大多数首席执行官都是说话的大师。大卫展台不是大多数首席执行官。"I hate complexity and a lot of changes,” the 70-year-old co-founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors says. “It undermines people’s trust in you. If people understand what you do, they’ll stick with you over the long haul, and if they do that, they’ll be okay.”
The pioneer of smart beta was more than okay one hot September evening in Austin, Texas, near the headquarters of the firm that has become his life’s work. He — along with the University of Chicago’s Gene Fama, who won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to efficient market theories and still teaches; Ken French, Fama’s longtime research partner and a finance professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College; Booth’s designated successor and co-CEO, Eduardo Repetto; and a smattering of other executives — were sitting around a rustic table in the restaurant of the Hotel Granduca, a luxury hotel inspired by a 16th-century Italian villa. The conversation, food, and Italian red wine flowed freely.
The group was talking — arguing, really — about the differences between Dimensional’s funds and those pouring from its competitors in the ballooning catch-all category of factor and smart-beta investments. The table’s consensus: stark.
1981年,布斯与维与雷克斯的罪quefield to create real-world investments based on the academic theories about market efficiency that had been flowing out of his alma mater, the University of Chicago’s graduate school of business. Booth, who had been Fama’s research assistant, drafted his professor as a founding director.
From the beginning Dimensional’s goal was to improve passive investments at the edges, combining the best of objective models with human judgment. At its core the view is that investors should act as though prices are right. Dimensional has long had competitors in its push to sell factor-based investments — funds that take advantage of persistent market characteristics — but its success now has firms racing to create everything from simple low-volatility funds to portfolios based on multiple and interconnected factors, all starting with the same core research born at the University of Chicago. Foremost among that work is Fama and French’s seminal 1992 paper on the sources of stock returns. Dimensional’s rivals, however, don’t have Fama and French on staff.
在餐厅桌上的每个人都有订购而低级别的喋喋不休已经蜿蜒如波士顿（教授家乡）的西西里家庭的数量，展台回到他最喜欢的话题：维度。“有一个基本差异，它可能听起来不像是一个大问题，但这是一个大的交易”：该公司成立了没有人能够预测证券价格的想法。
法国同意。“即使我们不明白世界，无论我们在那里的任何溢价中，我们的客户还有一个很好的投资组合，因为我们并不试图做任何疯狂的事情。我不想把言语放在大卫的嘴里 - “
“— Please do, it sounds better when you say it —”
“ - 这并不是说每一价格都是对的。”
“你是什么意思？”注射FAMA，曾经警惕价格可能是错误的。“可能会有错误，但你将无法讲述它们！”
“Well, there may be people out there who can tell,” French continues, “but if there are, they are the scarce resource and there is no reason for them to leave money on the table —”
“数据中的噪音很大。我们只对强大的东西感兴趣，“Fama说。“我们希望在多个时间段和市场看到它 - ”
“ - 它有意义，”法语补充说。“这不仅仅是一种模式。”
“‘Robust.’ I hate that word,” Booth says.
“这意味着脂肪，”笑了。
“所有这项研究都测试了模型，”展位回应，评论竞争。“随着基因所说，模特不是现实。如果他们解释了一切，那么你需要称之为现实。你不必打电话给他们的型号。“
The cross-talk continues. Yet one topic this group is less willing to banter over is the most complex issue of all for Dimensional Fund Advisors: Can the privately held firm survive its original team?
继承问题并不是统一的，或者一般投资管理不是独一无二的。随着婴儿潮一代离开劳动力，全球公司正面临着高级管理人员的退休。但资产管理已被问题难以击中，部分原因是其边缘往往在于有才华的人，而不是工厂或创新专利的集体经验。
Founded by now-wealthy men, asset management is a relatively new industry whose growth accelerated in the 1980s as individuals were forced to save for their own retirement and as institutions became more sophisticated investors. As the industry matured, many privately held money managers diversified beyond their core product, went public, or were bought by large banks, insurance companies, or consolidators like Affiliated Managers Group that promised to help with messy issues like succession. Private equity firms such as KKR & Co. and Carlyle Group have been a case in point, struggling to move beyond the famous faces of their founders (in branding, if not in returns). Mergers and acquisitions, which have been notoriously difficult to pull off, have also gone in the other direction, with companies spinning off their money managers, particularly after the financial crisis.
