This week on our Masters in Business podcast, we speak with Wes Gray, former Captain in U.S. Marines, and founder of Alpha Architect.
He studied economics at Wharton, graduated with honors before getting his MBA and PhD at University of Chicago. Instead of heading to Wall Street like so many MBAs, however, he joined the Marines, went to Iraq, where he embedded with the Iraqi Army as a U.S. Marines Intelligence Officer.
Wes described the many and surprising parallels between how the military prosecutes a War and what is successful Investors need to do to succeed. The training one receives to an exacting military standard operating procedure, is designed to help one remain calm in periods of tremendous stress and chaos.
We discuss how being well versed in military history and tactics are applicable to Wall Street.
Gray further combined his military and mathematical backgrounds running the quantitative analytics and asset management site Alpha Architect. His research has found two factors with persistent alpha: momentum and value. Combining the two somewhat counter-intuitively have yielded strong (albeit volatile) returns.
You can stream the full podcast below, or download it on iTunes, Soundcloud orBloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts are at iTunes, Soundcloud and Bloomberg.
Next week we speak with Ross Buchmuller, former President of AIG Private Client Group and now founder and CEO of Pure Insurance.
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