Echelon Alternatives was founded on a simple conviction: that disciplined mathematics, paired with serious engineering, can find and capture opportunity in even the most volatile markets.
Echelon Alternatives is a private alternative investment company specializing in the development and deployment of quantitative strategies applied to liquid derivative securities. We identify short-term opportunities arising at the intersection of directional forecasting and option valuation.
Echelon was founded in 2013 by M. Blair Wellensiek and Karl M. Peters, former partners and leaders of the Research Group at TradeLink, LLC. Drawing on their years of experience as innovators in both the options market-making and managed futures industries, they developed a framework linking the strength of market trends to a forecast of disruptive volatility.
Co-founder and the firm's lead on quantitative strategy. Previously Principal and Head of Quantitative Strategies at TradeLink, LLC, where she co-founded its asset management subsidiary, TradeLink Capital.
Co-founder involved in every facet of the firm — research, trading, portfolio construction, risk, and technology. Formerly a partner and head of the Quantitative Strategies Department at TradeLink, LLC.
Before co-founding Echelon, Blair spent 25 years at TradeLink, LLC, an alternative investment and proprietary trading firm, where she was a Principal and Head of Quantitative Strategies. In 1996 she co-founded TradeLink Capital, the firm's asset management subsidiary, and became chief architect and Co-Portfolio Manager of the TradeLink Integrated Program — the firm's flagship fund — at its launch. Over those years she led the development of rigorous statistical methods for investing in financial derivatives and guided the research efforts of the firm's financial engineers. Blair holds an MA in Mathematics and an MS in Economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a BA in Mathematics from Wellesley College.
As a founder of an entrepreneurial firm, Karl is involved in all aspects of the business: strategic planning, model research, trading, portfolio construction, risk management, and IT development. He was previously a partner at TradeLink, LLC, where he was portfolio manager of Digilog Strike and manager of the Quantitative Strategies Department. Earlier in his career he worked in R&D at United Airlines and was an assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at Loyola University Chicago. Karl holds a PhD and MA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where his research focused on representations of Lie algebras, and a degree in mathematics and anthropology from Reed College.