James A. Kaplan

Mr. Kaplan is a founding director of MarketWatch, and is widely recognized as one of the grandfather’s of modern portfolio theory. For the past 20 years, James Kaplan’s research interests and entrepreneurial ventures have focused on innovations designed to improve the predictive and explanatory power of classical finance theories and portfolio management philosophies. Before he co-founded CML, Mr. Kaplan was Vice Chairman and Chief Executive of GMI Ratings (now part of MSCI). In this role, Mr. Kaplan developed novel risk modeling methodologies to help capital market participants mitigate the impact of what he has dubbed “routine anomalies”. The term refers to high-impact events stemming from variables typically overlooked in classical economic theories.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Kaplan has advanced ground breaking applications of quantitative techniques and technology-driven solutions for equity and fixed-income portfolio analytics. In 1979, he founded Capital Management Sciences (CMS) and established the firm as the world’s top purveyor of fixed income portfolio analytics. During his tenure, the firm introduced CMS BondEdge, the chief independent source of research and valuation tools for the global bond market.

Following the sale of CMS to Interactive Data Corporation, Mr. Kaplan was a founding director of MarketWatch. In the wake of the notorious corporate scandals after 2000, he founded Audit Integrity, one of the three firms that merged to form GMI Ratings.

Mr. Kaplan received his BA from the University of Colorado and an MBA from California State University. Mr. Kaplan is a Chartered Financial Analyst.