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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Towers Watson: complexity coming straight at you

To be a long-term investor requires thematic investing because markets and economies are complex adaptive systems, according to Tim Hodgson, global head of the thinking-ahead group at Towers Watson. Hodgson told delegates at the Towers Watson Ideas Exchange in Sydney that economies and markets are complex and adaptive, their path is not random and the

AP7 accelerates equity returns with leveraging

The SEK150-billion ($22-billion) AP7 fund supplies the cream on the top of the Swedish public pension system. It essentially delivers premium pensions (in addition to the much larger pay-as-you go component) with a generous dose of equities. It has been able to further sweeten its offering by leveraging the main chunk of its portfolio. AP7

The Pension Trust: many schemes, one trust

“We are slightly unusual,” admits David Adkins, chief investment officer of The Pensions Trust (TPT), the £5.5-billion ($8.7-billion) pension fund founded after the end of World War II to provide retirement benefits for social workers. Talking from the trust’s Moorgate headquarters in London, Adkins explains how its umbrella structure has grown to provide pensions for

BT scheme treads carefully in emerging markets

Sunil Krishnan, head of market strategy at $62-billion British Telecom Pension Scheme Management Limited (BTPS), the United Kingdom’s largest pension fund for employees of global telecoms operator BT Group, has sage advice for investors contemplating their exposure to emerging markets. Examining the pros and cons of the asset class, Krishnan counsels caution. Speaking at a

Hintze: people are
hungry for alpha

Interest rate risk is the biggest threat to portfolios and the chances of inflation are very high, according to Michael Hintze, founder and chief executive of CQS, who spoke at the AIMA Australia Hedge Fund Forum on September 10. Hintze believes there is a great deal of moral hazard in today’s markets, mostly in money

Steady defense turns the wheels at Vervoer

Patrick Groenendijk, chief investment officer of €14-billion ($18-billion) Dutch fund Pensioenfonds Vervoer, seems to be well aware of the value of stability to investors, having striven to find the fund’s ideal fiduciary manager, keep faith in a defensive investment strategy and stay at an arm’s length from government investment initiatives. The Vervoer fund has been

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