Mr. Chelo has over 17 years of experience in the investment industry, ranging from the back office to portfolio management.  Prior to joining Benchmark Plus Partners, Mr. Chelo was a Vice President and Portfolio Manager at Rampart Investment Management.  He was responsible for the management of Rampart’s Buy-Write Index, Protected Equity, Enhanced Index ,and Quantitative Equity Programs.  He was actively involved in modeling and designing new equity and option strategies.  Neil was also an active trader in the equity and options market.   

Prior to joining Rampart, Neil was a Supervisor in the Securities Management Group of the Boston Company.  From 1993 to 1996 he was responsible for the accounting and client service for more than 15 large pension funds.

Neil received a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance, 1993 and a Masters of Science degree in Finance, 2000 from Bentley College.  He was awarded his CFA Charter in 1999.  Neil has also been awarded the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) and Financial Risk Manager (FRM) designations.  He also maintains his Series 3.

Steve has more than 19 years of experience researching and analyzing hedge funds and hedge fund strategies. Prior to joining Benchmark, Steve was a founding principal at Trail Ridge Capital, LLC. At Trail Ridge Steve was in charge of portfolio design and construction as well as manager research and selection. Prior to founding Trail Ridge, Steve served as the Director of Manager Research and Portfolio Manager for Long/Short Partners (now Silver Creek), a $600 million low volatility fund of funds. Prior to that, Steve was the Senior Manager Research Associate for Tremont Partners where he was responsible for the analysis and due diligence of hedge funds for Tremont's consulting clients, with a particular focus on arbitrage, quantitative, equity market neutral and long/short equity hedge fund strategies. Steve also spent four years as Manager of Economic and Performance Analysis with Weyerhaeuser's Pension Fund Investment Group and was responsible for the statistical analysis and performance evaluation of investment managers and investment strategies.  He has several years experience teaching Economics at the University of Washington. He has a B.A. in Chemistry from Earlham College, an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Alabama-Birmingham and an M.A. in Economics from the University of Washington.

In his 13 years in the investment industry Chris has experience with securities research, portfolio management, securities finance, and arbitrage trading.  Chris joined Benchmark from Paloma Securities, where he was the manager of a regional trading desk and a senior trader working on the Canadian and European trade book analyzing and managing global arbitrage opportunities.  He was also the head of the Hedge Fund security finance team that performed due diligence of hedge funds to assist in enhanced finance/margin treatment and short coverage cost.  Prior to that Chris was a portfolio manager for the investment division of Key Asset Management.  He managed institutional and private client discretionary accounts and was responsible for sales, asset research/valuation, and portfolio allocation.  Chris co-founded the Northwest Hedge Fund Society in 2004.  He earned his Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation in 1998 and holds a BBA from the University of Portland.

Matthew has over 13 years of experience as a trader and portfolio manager in the fixed income and derivatives markets. Matthew began his career in the trading pits of the Chicago Board of Trade as an option market maker. After a brief stint in the agricultural options markets, Matthew was assigned to initiate his firm’s entrance into the Treasury options markets where he led a team in building the market making and risk management operation in the interest rate quadrant. He later joined a firm arbitraging S&P 500 Options between the CBOE and CME contracts. Following business school, Matthew served as Deputy Director at the State of Tennessee’s Consolidated Retired System (TCRS) where he and his team oversaw $14 billion in fixed income and derivative assets. During his six years with TCRS he conducted trading, research, and asset allocation across fixed income and currencies.  As part of his efforts to enhance the fixed income product group, Matthew initiated and helped to build an interest rate derivative overlay program used to adjust interest rate and spread duration profiles and to hedge downside risks. Matthew holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University and a BA in Economics from Oregon State University. He earned his Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 2006 and is currently a CAIA Level I candidate.

Mr. Avakian has over 18 years of vast experience as an investment professional. He joined Benchmark in 2011 from AVA Investment Group, where he founded and managed a Capital Structure Arbitrage (CSA) / Private Investment hedge fund. Prior to AVA, Richard was the Global Head of Credit and a Portfolio Manager for Crestline Investors, a $5.6 billion Bass family affiliated multi-strategy fund-of-funds, Before Crestline, Mr. Avakian founded and managed the Credit Arbitrage Group for Carlson Capital, primarily focusing on CSA, Bank Loans, High Yield, and Distressed. Based in Dallas, Carlson Capital is a $6.5 billion multi-strategy hedge fund. Prior to Carlson, Richard was a Senior Analyst for Citadel Investment Group's CSA / Distressed / Special Situation team in Chicago. Before Citadel, Richard was an Equity Research Analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York covering the Financial Services Industry. Mr. Avakian was awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation in 1998 and holds a BBA from Texas Tech University and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Mr. Carroll graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Washington, Tacoma in June 2005 and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration with concentrations in Accounting and Finance. He began his tenure at Benchmark Plus as an Accounting Intern in January 2005. Mr. Carroll is a CPA and currently a Level III Candidate in the Chartered Financial Analyst Program.

With over 10 years in the investment industry, Stephen brings to Benchmark a strong institutional background in domestic and international equity trading and trading analysis. Prior to joining Benchmark, Stephen worked in the financial products group at BMO Capital Markets, part of the Bank of Montreal, as an equity finance trader. While with BMO he focused on the proprietary trading of their Asian matched SBL book, corporate action arbitrage and yield enhancement trading. In addition he assisted in establishing a funding platform collateralized and traded via SBL as well as covering select hedge funds in support of their prime brokerage activities. Prior to BMO, Stephen spent nearly four years with Paloma Securities, a trading arm of the multi-strat hedge fund Paloma Partners, working in the proprietary securities lending group; establishing the basis and experience for his continued work and responsibilities at BMO. His early career was spent at Russell Investments in their securities division where he worked on their institutional block trading desk covering nearly 60 top tier institutional managers and hedge funds. He was responsible for discretionary orders traded through various outlets including NYSE floor brokers, market makers, correspondent traders and electronic networks. Additionally at Russell he worked on the transition management product, focusing on delivering efficient and risk-hedged, large scale, asset class movements with extensive analysis and program trading. Stephen graduated Summa Cum Laude from Washington State University with a BS in Finance.