At first glance, Dimensional and its $445 billion in assets under management are well poised to manage the succession issue. The firm embraces a passive approach based on economic science. Its transparent investment process doesn’t rely on star managers. It does business under a structure favored by institutional investors, which often prefer private firms that aren’t subject to the vagaries of public markets and whose key executives have ownership stakes. Publicly owned companies, on the other hand, need to maximize their returns for stock owners by gathering assets and launching products, and that often conflicts with maximizing the return for investors in their funds.
尺寸的另一个优势：FAMA和法语。两者都是董事，与研究，投资和客户服务团队密切合作;他们还坐在投资政策委员会上。这两者如此如此积极参与公司可能会令他们在财经历史中的中央地令人惊讶。然而，他们至少在精神上，是芝加哥大学的着名商学院。
1960年，芝加哥开始为历史证券价格开发第一个数据库，并返回信息，允许研究人员分析市场的表现并启动现代财务时代。四年后，Fama - 一名芝加哥学生现在已知为“财务之父” - 发表着名的博士学位。论文的结论是股票价格变动是不可预测的（Fama使用他自己的论文数据）。这为高效的市场假设设定了舞台，并寻求匹配而不是击败市场的指数基金的出现。（亚博赞助欧冠1968年出版了较低的技术版本。）
正在追求堪萨斯大学硕士学位的展位读了Fama的工作。他决定申请芝加哥，并于1971年毕业。虽然Fama认为他应该向博士努力，但展位更有兴趣在现实世界中应用理论。“显然，离开芝加哥帮助了我和大学。每个人都赢得了那个，“在9月份的那天在一个预测的采访中开玩笑。他没有错：芝加哥的商学院现在被品牌品牌展示展位业务学院，在2008年制定了3亿美元的捐款后更名。
展位拒绝博士学位。轨道，Fama称为Mac Mcquown，该学生正在努力开发Wells Fargo Co.的第一名指数基金，推荐他的上一步研究助理。Mcquown聘请了在Wells Fargo的智库工作的展位，也担任顾问Fischer Black和Myron Scholes，他们将几年后发布Black-Scholes选项定价模型。
富国银行集团分拆后,布斯和Sinquefield formed Dimensional. By then Jack Bogle’s Vanguard Group and others were enjoying success with large-cap index funds, so the new firm decided to focus on small-cap stocks. At the time, there were no small-cap indexes — and no empirical research existed showing that small-cap stocks outperformed large caps.
然而，展位和他的合作伙伴直觉，更高风险的公司将返回超过风险的大帽和提供多样化。（芝加哥斯科尔博士学生Rolf Banz，将在立体发射前不久发布对小型超越优惠的博士研究结果。）
挑战是经济有效地购买和出售薄的额外的小型股票，以便优先表现不被费用食用。由于涉及涉及的头痛，拥有小帽子的少数机构，甚至是相互资金，如果它可以使其工作，维度将其本身成为本身。尽管产品阵容扩大了仍处于核心的诀窍，但几乎令人尴尬的简单：贸易尽可能少，直到股票价格上涨良好。和维度超出了仅仅保持交易成本下降，购买了折扣块的块以获得折扣。虽然该公司对它的股票的基本分析没有，但它避免了即将制定大公告或报告的内幕销售的公司。该想法是通过纳入人类判断，为市场投资组合添加溢价。
有效。尽管该公司的前九年恰逢小型股票的最糟糕的一段时间，但展位证明他可以为投资者创造一个被动车辆。然后，在1992年，芝加哥商学院的教授Fama和法国人发表了一篇为其三因素模型而奠定基础的论文，确定了股票市场的回报来源，包括价值和规模。但在本文发表之前Journal of Finance那Fama and French showed their findings to Booth and Sinquefield. Dimensional launched small-cap and large-cap value funds soon after.
