Clarkson Jones is president of Charlotte, N.C. based Monarch Capital Management, a forex money management firm that trades roughly $5 million in assets.
After gaining nearly 8 percent in both September and October, Jones’ FX Multi-Strategy trading program was up 38.52 percent in 2005. So far, the year has been a nice rebound from a 13.69-percent loss in 2004 (his largest drawdown has been -21.86 percent), which was his first down year since launching his program in Nov. 2001. Jones’ program posted annual returns of 78.23 percent and 164.15 percent in 2002 and 2003, respectively, and his fund’s total return since its inception in Nov. 2001 is 633.43 percent (a compound annual return of 64.56 percent).
Before trading full time, Jones, who turns 40 this month, was a civil engineer and owner of a company (from January 1991 to January 2002) that sold construction-related products and services. He first entered the markets in 1994, trading stocks and some treasuries. He then branched into commodity futures, which he found “somewhat challenging.”
However, his research in this area led directly to his discovery that “currencies leant themselves [more readily] to my methods — maybe because they are so liquid,” he says. “Other markets became less appealing once I discovered currencies.”
Jones is relatively tight-lipped about many of the specifics of his trading approach, but he has a diversified trading methodology that blends multiple trading systems triggered by both trend and countertrend signals on different time frames in five different currency pairs.
He stresses that he blends discretionary judgment with systematic trade execution. Jones studied music as well as mathematics and physics in college, and he says these seemingly disparate fields contribute to the way he approaches the market.
“I had two different majors — engineering and fine arts,” he says. “One is left brain and one is right brain. I think that’s actually helped me to be more creative and a little more, I guess, artistic with my approach to the market. “I studied music and learned about pattern recognition when learning how to read music,” he continues. “I also studied physics and mathematics and excelled in those areas — it came very naturally to me — and I became a civil engineer. I started my own company and made quite a bit money and started investing it for myself. I learned how to trade, and basically have evolved to where I am today.”
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