Alumn Profile: Benoit Montin
By: Reagan Creamer
In a rented car packed to the roof with his memories of Tallahassee, newly graduated Dr. Benoit Montin starts the three day journey up to New York City. He's just received his Ph.D in Mathematics from Florida State University, and begins his new job with Murex, a financial software company, in a few days. He thinks back to last night, when his two roommates, local DJ's at FSU's radio station V89, threw a blowout going away party with live Indie music to celebrate his nearly four years in Florida. Montin says goodbye to southern live oaks and his friends around the city, but nothing can dull the excitement of new opportunities.
Montin developed a keen interest in math and finance very early in life. As a ten year-old boy in France, he dragged his mom to the local bank to place nominal market orders after extracting stock price trends in the newspaper. Interning on trading floors during the early years of statistical arbitrage, Montin programmed models that the bank used to inform trading decisions, and he saw the power of financial mathematics to drive better outcomes.
"[Dr. Nolder] always provided guidance, strong intellect and good coffee. My time at FSU was cherished." Benoit Montin
Prior to FSU, Montin received a double degree from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in France and Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales in Spain. This training focused on engineering in a generalist sense, also providing a very strong background in mathematics, physics, and computer science. "The program at FSU sounded like the perfect match for me because I knew I was going to be able to take classes outside of math as well. I wanted to be well-rounded." Montin completed his Master's at FSU in 2002 and was invited to stay for his Ph.D.
After a semester jam packed with reading a vast array of material to determine his dissertation topic, Montin read an article by Craig Reynolds in the Computer Graphics journal. Reynolds managed to very realistically model how flocks of birds fly relying only on simple local rules, such as each bird "avoids collisions with nearby flockmates," or each bird "attempts to match velocity with nearby flockmates." This concept inspired Montin's dissertation in which he leveraged both topology and evolutionary game theory to model the dynamic distribution of stock prices that is derived from simple behavioral and economic rules for trading agents.
Montin chose the committee for his Ph.D defense with the same desire for well-roundedness that brought him to FSU. Dr. Beaumont from the Department of Economics and Dr. Huffer from the Department of Statistics joined members he selected from the math department. He strongly praises his advisor, Dr. Craig Nolder, for "always providing guidance, strong intellect and good coffee. My time at FSU was cherished."
For his first two years in NYC, Montin worked with Murex's clients to turn their ideas into mathematical frameworks and software. He then transitioned to Barclays in their quant group focusing on credit derivatives and then just before the financial crisis, accepted a position on the proprietary trading desk for mortgages.
Shortly after, Barclays purchased Lehman Brothers, and Montin supported the transition by valuing some of Lehman's mortgage assets. With the regulatory changes, Montin and the other prop traders spun off and created a hedge fund called C12 Capital Management. Montin stayed there for four years before joining another hedge fund, BlueCrest Capital Management, where he continued to model and trade mortgages. He is now with Annaly Capital, one of the largest Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) in the world.
There is no 'average' workday in Montin's profession, as macroeconomic and geopolitical developments bring their set of new challenges daily and one has to constantly adapt. Fortunately, managing fixed income investments with discipline in spite of a fast paced and volatile environment is a mental challenge Montin and his colleagues happen to enjoy.