GameChanger Interview with Chasing Returns CEO, Ann Hunt

Readers may not be aware that you began at JP Morgan. How did you begin your career?

I studied Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin – Ireland and joined J.P. Morgan’s graduate training program in London.

I was very lucky, computer science graduates are allocated randomly around the organisation, I could have ended up in a back office, or the HR department, but instead my first assignment was to the Bullion trading desk building risk models.

It was a global desk spanning NY, London and Tokyo so I got very early exposure to working as part of a global team.

After about a year, I was sent on a business trip to NY. It was supposed to be for 3 weeks, and I ended up staying for nearly 10 years.

I spent a lot of that on the trading floor – building and running risk systems.  A lot of the influences for Chasing Returns were born out of that experience.  As one of the few people on the trading floor, not running my own position, I was able to observe traders in action through the good and the bad.  The broken screens, the tantrums as well as the incredible highs of a good trading session.

I saw even back then, that traders reviewing metrics at the end of the day was such a narrow view of managing risk – when psychological risk drove a lot of actions, but was effectively ignored by risk managers, and traders themselves.

Can you explain to readers what it is like working in that type of environment?

The energy levels were fantastic – no two days were ever the same. I learned to thrive pretty quickly. I knew I had an amazing opportunity, and if I didn’t deliver I would be out of there on the first plane home.

Most people won’t believe that I was a shy retiring programmer before I got that opportunity, but when you are surrounded by loud, confident, males from Ivy league colleges exclusively, you have to find a way to be heard. I developed my resilience, and honed my “bullshit” detector there, and it made me the personality I am today.

What tips would you give to entrepreneurs looking to go out on their own?

I’ve never met an entrepreneur who regretted their decision to start a business.  I have met many people who regret years spent in unfulfilling jobs that they choose not to leave.

If you have the desire to be an entrepreneur, then just do it.  You won’t have all the right skills, and there is never a perfect time, there is just the decision to give it a go.

 I didn’t leave a job to build Chasing Returns, I left to build “something”. I didn’t even really know it was going to be a trading product, as in the early months I went a completely different direction.

Once you’ve made the decision, be strategic about everything you do. Your first  hire, your first investor and first client are all massively important.  They help you set the culture of the company, and lay the groundwork for the business you become in the future.

Surround yourself with your biggest critics – they will help keep you grounded and focused, and continue to challenge you through some of the hard decisions.

Have fun. Stop and reflect after every day – you’ll have your absolutely worst career days as well as your absolutely best ones when you have your own business.

Does your brand ever get confused with the educational FX industry? Having an in depth look at it, this is far from an ABC FX course. Can you elaborate more on what the apps are?

In a nutshell, there is theory and there is practice.  Trading is something you can’t learn from a book, you have to learn by doing. Our apps are embedded in your trading day, providing guidance, measuring outcomes while nudging you to better behaviour.

With our PlayMaker platform you start every day with your levels for that day. If you lost money yesterday then you trade slightly smaller, if you made money, then you trade slightly larger. Using our recommended levels keeps traders alive for a lot longer.

As you trade we help keep you on track. We monitor how close you are to stops and targets, and we warn you when levels are close to being breached.  Our amber alerts are there to help you focus, to nudge you to more disciplined behaviour and help prevent many of a traders sporadic episodes of emotional trading.

With GamePlan you get a full historical lookback at behaviours that are beneficial as well as those that cost you money.  For example, you might have an edge where your morning trading is much more successful than your afternoon trading,  or trades executed after a losing streak perform really strongly due to increased focus.

I am a massive believer in traders studying their good habits and their disciplined trades.  Too much education focuses on the negative – it’s important to balance this out.

Some of the greatest products are the simplest to use. Can I use and understand how to use your products quickly?

Luckily, all of our complicated work goes on behind the scenes!  Our service is tiered, so it unlocks new features as you gain experience.   We start off really simply and our onboarding process provides all the information you need to use the platform.

We also have comprehensive in-line help and tours to support our clients.

Once you are onboarded, there are choices for what you might want to do. If you have live open positions you will go to PlayMaker to monitor against your rules.

If it’s month-end and you want to review behaviour, you can start with our Paths to Profitability which will show the habits that make and lose the most money.

It’s not prescriptive – every trader will find their own unique edges that they feel they can improve.

Both PlayMaker and GamePlan, look to get the trader to use behavioural science in trade analysis. How well do you think this acts a curb against the greed factor when trading?

I like to quote Ed Seykota. Success in trading is 10% Strategy, 30% Money Management and 60% Psychology. 

