This week, we speak with Harindra de Silva, of Wells Fargo Asset Management. He leads the Analytic Investors group, running quantitative strategies, and managing $20 billion in client assets.
While he was studying mechanical engineering at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, his home country Sri Lanka broke out into a civil war. That sent him to the US to pursue a master’s degree in business administration with an emphasis in finance and a master’s degree in econometrics from the University of Rochester.
He is a pioneer in low volatility and factor-based investing, and has won various CFA Institute Graham & Dodd Awards for Excellence and several Institutional Investor Bernstein Fabozzi awards.
He explains why building a portfolio of low beta stocks generates similar performance returns over the long-term as do high beta stocks only with less volatility and drawdowns. He uses the example of Amazon which (up until recently) was a low beta stock. Now it has a high beta score and trades with the market.
A list of his favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here.
You can stream and download our full conversation, including the podcast extras on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, Bloomberg, and Acast. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Brad Stone author of the new book, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.
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