Over a 25 year financial career, Mr. Halpern has structured, priced, and traded billions of dollars in structured products, exotic derivatives, and listed vanilla options in addition to managing trading groups, supervising risk management and participating in executive level, firm-wide strategic initiatives.

Mr. Halpern founded Exceed Investments in order to take advantage of the unique characteristics that options present in defining, hedging, and/or optimizing a market exposure. Exceed’s first initiative was to combine the beneficial elements of structured notes with that of mutual funds. Exceed currently sub-advises on four mutual funds that use elements of structured notes in providing a defined level of downside protection. Consistently a thought leader in the space, under the direction of Mr. Halpern Exceed continues to innovate, resulting in a number of 1sts in the industry inclusive of the first mutual fund using a structured notes approach, optimization features allowing for evergreen characteristics, and with more to come.

Prior to founding Exceed Investments, Mr. Halpern was a Director at Lamco, the asset management division of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. He managed the exotic derivatives commodities book, a multi-billion complex OTC derivative portfolio, was the chief negotiator on a number of global bank settlements and was a lead member of a task force on structured products.

Prior to joining Lamco, Mr. Halpern was Director on the Equity Derivatives Trading desk of ING Financial Markets, a global financial institution. As a Director, Mr. Halpern was
responsible for structuring, pricing, and trading an array of exotic derivatives for the global sales force. Prior to joining ING, Mr. Halpern was SVP of Strategy and Risk for Kellogg Capital Group’s derivatives division.

From 1996 to 2002, Mr. Halpern was at Letco Specialists, since acquired by TD Securities, where he began his career as a derivatives trader. Mr. Halpern became the youngest partner at Letco Specialists. He was responsible for the IT build-out for the company’s east coast operations while managing a trading division and a proprietary portfolio. He was also the primary market maker on the American Stock Exchange in a number of highly volatile, active derivative listings.

Mr. Halpern lives in New York City with his wife and three children.

John has over 25 years of experience managing, trading and developing options strategies as well as institutional level experience in index arb trading, risk management and portfolio analysis.

In 2021, John joined Exceed Investments as a partner to lead on its SMA initiative inclusive of launching a Covered Call strategy, which combines passive ETF investing with an active options overlay in seeking to deliver attractive returns with dampened volatility – a strategy managed by him since 2013 at another firm, in which Exceed has acquired a 50% ownership interest.

Before joining Exceed, John was a Manager of Options Trading for 15 years at Charles Schwab Institutional, where he was instrumental in creating structured option hedging strategies for Financial Advisors. In addition, he developed analytical tools to improve hedging and obtain the best execution. To promote Schwab’s capabilities in options trading, John partnered with Schwab’s business development offices and relationship managers. He would consistently lead the conversation with prospects and existing clients. 

Prior to joining Charles Schwab, John was a Managing Member and Index Arbitrage Trader at Sovereign Capital Partners. He distinguished himself in the areas of ETF market making, index arbitrage, risk management, and portfolio analysis.

Prior to that, John worked as an equity options market maker on the American Stock Exchange, responsible for the trading and risk management of a portfolio of options on highly volatile equities such as Motorola and Intel. John started his career on the Pacific Options Exchange, in addition to his Market Making responsibilities on Technology stocks, such as Applied Materials and Microsoft, he assisted in the development of the PSE Technology Index.

John earned an MBA from Pepperdine University and a BS in Finance from Bryant University. He currently lives in the Denver area with his wife and son.