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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Indexing pressure improves active management

A new study of active and indexed-based mutual funds shows the impact of different countries’ regulatory and financial market environments. The study finds that the average alpha generated by active management is higher in countries with more explicit indexing and lower in countries with more closet indexing. The evidence suggests that explicit indexing improves competition in the mutual fund

Designing an investment organisation for the long-term

With so many asset owners looking towards long-term investing, it is considered for funds managers to ask how their business models are aligned with those client aims, or not. In this research paper, Geoff Warren, research director for the Centre for International Finance and Regulation looks at how investment management organisations might be built to

AustralianSuper’s insourcing journey

By 2018 AustralianSuper will be managing about A$50 billion ($38 billion) of assets in-house. Chief investment officer of the A$84 billion($64 billion)  fund explains the logic behind the move to David Rowley. AustralianSuper is rapidly redefining the limits of what a large Australian institutional fund can be.  Projected to double its A$84 billion ($64 billion)

UK funds set RI reporting expectations for managers

A group of 16 UK asset owners with combined assets of more than £200 billion ($269 billion) have developed a guide to responsible investment reporting in public equity. The aim of the guide is to clarify the investors’ reporting responsible investment requirements as they seek to include it in RFPs, manager searches, due diligence and

Investors need to revamp portfolio construction

Investors should re-consider their investment processes in order to achieve the needed “step-change in efficient portfolio construction” in a low return environment, the chief executive of the A$109 billion ($83 billion) Future Fund, David Neal, says. “It is the investment process that turns the universe of opportunities into a portfolio, and right now that process

Beyond divestment

While divestment is a useful tool to communicate concerns of climate risk to stakeholders, it is not an optimal investment strategy, in part because it ignores short-term benchmark risk. A research paper by MSCI provides a framework for evaluating ways to reduce two dimensions of carbon exposure – current carbon emissions and potential future emissions

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