Team
James McKeough
Founder and Managing Partner
James McKeough has been a research analyst of public and private companies since 1993 at First Marathon Securities, Deans Knight Capital Management, HSBC Asset Management, and Onward Capital until focusing in 2010 on macro behavioral research at Pavilion Global Markets.
In 2017, he started a Masters in Cognitive and Decision Science at University College London, completing a thesis project on the impact of uncertainty in financial language on investment decision-making. This research is the foundation of applied narrative economics, which defines and quantifies linguage patterns as signals in financial markets.
Born and raised in Canada, Mr. McKeough holds a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.
Manuel Isava
Founder and Managing Partner
Manuel Isava has been a software engineer since 2016. His career began at Amazon, where he spent four years working on Alexa, specifically its Machine Learning Data Platform division, building a data labeling platform for machine learning modeling. In 2020, he transitioned to Paige, a world- leading AI company in pathology and cancer detection, where he worked for one year, building and improving their AI platform. In 2021, he moved on to M1 Finance, a financial technology company, where he worked as a Senior Software Engineer for almost two years, leading engineering efforts to build a self-clearing platform for the Invest division.
In May 2023, he became a founding member and managing partner at Narranomics.
Born and raised in Venezuela, Mr. Isava holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota.
Bernardo Villalba Cahue
Founder and Managing Partner
Bernardo Villalba Cahue has worked as an analyst, software engineer, and data scientist for established financial institutions and cutting-edge start-ups, including Deutsche Bank, CarVal Investors, and CIBO Technologies.
With a passion for applying analytical frameworks to understand complex, real-world phenomena, Bernardo developed a multifaceted perspective to researching financial markets. At the core of Bernardo’s work with Narranomics is an approach that combines cognitive and behavioral research with mathematics and computer science.
Born and raised in Mexico City, Mr. Villalba holds a BS in Mathematics focused on Computer Applications from the University of Minnesota and an MSc in Cognitive and Decision Sciences from University College London.
