This week, we speak with Harold J. (Jay) Bowen III, CEO/CIO of Bowen, Hanes and Company Inc., an Atlanta-based investment counseling firm. The firm has received national acclaim for its 43-year tenure as the sole manager of the City of Tampa Firefighters’ and Police Officers’ Pension Fund. Bowen is also a trustee for the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE).
Bowen describes being top down and thematic, which allows him to take a very long term perspective. The Pension Fund Board of the City of Tampa has a 20 year timeline for the pension fund. The fund looks at Trade, Monetary, Tax, Fiscal, and Foreign policies, and what these government actions might mean to financial assets, including stocks and bonds, and inflation. When he took over the fund from his father, he said all of the bloody fights had been done, and all he had to do was keep running the same sorts of analyses that the firm had always done.
Bowen notes that there has not been a 20-year rolling period that has not included: a bull market, a bear market, a speculative bubble and a war in the past century.
He believes the consulting industry has a stranglehold on pension funds and municipalities
Bowen reads lots of history, biographies, and class American novels; some of his favorite books are here; A transcript of our conversation will be available here.
You can stream/download the full conversation, including the podcast extras on Apple iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Stitcher. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.
Next week, we speak with Kara Swisher, founder of Recode, which was recently sold to Vox for $20 million dollars. She is best known for the 2 decades she spent at The Wall Street Journal, where she covered the internet and technology from San Francisco.