Rich Paul of Potomac Advisors Wins Fourth Annual NAAIM Shark Tank at Uncommon Knowledge 2017 Conference
Littleton, CO – May 23, 2017 – Richard Paul, Founder and CIO of Potomac Advisors, Inc. in Lakewood Ranch, FL, received 1st place in the 2017 NAAIM Shark Tank competition for best investment strategy at the 2017 National Association of Active Investment Managers Uncommon Knowledge Conference. Uncommon Knowledge 2017 was held in San Diego, CA, May 1-3 2017. Paul’s strategy, EVO, boasts of a 15-year, real-money, track record that has doubled the annualized total return of the S&P 500 index, with half of the maximum drawdown. The NAAIM Shark Tank competition is an opportunity for the developers of active investing approaches to pitch their strategies to fellow advisers and active investment managers in pursuit of sub-adviser agreements. Finalists have six minutes to present their strategies, followed by eight minutes of Q&A from judges and the audience. The winning strategy is selected by three judges and audience ballots. “The NAAIM audience are largely active investment managers, themselves,” explains Steve Williamson, chair of the 2017 Shark Tank Committee. “They are looking for active strategies to diversify their portfolios and reduce risk. When you look at EVO, it is based on strategy diversification and has shown strong improvement in risk/return as strategy diversification increases.” Paul began his career as an engineer, where his expertise in analyzing weapon system performance provided the basis for developing the risk/reward analysis that is fundamental to the techniques used in Potomac’s asset management program. In 1986, he registered as an investment advisor and founded Potomac Fund Management in 1987, which eventually grew to over $100 million in assets under management. After selling his majority interest in 2003, and his remaining shares in 2014, Paul expected to hang up his shingle and enjoy retirement. Instead, his passion for perfecting EVO, and its outstanding 12+ year performance at the time led him to continue to evolve the system. After rejoining NAAIM in 2015, Paul began licensing EVO signals to NAAIM and other investment advisers, in addition to offering it to his own clients, resulting in the growth of assets using EVO from $1m to over $250m. EVO is a mechanical market timing trading system that generates buy, sell and short signals based on algorithmic rules using quantitative analysis. EVO utilizes combinations of 25 short to intermediate-term strategies from a universe of more than 120 trading systems that are each evaluated for risk and return. The National Association of Active Investment Managers (NAAIM) is a non-profit trade group of more than 150 registered investment advisors who collectively manage over $35 billion in assets. NAAIM members provide active money management services to their clients to produce favorable risk-adjusted returns as an alternative to more passive, buy-and-hold investment strategies. In addition to the NAAIM Shark Tank, NAAIM sponsors the NAAIM Founders Award for white papers advancing the understanding and validation of active management, publishes the weekly NAAIM Exposure Index, and sponsors its annual Uncommon Knowledge conference along with smaller conferences and regional workshops on active investment management, trading techniques for various instruments and markets, regulation and compliance, and other topics of interest to its membership. Prior Shark Tank winners have included 2016 – David Bush, Founder of Alphatative LLC, 2015; John McClure, President of ProfitScore Capital Management, and 2014 – Len Fox, president of Scarecrow Trading, LLC. About the Winner: 
Rich Paul is the founder and chief investment officer of Potomac Advisors in Lakewood Ranch, FL, and is a seasoned quant with over 30 years of experience as an investment advisor. His passion for perfecting his algorithmic, rules-based market timing trading system drives a desire to maintain the legacy of what has become an increasingly more impressive long-term track record. He has teamed up with his daughter and brother-in-law to ensure that the trading system is maintained for the foreseeable future. Paul is a co-founding member of NAAIM, where he served on their first Board of Directors in 1990, and authored the organization’s original Performance and Measurement Standards while serving as the Chairman of the committee. He also co-authored the landmark article, “Market Timing Works Where it Matters Most…. In the real World,” in the Journal of Portfolio Management in 1992.
Congrats to 2017 Shark Tank Winner – Rich Paul of Potomac Advisors for his EVO Strategy 