The subsequent years have been just as kind to Booth and his team. They’ve won the argument that a basic index fund can be improved upon — Dimensional, after all, is the fastest-growing fund company in the U.S. — and they’ve shown that a methodical culture can still work in the age of faceless computers.
Such success is even more surprising given the firm’s counterintuitive approach to marketing, which largely relies on word-of-mouth and dates back to 1988, when a newly independent financial adviser named Dan Wheeler called Booth and Sinquefield to ask if he could sell the firm’s funds. Wheeler had spun out of Merrill Lynch & Co. to start something that was rare at the time: an advisory firm that was paid directly by clients rather than through controversial commissions earned by recommending his employer’s products. Although Dimensional’s co-founders worried that mainstream investors would move in and out of funds and raise turnover and costs for the firm’s pension and other institutional clients, they gave it a try.
The bet paid off handsomely. Dimensional raised $90 million in the first year, and Wheeler soon came on board to build a dedicated business that remains content to wait for advisers’ calls. From the start he pummeled financial advisers with questions about their intentions for the funds. In a rather cheeky move, he also required advisers to pay to attend what has become known as “boot camp” to learn about Dimensional’s philosophy directly from Fama, French, and others before being anointed to sell the funds. “People were shocked we wouldn’t take their money immediately,” says David Butler, the group’s current leader, a former basketball player for the University of California, Berkeley, who was Wheeler’s fourth employee. Yet that approach has earned Dimensional unheard-of loyalty. In 2008, while investors pulled an overall $500 billion from equity funds, the firm had positive flows. It wasn’t because of performance: Dimensional’s funds lost more than the market. According to the group gathered for the September dinner in Austin, clients chose to stay because they understood the firm’s philosophy and the small judgment calls it was making on market portfolios.
该公司独特的文化的另一个例子 - 在一个行业中慢慢地工作，这些行业往往相反亚慱体育app怎么下载 - 可以理解，在推出目标日期退休基金之前，该行业最畅销的产品十年来。
当该类别近8000亿美元的资产上没有大量资金制定计划时，没有目标日期基金并没有多少钱。Tim Kohn是一项典型的贡献业务负责人，20多年前在巴克莱全球投资者上推出了现在最大的目标日期基金，如果它想要在一天内汇集自己的版本。然而，Robert Merton - 一位诺贝尔赢得的MIT Sloan Sloan学院，他们在2010年作为维度的首席科学家作为维度的首席科学家来说 - 相信现有的模型是错误的：它只讨论了储蓄。在他看来，需要专注于积累以及退休的收入。
Merton is well known for a body of research on life-cycle investing and retirement funding, but Dimensional needed to solve an engineering problem, according to Gerard O’Reilly, the firm’s head of research. “The solution needed to manage uncertainty about in-retirement consumption and provide customized participant information that helps them make informed saving and consumption decisions,” says O’Reilly, who studied theoretical physics after reading Stephen Hawking’s books when he was a teenager in Waterford, Ireland, and now shares the CIO role with Repetto. The co-CIOs met at the California Institute of Technology when both were pursuing Ph.D.s in aeronautics.
The target date funds, launched late in 2015, were built using an approach from the institutional market: liability-driven investment. For, say, every $100 invested 20 years before retirement, $50 is socked away for growth and $50 is put into risk-managed assets that hedge inflation and interest rates. With the risk-managed assets, Dimensional can then provide some clarity around the actual income that investors can count on in retirement. “In my mind, we should have solved that earlier,” says O’Reilly in his thick Irish brogue, which is untouched by 20 years in the U.S. But, he adds, “when we thought we had something better than everybody else and at the same time solved a problem that hasn’t been solved — that’s when we launched.”
