Our strategy

At Apollo Ventures, we use our advanced know-how to agilely adjust our investment strategies depending on market conditions. This enables us to take advantage of a wide range of market opportunities to achieve the best possible risk-to-reward ratio at any given time.

This approach requires active portfolio management, often combining multiple trading tools to ensure overall balance. The tools we actively use include not only spot trading, but also futures trading, particularly for hedging spot positions, options trading, providing liquidity on decentralized protocols, or using AI-based algorithmic trading.

Our goal is to identify emerging trends and technologically interesting projects at a stage when they are already tradable on decentralized exchanges and are sufficiently liquid relative to the fund's traded volume.

For these projects, we assemble investment theses based on which we enter positions. This strategy carries the potential for above-average returns, but also high volatility and limited managed capital volume. For this reason, the number of investors in the fund is limited.

Results of our strategy

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	June	July	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	YTD
2023	-	-	3.68 %	-0.45 %	-2.83 %	-0.22 %	-2.21 %	-2.91 %	4.01 %	19.16 %	15.71 %	38.58 %	88.79 %
2024	-3.7 %	31.62 %	13.18 %	-28.03 %	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	3.24 %

How we achieved the above returns

We were able to achieve the above returns through the proper execution of our strategy in combination with a number of macroeconomic factors. Below we outline the specific strategies that helped us achieve the above results, and which we combine depending on current market conditions in order to potentially achieve above-average capital gains.

Strategy of actively seeking quality projects

This strategy has consistently delivered the best results for us, and its foundation is actively seeking projects with high innovation potential and real-world applications. We subject these projects to thorough due diligence based on which we determine the valuation of these projects depending on market conditions.

We compare this valuation to the current market valuation of projects and evaluate whether the projects are correctly valued by the market. Based on the data obtained, we make qualified decisions about the level of investment and the degree of risk.

One recent example is the decentralized perpetual exchange gTrade and its token $GNS.

After the collapse of the centralized exchange FTX, there was a high probability that market participants would start looking for alternative solutions for trading their assets more safely. Decentralized exchanges were an obvious candidate. Our team had already analyzed these opportunities earlier, so we only needed to update these previous analyses briefly.

Thanks to the comparison of relevant indicators and data, such as token utility, tokenomics, likely catalysts, volume, total locked value, and many others, we selected gTrade with its token $GNS as the main candidate for this type of investment.

In addition to the relative undervaluation of the token compared to competitors (such as GMX), we knew through extensive analysis that it would soon expand from the existing Polygon cryptocurrency network to the popular Arbitrum cryptocurrency network. We also contacted the project founders and found out if there would be any other news or improvements that could have a positive impact on the token price in the near future, successfully.

As a result, we were not afraid to allocate a larger amount of capital to $GNS. The token subsequently appreciated by 300% in 3 months, while the market average for this period was just under 30%. When closing the position, comparing data with the competing protocol GMX with its token $GMX played a major role, which started to become proportionally cheaper than the $GNS token again with respect to this data. After closing the $GNS position, we again allocated some of the profits to $GMX, which subsequently grew proportionally compared to $GNS, and the protocols with their tokens returned to balance according to our analysis, where we consider them mutually correctly valued.

Proactively utilizing free capital with the elimination of market risk impact strategies

These strategies are built in such a way that the allocated capital is protected against negative development in the value of the used assets. In practice, this means we make money whether the market is going up or down.

Recently, the most attractive opportunity of this type in terms of the ratio of returns and risks has been providing liquidity through the holding/staking strategy of the GLP token and its synthetic hedging through perpetual futures or classic futures. (Depending on whether classic futures are in contango or backwardation and how much it is interesting for us. Another possibility is writing options on the relevant exposure and collecting additional returns in the form of option premiums.)

GLP represents an index of assets that are used for swaps and leveraged trading. These are primarily quality assets (BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT) that represent almost 95% of the entire index.

The current price of the GLP token is calculated based on the total value of all assets included in the index and the profit/loss of traders speculating with these assets among themselves.

Our main thesis is based on the statistic that more than 80% of all traders are losing money. Therefore, it pays off in this case to be their "casino," where they play and lose money. However, this situation may change depending on overall market conditions, so we constantly evaluate and actively manage this strategy as well as others.

Plain vanilla options and option combinations

In managing our portfolio, we also use option strategies, mainly trying to participate in the volatility of cryptocurrencies. In the current market, we are only able to trade options on BTC and ETH due to low liquidity in other assets.

When using plain vanilla options, we prefer only buying options, where we trade a certain direction of the market with limited risk provided by the options. From more complex option combinations, we mainly use long straddle, long strangle, and long iron condor due to the greater natural volatility of cryptocurrencies.

Utilizing AI and machine learning

There aren't too many ways today to have positive exposure to the cryptocurrency market and also utilize the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to generate additional yield. However, thanks to our market knowledge, we have found room for quality allocations in this area as well.

This is a complementary strategy that uses artificial intelligence to create predictive models for the stock market. The entire predictive ecosystem and its functionality are provided by blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, which are necessary for the functioning of the entire AI ecosystem.

We gain two advantages in one investment: exposure to a quality digital asset and access to robust predictive models created by cooperation between the best data scientists and artificial intelligence.

Spot Grid Trading

Grid is a quantitative trading strategy. It is a robot that automates buying and selling digital assets in a certain pre-configured range. Grid trading performs best when the market moves within a certain range. Grid then tries to profit from small changes in price.

Quantitative trading is not the primary strategy of our fund and is only used to optimize our main money management strategy. Due to the nature of the market, we prefer only long grids.

Jakub Helešic
Director
tel: +420 775 029 612
email: info@apolloventures.cz

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DISCLAIMER

This website is intended solely for informational purposes and is not an offer or solicitation to invest, investment recommendation, or analysis of investment opportunities.
Apollo Ventures s.r.o., IC: 17511933 is the manager of an alternative sub-threshold fund within the meaning of Article 3(2) of Directive 2011/61/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2011 on Alternative Investment Fund Managers. The company is registered with the Czech National Bank in the list of persons under § 15 of the ZISIF.