Vercis
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About

A boutique systematic research firm.

Vercis exists because the institutional research market has a gap. BCA Research, Ned Davis, and the major sell-side houses serve institutions at $50K+ per seat. Retail smart-beta products serve individuals with commodity exposures. Family offices in the $500M–$5B range sit between — too small for bespoke institutional research, too sophisticated for retail packaged products.

We take cutting-edge academic research — papers published in the Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Portfolio Management — and build implementable, pre-registered, forward-OOS-tested systematic allocation products against them. We deliver them alongside a portfolio analytics service that applies the research to your specific book.

Our current research catalog is four allocation models covering the US and Canadian equity and fixed-income sleeves, plus a set of macro and risk surfaces that contextualize the signal outputs. Each allocation model is pre-registered (specification frozen prior to in-sample evaluation), forward-OOS-firewalled (no parameter or benchmark revision allowed during the OOS window), and gate-tested against Bonferroni-corrected acceptance thresholds. Production deployment dates are recorded; OOS evaluation dates are published in advance.

Research products (in production)

  • US Equity Allocation Model. Two variants on a shared regime-conditional framework: Core + Momentum Overlay (70% SPY + 30% MTUM/USMV) and Anti-Concentration (70% RSP + 30% dynamic top-7 megacap / USMV). 149-month in-sample window, walk-forward split 2017-12, all five acceptance gates pass at the pre-registered thresholds.
  • US Fixed Income Allocation Model. 70% AGG core + 30% overlay rotating between HYG, TLT, and BIL on a credit + rate vote state machine. 220-month window. Production deployment 2026-05-25; forward-OOS clock starts 2026-06-01; H1 evaluation 2029-05-26.
  • CA Equity Allocation Model. 70% XIC core + 30% overlay rotating between XMTM and ZLB on a US-anchored macro stress trigger. 27-year window. Production deployment 2026-05-31; OOS evaluation 2029-05-26.
  • CA Fixed Income Allocation Model. 70% XBB core + 30% overlay across XHY, ZFL, and ZSB on a US HY OAS 60-month z-score discriminator. Production deployment 2026-05-25; H1 evaluation 2029-05-26.

Supporting research surfaces

  • Event-Risk NAV. Forward NAV distribution across all four allocation models, gate-aware Monte Carlo simulation conditioned on live Kalshi + Polymarket event probabilities.
  • Hedging. VIX percentile, term-structure, and SKEW signals feeding a composite hedge-attractiveness score, with structured recommendations and an explicit rebalance playbook.
  • Regime Monitor. Macro regime classification across the equity-bull, credit, and duration axes.
  • Crash Response. Stage-aware playbook for SPX drawdowns.
  • Factor Explorer. Interactive factor-cohort exploration tied to the US Equity model's overlay sleeve.
  • Portfolio Diagnostics. Upload an equity or fixed-income portfolio; receive factor / duration / credit / geography decomposition and a strategic-recommendation gap analysis.

Founder

Jay Sharma is the founder and principal researcher. Rotman MBA (2015), background in quantitative finance and systematic signal development. Vercis builds on research infrastructure developed over multiple years of independent quantitative work.

External methodology review

Planned.An external review layer — academic and practitioner methodology reviewers — is on the roadmap. In the interim, the firm substitutes review with mechanical discipline: each allocation model is shipped with a pre-registration document that fixes the specification (signal definitions, benchmarks, acceptance gates, OOS evaluation date) prior to in-sample evaluation. The forward-OOS clock starts at production deployment and runs for 36 months before the H1 acceptance test is re-evaluated on the OOS window alone. No parameter or benchmark revisions are permitted during the firewall window without resetting the OOS clock. This is the substitute for pre-publication external review: the gates are visible, the deadlines are visible, and the constraints are mechanical.

Corporate structure

Vercis is the institutional research brand of FolioX, a Canadian sole-founder research entity (incorporation pending). All intellectual property, signal repositories, and pipeline code are held by FolioX. Research is published under the non-discretionary research exemptions of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) in Canada and the SEC research-publisher regime in the United States. A fuller regulatory-framework subpage is in progress.

Mission

We translate the best academic research on asset allocation into implementable frameworks for family offices. We are independent — no fund vehicle, no brokerage, no custody, no conflicts.