Jennifer Fan grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and attended Bard College at Simon’s Rock, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. She enrolled at New York University at the age of 16, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Finance and a Bachelor of Science in Statistics, at the age of 19.
Here we take a closer look at her career and thoughts, in our series on inspirational women in trading and finance. Also in this series are articles on ,Lucy Baldwin, ,Nelisiwe Masango and ,Raghee Horner.
In 2002, she started to work for Bank of America, then moved on to Morgan Stanley. There she worked as an analyst before becoming a trader in the global liquids group.
She became a specialist in commodities, partly because of their tangible nature. She was quoted as saying:
“Commodities affect everything that humans do every day. People use oil, buy food from the store, use electricity—all of that is a very efficient machine… As a trader I have a front row seat to see how that machine works, and how things get to the end consumer. It’s problem solving on a big scale to enable modern living.”
In 2009, she joinined Arrowhawk Capital Management, becoming a portfolio manager and partner.
She was named a Hedge Fund Rising Star by Institutional Investor in 2011.
Whan Arrowhawk Capital Management closed in 2012, Fan launched Arbelet Capital LLC, with $650 million, bringing with her some employees and investors from Arrowhawk. Arbelet specialised in energy and agricultural commodities, and was named after a type of crossbow.
Her specialist approach was finding relative value in energy and agriculture markets. This strategy attempts to exploit differentials in price, as well as the delivery dates and locations of different products.
At the time, Fan was one of the youngest hedge fund managers in the industry. She was also one of the few female hedge fund managers in New York.
In 2012, she made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list.
Arbelet’s performance was not as good as expected, and the departure of some investors reduced its funds to $200 million. Arbelet closed in 2014.
After that, Jennifer Fan became a commodities trader at Millenium Management, becoming a portfolio manager responsible for commodities. At the time, Millenium had about $20 billion under management, and had offices in London, Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong.
She worked there until 2019, when she left to start her own office.
Currently, she is CEO of Fan Family Office, a private wealth and asset management firm in New York. She is a named donor of her old college, Simon’s Rock.
This article is part of our series on inspirational women in trading and finance. If you want to read more, have a look at our pieces on ,Lucy Baldwin, ,Nelisiwe Masango and ,Raghee Horner.
