, Distressed/Special Situations, Data, Corporate Governance, Amazon Machine Learning, Emerging Markets, Credit Ratings, Commodity Markets, Deal Flow Origination, Azure Machine Learning, Fraud Detection
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