Pico Quantitative Trading

Our Firm

Jarrod Yuster, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, is a financial services industry veteran with more than 14 years in institutional equity trading. Most recently Mr. Yuster was a Managing Director and Global Head of Merrill Lynch's Portfolio and Electronic Trading, where he oversaw the business from inception in 2002. He was responsible for sales, trading, risk, service, product development and quantitative analytics for these products worldwide. His trading products reached over 85 global equity markets and were used by institutional clients, hedge funds, broker dealers and retail clients as well as Merrill Lynch’s internal trading desks. His team built electronic and quantitative trading strategies and provided consulting to clients on execution, transaction cost analysis, trading technology and market structure. Mr. Yuster was on the equity management committee responsible for strategic investments and partnerships and held several Director and Advisory roles for portfolio companies and industry committees (including a member of the NSX Board of Directors, OES Marketgroup Board of Directors, FTEN Advisory Board, the NYSE electronic trading committee (ELTAC), and a NYSE seat in his name representing Merrill Lynch).

Mr. Yuster has extensive experience starting trading businesses. Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, Mr. Yuster led the quantitative and automated trading efforts in the portfolio trading group at Schwab Capital Markets where he joined from a Schwab-led start-up investment bank, Epoch Partners, which was sold to Goldman Sachs in 2001. Mr. Yuster has held positions in quantitative research and program trading at Bank of America Securities and Deutsche Bank Securities, both start-up trading desks.

Jarrod Yuster received his M.S. in electrical engineering from Columbia University and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Yale University. Prior to working on Wall Street, Mr. Yuster worked as a product engineer, performing semiconductor research at Intel Corporation.

Clarke Roberts, Co-Founder and Head of Sales, has an extensive career in equity sales, trading and quantitative research. Most recently, Clarke was a Director of Quantitative Sales within Merrill Lynch’s Portfolio and Electronic Trading group. Mr. Roberts was responsible for sales to the high frequency trading client base, packaging execution, clearing and financing across equities, futures, and options.

He joined Merrill Lynch in 2004 as the first electronic salesperson for Merrill’s electronic equities trading suite. His responsibilities included sales to hedge funds and institutions, building and interpreting post trade analysis (TCA), and front end sales, consultation and training.

Prior to joining Merrill, Mr. Roberts worked in the analytics products division of ITG, improving on and presenting the firm’s pre trade and post trade analysis tools (ACE and TCA, respectively). Prior to ITG, Mr. Roberts was a quantitative research analyst in Nasdaq’s Economic Research Division. At Nasdaq, he helped shape significant market microstructure issues such as the Nasdaq Single Price Opening and Closing Processes. Mr. Roberts began his career as a financial analyst within Charles Schwab’s Capital Markets Division.

Mr. Roberts received his B.A. in economics from the University of Virginia.

Kenneth Bradley, Chief Financial Officer, has 25 years experience in the financial services industry primarily focused on accounting, financing, and regulatory matters for self clearing firms. Most recently, Kenneth was the CFO and member of the operating committee for Broadcort a division of Merrill Lynch which handles third party clearing, custody, and financing on a fully disclosed basis as well as registered investment advisors. Additional responsibilities while at Merrill Lynch include finance support for U.S. stock loan, commission recapture (soft dollar), domestic prime brokerage and consolidated management reporting for the global equity financing business.

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