Away from Wall St, DIY quants changing financial markets

Washington

IN THE high desert plain of New Mexico, Roger Hunter monitors automated trades on hog futures and currency pairs. Four computer screens display a dizzying array of price charts and program codes in the office of his single-storey, thatched adobe home in the town of Las Cruces. Out back, where scrub brush stretches into the arid plain between the nearby mountains and the Rio Grande, is a 50-foot-tall (15.2m) wireless Internet tower.

As chief technology officer of a two-man startup called QTS Capital Management, the 66-year-old former math professor turned DIY quant had just pulled an all-nighter fixing a systems glitch.