For asset managers
Powering Asset Manager
Growth and Operations
RCM Alternatives serves as a strategic partner for investment managers seeking operational excellence and asset growth. We provide the infrastructure, expertise, and connections that allow you to focus on what you do best: managing assets and generating returns.
How We Work With Asset Managers
Whether you’re managing a systematic CTA, launching a futures-based ETF or mutual fund, optimizing a prop trading operation, or expanding your hedge fund’s reach, we provide tailored solutions across five core areas:
A 24/6 institutional trade desk covering 300+ markets across 30+ global exchanges, staffed by regulated futures and options veterans with decades of experience. We handle everything from straightforward order execution to complex algorithmic strategies, eliminating the overhead of managing in-house execution teams and technology.
Not all clearing firms have the capacity, market coverage, or technology capabilities your business needs. RCM maintains 10+ FCM relationships and manages all the operational complexity, so you get the right clearing partner for your business without juggling multiple workflows yourself.
Comprehensive operational backbone from fund structure and registration to customer onboarding, ongoing compliance, back-office services, and administrator/custodian coordination.
Strategic connections to institutional allocators, family offices, and HNWI networks, combined with marketing amplification through established industry channels.
Custom frameworks for CTAs/CPOs, registered fund managers, professional trading groups, and emerging managers, each designed around the unique operational and regulatory requirements of your business model.
Types of Managers We Work With
Our balanced approach ensures that both established and emerging managers receive the resources, relationships, and support they need to thrive in today’s competitive landscape.
With RCM as your partner, you gain not just a service provider, but a committed ally in your long-term success.
Outsourced Trading:
Your Trading Desk, Without the Overhead
Managing a modern trading desk means navigating a complex landscape of technology costs, staffing challenges, and 24-hour markets. For investment managers running private funds, ETFs, or mutual funds, the question isn’t whether you need sophisticated trading capabilities, it’s whether building and maintaining an in-house desk is the best use of your resources.
RCM’s outsourced trading solution gives you institutional-grade execution without the infrastructure burden. Our 24/6 trade desk operates continuously from Sunday 3:30 PM through Friday 5:00 PM, providing seamless market access across 300+ markets on 30+ global exchanges. With over two decades of experience across buy-side, sell-side, floor, and electronic trading, our team becomes an extension of your operations.
As an FCM-agnostic provider, we offer complete flexibility in your clearing relationships while delivering the execution expertise, technology infrastructure, and risk management capabilities you need. From simple order execution to complex algorithmic strategies, we handle the operational complexity so you can focus on investment decisions and client service.
Whether you’re launching a new strategy, scaling existing operations, looking to access new markets, or looking to reduce overhead; our outsourced trading solutions adapt to your needs, without the hiring cycles, technology headaches, or middle-of-the-night system updates.
ETF/40 Act Services
Futures-based ETFs and mutual funds require specialized expertise across trading, clearing, margin management, fund structure, and operational infrastructure. With deep experience supporting both private and registered fund vehicles, RCM Alternatives helps managers navigate the unique complexities of futures-based products while bringing institutional-grade execution and operational efficiency to every stage of the process.
We work with
- Experienced sponsors seeking to launch or scale futures-driven strategies
- Established mutual fund and ETF trusts
- Emerging managers
What we provide
Multi-FCM Clearing & Execution
- Flexibility, capacity, and access to a broad range of global markets
- Reduced reliance on a single provider
- Institutional-grade infrastructure that scales with your fund
Fund Launch & Operational Support
- Coordination with administrators, custodians, and legal counsel
- Smooth transition from private fund structures to registered products
- Streamlined fund operations from day one
Asset Growth & Distribution
- Marketing capabilities to build long-term foundation for success
- Connections to potential investors and distribution opportunities
- Strategic partner introductions through our industry network
CTA/CPO/Hedge Fund Services
RCM Alternatives supports commodity trading advisors, commodity pool operators, and hedge fund managers with the operational foundation and deep industry knowledge and relationships needed to scale efficiently. We combine decades of industry expertise with high-touch service that lets you focus on what matters most: performance and growth.
