The Wall Street Lab

Howard Marks is co-chairman and co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management a leading global investment firm with deep expertise in credit strategies, which manages more than $120 billion in assets. Howard is the bestselling author of the two highly influential books: "Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side" and "The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor". He is also known for his very insightful investor letters, which has been claimed to be must-read material by many well-known investors, including none other than Warren Buffett. Howard holds a B.S.Ec. degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a major in finance and an M.B.A. in accounting and marketing from the University of Chicago. “Experience is what you got, when you didn’t get what you wanted” – Howard Marks In our conversation we discuss: How Oaktree experienced raising and deploying capital during the GFC of 2008 The difference between scepticism and negativism The similarities

Christopher (“Chris”) Schelling is the Director responsible for Private Equity investments at Texas Municipal Retirement System (“TMRS”). Prior to joining TRMS, Chris served as Deputy Chief Investment Officer and Director of Absolute & Real Return at Kentucky Retirement Systems and as an Adjunct Professor of Finance at University of Kentucky, where he taught a class in Alternative Investments.  He If you are an allocator and want to know more about how some of the best in the business go about vetting their private equity fund managers, this episode is for you! Aside from being a well-known columnist for Institutional Investor, and a guy who makes his passion, deep understanding and curiosity for the profession very evident, Chris takes quite a scientific approach to manager selection. We start our conversation by going through Chris’ career, we move on to discuss the due diligence process at TMRS in more detail, covering topics such as their sourcing funnel, how they sperate the “wheat from the chaff” an

Dan Houlihan is an Executive Vice President and Head of Northern Trust Asset Servicing for the Americas. Prior to joining Northern Trust, Dan spent 19 years in numerous leadership positions across several companies in the investment management, technology, and service space. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board for the National Investment Company Service Association (NICSA) and as a Director on the Advisors Investment Trust.  We talk about the asset servicing business and its various components like custody, fund administration, investor servicing and outsourced solutions across the front, middle and back office. We touch on trends in the asset management industry in regard to outsourcing and technologies and last but not least about diversity in the banking industry.

Daniel Crosby is a New York Times Bestselling author with books like “Personal Benchmark”, “The Laws of wealth”, and “The behavioral investor”. He is also the Chief Behavioral Officer of Brinker Capital. He spoke at TEDx in Huntsville and hosts the podcast “Standard deviations”. Daniel holds a PhD in Psychology from Brigham Young University. We talk about his role as Chief Behavioural Officer, the insights of his several books and how to apply the learnings from behavioural finance in real life. We dive into the psychology of human beings, how investors can stick with their portfolio during difficult times and how to outsmart yourself and other investors. We touch on hedge funds like Long Term Capital Management and Renaissance Technologies and the merits of active and passive investing.

Paolo Sironi is the Author of several books including “Financial Market Transparency” or “Fintech Innovation”. He is a Fintech Advisor for IBM, Fintech Thought Leader, co-host of the podcast “breaking banks europe”, and member of the advisory boards of several companies. In the past, Paolo founded his own fintech startup as a joint venture of German Private Bank Sal. Oppenheim and Fitch ratings. Before that he was working as Director of Risk Management at the large Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo. We talk about his different books, the insights he gained from his research and how his views developed over time. Paolo shares with us the biology of how humans make investment decisions, the importance of financial market transparency and how banks and fintechs can leverage those insights to succeed in the coming years. This episode was recorded in December 2019. Links Paolo’s website: http://www.thepsironi.com/ Paolo’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thepsironi/ IBM: https://www.ibm.com/us-en/?lnk=fcc Breaking

Michael O’Sullivan is the author of the book 'The Levelling' - What's Next After Globalisation? He has a blog with the same name. He is a World Economic Forum Global Futures Council member and Forbes contributor. Michael holds a PhD from Oxford and is the former Chief Investment Officer for International Wealth Management of Credit Suisse. We talk about his different roles, like being an equity strategist and of course his work as CIO for Credit Suisse. We talk about education and Michael lets us in on his career advice, what it takes to succeed in Finance and the skills a CIO needs. We then jump into Michael’s book “The Levelling” and speak about economics, the impact of globalization, the global financial crisis and many more interesting topics.

Jorge Tavio is the Market Development Director, Wealth EMEA for Refinitiv. Refinitiv is one of the largest market data providers on the planet with more than 40,000 clients in 190 countries. In his current role Jorge is leading the wealth market development team in EMEA. He and his team are connecting the dots between new technology, regulation, new business models and innovative customer experiences. His previous roles included being the Head of Partners and Digital Innovation Continental Europe and several Specialist roles within Refinitiv (former Thomson Reuters). The episode was recorded in July 2019 With over 20 years of experience in the financial data industry we dig into the history of delivering market data and how the business changed over the years. We learn how market data helps financial institutions to make decisions and powers financial markets. Jorge shares with us the latest trends in technology, the big challenges of all industries, especially the wealth industry and his thoughts on hiring a

