TELESIS CAPITAL LLC

Established: 2005

Headquarters: 422 Glencoe Ave., Marina del Rey

Principal: Rishi Narang – Assets: $53.6 million

For Rishi Narang, the key to hedge fund management is all in the numbers. Narang takes a quantitative analysis approach to investing. And so far, his approach has paid off: through November, Narang’s Ergos Fund had posted a year-to-date return of 12.5 percent, he said, making it one of the most successful funds in a generally disastrous year.

Telesis hires managers at other hedge funds to invest on its behalf through separate accounts. Focusing on short-term trading, about two-thirds of the investment portfolio changes over every two or three days. “That’s way faster than the industry, which often holds onto investment for months or quarters,” Narang sid. One reason: it’s easier to predict where a stock will go in two or three days than two or three quarters down the road.

This short-term focus carries one key advantage that has been crucial in recent months: when markets turn sour, Telesis can maneuver quickly to minimize losses, Narang said.

The 34-year-old manager grew up in New Jersey and Texas and got his degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He then went straight into the hedge fund business, at Citibank in 1996, just before the Long Term Capital Management debacle rocked the industry. He took an interest in quantitative analysis and carried that with him as he co-founded with his brother Tradeworx Inc., a quantitative finance shop in New York in 1999.

Southern California’s climate beckoned Narang, who moved Tradeworx to Santa Barbara the following year. Then, in 2002, Narang left Tradeworx and joined the Santa Barbara Market Neutral Fund, a fund of funds focused on market neutral hedge funds. Narang left the Santa Barbara fund in 2005 to launch Telesis Capital.