Tradable Intelligence Co.

Contents:

The Emerging Markets Intelligence Conundrum
What Is Tradable Intelligence?
Who Are The People of Tradable Intelligence?
The Tradable Intelligence Approach
Doing Business With Tradable Intelligence
Download the Online Brochure

THE EMERGING MARKETS INTELLIGENCE CONUNDRUM

Emerging markets traders for years have expressed unhappiness that the quality of the economic and traditional financial analysis by which they supported their efforts far exceeded that of the political, security and other assessments that were often equally or more important to determining the value of an asset or the merits of a trade.

Furthermore, they recognize that whereas with major developed markets information flows are extremely efficient delivering news on most critical aspects impacting decisions to virtually all players at virtually the same time, in emerging markets this is not the case.  There are important and stubbornly lingering inefficiencies in emerging markets information flows due to lack of transparency both in government and business activities, lack of corresponding regulatory demands, traditional styles of communications among important elites, poor quality research, and gaps or weaknesses in the information infrastructure.  Furthermore, in emerging markets, the analysis of political and security related issues is of much greater impact than in any other class of markets worldwide.

Such conditions have resulted in there being significant information arbitrages available to those emerging markets investors who have access to unique, credible, well-assessed intelligence flows.

At the same time, the information and communications revolutions worldwide have produced a variety of important tools that can enable sophisticated investors to vastly improve their intelligence and analysis about these markets.  The old worn techniques of very narrowly based analysis on these fronts - newsletter perspectives, uni-dimensional perspectives, collectives of young graduate students offering snapshots from afar - are perpetuating the old models for gathering information and do not really produce the level of insights that are typically required to support multi-million dollar trades in other asset classes.

That need not be the case.  There is a better way.  There is an approach that is more rigorous, more richly useful, more timely, more tuned to your individual needs.

That is the approach of Tradable Intelligence Associates.

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WHAT IS TRADABLE INTELLIGENCE?

Tradable intelligence is a concept that marries the most sophisticated techniques for gathering and analyzing international developments with a unique set of proven analytical resources to provide a customized flow of actionable intelligence to portfolio managers, traders, strategists and other institutional investors.

Tradable intelligence has been created by an unusual group of individuals and companies with an extraordinary depth and range of experience in emerging markets, asset management, financial markets, politics, security-related issues, intelligence gathering and other macro and micro-disciplines impacting the value proposition underlying most individual international trades or trading strategies.

Unlike other firms that offer the perspectives of a small group of analysts working with a small group of international experts or advisors, Tradable Intelligence Associates uses the latest techniques applied by the U.S. intelligence community, the military, political professionals and others who for whom international decision-making is equally high-stakes. This approach combines state-of-the-art information gathering techniques with high-quality translation, the analysis of highly-experienced, dedicated, professional political and security analysts and the ability to rapidly change - without sacrifice of quality - targets and objectives at a pace consistent with the demands of financial professionals. 

Tradable Intelligence is also defined by what it is not.  It is not a producer of newsletters or one-size-fits-all analysis.  It is not a "first job" for young analysts seeking to break into other areas of "the business."  It is not a place where political or security analysis is a secondary discipline. 

Tradable Intelligence Associates is dedicated to a single goal: providing custom consulting, intelligence gathering and analytical services in support of multi-million dollar international investment decisions.

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WHO ARE THE PEOPLE OF TRADABLE INTELLIGENCE?

Tradable Intelligence Associates is an organization that brings together a remarkable group of highly-regarded individuals and strategic partner companies to provide the very best in in-depth, predictive, substantiated analysis on international developments. Together with our strategic partners we have the ability to identify intelligence and analytical requirements of an investment organization, devise a proprietary system to meet those requirements, supervise the creation of that system and provide a wide range of the services and technologies needed to empower and maintain that system.
 

Tradable Intelligence Associates (TIA) is a project of The Rothkopf Group, LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based consultancy founded by David J. Rothkopf (www.therothkopfgroup.com).  Rothkopf is also co-founder and chairman of Intellibridge Corporation, perhaps the most well-known and well-respected provider of custom open-source intelligence analysis serving the U.S. intelligence and military communities.  He was previously managing director of Kissinger Associates, the firm established by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.  Immediately prior to joining Kissinger Associates, Rothkopf was Acting Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, running the 2400 person U.S. International Trade Administration.  During his time in the Clinton Administration, he also served as Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade Policy Development in which capacity he co-created and chaired the Administration's Big Emerging Markets Initiative, the first ever government-wide program to manage policy toward the world's most important emerging markets.  Before joining the government he was chairman and ceo of International Media Partner, Inc., where he was editor-in-chief of Emerging Markets Newspapers, the daily newspapers of the entire world's development bank meetings, and CEO Magazine. Prior to that Rothkopf was both a managing editor and the publisher of the special publications group and Institutional Investor, Inc.  Rothkopf has taught U.S.-Emerging Markets relations at Columbia University for the past six years and has written over 150 articles and several books on emerging markets-related and other international issues.   He is a senior advisor to the World Economic Forum, a Forum Fellow, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a member of the Advisory Board of the U.S. Institute of Peace and a member of the Advisory Board of the Johns Hopkins/Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Rothkopf Group also includes C-Level Solutions, LLC (http://www.c-levelsolutions.com/).

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THE TRADABLE INTELLIGENCE APPROACH

The Rothkopf Group brings to Tradable Intelligence significant experience in international financial markets, with institutional investors, with international economic issues generally, with predictive modeling and planning tools, building intelligence systems and expert networks and in consulting services.