Christina Qi serves as Founding Partner at Domeyard LP, among the longest running HFT hedge funds in the world, and CEO of Databento, a unified data discovery platform. She started Domeyard 8 years ago with $1000 in savings. Domeyard trades up to $1 billion USD per day. Her company’s story has been featured on the front page of Forbes and Nikkei, and quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN, NBC, and the Financial Times. Christina is a contributor to the World Economic Forum’s research on AI in finance. She is a visiting lecturer at MIT, including Nobel Laureate Robert Merton’s “Retirement Finance” class since 2014, and and alongside President Emerita Susan Hockfield and Dean David Schmittlein in 2019. Christina teaches Domeyard’s case study at Harvard Business School and other universities. Christina was elected as a Member of the MIT Corporation, MIT’s Board of Trustees. She was elected Co-Chair of the Board of Invest in Girls in 2019. Christina also sits on the Board of Directors of The Financial

Uwe Wystup is the founder and Managing Director of MathFinance, a quantitative finance advisory firm. They specialize in the development of state-of-the art models for trading, sales and risk management. Their focus is on FX options, the volatility surface and structured derivatives. Uwe is also a Professor of Financial Option Price Modeling at the University of Antwerp, Honorary Professor at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, was a Visiting Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, where he holds a Ph.D. in Mathematical Finance. Please keep in mind this is not investment advice. Full disclaimer at the end of the podcast.  Are you interested in the difference between Plain Vanilla and Exotic Options? Or the difference between Finance and Quantitative Finance? And of course what skills you need to land a job in quantitative finance? Uwe explains the science behind exotic options valuations, how quantitative models get developed and improved upon. Learn how brokers, treasurers, and hedge funds interac

Markus Koch is a German Wall Street journalist and entrepreneur. He started trading friends & families money very early and had 70k€ debt at age 17. He then paid back the money by working at Bear Sterns before starting his own journalism company. Markus acted as Economic Advisor for the Web-Series “We, the economy”, produced by Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen and was part of the Introduction of the Hollywood-Blockbuster Wall Street, Money never Sleeps” in Germany. What does Star Wars, Jazz, or Casanova have to do with Finance? Markus brings Wall Street to retail investors. This interview provides a very honest and open insight into Wall Street from an Insider’s perspective. Markus shares his opinion on many different topics, ranging from Trading to Politics. We talk about how Markus lost his teachers’ money, started at Wall Street while sleeping on his boss’s couch. We talk about the stories that drive the stock market and what drives Markus to educate retail investors about finance. Markus gives insights

Andreas Lukic is the Managing Partner of ValueNet Capital Partners, a Private Equity Firm based in Frankfurt. He is also the honorary Chairman of the Business Angels FrankfurtRheinmain e.V., one of the biggest Angel Investor networks of Europe where he engages to grow the Frankfurt Angel and Venture Capital ecosystem. Andreas has worked in Private Equity, Venture Capital and has been an Angel Investor himself for many years. We spend a lot of time talking about the difference in Angel Investing, Venture Capital, and Private Equity. We also talk about how the investment process changes in all of the areas and what to watch out for when investing in startups. Other topics we get into are the differences and success factors of a good ecosystem for startups with some examples from Singapore and Frankfurt. 

PART 2 - Mark Yusko is the Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Officer at Morgan Creek Capital Management, a company that provides investment management services to institutions and wealthy families. Prior to forming Morgan Creek, Mark was the President, Chief Investment Officer and Founder of UNC Management Company, the endowment investment office for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to that, Mark was the Senior Investment Officer for the University of Notre Dame Investment office, where he joined as an Assistant Investment Officer in October of 2003. We spend a lot of time talking about asset allocation, manager selection, and portfolio construction, which are topics Mark is a true expert in. We also spend time discussing what Mark thinks makes a great investor, why he spends so much of his time putting his ideas into paper and sharing it with the world, and why he thinks institutions should include cryptocurrencies in their diversified portfolio. This interview was broken down into tw

Mark Yusko is the Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Officer at Morgan Creek Capital Management, a company that provides investment management services to institutions and wealthy families. Prior to forming Morgan Creek, Mark was the President, Chief Investment Officer and Founder of UNC Management Company, the endowment investment office for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to that, Mark was the Senior Investment Officer for the university of Notre Dame Investment office, where he joined as an Assistant Investment Officer in October of 2003. We spend a lot of time talking about asset allocation, manager selection and portfolio construction, which are topics Mark is a true expert in. We also spend time discussing what Mark thinks makes a great investor, why he spends so much of his time putting his ideas into paper and sharing it with the world, and why he thinks institutions should include cryptocurrencies in their diversified portfolio. This interview was broken down into two parts, s

