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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New Jersey’s $85 billion fund stockpiles cash, eyes PE secondaries

New Jersey’s $85 billion fund stockpiles cash, eyes PE secondaries

An underweight position across private markets, predicated on a view that geopolitics and inflation mean interest rates are not coming down any time soon, has positioned the New Jersey Division of Investment with plenty of dry powder and a cash position four times the policy allocation. It is now readying for opportunities in private equity secondaries and with emerging managers. Chief investment officer Shoaib Khan spoke to Top1000funds.com.

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Paul Marsh: live with low returns

The London Business School’s emeritus professor of finance Paul Marsh admits that you have to be slightly mad to embark on the kind of research detailed in the latest edition of Global Investment Returns Yearbook. This year Marsh and colleagues Elroy Dimson and Mike Staunton – Marsh describes the three of them, pictured below, as

Blinder: a power of paradox at Princeton

Pension funds or any investor holding a slug of long-term fixed income needs to factor in some capital losses soon, says Princeton academic and former vice president of the Federal Reserve, Alan Blinder. “The timing is difficult to predict, but three or 15 months, it doesn’t matter. It is predictable,” he says. “The unpredictable part

Position shift at University of Toronto Asset Management

In organisational terms there isn’t a stone unturned at University of Toronto Asset Management (UTAM). The organisation has a new board, new staff, new risk and reporting systems and has restructured its portfolios, including a new policy portfolio. Where previously the assets were managed in a traditional method, with public market assets and alternatives allocated

Dutch pension fund defines dynamism

Geraldine Leegwater, ABN AMRO Pensioenfond’s director, talks about her fund’s investment strategy process with a matter-of-factness that possibly belies how far it has moved established ground. While Leegwater sees logic at every vantage point behind the changes that she helped to introduce at the Dutch banking giant’s €18-billion ($24-billion) fund in 2007, she skips from

UniSuper defies accepted thinking

Mention any asset class to John Pearce, chief investment officer of Australian superannuation fund UniSuper, and he will doggedly set out the good and bad thinking around it. A common source of his ire is the sight of investors herding around a belief based on a lack of rigorous thinking. Good practice for him involves

OTPP deals with underfunding

Even the most successful and well run pension plans are facing underfunding challenges. The $129-billion Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is the latest to investigate solutions to solve the mismatch between the pension promise and the funds required to meet that, says Jim Leech, chief executive of the organisation . OTPP has appointed a taskforce – chaired

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