Principals

Samir Varma, PhD

Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer

Samir holds a PhD in theoretical particle physics from the University of Texas at Austin, where his advisor was E. C. G. Sudarshan; Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg served on his dissertation committee. He holds a BS in electrical engineering from Columbia University.

Samir began trading systematically in 1995 as a registered commodity trading advisor. In 1997 he co-founded Chaos Systems, LLC. In 2001 he founded VS Asset Management, LLC.

Samir holds (now-expired) US Patent 6,349,291 on the measurement of risk in volatile, unpredictable, and illiquid markets. He holds additional granted patents in finance and traffic engineering and patent applications in medicine and software.

Selected published work

• The False Promise of Drawdown Rules: New Evidence and a Better Framework, Journal of Portfolio Management 52(1), 2025, pp. 145–161.
• The Science of Free Will (2025).
• Editor and chapter contributor for the IntechOpen volume Investor Behavior and Investment Strategies (forthcoming).

Samir writes at samirvarma.substack.com; a longer biography and a complete list of media appearances are at samirvarma.com.

Rob Harrington, PhD

Co-Founder

Rob holds a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Texas at Austin and a BS in mechanical and nuclear engineering from the University of Oklahoma.

Rob has more than 25 years of experience building systems for trading and portfolio management. Before VS Asset Management, he founded Instanton, a software company for high-performance distribution of digital content, and served as Director of New Business and Product Management at Qwest Communications International. He and Samir collaborated for four years on proprietary trading at Fox River Financial Resources.

Rob holds a software patent for high-performance digital delivery.

Samir Varma and Rob Harrington each have personal capital invested alongside the firm's investors.