Excess Returns

Steve Romick, FPA Crescent Manager, shares lessons from his 30-year career as a value investor. Topics include the current state of value investing, unique aspects of managing a go anywhere fund, the importance of saying 'I don't know' as an investor, the impact of AI and disruption on the investment landscape, the influence of narratives on the market, the role of cash and drawdowns in investing, and the qualities of standout companies.

Guest Tobias Carlisle, author and value investor, commiserates about the struggles of value investing in recent years. They discuss value spreads, enduring pain, and the comparison with 2000. They also get an update on Toby's new book.

Michael Robbins, author of 'Quantitative Asset Management', discusses data science and machine learning, factor investing, risk management, and the qualities of a good backtest in this episode. The podcast covers the different paths in quant investing, breaking down the equity risk premium, evaluating quantitative managers, managing quantitative models in an ensemble approach, and the importance of backtesting. Michael Robbins also discusses his book 'Quantitative Asset Management' and the companion website that contains additional resources.

James St. Aubin, Sierra Mutual Funds CIO, discusses their unique banded moving average approach to trend following and risk management. They explore the importance of educating investors and what makes a good investment manager. The podcast delves into quantitative vs discretionary management and constructing portfolios with minimal drawdowns. The challenges of momentum investing and trend following are also addressed, along with managing investor expectations in a conservative investment strategy.

Andy Constan, founder of Damped Spring Advisors, discusses his portfolio construction based on lessons from his asset management career. Topics include risk parity, alpha seeking strategies, stock and bond market views, factor investing, and international diversification.

Financial expert and portfolio manager, Cullen Roche, discusses his unique approach of matching duration of asset classes with personal goals. They explore whether macro views influence his portfolio, international diversification, leaving money to children, and more. They also discuss time horizons in portfolio planning, retirement perspectives and planning mistakes, understanding time horizons and asset allocation, asset classes and insurance in portfolio construction, Bitcoin as a long-duration insurance hedge, saving and investing for children, and investing in value beyond financial return.

Alistair Wittet, a Comgest portfolio manager, discusses his approach for building a portfolio of high-quality European growth companies. Topics include defining great long-term brands, the current economic situation in Europe, and how the European growth universe differs from the US one.

Dan Villalon, AQR researcher, discusses valuations in emerging market stocks and the opportunity they present for long-term investors. They explore the importance of international diversification in investment strategies, factors influencing market valuations, managing tracking error, and recent market conditions and the performance of value investing.

Clare Flynn Levy, founder of Essentia Analytics, shares lessons on evaluating investment managers and improving as investors. They discuss early experiences shaping investors' approach, common mistakes made by managers, evaluating managers and the role of data, exploring AI in evaluation, challenges for asset managers, analyzing wealth creation, and the importance of decision-making quality in evaluating managers.

Topics discussed in this podcast include factors in investing, combining value and momentum factors, building a statistical scoring methodology, layers of multi-factor investing, dangers of data mining, and the relation between multi-factor investing and financial planning.