Option Strategist Asset Management places a strong emphasis on the research and development of its trading strategies and models. Only those models that fit the fundamental premise of the underlying trading strategy are investigated and developed. The trading models allow for testing of hypotheses and generate understanding of market dynamics. Models created are continuously tested in order to examine variability in the model's performance over different periods and in different market conditions.

The investment manager's approach of conducting extensive research of a range of market conditions, together with a high degree of diversification provides a solid foundation for the control of risk. This, together with a range of in-house risk monitoring systems ensures that risk is effectively managed at the market and the portfolio level.

Computational analysis is fundamental to the research. Option Strategist has developed proprietary programs capable of providing fast, robust solutions to the problem of the analysis needed to verify the models, and has developed in-house implementations of standard statistical methods and proprietary algorithms in order to perform these analyses.

The complex nature of the models thus developed has necessitated the creation of a front-end trading software in order to allow the trader to follow the precepts of his trading strategy. All traders have integrated real-time data feeds in their computation modules which emulate the trading model, linked to a user-friendly front end that informs the trader both of the current position and state of his portfolio and of what actions need to be taken at any given time. This enables a continuous measurment of risks in each market included in the investment portfolio, as well as their correlation coefficients, thus enabling position adjustments necessary to mantain the desired risk profile in changing market conditions.