Howard W. Cunningham
Co-founder & Chief Investment Officer

Mr. Cunningham is the founder and majority owner of the firm with over 30 years of investment experience in challenging market environments including multiple bull markets and subsequent market bubbles. Mr. Cunningham began his career managing individual investment accounts using a long-only equity model for U.S. stocks, during which time the investment accounts significantly outperformed the S&P 500. This was his first demonstration of using cash as an investment alternative and valuable tool for risk management. In 2005, the individual accounts managed by Mr. Cunningham moved into a private fund that is currently managed by Cunningham Asset Management, LLC, a registered Commodity Pool Operator with the Commodity Futures Trade Commission (CFTC).

In 2006, Mr. Cunningham began the development of a new investment approach with a primary focus on risk management called Dynamic Asset Allocation. This investment approach was developed, optimized, and validated by CIM's research affiliate Algorithmic Solutions Inc. and is the investment method used by CIM's InvestFlex™ Strategies.

Before starting his own investment management business, Mr. Cunningham spent two years under the tutelage of money manager and market wizard Ed Seykota. Mr. Cunningham was featured in serveral financial publications including Futures Magazine.

Mr. Cunningham received a B.S. in Finance from Oklahoma City University and his MBA from the University of Nevada, Reno. He has served as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Nevada, Reno providing instruction in the areas of corporate finance and portfolio management. He holds the National Futures Association (NFA) Series 3 and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) 65 licenses.

James J. Schmid
Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer

Mr. Schmid has worked with Howard Cunningham for over two decades and brings a mathematics and engineering background to the firm. He specializes in the development of software technology and decision algorithms using machine learning, artificial intelligence, signal processing, pattern recognition, & big data. Mr. Schmid built the software platform and modeling algorithms utilized to develop and validate the Dynamic Asset Allocation method used to manage CIM's suite of InvestFlex™ Strategies. He is the President and co-founder of CIM's research affiliate Algorithmic Solutions, Inc.

Mr. Schmid has spent the past 9 years at Amazon building forecasting, insights, and anomaly detection systems using machine learning and big data technologies. Prior to that he spent over 20 years at General Electric (GE) building software technologies for the energy domain. During his career, he has engineered software with advanced signal processing algorithms used to translate noisy measurement signals into valuable or deterministic indicators of process and machine behavior. He has built artificial intelligence software that mine massive data sets to identify anomalies, model electric power consumption behavior and optimize chaotic combustion processes.

Similarly, Mr. Schmid has directly applied his experience in the energy industry to financial markets to develop investment decision algorithms that extract actionable information from noisy financial data, optimize chaotic market instruments, and model financial behavior.

Mr. Schmid has 23 international patents and a number of trade secrets for his work in the energy industry. In 2012, he was the recipient of the prestigious Edison Award for his numerous software contributions to GE.

Mr. Schmid is a minority owner of the firm, received his Bachelors degree in Computer Science from the University of Nevada, Reno and holds a National Futures Association (NFA) Series 3 license.

Dr. Rahul Bhargava, Ph.D., CFA
Advisory Board Member & Research Consultant

Dr. Bhargava is currently an Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has previously worked as a commodities trader with TISCO, one of the largest conglomerates in India. In this capacity he traded coffee and managed foreign exchange risk. He also managed an option trading strategy while working as a consultant with Navellier and Associates. Dr. Bhargava has been published extensively in leading academic journals including the Journal of Banking and Finance and the Journal of Financial Research.

His expertise is in the areas of Investments, Derivatives and International Finance. He received his Ph.D. in Finance from Texas A&M University, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder.

Ryan M. Adams
Registered Representative, Manager of Compliance & Administration

Mr. Adams has worked with Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Schmid for the past 25 years and provides compliance and back office support to CIM. He has managed multiple financial and compliance audits involving both state and federal regulatory agencies. Mr. Adams received a Bachelors of Science degree with an emphasis on Finance from the University of Nevada, Reno. He also holds the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Series 65 and National Futures Association (NFA) Series 3 licenses.

Mr. Adams has been registered as an Investment Adviser Representative with the State of Nevada Securities Division since October 2009 and has also been registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and a member of the National Futures Association (NFA) as an Associated Person since January 2008.