If you always wanted to have a real and unromantic view on what it takes to be a trader, this is the episode for you. Gerard is Principle at Epitrain, a financial markets, business, and project management training company. He also teaches Trading courses at the National University of Singapore, one of Asia’s most prestigious universities and Singapore Management University. Gerard has been in the realms of trading since 1992, the very early days of trading in Singapore. In the past 25 years, from open outcry to electronic trading, he has seen it all.  With his company he is working closely with universities, large banks, hedge funds, and financial institutions to train their people, help them make the right hires and much more.   Gerard, in his straight and unapologetic manner gave us very interesting insights into financial markets and trading more specifically. He also gave us the harsh truth about being in trading and what it takes to get into trading. We talk about his own experiences, stories from the ma

This week, we had the pleasure to speak to the current (as of July 2019) CEO of the CFA Institute, Paul Smith. In our conversation, we cover some of Paul’s challenges in running the CFA Institute during his almost 5-year tenure, the future of the investment management industry, his vision for the organization, why he thinks it is important to have a mandatory Continuing Professional Development requirement for CFA Charterholders, as well as why he thinks young professionals interested in in investment management should strive to become CFA Charterholders. For more visit: www.thewallstreetlab.com 

#33 David Salem - A Deep Dive into Capital Allocation   This interview is a true master class for anyone interested in capital allocation and manager selection. We had the great pleasure to speak to David Salem, the Co-Chairman of New Providence Asset Management, a firm that provides investment office solutions for endowments, foundations and family offices. David is also a contributor to Epsilon Theory, an online community in which he writes extremely thoughtful articles about investment management and combines it with his passion for the game of baseball.   Before assuming his current post, David served as a Managing Partner at Windhorse Capital Management, which merged with New Providence in 2018. For almost two decades before that, David served as the Founding President and CIO for the Investment Fund for Foundations (TIFF), a non-profit investment cooperative that managed over $8bn on behalf of more than 700 endowed charities by the time he left. We discuss many different topics during our conversation,

We had the pleasure to chat with Iven Kurz, founder and CEO of Evergreen GmbH. Evergreen is a German retirement focused Robo advisor. Before founding his own company, Iven was a total return fund manager for two of the biggest German Private Banks. The total return investing style Iven uses is called Passive Dynamic Investing, which is based on the Black-Scholes Option Pricing Theory and he used for many years. We dive deep into the weeds of this investment form and see why it is being used for retirement saving. Please keep in mind this is not investment advice full disclaimer at the end of the podcast.   The topics discussed include: 03:00 - investment philosophies 04:30 - How Iven got into Total Return investing 07:00 - portfolio insurance investing and what is passive dynamic investing (PDI) 12:30 - deep dive into PDI and Option Pricing theory 17:30 - what is the goal of PDI 23:55 - how does risk work in PDI? 26:40 - PDI for retirement planning and risk 29:00 - risk budgets 32:00 - predicting returns for

This week’s episode is a treat to all of the excel geeks out there. We are delighted to share the conversation we had with Joseph Lau, the only 2-time Financial Modelling World Champion at the ModelOff competition. We cover many interesting topics, ranging from his experience competing at the ModelOff competition, common mistakes people make in financial modelling, and tips on how to excel (pun intended) at financial modelling. Besides being a World Champion in his spare time, Joseph is a Director of Project Finance at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. He is also a Co-founder of Spreadsheet Advantage, which is an Excel add-in designed to help excel users and developers increase their productivity. Joseph has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, a master’s degree in Applied Finance and a PhD in Pure Math.   The topics discussed include: 03:00 – Joseph’s background 04:50 – Requirements for excelling at financial modelling 05:30 –How Joseph got involved in the ModelOff competition 06:15 – H

This week we are talking about the placement agent business in the alternative investments space. We could not have imagined finding a better person to discuss this topic with than Charles “Charlie” Eaton, the Founder of Eaton Partners and one of the pioneers of the whole industry. Charlie founded Eaton Partners in 1983 as one of the first and now one of the largest placement agents in the world. Eaton Partners was acquired by Stifel Financial in 2016. According to Eaton Partners’ website, it has been widely recognized as the world’s leading placement agent. Since the firm’s founding in 1983, they have participated in raising over $100 billion of institutional capital across more than 125 highly differentiated investment funds, including private equity, private credit, real estate, real assets and hedge funds. Eaton Partners currently employs over 80 professionals in nine offices worldwide. We speak about the early days at Eaton Partners and how Charlie was able to experience first hand how the industry has

Dan Rasmussen is the Founder and Portfolio Manager at Verdad, a hedge fund that attempts to replicate privately-equity like returns through investments in publicly listed highly leveraged micro-caps. Before starting Verdad, Dan worked at Bain Capital and Bridgewater Associates. Dan graduated from Harvard summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the New York Times bestselling author of American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt. In 2017, he was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list. In the episode we talked about: Replicating private equity with public equities Average private equity deal structures now and then Leverage buyout transaction structures in US and Asia Controlling for risk and bankruptcy probability United States vs Japan market for equities Doing research in quantitive investing Difference of running big and small funds The relationship between interest rates and equities Why is Dan bearish on VC Propert