MZB NISA Investment Advisors, LLC | St. Louis MO

Above Cash

Mitchell Zitsbank

Investment Officer · Portfolio Manager · Hedge Fund Trader

My team finds the arbitrage, prices the risk, and then builds the tool that watches for opportunities.

Illustrative simulation Synthetic — no proprietary data
Benchmark Portfolio Growth of 1.00
Payoff at expiry Current value Long call
Synthetic data. No proprietary positions, returns, or client information appear anywhere on this site.
Experience
6 years
Scope
~$18B notional*
Credentials
Series 3 · 65 · MS Finance
Based In
Miami & St. Louis

*Derivative notional supervised across portable-alpha programs. A measure of scope of responsibility, not a performance figure.

In one sentence

The same idea, told two ways.

I'm an investment professional who works with a team to help manage money for pensions and endowments. Pensions and endowment money has to grow safely so people get their retirement. I use options, futures, and swaps to pull extra return into the safe, cash-like part of those portfolios. This experience has lended me the ability to trade at the multi-strategy hedge fund NISA launched in 2026.

Portrait of Mitchell Zitsbank

About

The math buried inside funding markets.

I'm a registered investment adviser representative, portfolio manager, and trader who found his edge in a place most people skip past: the math buried inside derivative funding markets. Six years into managing institutional capital and I still get the same rush I did on day one — pulling apart a formula until it reveals an arbitrage no one else saw.

That curiosity doesn't stay in one lane. I'm always picking up new skills — right now, full-stack web development and building an AI agent. The best trade ideas come from people who stay curious past the edges of their job description.

  1. Generate the idea
  2. Make the case
  3. Rally the resources
  4. Execute
  5. Process
  6. Monitor risk

What I actually do

Two books, one seat.

Trader and portfolio manager — the combination is the point.

Book 01 · RIA / Portfolio management

Cash enhancement & portable alpha

Construct and manage a book of funding trades designed to beat cash — long cash against short derivative structures, sourced from bespoke broker-dealer quotes and ranked by risk-adjusted excess return. That return is overlaid onto a client's exposure as a portable-alpha product for pensions and endowments.

Portable alphaFunding basisGold futures & equitiesTreasury futuresSMAs
Book 02 · Multi-strat hedge fund

Carry, vol & opportunistic

Trade a discretionary book across carry, volatility selling, congestion, balance-sheet relief and opportunistic dislocations — sized and hedged against the funding book's risk.

CarryVol sellingCongestionBalance-sheet reliefOpportunistic

The edge

What people come to me for.

E1

Reading funding markets

Locating where derivative funding and financing is mispriced, and positioning before it corrects.

E2

Hedging risk

Isolating and pricing risk-adjusted excess return, then decomposing a book into its greeks and cash flows to neutralize what shouldn't be there.

E3

Automating the desk

Replacing manual workflow with pipelines and monitors. Hours removed, errors gone, decisions faster.

How I build

The technical layer, without the IP.

PythonSQLVBAExcelDatabricksBloombergBQuantBQLASKBJPM DataQuery
Options pricing models for embedded optionality in US Treasury futures.
Monte Carlo and first-principles quant models — solved by hand first, then coded in Python.
Backtests and the quantitative case for a trade, built end to end.
Built the firm's derivative pricing automation from scratch.
Currently building: AI agents and full-stack web applications.
Funding monitor — illustrativesynthetic
Instrument Level vs cash (bp) Signal
3M basis 0.42 +11.0 rich
Roll — front 1.18 +6.4 open
Vol carry 0.87 −2.1 fade
Curve congestion 0.05 +3.8 watch

Selected work

Systems that scaled the desk.

High level by design — no client or proprietary detail.

1 week → 2–3 days
Performance verification · now used firm-wide

Derivative Performance Automation

Before
Verifying derivative portfolio performance meant two analysts hand-calculating results independently, then reconciling against a third team. It took a week or more and didn't scale.
After
Built an Excel prototype that calculated performance at the push of a button, then rebuilt it in Python for production. The whole team now runs on it.
Excel → centralized
Trading infrastructure · new flows, no added headcount

Infrastructure Overhaul

Before
The entire trading book lived in an Excel workbook.
After
As the go-to voice on what the rebuild needed to support, I ranked build priorities, answered spec questions in real time, and tested new outputs. The book is now monitored and traded from an automated, centralized system that adds clients and flows with no additional resources.

Record

Six years, a promotion every two.

Now

Investment Officer — NISA Investment Advisors, LLC

Manage the cash-enhancement book and help oversee roughly $18B in derivative notional across portable-alpha programs. Registered Investment Adviser Representative.

Leadership

Trading and pricing team

Manage traders and derivative pricing staff. Partner with quants, legal and custodian banks to stand up new trades, and present trade pitches to investment committees.

Progression

Promoted on a two-year cadence

Each step added book responsibility and trading discretion.

Credentials

Series 3 · Series 65 · MS Finance

National Commodity Futures Examination; Uniform Investment Adviser Law Examination; Master of Science in Finance.

Contact

Open to PM, allocator, and quant seats in Miami.

zitsbankmitchell@gmail.com
  • mitchellzb.com
  • Résumé — on request