James Leong

CEO

Tan T-Kiang

CIO

An early pioneer in electronic market making, T-Kiang has seen the advent of modern trading from writing code for UBS O’Connor in his cramped Chicago apartment in the 1990’s to full-scale build-outs of high frequency infrastructure for major investment banks across Asia like Lehman and Mizhuho.

As Chief Investment Officer, TK engages with major exchanges, corporate leaders, regional regulators, and key partners for Grasshopper.  He is a highly sought-after expert panelist at global conferences on trading, technology, and innovation.

Sachar De Vries

CTO

Sachar de Vries has spent a decade building the technological foundations of Grasshopper. As the first IT hire, Sachar was pivotal in the firm’s transformation from first time electronic traders to regional tech powerhouse.

Now, as Chief Technical Officer, Sachar leads technology strategy and helps the trading teams leverage Grasshopper’s proprietary trading platform.

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Sachar previously held roles at Essent, Kabelcom, the second largest internet provider in the Netherlands. He moved to Singapore in 2008, and can be found travelling the region in search of the best places to kitesurf and hit waves.

John Lin

Founder and Chairman

After graduating with an Engineering degree from Cornell University, John worked his way up from a clerk position in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Since then, he’s lived and traded internationally in London and Tokyo, and now calls Singapore home. John founded Grasshopper in 2006, and plays an active role in guiding vision and strategy as its founder and Chairman.

John’s passion for teamwork, culture, and innovation makes him an inspiring mentor and visionary thinker. He devotes significant time and energy to influencing a better future for the next generation.

At the start of 2019, John was interviewed on Michael Covel’s prolific podcast with over 7 million listens, Trend Following.  Catch the episode here.

Gabriel Yap

CEO, Grasshopper Asset Management

Gabriel has been in Grasshopper for 15 years. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Grasshopper Asset Management.

Gabriel was pivotal in growing Grasshopper’s proprietary trading to be consistently profitable over the last 12 years. He has been the senior trader, managing Grasshopper’s proprietary team and positions in various financial products since 2010 and brings deep financial expertise to his position. He has helped manage Grasshopper’s portfolios during volatile periods, through well-placed large volume trading of equities, derivatives and ETFs by quantitative methods using automated algorithms. Furthermore, he has continued to push the development, review and improvement of strategies based on a wide universe of market conditions capturing more alpha for the proprietary portfolio. He has also introduced new quantitative strategies relying on probability-based models.

Gabriel graduated from the University of West Australia with a BSc. Economics in 2004.

Raino Saari

Executive Director, Grasshopper Asset Management

Raino is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University. His trading career began as a “local” market-maker in the Comex’s copper options pit. He has been a member of the Comex, Nymex, CSCE, CBOE, Amex, and Simex. In 1993 he came to Singapore to make markets in the Nikkei options as a member of the Simex. In 2001 he was hired by John Mulheren to develop and head up the Chicago trading operations of Bear Wagner, which were expanded to span the CME, CBT, CBOE, and CSE, and focused primarily on index-options market-making. He moved to NY a couple of years later to head the American Stock Exchange trading operations of LaBranche Structured Products. He was subsequently posted to HK, as CEO of LaBranche Structured Products HK. In 2015 he returned to Singapore to join Grasshopper and build our business as a designated market maker for ETFs on the TSE.