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 designing and managing investment strategies, particularly equity and asset allocation mandates. While the head of equity at LCAM, he helped raise AUM from $200 million to + $1 billion. He is keen on projects that allow him to utilize his investing/ML/AI background to add value. Carlos has extensive experience with institutional investors (pension funds, hedge funds, RIAs), family offices, and UHNWI investors.
Career Highlights
Education Highlights
Certification Highlights
Case Studies
Turnaround/Self-help Investment Strategy for Pension Plan Client
Quantamental Analysis Case: Applying Alternative and Conventional Data to Industry Analysis and Stock Picking
Pair Trading Idea Using Derivatives
Derivatives Strategy | Covered Call for Long-only Equity Income Mandate
Oil & Gas Company Analysis
Tesco PLC | Key Performance Indicators
Expertise
- Corporate Finance
- Data Science
- Equity Research
- Financial Modeling
- Fundamental Analysis
- Machine Learning
- Portfolio Management
- Python
Work Experience
Freelance Investment Research Consultant | Portfolio Manager
Independent Consultant
- Managed investment research projects blending investments, fundamental analysis, ML/AI, and alternative data expertise for institutional investors (hedge funds, pension plans) and family offices.
- Designed and managed several asset allocation and equity/stock portfolios based on the return and risk requirements set up by institutional and individual clients.
- Involved in projects related to enhancing asset allocation policies, trade execution process, and risk management systems for multi-asset class strategies (equities, bonds, FX, commodities, and derivatives).
- Conducted advanced corporate training—coding, data science, and ML/AI—for institutional investors on behalf of the University of London. This helped secure critical contracts with large financial companies.
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, Valuation, Financial Modeling, Fundamental Analysis, Due Diligence, Fraud Investigation, M&A (Buy-side), Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Financial Planning & 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, Asset Allocation, Three-statement Modeling, Fund Management, Forecasting, Data Analysis, DCF Valuation, Revenue & Expense Projections, REITs, Private Equity, Cross-border M&A, Fund of Funds, Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), Credit/Debt
Output Software
Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook
Data & Analysis Software
Bloomberg, SQL, R, Tableau, FactSet, Quantopian
Industry Expertise
Food & Beverage, Financial Services, Capital Markets, Macroeconomics, Retail & Wholesale, Technology, Industrials, Energy, Asset Management, Banking & Finance, Semiconductors, Software, Public Companies, Venture Capital, Oil & Gas, Mining, Healthcare, 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), Startups, Business Models, 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 Fund Consultant, Investment Banking, Research Analysis, US GAAP, Consumer Marketplaces, Data Analytics, Financial Data Analytics, Alternative Data, Investments, Forensic Accounting, Machine Learning, Python, Excel Modeling, S&P Capital IQ, Financial Statements, Excel VBA, Public Speaking, Lecturing, Training Workshops, Financial Training, Tutoring, Derivatives, Hedge Funds, Arbitrage, Investment Ideas, ESOPs, Business Plan Consulting, Business Planning, Family Office, Family Office Consultants, Quantitative Modeling, Fintech, Business Strategy, Equity Markets, Investment Funds, Research, Management Consulting, Quantitative Research, Alternative Investments, Quantitative Finance, Backtesting, Backtesting Trading Strategies, Futures, Options Trading, Algorithmic Trading, 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, Reuters Eikon, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Genai, Equity
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