Principals

Tim Pickering 

President, Lead Portfolio Manager, CIO 

Tim Pickering is Founder, President and CIO of Auspice. Tim leads strategic decision making and the vision for Auspice’s diverse suite of active and passive systematic trend following (CTA) and commodity strategies. Prior to forming Auspice, Tim was VP of Options Trading at Shell Trading for North America. Tim began his career at TD Securities in Toronto in their elite trading development program gaining experience in risk management and proprietary trading. Ultimately, Tim held the Senior Trader position for TD’s energy derivatives portfolio. Outside of Auspice, Tim has been involved in grain farming in Western Canada. Through the founding of Auspice, Tim ties together a career in commodity and financial risk management and trading that has spanned institutional success along with entrepreneurial vision.

With partner Ken Corner, Tim Pickering has built Auspice Capital Advisors as a next generation CTA, offering strategies in active managed futures (Diversified and Energy), passive ETFs, enhanced indices and custom commodity strategies. Auspice was selected as one of Alberta’s 50 fastest growing companies by Alberta Venture Magazine and KPMG for both 2010 and 2011. Auspice is also the winner of the 2011 Silver medal from Morningstar in the category of Best Opportunistic Hedge Fund in Canada.  The Auspice Broad Commodity Index is ranked as one of the top performing global commodity indices by an independent third party. After creating the first physical natural gas ETF in 2008, in 2010 Auspice launched the third generation Auspice eBeta™ indices: the Auspice Broad Commodity and Managed Futures Indices are NYSE published. Both indices have been licensed by Direxion Funds and launched in February 2012 as mutual funds in the U.S and by Horizons ETFs in Canada ( HMF and HBR on the TSX).  Additionally, Auspice has launched a systematic energy program that is designed to profit from the volatility and trends in the global energy markets while offering diversification from diversified CTA and traditional investments.

Ken Corner 

Portfolio Manager, Director of Research and Operations 

Ken Corner is a founding partner of Auspice and a limited partner. Ken's professional career began as a design engineer (Mechanical) for the ATCO group of companies and then evolved into financial modeling and commodity trading. Following his time with ATCO, Ken traded natural gas derivatives for Shell, and then went on to become the Vice President of Options Trading for TD Securities in Calgary. Ken leads the research effort at Auspice, and oversees the trading operation.

Team

Michael Lee Hing

Director of Risk and Compliance

Michael has over 12 years of experience in enterprise risk management, financial reporting and analysis, and corporate due diligence. He spent the previous four years working in risk management at Bell Canada Enterprise where he developed expertise in implementing enterprise risk management platforms. He is now responsible for risk management and compliance at Auspice.

Laurie Kelly

Director of Finance

Laurie has over 15 years of experience in accounting, financial reporting and analysis and internal controls.  Prior to joining Auspice, she was a finance manager at Enbridge Inc. Laurie started her career with KPMG LLP, specializing in audit and advisory services to companies in the oil and gas industry before transferring to KPMG’s Silicon Valley, CA office in 1999, where she managed several public company audit engagements and assisted in initial public offerings of companies in the high-tech industry. From 2002 to 2007, Laurie worked in the U.S. in a variety of finance related management positions, including two years as the Corporate Controller of a NASDAQ-listed biotechnology company. She has experience managing accounting and treasury functions, including processes and controls, and internal and external reporting. She is a Chartered Accountant and a graduate from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Commerce degree.

Basil D’Souza

Director of Business Development

Basil leads Auspices institutional and retail sales initiatives. He has over 10 years of industry experience with Claymore ETFs and TD Asset Management. Through his career, Basil has worked with structured products, hedge funds and complex derivatives. Basil is a graduate of Concordia University from Montreal and he has been awarded the CFA charter.

Kevin Malenfant

Quantitative Analyst

Kevin has a Master's of Science degree in Applied mathematics from the University of Calgary. Kevin first joined Auspice through MITACS-Accelerate, a national internship program.

Jason Ewasuik

Trader

Jason graduated in 2009 from the J.R. Shaw School of Business at The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology with a Bachelors of Applied Business and a major in Finance. Before joining Auspice, Jason traded for National Bank Financial.