Duke Jones, who holds a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation, was a Senior Financial Analyst in the Private Banking and Investment Group of Merrill Lynch, where he directed financial research and portfolio allocations for over $4B in assets. Prior to that, Duke served as a Vice President and Portfolio Manager for BlackRock (BLK-NYSE) in their Private Investors division where he partnered exclusively with Merrill Lynch Financial Advisors to provide customized investment solutions to their high net worth and institutional clients.

Duke has served as a hedge fund manager and quantitative analyst providing research and historical model back-testing and investment consulting to family offices and corporations for several years. He developed a proprietary sector and industry classification pyramid which generates quantitative rankings of sector and industry constituents that are beneficial in portfolio management and risk modeling. Duke previously served as Vice President and Portfolio Manager for Cullen Frost (CFR-NYSE: Frost National Bank.) During his tenure, he served as Chair of the Investment Strategy Committee, which consisted of a team of 28 portfolio managers and analysts (11 CFA’s) that oversaw asset allocation and equity selection for over 12 billion in trust assets. During this period, investment performance ranking rose from the 75th percentile to the top quartile.

During his career he has served as a research analyst covering the Technology, Telecom and Discretionary Sectors with specific industry coverage of Computer Software, Computer Services, Media, Broadcasting, Entertainment and Telecommunication Equipment & Services. He has conducted numerous presentations on investment strategies, asset allocation and fundamental and technical modeling for Merrill Lynch Institutional clients, private family offices and organizations such as Texas Society of CPA’s and Treasury Management Association. Duke has been quoted in Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and the local press. He is a member and former Director of the CMT Association, as well as a member of the CFA Institute and Houston Financial Analyst Society.

James Bianco, CMT is President of Bianco Research, L.L.C., an Arbor Research & Trading, LLC affiliate. Since November 1990, he has been producing fixed income commentaries, which enjoy a circulation of portfolio managers and traders numbering into the several hundreds. Jim’s commentaries are primarily devoted to fixed income markets, and he places special emphasis on the money flow characteristics of primary dealers, mutual funds, hedge funds, futures traders, banks, and institutional investors. Other topics he has researched include the effects of commodity prices on bond yields, how the ratio of the equity market’s capitalization as a percentage of nominal gross domestic product affects price performance of the stock market, the role government regulation plays in determining inflation, how market performance affects mutual fund investors, the role politics plays in setting interest rates, and measuring the stock and bond markets from a total return perspective.

Jim produces unique and original insights into movements in the financial markets and has been a featured speaker at many investment conferences. He is regularly featured in investment publications including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Barron’s, US News And World Report, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, The National Review, Euromoney, and Grant’s Interest Rate Observer in addition to the Dow Jones, Reuters, Knight-Ridder and Associated Press newswires. He has also written for Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities as well as Financial Trader and Futures Magazine and has appeared numerous times on CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg and Fox News.

Prior to joining Arbor and Bianco Research, Jim spent five years in New York City with several prominent investment banking firms. He was a Market Strategist in equity and fixed income research at UBS Securities, and an Equity Technical Analyst at First Boston and Shearson Lehman Brothers. He is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) and a member of the Chartered Market Technicians Association (CMT Association), where he previously served as a national Vice President, chairing the CMT Association’s 1996 annual seminar.