Outsourced Trading Operations
We build great Alternative Investment portfolios with clients looking to access the managed futures/macro space in a meaningful way. That’s been our specialty for more than a decade, with our experienced team up to the challenge of finding unique managers to fit unique needs
Multi-FCM Clearing Solutions
We maintain active relationships with 10+ FCMs, enabling us to match your strategy with clearing partners whose risk appetite aligns with your trading approach, global market access needs, and technology requirements, with the ability to establish redundant clearing arrangements for operational continuity. This gives you strategic optionality and the right counterparty fit without the burden of managing multiple clearing relationships yourself.
Marketing/Asset Raising
Meaningful connections to institutional allocators, family offices, and high-net-worth investors, paired with the marketing muscle to make your story land. RCM helps translate complex strategies into clear, investor-ready positioning, then amplifies it through targeted content, curated events, featured spotlights, and our media ecosystem, integrating you directly into RCM’s network of allocators, advisors, and industry peers.
SMA Platform Plug IN
RCM’s SMA Platform enables managers to scale their strategies within a fully institutional, investor-friendly structure, without building the operational machinery yourself. We serve as the operational hub, handling account setup, FCM coordination, trade implementation, risk parameters, and ongoing support across a multi-FCM environment. The result is a streamlined, centrally supported SMA offering that delivers transparency, control, and capital efficiency for investors—while allowing you to stay focused on trading and performance.
Outsourced Fund Startup/Launch
Looking to launch a fund? RCM’s wholly owned subsidiary, Attain Portfolio Advisors (APA), handles everything, NFA compliance, fund documentation, investor onboarding, DTCC registration, and access to pre-vetted service providers at discounted rates. You maintain your role as fund manager and focus on what you do best: trading and performance.
PTG Services
Based in Chicago with deep roots in the prop trading community, RCM Alternatives understands what professional trading groups need to thrive: capital efficiency that maximizes returns on deployed capital, pro-business risk departments that understand sophisticated trading strategies, and uninterrupted market access across all trading sessions. We’ve built the clearing relationships and operational infrastructure to deliver on each of these requirements.
Strategic Clearing & Capital Efficiency
Our long-standing C-suite relationships with multiple clearing firms enable us to negotiate consolidated clearing arrangements, custom margin structures, and capital-efficient configurations that individual firms rarely access. We’ve cultivated a specialized FCM network specifically for prop trading business models, delivering the executive-level access, technology integrations, and scalable infrastructure that maximize your trading capital while minimizing operational overhead.
Proactive Risk Management
Our dedicated risk team works directly with clients to optimize positions and exposure management before issues ever reach FCM risk desks. By identifying and addressing potential margin or concentration concerns proactively, we help you maintain capital efficiency and preserve critical clearing relationships. Every clearing arrangement incorporates institutional-grade risk controls that balance the precision execution your strategies demand with the robust oversight your operation requires.
FAQ
Outsourcing gives investment managers access to institutional-grade execution, technology, and 24/6 market coverage without the expense and operational burden of hiring traders, maintaining infrastructure, managing exchange connectivity, or supporting multiple time zones. It allows your team to stay focused on portfolio management and alpha generation while experienced professionals handle trade execution.
RCM provides access to more than 300 futures and options markets across 30+ global exchanges. Our team supports trading across equity indices, interest rates, currencies, commodities, energy, metals, agriculture, and volatility products through a single execution relationship.
RCM offers a comprehensive platform that extends beyond trading, including multi-FCM clearing access, capital introduction, startup support for emerging managers, marketing assistance, ETF and mutual fund support, and institutional infrastructure designed to help managers launch, grow, and scale their businesses.
Let’s Get in Touch
Ready to talk specifics? Call us at (855) 726-0060
or request a call here.
We’ll bring the insights, you bring the questions.