Gordon Ritter

Gordon Ritter completed his PhD in mathematical physics at Harvard University in 2007. His publications while at Harvard were in quantum field theory, differential geometry, quantum computation and abstract algebra, including a well-known simplicity theorem for Kac-Moody groups and a mathematically rigorous treatment of Euclidean QFT on Riemannian manifolds. Prior to Harvard he earned his Bachelor’s degree with honors in Mathematics from the University of Chicago. Dr. Ritter currently teaches at Columbia, NYU, University of Chicago and the Baruch MFE program. His academic research is on portfolio optimization and statistical machine learning; his finance publications can be found in journals including Risk, the Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of Financial Data Science, European Journal of Operations Research, Journal of Machine Learning in Finance, and others. He was named Buy-Side Quant of the Year in 2019 (researchers awarded the same honor in other years included Marcos Lopez de Prado, Alex Lipton, and Jean-Phillipe Bouchaud). In parallel with his teaching responsibilities, Dr. Ritter works full time in the industry. In 2019 he founded Ritter Alpha LP, a registered investment adviser running systematic absolute-return trading strategies across multiple asset classes and geographies, based on cutting-edge technology and rigorous applications of statistics and the scientific method to investment problems. Prior to founding Ritter Alpha, he built a successful trading system from scratch at GSA Capital, a firm which won the Equity Market Neutral & Quantitative Strategies category at the Eurohedge awards four times. Prior to GSA, Dr. Ritter was a Vice President of Highbridge Capital Management (HCM) and a core member of the HCM statistical arbitrage group, a small team sharing full discretion over systematic trading models that generated billions in profit for investors and directed trillions of dollars of trades across global equities, futures and options. Several senior members of the HCM statistical arbitrage group later joined Gordon at Ritter Alpha. In his spare time Gordon enjoys scuba diving in Hawaii. Diving certifications include Master Scuba Diver (PADI and NAUI), SDI Solo Diver, TDI Advanced Nitrox & Decompression procedures, and PADI Tec 40 CCR.