Zacks Investment Management

As the firm's primary expert on quantitative investing, Mitch Zacks joined Zacks Investment Management in 1996 and has led the portfolio management team for many years. While he oversees all portfolio management activities at the firm, he is principally involved in the engineering of Zacks strategies, and he has personally developed many of the firm’s proprietary models.

Prior to joining Zacks, Mitch was an investment banking analyst with Lazard Frères. He has become widely recognized as an expert on corporate earnings, having written two books on quantitative investment strategies: Ahead of the Market, which details the Zacks method for spotting winning stocks early in any cycle, and The Little Book of Stock Market Profits: The Best Strategies of All Time Made Better, which was one of the top selling investment books in its publishing year. He has written a weekly column for the Chicago-Sun Times and currently produces a popular report, “Mitch on the Markets”.

As the head of all fixed income strategies at Zacks Investment Management, Manish Jain brings to the portfolio management team an in-depth knowledge of the bond market and high-yielding investments.

Manish has nearly 20 years’ experience in the financial services industry and is an expert on corporate, government and municipal bonds, as well as preferred stocks, MLPs, and other income-producing investments. Prior to joining Zacks, Manish was an investment manager for People’s Bank, where he also served as a portfolio manager in the trust department. His experience and expertise are instrumental to the team’s process of designing customized income strategies for Zacks clients.

Dr. Tony Zhang is currently the Assistant Portfolio Manager at Zacks, managing multiple portfolios and strategies based on quantitative methodologies.

He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Gies School of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. His main expertise includes quantitative investment, machine learning and big data analytics, and analytic finance. He has served as an academic advisor for the CFA Institute Research Challenge, and an academic advisor for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Global Annual Trading Competition.

Tony holds his Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He also received his M.B.A in analytic finance from Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, and completed his executive education in a general management program from Harvard Business School.

Prasanth Sankar’s role as a portfolio manager and quantitative analyst involves co-managing several of Zacks’ investment strategies, while developing and refining several of the firm’s proprietary models.

Prasanth has a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics and applies his mathematical background to the investment process through sophisticated and in-depth quantitative analysis. This enables him to identify anomalies and develop investment models.

As a Data Scientist, Metin Akyol researches quantitative models through the analysis of big data. Research is foundational to the Zacks approach, and Metin’s is crucial to the management of several Zacks strategies.

A Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Metin has also worked at the European Central Bank, the Center for European Economic Research, and the Deutsche Boerse-Eurex. He earned his doctorate in Economics with honors from the University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany, and his research has been published in top journals. A recognized industry expert, he has presented at numerous conferences, has earned a best paper award, and has served as an adjunct professor at Trinity Christian College in Illinois.

Atanu Ghosh has over 15 years of finance experience, during which he has served as a quantitative and fundamental research analyst and also as an equity portfolio manager. Prior to joining Zacks, he was a Senior Research Analyst at Fiduciary Asset Management on their large-cap core and quantitative strategy teams.

Atanu develops quantitative models that Zacks Investment Management deploys as part of the portfolio decision-making process, and he helps oversee macroeconomic and industry-specific research for the firm. He also tests investment models in an effort to find improvements for each market cycle. Atanu received his M.B.A. from Washington University, St. Louis, and his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India. Atanu is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

As the head of Zacks Index Services, Jane oversees index maintenance, strategy development, and marketing support of existing products.

Jane has over five years of experience in index strategy development and index rebalances. She specializes in quantitative research on smart beta strategies, and she back-tests alpha factors to enhance index performance, scenario analysis, and risk analysis. Many of her research projects have successfully led to investable products. Representative work includes the research projects that led to the launch of Zacks New China Index, Summit Zacks Global Water Index, Zacks ESG Index, and Zacks Earnings Consistent Portfolio ETF.

Previously, Jane worked as a quantitative analyst and alpha model builder at Zacks. She worked with the portfolio managers at Zacks in the design, development and implementation of various trading models. She holds a Master of Finance from the Illinois Institute of Technology and is a Ph.D. Candidate in Management Science of Finance at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She’s an FRM and CFA charterholder.

William Yost joined Zacks Investment Management in 2018 as a Portfolio Specialist, where his responsibilities include new product development, sales and marketing support, and client portfolio allocations. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame and an MBA in Finance at the University of Wisconsin.

Yost joined Zacks from Quotient Investors, a quantitative equity management firm that he co-founded in 2008 under the CalPERS Manager Development Program. At Quotient he was Director of Portfolio Management and Trading and responsible for all structured equity, small cap, microcap and ESG portfolios. Prior to Quotient, he was Director of Portfolio Management and Trading at Tokyo-based Asset Management One, and President of Innovest Capital Management Inc., which he founded in 1996 with the backing of the IBJ Whitehall Financial Group. He began his work with IBJ Whitehall in 1991, where he was responsible for the research and development of the firm’s market neutral and multi-strategy hedge funds. From 1981 to 1990, Yost was a quantitative portfolio manager and product development specialist with J.P. Morgan Investment Management and State Street Global Advisors.