Our strategic partners bring to the table an unsurpassed reputation for providing detailed intelligence in real time in support of critical missions worldwide and has developed, working as part of Tradable Intelligence Associates, a methodology for correlating security-related, environmentally-related and politically-related information flows with market movements to identify trading opportunities.

Our strategic partners also offer a special capability to gain, through polling and focus groups, on-going insights into changing political climates and have developed, working as part of Tradable Intelligence Associates, a methodology for correlating political information flows with market movements to identify trading opportunities.

Together, The Rothkopf Group and our strategic partners have dedicated themselves to creating an entirely new approach to supporting investment decisions in international markets that is built around several core concepts:

Custom Mission Evaluation

The first step of a Tradable Intelligence Associates assignment is to understand the specific requirements of an individual client.  Each project is built around those requirements after an intelligence audit conducted by Rothkopf Group professionals, detailed interaction with senior partners, portfolio managers, traders, research directors and others in the client organization.

Proprietary Project Design

Each project is then implemented after the approval of the audit and the acceptance of the plan by the client.  An important portion of this plan is to identify exactly which portions of the effort and the services provided are proprietary to the client to ensure that maximum advantage is gained by the institutions we support.  We are able to support proprietary solutions because we limit ourselves to a very small number of highly-integrated, on-going projects with major clients and because of our success-weighted fee structure.

Hybrid Project Design

There is no single solution to establishing effective intelligence and analytical support that works for each client.  We focus on determining the right mix between internal and external support drawing on the resources of the client and of TIA.  This may involve recommendations to enhance technological capabilities, broaden the base of resources drawn upon, creation of international expert networks of panels, development of custom polling or other live monitoring efforts, creation of on-the-ground humint (human intelligence) or expert capabilities or other unique and always confidential services.

Dynamic, Interactive Approach

Solutions are designed to meet the changing needs of portfolio managers, traders, strategists and other senior executives in what can be rapidly changing environments.  They are designed to reflect the need to rapidly change the focus of intelligence gathering and analytical efforts and to draw upon new sets of expert resources.  The reality is that even the world's largest financial organizations cannot maintain in-house the kind of constant on-tap expertise and intelligence flows associated with every conceivable trading strategy or set of circumstance.  We have the ability through the creation of flexible, virtual networks and many decades of experiences to rapidly refocus efforts based on constant interaction with our clients.

Focus on Rigor and Human Experience

For too long, political and security analysis were considered secondary disciplines within the investment community.  Junior staff were focused on them.  The results and perspectives of deeply flawed information resources including ratings agencies, a handful of news services and rumors were used to drive decisions and even a shred of dubious information might be seen as the kind of advantage that could support a trading strategy.  Most firms now recognize that this is antiquated and irresponsible approach and have sought to address it.  Problems they have found include recognition that technological solutions are inadequate and that they simply can't maintain the kind of in-house expertise on scores of markets in each of these areas that they need.  And, just as the world's best experts on financial markets don't work for governments because they have better career prospects on Wall Street, it is also true that the best political and security analysts and those who best understand the systems and techniques for capturing such intelligence or analysis don't work in the financial community.  They are highly specialized, hard to find, globally distributed…and TIA has access and long-term relationships with them.

Focus on Predictive and Correlative Analysis

Many currently available information or analytical resources hedge their analyses, simply report news and avoid the hard predictive stances that traders require.  Many do not have the ability to drill down into the bedrock issues around a specific trade to mine new intelligence.  Many do not have the ability or the rigorous methods to ensure credibility of sources or reliability of analysis.  TIA does.  Further, TIA, has devoted itself to building predictive and correlative methodologies designed to ensure the best possible picture of any individual situation and the possible outcomes associated with it.  We create "fused" analysis, blending our work with that of internal analysts and then correlating it with the universe of perspectives publicly available to understand where we are and where we are going.  We are also developing moving models to help track areas where we might though special techniques like polling capture insights that are out of sync with the conventional wisdom driving markets and thereby create trading opportunities.

Focus on both Tactical and Strategic Intelligence and Analytical Support

TIA can offer support around individual trades, companies, sectors, political issues, regulatory issues, dispositions of deals, even due diligence.  Further, it has extensive expertise in building scenario models that can be used to consider different alternative futures, identify those developments that can serve as early warning indicators of potential moves, identify in advance appropriate trading strategies and support those strategies with constant monitoring and rechecking of assumptions and fine-tuning of strategies and ultimately tactical implementation of those strategies.

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DOING BUSINESS WITH TRADABLE INTELLIGENCE ASSOCIATES

Tradable Intelligence Associates works with a very limited number of large, blue-chip investment organizations and companies.  Our relationships, based on the approaches described earlier in this document, are proprietary, highly confidential and very results oriented.  Our compensation model is similar: custom-designed to the specifications of individual clients, often including a consulting component for the establishment of the system and the provision of TIA services, a polling/expert network/on-going human intelligence component based on specific needs, and a mutually determined success-fee structure consistent with industry standards.

For further information about Tradable Intelligence Associates contact:

Tradable Intelligence Associates
A Project of The Rothkopf Group
1101 30th Street, NW
Suite 310
Washington, DC 20007
Telephone: 202-625-8360
Fax: 202-625-8361
Internet: http://www.tradableintelligence.com

References and sample work product available on request.

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DOWNLOAD THE TRADABLE INTELLIGENCE BROCHURE

To download the Tradable Intelligence Brochure, stored in Adobe PDF format, please click the link below.

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