I don’t just think it acts as a curb, at Chasing Returns we prove that it does. Traders are educating themselves more and more about psychology and behavioural science. People understand the principles of fear and greed, how streaks can cause tilts, and the behavioural biases at play in their trading. However, we are the only people who measure this.

I have conversations with traders all the time about this. For example, let’s say I have a trader who, after a decent winning trade often gives back his winnings on the next trade.  If I tell this trader he has this habit, he will already know.

However, when I then tell him that 15% of his trades fall into this category but they account for 200% of his losses – that’s when he falls off the chair. 

What we do, is we cross the divide between the emotions, and the actions traders perform due to those emotions.

Using the same example, a winning trade might cause a trader to get overly confident and he becomes less disciplined on his next trade.  For another trader, a winning trade might trigger FOMO (fear of missing out) and he forces himself back into the market.  These 2 very different reactions end up with the same result – a trader giving back profits.

To help traders we turn this on its head. We can only tell them the actions that cost them money (trading after a winner). Each trader must then determine what they want to do about it. 

In the short term, our technology builds awareness.  A trader might decide to manage a weakness by making those trades smaller and/or building breaks into his trading day when he knows he’s at risk.  Alternatively they may hire a coach/therapist to work through their behaviour. Both solutions work.  

As long as traders separate their “emotional reaction” from the “action that follows” they can manage around their own behaviours.

Over time, traders start to track their own improvements, leading to a continuous improvement cycle that leads to more sustained trading, less account blow-ups and longer life for traders.

There are a lot of products out there that seem to be a solution looking for a problem. How does the Chasing Returns differ?

We are in the lucky position; we tailor new features to our products after we have proven they are problems for our traders.

We have a large data set that we use to test any new hypothesis we have.

For example, new traders are often advised to stick to a small number of products. We did a bunch of testing on this, and discovered that beginners who stick to 5 products or less do twice as well as beginners who trade more than 10 products.

So now we are giving new traders the option to set this as a guardrail for themselves. This means that they will be more likely to stick to 5 products. We have a very simple system where we allow traders set rules (or use our recommendations). Any trades that don’t follow the rules are marked as undisciplined.

When traders stick to their rules, they are profitable 80% of the time. This is an incredibly positive feedback loop for any trader to see. By showing them that discipline pays, it makes traders trade in a more disciplined manner. It becomes a self- fulfilling prophecy.   

Do you have a specific type of individual client who buys your product?

We have a large range. Our clients are a mix of retail and professional, and span all products. We support all Asset Classes available from our broker clients, or on MT4.

The biggest cohort are MT4 traders. We offer a free trial, and it takes less than 5 minutes to connect MT4 accounts to our products. Once connected they work in real-time, the trader never needs to worry about it.

Beyond this, we allow clients to upload statements from most of the large brokers, and we also have professional futures traders using our technology.

With our white labels, we are available seamlessly to all clients of FOREX.com, OANDA, and City Index.

In my experience from dealing with brokerages, there are many different models on how they derive their profits. Is there a specific type of brokerage who is your client?

I believe the last few years has really changed how all types of brokers think about success.  Regardless of how brokers are managing their risk, retention of existing clients has become front and centre of strategies.

As acquisition gets more expensive, the most successful brokers are spending more time and effort retaining the clients they have for longer, and providing a better experience for them.

Can your product adapt to the increasing market volatility we have seen over 2020?
Yes. Until 2020, we hadn’t had sustained high volatility for a number of years. Using our test driven approach, we have identified a new edge to measure for our traders.  Over 40% of traders show an edge based on volatility – meaning that they perform better or worse in one environment over the other. In low volatility environments, traders are most likely to have a weakness, while in high volatility (VIX > 30) they are more likely to be positive. 

That was a really insightful experiment for us. I believe that the higher volatility curbs a lot of what I call “bored” trades. With enough signals in the market, people don’t trade for the sake of it. As a result of these experiments we are introducing a series of “Market Edges” starting with volatility edge this quarter.

You have recently signed partnerships with some of the largest brokerages in retail FX. Why did they choose you?

There are three types of brokers for us. Those who want to build themselves, those who want to provide the best solutions to their clients and are happy to licence, and then those that have not yet refocused on retention as a major component of their business strategy.

Companies who told us 3 years ago that they were building themselves are now realizing it’s not that simple, its slow and its expensive. When products are changing fast it’s a huge investment, and you can never be as good as a company whose entire focus is on analytics.

Similarly companies who were sticking with their acquisition models a number of years ago, are now paying more attention to retention and are more interested in our solutions.

What's the best way for readers to find out more about how Chasing Returns can help their trading, or their brokerage?

You can visit our website at  chasingreturns.com, or you can contact me directly at  ann@chasingreturns.com