With a proven track record first developed in the founder’s family office, 5th Horizon was established to provide superior core equity exposure using quantitative techniques. A unique 3 model strategy ensures orthogonal factor exposure. This technique is designed to deliver competitive returns with below market volatility.
Portfolio Manager
Trent Ambler
Trent holds a Bachelor’s in Chemistry from the University of Southern California and a Master’s in Finance from the University of Denver. Trent has overseen investment activities for a family office since 2006. He has also spent time as an Adjunct teaching portfolio construction and quantitative methods to University students.
Research & Operations
Jon Tesseo
Jon’s career spans multiple asset management firms including, a top performing momentum shop where he helped grow assets from under $100mm to over $9b, a bank owned investment firm where he ran index, value, and growth funds, and a hedge fund where he was Director of Investment Research.
Partner
Merrill Stillwell, CFA
Merrill is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder & a member of the CFA Institute and CFA Society Colorado. Merrill graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics & Government. Merrill’s financial experience includes an analyst role at an international small cap fund, the investment committee at an award winning TAMP and as a general partner in real estate private equity.
Managing Partner
Ben Lakoff
Ben Lakoff, CFA is the Managing Partner of Bankless Ventures, an early-stage venture fund backed by Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, and dozens of leading founders and GPs. The firm currently manages two active funds focused on the intersection of crypto infrastructure and consumer adoption.
Investment Advisor
Tommi Johnsen
Tommi Johnsen, PhD, is the past Director of the Reiman School of Finance and is now emeritus faculty at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. She has worked extensively as a consultant and investment advisor in the areas of quantitative methods and portfolio construction. She has developed risk-controlled strategies in the equity markets for institutional investors and option strategies for retail investors. She taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels and published research in several areas including: capital markets, portfolio management and performance analysis, financial applications of econometrics and the analysis of equity securities. Her publications have appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and she has published a book: Smart(er) Investing, Palgrave/MacMillan. You can find her postings for practitioners on Substack, Fiduciary Wealth Partners, AlphaArchitect and 5th Horizon.
Strategy & Growth
Saira Rahman
Saira Rahman currently focuses on strategy and growth at Fundrise, driving long-term business expansion and capital formation initiatives across both real estate and venture capital vertiacals. She previously spent over a decade in derivatives sales and trading, advising institutional clients on structured products and risk management across asset classes, and later served as Head of Finance at a fintech company overseeing $500 million in deposits. Saira brings a growth-oriented mindset and strategic marketing perspective to her board role.
Finance without the forecasting.
Markets are complex and information is incomplete, crystal balls do not exist.
Our aim is to eliminate the need to time markets and to build portfolios that offer unique opportunities for enduring performance.
Orthogonal models for value, growth, and shorts. Selecting the best issues from each factor family and avoiding the inherent compromise caused by traditional blended models.
Objectivity
We seek out exposures that are well articulated and defensible we use objectivity not gut or emotion when building these exposures into our portfolio.
Discipline
We are disciplined in the execution of our process. By embracing uncertainty, we avoid the temptation to deviate and be whipsawed by forecasting errors.
Flexibility
We are not stubborn adherents to a singular vision for the future nor do we slave under a rigid understanding of market dynamics.
Risk Management
Our process was built with risk as the primary consideration. Everything that we do is informed by a risk-centric view.
RISK IS ALSO THE POTENTIAL FOR PERMANENT LOSS, it is losing the ability to continue investing, it is a misguided limitation of the opportunity set and at the same time the possibility for overreach. Risk is multidimensional and effective risk management necessitates a broad understanding of the drivers that lead to deleterious outcomes. Risk is a primary consideration in each decision that we make. We want to deliver enduring performance over a long investment cycle and so prioritize risk at every turn.
