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“I learned everything I ever needed to know about systematic and quantitative investing even before I set foot in the field because systematic and quantitative investing, at the end of the day, is about discipline.” - Alan Sheen (Tweet) Today on Top Traders Unplugged, I’m speaking with Alan Sheen, Founder and CIO of Dalton Street Capital. Alan has an interesting background in science and engineering, and also spent time in the military, which allowed him to later thrive in rules-based investing. He’s also the first Australian manager to be on the podcast. Listen in to today's episode to learn about Alan’s journey from the Australian military to starting his own investment firm, why investors should look at volatility not as risk but as an opportunity, and what an investor’s own personal car says about their investment strategies. Thanks for listening and please welcome our guest Alan Sheen. Subscribe on: In This Episode, You'll Learn: What Alan’s childhood was like in Australia Why Alan studied aeronautical engineering How Alan equates gas-turbine engines with robust investing How Alan’s experience in the military helps him as an investor “I was stunned when I came into the investment market and realized that the mentality was have a hunch, bet a bunch.” - Alan Sheen (Tweet) How Alan was influenced by Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species” Quantitative investment’s prevalence in Australia in the early '90s The influence the VIX Index had on Alan’s career How Alan’s hedging strategy turned into a managed futures strategy “What I’ve tried to explain to people is volatility is not risk, volatility is opportunity.” - Alan Sheen (Tweet) Why Alan use an equity portfolio as collateral instead of cash How volatility can be opportunity and a friend How Berkshire Hathaway has benefited from a volatile market The importance of an investment manager to personalize their hedge funds Connect with Dalton Street Capital: Visit the Website: Dalton Street Capital Call Dalton Street Capital: +61 2 8651 3489 “Humans, no matter how far we’ve evolved, no matter who we mate with, no matter how intelligent we think we’ve become, our behavior doesn’t change.” - Alan Sheen (Tweet)   Links Mentioned: Sensation Seeking and Hedge Funds Full Transcript The following is a full detailed transcript of this conversion. Click here to subscribe to our mailing list, and get full access to our library of downloadable eBook transcripts! Niels Hey everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Top Traders Unplugged, where today I'm joined by Alan Sheen, who is the Founder and CIO at Dalton Street Capital, based in Sydney Australia, and, I'm pretty sure, the first Australian manager on the podcast. So, first off, Al, thanks so much for coming on the podcast with me today. I'm very excited to be able to speak to you today and about our conversation in general.  Alan Thank you very much, Niels, the feeling's mutual.  Niels Good stuff. Now, I want to kick-off, as usual, by framing what we're going to talk about today by getting a better understanding of your journey into the rules-based world of investing, which even today, I think, is not fully appreciated by enough investors. So, why don't you take us back to how it all began and how you got to where you are today.  Alan Well, I'll probably have to go back to almost childhood just to give a bit of an understanding about my thinking behind what I planned to do as an adult, so to speak. My background is that I was born and raised in a very small country town. It was under 2,000 people, in a state in Australia called New South Wales. We call it the Outback. A lot of people think of Crocodile Dundee and where the goings-on, and the crocodiles, and everything was filmed. Ours was a little bit like that but more kangaroo, sheep, and cattle.   I enjoyed that upbringing. I was very, very good at math and so on, not so good at the social sciences and the English part. I guess, notwithstanding that,