Enterprising Investor

In Episode #357, Shamaila Khan, director, emerging market debt at AllianceBernstein, discusses a number of issues related to this market, including concerns about broader contagion, which countries look most fragile, bright spots, global macro trends, and active versus passive investing.

In Episode #356, Priscilla Hancock, a managing director, senior fixed-income specialist, and head of the fixed-income insights team at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, explains why investors should stay in fixed income, what attributes fixed-income portfolios should have to be well positioned for the future, and where there are risks and opportunities in the municipal bond markets.

In Episode #355, Philippe Desfosses, CIO of ERAFP, France's public service pension scheme, discusses the unique situation ERAFP is in-including regular inflows and a funding ratio of 105%--and the resulting challenges they face in applying the traditional framework. To further complicated things, some sovereign bonds have been producing negative returns. He suggests a number of changes that need to be made by the industry so pension fund managers can properly deal with the challenges presented by these unique situations.

In Episode #354, Shazia Syed, chief executive and chairperson of Unilever Pakistan Limited, describes her journey from management trainee to CEO, including the skills she needed to cultivate and lessons learned along the way. As an active advocate for greater gender diversity, Syed also discusses the importance of mentors in building one's career.

In Episode #353, Professor Raphael Douady and Ron Rimkus, CFA, discuss the evolution of risk management practices and where we are today. Douady believes even with the "quantitative-ization" of risk management and increased sophistication in data analysis, investors need to strive to uncover the invisible or hidden risks of their investment portfolios. Risk management strategies that only focus on the visible risks could exacerbate the invisible risks inadvertently. Douady also explains that the evaluation of risk is not just about fat tails, it is also about where the risks are coming from. Douady's "Dominant Factor Analysis" is one method that helps investors determine dominant factors and the possible sources of risks in the portfolio as a window to portfolio sensitivities under different market conditions. Finally, Douady warns that investors cannot seriously avoid economic cycles and notes it is better for investors to be prepared for a "Minsky Moment" rather than trying to predict it.

In Episode #352, Sonny Kalsi discusses his outlook, including the megatrends affecting real estate investment opportunities today. Kalsi examines the effects of disrupters—from the growth of online retail to the sharing economy and changing generational preferences. Kalsi explores single-family and multi-family housing in the United States 10 years after the Great Recession and changes he expects going forward during a rising interest rate environment. He shares his mistakes and lessons learned in his nearly 30 years as a real estate investor and discusses how his philosophy, process, and people have adapted to better position his firm for the future.

In Episode #351, Professor Luigi Zingales discusses Capitalism and the economic system—what works, what doesn't work, and what can be done to fix the parts that are broken. Zingales focuses on the problems with capitalism, such as the concentration of market power and where distortions occur that benefit the few—not the many. In addition, Zingales proposes a unique alternative to the public company model of maximizing shareholder wealth and recommends companies instead "maximize shareholder welfare" to focus on what investors care about—not just profits and market value—but also the environment, governance, and society.

In Episode #350, we continue our talk on with the Pension Fund Association of Japan, which manages over US$ 110 billion in assets for pension clients.

In Episode #349, Martin S. Fridson, CFA, chief investment officer at Lehmann Livian Fridson Advisors LLC, is regarded as one of Wall Street's most thoughtful and perceptive analysts and has been dubbed "the dean of the high yield bond market". In a wide-ranging interview, he discusses a number of issues, including the investment grade and the high yield credit markets, how to correctly forecast the default rate, and how the leveraged buyout market has evolved since the 1980s.

In Episode #348, we talk pension funds and how they tend to have regular outflows and are often underfunded, as a result the tools the industry has developed tend to be based on these assumptions.