Crescent Financial Partners has purchased a minority stake in IT Trading’s proprietary quantitative trading software for USD3.2m.

The software, which has been under development for nearly a decade, employs a statistical arbitrage trading model.

“In the finance world, arbitrage is commonly known as the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets,” said John Indelicato and Anthony Tuozzo, creators of the software. “Essentially what our software does is automates this process through the use of advanced sophisticated algorithms.”

Russell Armstrong, chief executive and managing director of Crescent Financial Partners adds: “We believe this algorithm is capable of generating non-correlated excess returns, in both up and down markets. We plan to scale this trading model to discover and benefit from statistical inefficiencies in highly liquid markets. In the current investment environment, we feel the superior risk-reward profile of this trading platform will stand out.”

The trading software generates returns that are not correlated to any particular US or foreign market index.