This week, we speak with Jason Schwarz, who is president of Wilshire Funds Management and Wilshire Analytics. The firm manages more than $195 billion in capital for more than 600 institutional investors, and is best known for the creation of the Wilshire 5000 stock index in 1974.
Schwarz got his MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California, where part of his training was to manage some of the assets of USC’s endowment. He joined Wilshire in 2005.
He describes the challenges of working for such a complex firm that does so many different things, from consulting services to analytical products to “value-add niche strategies” as well as managing various investment vehicles.
Wilshire, which was founded in 1972, was a pioneer in the field of quantitative investment analysis. Its founder and Chairman, Dennis A. Tito, started his career as a rocket scientist, worked for five years for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s. he eventually became the world’s first paying space traveler in 2001, when he flew with a Russian crew aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station.
The transcript of our conversation is posted here.
You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras on iTunes, Bloomberg, Overcast, and Stitcher. Our earlier podcasts can all be found at iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast, and Bloomberg.
Next week, we speak with Len Kiefer from Deputy Chief Economist at Freddie Mac.
