Chicago Equity Advisors

Established in 2011, Chicago Equity Advisors (CEA) is an Illinois-based hedge fund manager. Over the last 35 years, Tony Graffia, the firm’s founder and CEO, has invested his personal funds in venture capital, private equity, debt financing, and publicly traded securities. Tony has purchased and sold several small businesses in the online retail, manufacturing, leasing, and electronics industries. CEA’s advantage exists in its ability to complement macroeconomic trends with insight provided by Tony’s personal investments in order to create a rigorous set of criteria when evaluating potential investments. The firm begins by identifying a macroeconomic environment for a specific market segment. Its team looks to see if this forecast can be supported by knowledge of that segment acquired from the various personal investments. Once the segment is selected based on macroeconomic research and/or internal segment-specific insights, then it turns to individual equity selection. These equity investments are primarily highly liquid stocks of large and mega-cap companies poised to benefit from the dynamics of the larger macro environment.