A little bit about me…

Born in Alexandria, Ontario, Canada in 1975, Robin moved to Ottawa at the age of 10 and attended Lisgar Collegiate Institute’s gifted program.  After high school, Robin completed a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Biology and Biotechnology from Dr. James Cheetham’s lab at Carleton University and a Master of Business Administration from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.  Robin is currently pursuing a PhD in Finance from Walden University.  His research interests focus on developing a game theoretic approach to behavioural finance for the fundamental analyst.  Now divorced, Robin has a loving daughter, Kaitlain Rita Lai Yee Cheung, born July 6, 2003.

Originally enrolled in the Finance MBA program, Robin developed a strong belief in the importance of holistic management after completing 19 courses in the various functional groups during first year.  His science undergraduate background allowed him to develop strong analytical, quantitative, and critical thinking skills and to apply them in a systematic, rigorous framework.

He is a fervent supporter of traditional valuation methodologies relying on fundamental analysis and has made it his mission to mitigate the confounding effect of technical analysis and to refine game theoretic techniques to incorporate the behaviour of sheople in modeling investor behaviour.

After completing my OSSD in the gifted programme at Lisgar Collegiate Institute, Ottawa, I completed my BSc (Hons.) in Biology and Biotechnology at Carleton University, Ottawa (1999) and my MBA at McMaster University, Hamilton, ON (2003).

I am currently a PhD student at Walden University in the AMDS programme, Finance specialization. I am passionate about applying my individual strengths and competencies as a researcher and I feel my best contributions to society will be in the field of research and education.

As a former Finance Analyst in CIBC’s Finance and Retail Markets groups, one of the projects I was involved in around 2001 was to develop a comparative analysis database and populate it with metrics relevant to bank stability and performance, such as Tier 1 Capital Ratio. I was to include all Canadian and US Banks and Broker/Dealers. The difference in regulatory capital structures between Canadian and US banks was already apparent at the time; even as recently as 2009, Tier 1 Capital Ratios of Canadian Chartered Banks hovered around 10%–well higher than the OSFI requirement of 7% and more than twice the required amounts by Basel II.

My future research interest–and hopefully dissertation topic–will focus on elucidating the impacts of regulation in the banking industry, such as Basel II, and the specific contribution of the various metrics that were instrumental in Canadian bank stability; hopefully, this will lead to future research to optimize regulatory requirements for performance.

Current research interests also include application of Financial Engineering concepts to development Shariah-compliant debt-substitutes for integrating into capital structure and ensuring academic freedom in an era of dwindling tenure-track positions and increasing adjunct faculty. Special interests in research design and methodology.

I studied classical piano for 20 years and violin for about half that. My favourite era is currently late romantic/impressionist (Maurice Dela, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Prokofieff) and studied piano, music theory, harmony, and counterpoint with Heidi Ang in Ottawa. I also occasionally DJ at club and rave events, primarily spinning house, electro house, deep house, tech house, disco house, epic/uplifting trance, hard trance, jump up, dark jungle, tech step, and mid-90s happy hardcore (before jungle differentiated out of hardcore and the jungle interludes disappeared from hhc). I currently use two Vestax PDX-2000s, Stanton RM-3, Trackmaster II SK, and M-Audio Torq with control vinyls to spin mp3/wav/ogg as if they were on vinyl.

I’m an avid cuber, though not a typical “speed-cuber.” Rather than trying to obtain the fastest times solving the

Rubiks cube by memorizing a large repertoire of special cases, I rather use my understanding of how cubelets behave between (n-2)-, (n-1)-, (n+1)-, and n-layered cubes and inductively abstract generalizations; just as Chess is an exercise in strategy, I find cubing an exercise in reasoning, free of complications and loopholes that traditional situational logic problems present to criticalthinkers.

I’m the guy you pass by on the street or waiting in a bank line solving my cubes, from 2x2x2 to 7x7x7 V-Cubes. Traditionally, I use the Fridrich method for solving 3×3 Rubiks cubes and the reduction method (solving centres, edge-pairing, correcting parity errors, then solving as a 3×3) for higher-order cubes, such as the 4×4, 5×5, 6×6, and 7×7 cubes; however, I am also a student of the Petrus and ZZ methods. While Fridrich is a layer-by-layer method, requiring what has already been solved to be disrupted and reset at each step, Petrus and ZZ are block-building methods that attempt to keep entire faces free to rotate as long as possible.