FIS Stanford 2023

Sustainability, Technology and Finance. Rethinking how markets integrate ESG

Using practically relevant examples and recent insights from people working in the field, the book explores the linkages between sustainability, technology, and finance in different contexts and shows how practitioners can accelerate needed change processes. View book here: https://www.routledge.com/Sustainability-Technology-and-Finance-Rethinking-How-Markets-Integrate/Bril-Kell-Rasche/p/book/9781032200545

David Eagleman interview: How our brains could create whole new senses

Neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to remodel itself, enables us to interpret all kinds of sensations. We can use that to create new ways to perceive the world, says neuroscientist.

Fei-Fei LI: If we want machines to think, we need to teach them to see

It’s 2025 (give or take), and the long-awaited Big One has hit the San Francisco Bay Area. In the frenetic aftermath, teams of specialized rescue workers begin tearing through piles of wreckage—searching for signs of life, administering care, and calling for backup.

Fei-Fei Li’s Quest to Make AI Better for Humanity

AI has a problem: The biases of its creators are getting hard-coded into its future. Fei-Fei Li has a plan to fix that—by rebooting the field she helped invent.

Portfolios for Long-Term Investors

How should long-term investors form portfolios in our time-varying, multi-factor and friction-filled world? Two conceptual frameworks may help: first, look directly at the stream of payments that a portfolio and payout policy can produce. Second, include a general equilibrium view of the markets’ economic purpose.

San Francisco’s Alison Romano makes her mark

Over a year into her role as executive director and CIO at SFERS Alison Romano gives the low down on how she approached her new role, how she is reviewing the absolute return allocation and how leadership involves more listening and asking questions than speaking.

What drives success at CPP Investments’ giant PE portfolio

Size and scale are not always advantages. Against the backdrop of tougher market conditions, CPP Investments' global head of private equity Suyi Kim says successfully managing what could be the world’s largest private equity allocation a program will depend on successfully managing the large team.

Temasek’s approach to AI: Support portfolio companies create value

Temasek's CIO Rohit Sipahimalani explains the investor is approaching opportunities in generative AI by focusing on supporting portfolio companies apply the technology so they can better create value.

AI, humans and the new age of asset management

AI cannot yet fully replicate human behaviour in all its dimensions, but if we are able to mitigate the risks that have and will come from multiple sources, it can be a game changer for our industry.

Megatrends: from secular growth drivers to investment themes

Megatrends are a group of powerful social, demographic, environmental and technological forces of change that are reshaping our world. They are also central to our thematic investment strategies. Stephen Freedman, Hans Peter Portner. 2022, Pictet Asset Management

How CPP’s active equities team delivers pure alpha

The active equities team at CPP Investments has abandoned antiquated investment categorisations, such as style and size, and views companies through a more holistic “domain” interpretation. Global head Frank Ieraci discusses the team’s approach and the contributions it makes to the total fund, including capital efficiency, agility and pure alpha.

The power of the chip

Tiny yet immensely powerful, semiconductors are taking over the world. Professor Chris Miller, author of Chip War, explains how they work and how they impact everything from daily life to geopolitics. Chris Miller. 2022, Pictet Asset Management.

Understanding megatrends

Total Portfolio Management (TPM) has typically focused on maximizing the fund level reward to risk ratio across asset classes on a strategic and tactical basis. Recent evidence suggests that the style exposures (complementing asset class exposures) account for a significant part of the returns reaped by asset owners.

Handbook of Artificial Intelligence and Big Data Applications in Investments

Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data have their thumbprints all over the modern asset management firm. Like detectives investigating a crime, the practitioner contributors to this book put the latest data science techniques under the microscope. And like any good detective story, much of what is unveiled is at the same time surprising and hiding […]

Transition Finance: Investing in the Transition to a Low Carbon Economy

This note discusses the potential of transition finance as an investment opportunity and introduces MetLife Investment Management’s (MIM) Transition Strategy, a new research-driven, forward looking strategy to mobilize capital at scale to support the energy transition while targeting outperformance for fixed income portfolios. Daniel Kricheff. 2023, MetLife Investment Management.

Portfolio managers 3.0: APG’s digital future

APG recently hired its first digital portfolio manager. “Samuel” comes complete with an employee identity number and underlines the firm's ambitions around data-driven money management. Amanda White spoke with APG's CIO Peter Branner about the road ahead.

APG talks crypto: Those who got rich in the gold rush didn’t do the digging

APG’s chief economist Thijs Knaap and senior strategist Charles Kalshoven lay out the case for not investing in crypto. They find that only an expected return of 25% pa would make it worthwhile and even then there’s no cashflows. They argue pension funds can afford to ignore this asset.

APG takes the lead on AI

APG is one of the few large asset owners putting AI to work effectively in its investment process. Amanda White looks at how it is integrating machine learning and more to enhance decisions.