Trading Moves to Maine

Sitting in the catbird seat, finally.

That’s how Rob Felvinci, director of portfolio management and trading at Spinnaker Trust, sees things.

After spending his entire trading career and life paying his dues in the concrete jungle that is New York City, the veteran trader and family man now can write his own ticket. And he has-trading Gotham for Portland, Maine. 

After almost three decades riding packed subways between his Upper West Side home and his AllianceBernstein office in midtown Manhattan, Felvinci now enjoys a peaceful drive between Kennebunkport and Portland, by car.

He’s come a long way, literally. After all, Felvinci was born and raised on the Upper West Side.

Felvinci’s sojourn out of Manhattan to the tranquility of Maine started in February 2012, when he left AllianceBernstein for a better quality of life. He had spent his entire Wall Street career until that point at the investment management firm, which he joined after graduating from Northeastern University in 1990.

A business major at the Boston institution, he joined AllianceBernstein on its over-the-counter equities desk and then moved to its listed desk in 1997. He then rose to become head of program trading in 1996, and then co-head of trading for the Americas in 2003 and most recently head of equity derivatives trading in 2008.

After a lifetime of living and success in the Big Apple, Felvinci was ready for a change. Not to mention the fact he was the father of two and wanted to raise his children outside the confines of steel, glass and concrete.

“All along, my goal was to get to Maine,” Felvinci said. And for him, that goal was cemented by two things: First, he already had a summer home in Maine; second, by becoming a father he wanted to raise children outside of the metropolitan area.

“We enjoyed the lifestyle and quality of life in Maine. It was a better place to bring up children,” he recalled.

Once he left Alliance’s trading desk in early 2012, he opted to go all in and resume his trading career where he wanted to-even if it meant waiting for the right opportunity. With his mind set on leaving New York, Felvinci was convinced he was going to work in the Boston-area-home to many buyside money management firms, such as Fidelity Investments and State Street Corporation. He spent a fair amount of time meeting and greeting different firms before eventually being introduced to Richard Curran Jr., president of Spinnaker, in August 2012 by a mutual acquaintance while in Maine.

“After three months of conversations with them, they offered me a position,” Felvinci said. Now the Kennebunkport resident has trimmed his commute from about a jam-packed hour to a leisurely 30-minute drive along the water. No subways. No taxis. Just the occasional moose sighting on I-95 highlighting his morning trips to the office.

Spinnaker is a 12-year-old Maine bank chartered as a nondepository trust company; it operates a fund of hedge funds and private equity funds. It also offers exchange-traded fund portfolios for U.S. and global assets, using ETFs to allocate to equities, bonds, commodities and alternatives.

Just three months into his position as director of portfolio management and trading at Spinnaker, Felvinci has his work cut out for him. The NYC expat is shaking things up, technically speaking, by looking at his trading desk’s technology. First, he is looking to replace Spinnaker’s existing order management system, as it isn’t as customizable as newer systems based on an open architecture-type platform. He has narrowed down his choice of a replacement system to three. He declined to say which three suppliers and systems are the finalists.

Also, Felvinci is changing his execution management system to better accommodate his soft dollar research payment plan. After looking at his existing system from FinTech Securities and his usage of soft dollars to pay for research, he has opted for RealTick. By using RealTick through broker-sponsored platforms, Felvinci said, it was more economical for Spinnaker to leverage its relationship with preferred broker/dealers and manage his soft dollars through them.

“The ability to pay for research through soft dollars is more attractive and cost-effective for us,” he said.

Felvinci also is looking at adding a transaction-cost analysis system. When he arrived at Spinnaker, the desk employed no TCA system, which can help identify savings in the trading process. Now, recognizing the importance of trading efficiency, Spinnaker wants to tap his prior experience with this technology and employ it.

“When it comes to TCA, this is something I was brought on to look at specifically,” he said. “TCA is not a priority right away, but something to be addressed down the road.”

Another area he will be looking at is his broker list. Currently, the firm uses seven brokers. But as is the case throughout the industry, Spinnaker is looking to reduce its costs amid lower trading volumes. As a result, Felvinci is examining the idea of executing trades with fewer brokers. That could help reduce his average commission rate, which is in the 4.4 cent a share range, and improve his overall bottom line.

One thing Spinnaker is not doing at the moment is hiring. Felvinci is the missing piece to their puzzle and wears several hats-not just trading. He sits on the investment committee and assists with how the firm allocates its assets, and helps choose what assets to invest in. This includes the regular maintenance of investors’ cash to its own fund-of-funds, hedge funds and private equity offerings. This means holding not just equities and fixed-income products, but also assets such as options and derivatives. He also interacts regularly with clients.

“Trading here is just a piece of my overall responsibility,” he said.

But he accepts his newfound responsibilities without hesitation as he enjoys the perks of living in more rural environment. An avid fisherman and lover of the outdoors, Felvinci finds that Maine suits him in a way New York never did. After work, he and his sons follow their passion and fish for striped bass in the Atlantic-fileting and eating what they catch. He counts his new backyard and being able to attend his children’s school events as immediate benefits.

“I’ve gotten calls from my old Wall Street friends, and when I tell them of what I’ve found, they say its best thing they’ve heard in a long time,” Felvinci said. “After many months of uncertainty and apprehension, I now find myself in the perfect situation and the perfect role. I’m not complaining about anything.”

 

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