John Fawcett: Disrupting the secretive world of quants

I chat with John, the founder of Quantopian, on how he got started in quantitative finance, where he sees the industry evolving and how he created a global community of intrinsically motivated coders to create unique solutions to the greatest intellectual game on earth.

Nothing on this podcast is to be considered investment advice or a recommendation. No investment decision or activity should be undertaken without first seeking qualified and professional advice.

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Michael Pettis on China’s overinvestment paradox, and the Japan-style reckoning still to come

Michael Pettis on China’s overinvestment paradox, and the Japan-style reckoning still to come

China's advanced infrastructure and ballooning debt are two sides of the same story, says Carnegie Endowment nonresident senior fellow Michael Pettis, who compares China's coming consumption-led rebalancing to Japan's in the 1980s. In conversation with Top1000funds.com Asia Pacific correspondent Darcy Song, Pettis unpacks what this means for institutional investors weighing China exposure over multi-decade horizons, and why he remains bearish on the country's outlook.

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Capitalising on institutional co-investment platforms

Co-investment is often perceived as referring to institutional investors investing alongside their external asset managers in companies, but increasingly it refers to investment responsibilities being shared among peer investors, as long-term institutional investors are forming co-investment partnerships with the specific objective of deploying capital collaboratively into attractive investment opportunities. These collaborative partnerships seem to be an

GRESB infrastructure launch

A new infrastructure sustainability benchmark has been developed by a group of eight institutional investors, alongside GRESB, to enable systematic evaluation and industry benchmarking of the sustainability performance of their infrastructure assets.   Despite large and widespread allocations by Canadian and Australian pension funds to infrastructure, institutional investors globally do not have large allocations to

State pension funds tilt towards politically-connected stocks

It is well documented that local bias exists in US state pension fund holdings, but now an article in the Journal of Financial Economics (forthcoming) finds evidence not only of local bias, but bias towards politically-connected stocks.  Not only that, but the article finds that political bias is detrimental to fund performance. “Political bias is

Guide to persuading trustees to join the ESG journey: CalSTRS and BT Pension Fund explain all

For many asset owners, persuading their trustees to adopt an ESG strategy can be a challenge. The ESG strategy of one of the UK’s biggest pension funds, the $65 billion BT Pension Scheme, became more serious with the realisation that the scheme’s sponsors and beneficiaries were more interested in the area, said Daniel Ingram, head of

CalPERS pushes for carbon disclosure to boost returns

Mapping a company’s carbon footprint, or the emissions it produces, is an important and growing part of portfolio analysis at CalPERS says Anne Simpson, senior portfolio manager and director of global governance at the $307 billion fund speaking at PRI in Person 2015, the annual conference for the UN-supported international network of investors working to

Culture is key in the ESG journey

Renosi Mokate, board member at Africa’s largest pension fund South Africa’s Government Employee Pension Fund, GEPF, believes that one reason the R1 trillion ($107 billion) fund so comfortably embraces ESG principles stems from South Africa’s own turbulent history. “Our investment policy has been influenced by our history,” she says, speaking at PRI in Person 2015, the annual

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