David has been CEO of HB&T since 1986, and Executive Vice President of BPAS since 2006. He is a graduate of Auburn University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. He is an Enrolled Actuary (EA), a member of the American Society of Pension Actuaries (ASPA), a member of the American Academy of Actuaries (AAA), a Registered Securities Representative, and a Registered General Securities Principal.
An active member in his community and a recognized leader in the pension industry. David has served as past Chairman of the ASPA Business Owners Conference and currently serves on the ASPPA Board of Directors for CIKR (Counsel for Independent 401(k) Record keepers). David frequently speaks before professional organizations on such timely topics as “the impact of legislative and regulatory changes in the public and private pension and employee-benefit industry”, and “the impact of technology on the delivery of benefit services”.
Stephen graduated from Texas Tech University, majoring in Finance. He began his career with Hand Benefits & Trust as an account executive, and has broadened his duties today to include trust accounting, investments, marketing, and administrative activities.
In addition to his role as Executive Vice President of Hand Securities Inc., a Registered Securities Representative, and an IMCA – Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA), A General and FINOP Securities Principal, Stephen is President of Hand Benefits & Trust Company.
Dr. John Lightstone holds a B.A. degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Finance from New York University. He was a Fulbright Scholar.
Lightstone Capital has been a portfolio consultant for ten years for conventional unit trust strategies offered by the Van Kampen subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. Dr. Lightstone presented the paper “Using Quantitative Stock Selection to Offer Shariah-Compliant Strategies across All Equity Styles” to the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund in June 2007. His paper on “Quantitative Methods of Stock Selection in the Construction and Testing of Shariah-Compliant Strategies” was published in the proceedings of the Fifth Harvard University Forum on Islamic Finance in April, 2002. He was co-author of “Volatile Exchange Rates can put Profits at Risk,” published in Harvard Business Review. He was formerly a Senior Vice President, Strategic Risk Management at SEI Corporation; a Vice President at Chemical Bank (now JPMorgan Chase) responsible for evaluating the risk of various bank products.
He had previously been Director, Financial Services at Union Carbide Corporation, after being a member of the Executive Staff, developing econometric models of individual businesses and working with operating management to identify consistent strategies. Before that, as a scientist, he had managed programs in welding, coal desulfurization, superconducting cable technology, cryometallurgy, heat transfer, oxygen chemistry, process engineering and solar energy.
Dr. Lightstone is currently a Senior Adjunct Professor of Finance at Pace University, NY. His areas of research include market inefficiencies, investment strategies, the usefulness of estimate revisions and earnings surprises in predicting stock returns, and the effect of socially responsible guidelines on investment performance. He is also CFO of a start-up company that has developed fusion technology to generate extraordinarily low cost electricity with no greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. The Company has also developed protection against the effects of EMP attacks and solar storms and novel solutions for environmental remediation.
He is on the Board of Directors of the Meals on Wheels of White Plains and other civic organizations. Dr. Lightstone is married with two daughters.
Gregory Woods joined Lightstone Capital in 1999. He works closely with John Lightstone in the development new portfolio strategies. Gregory also oversees the daily maintenance and tracking of the live portfolios, while having overall responsibility for quality control on the multiple databases and data sources. He is also in charge of the implementation and trading of the live strategies.
He worked on a number of research papers and books, including The Fourth Mega-Market (Acampora: Hyperion, 2000) where his research was focused on the economic conditions, and stock market movements of late 19th century America. He also coauthored the papers: “Using Quantitative Methods of Stock Selection to Offer Shariah Compliant Strategies Across All Equity Styles”, presented at Islamic Finance World, Toronto, Canada. May, 2007; and “Searching for Alpha”, presented at Islamic Finance World, New York. May, 2008. These papers focused on creating equity strategies that comply with Shariah Law but are also benchmarked to conventional style indexes so that they give investors the possibility of asset allocation.
Mr. Woods holds a B.S. degree from Fordham University’s College of Business Administration, majoring in Finance and Economics. He holds a Series 65 License. . Mr. Woods is treasurer of several community organizations. He is married, with four daughters.
Michael holds a Ph.D. from the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology / Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Michael has been working with John Lightstone and Gregory Woods at Lightstone Capital for over eleven years, since its founding.
Dr. Legatt has been working to implement Lightstone Capital’s quantitative methods of portfolio selection through software development and IT infrastructure.
Michael’s interests in psychology have found applications in the technology world, in the fields of human factors and usability, and in the finance sector, in behavioral economics.