在亚福音派上的结果前沿的尺寸激情。“十年来，人们会说，”你有一个基于财富的或基于收入的目标解决方案吗？“”kohn说。“这绝对是一个新的课程。这就是为什么它值得等待。与像鲍勃默顿这样的人一起工作并定义一个课程，就是这样。我们希望每个人都创建一个[目标日期收入基金]来竞争，因为它是正确的解决方案。它应该是标准。“
To some outsiders, it’s surprising that Booth waited so long to try and crack the defined contribution market; he has repeatedly emphasized that he wants to reach investors who don’t have enough wealth to be of interest to advisers. But the academic in him stopped him from rushing to market with something mediocre, he says. Plus, Dimensional didn’t need the money. Kohn supports that view, noting that at any other firm, not having the hot product of the moment for a hungry sales force
不起作用。但维持者没有目标没有目标。销售团队在客户关系中判断，包括他们为他们提供的方式。
考虑其他事情的规模没有，这是一个有效的人。例如，即使在数据中清楚地看到优惠的模式，它也没有提供势头股票策略。该公司认为，动量股票的组合产生了太多的营业额，并创造了一个基金，其特征看起来与市场组合非常不同。相反，维数使用有关势头的信息，以告知其交易策略，例如在某些时候延迟购买和销售。它只开始提供专注于2012年盈利因子的资金。
无论是忠诚的创始人还是忠诚的创始人的结果，或者公司的身体和情感联系是学术界的一个问题是一个问题未经答复。为了他的部分，奥莱利认为他们植根于公司的哲学，即难以脱颖而出市场。“Rather than saying the market has something wrong, we say, ‘What is it telling us?’” he explains, adding that “listening” to the models in this way makes him appreciate the complexity in markets and the wide gap that has to be crossed to get from academic theory to working product.
也许是谨慎而谦虚，因为它雇用了为高效市场假设和三因素模型编写了代码的人。正如雷德托所说：“”基因和肯和我们员工的其他学者都一直在写关于这些东西的书。这不仅是他们发表的 - 想想从未发表过的工作。我们有那个。“
继承问题归结为两个相关但不同的问题：组织和文化。亚慱体育app怎么下载
组织地，维度似乎是安全的。一个最初的公开发售 - 一个明显的路线，以确保灯光停留，建筑物被清洁，合适的人接管 - 已经讨论过。在晚餐展位上是坦率的，如果犹豫不决，关于可能性。“我很难想象。我们都有一个很好的演出来了，“他说，在Fama的笑声。“如果我们有一个IPO，我们可以赚更多的钱。”
“我不这么认为，”Fama说。
“但它会改变角色，”展位笔记。桌子上没有人不同意。
展位的严重性逐渐消失，因为他转向Fama和法国人：“这些家伙仍然每周工作七天吗？”
French is quick to respond: “He pays us a lot, what could be better? I’d work for free, but I don’t have to!”
一个IPO或销售给更大的公司可能很难想象，但是私人公司需要一种方法可以将所有权从一代传递给下一个方法。展台再次严重。“这是我们担心的事情 - 继承，下一代。”几乎无法阻止自己，他继续riff：“我们喜欢我们正在做的事情。这和它一样好。什么礼物。“
But an IPO doesn’t solve for cultural persistence. The members of Dimensional’s executive team, replete with engineers, Nobel Prize winners, physicists, and fluid-mechanics experts, believe that succession is less important because the firm’s products are based on science. They have built a firm on the back of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, and judging from the popularity of their products, they’ve won the argument that investors should act as if prices are right.
然而，调查目前可用的竞争对手的产品数量和使用相同的基础研究：它将很快清楚它是implementationof such insight into the investment process, not the research itself, that is essential. This implementation is a matter of culture, and culture is always in the hands of people.
展位和他的剩余团队强烈地觉得他们的文化，而不是个人的财务问题，是他们成功的根源。亚慱体育app怎么下载当第一代兑现时，将成为尺寸的方法，几乎冒险的方式是什么？
“我们以为你会忘记继承，”当主题再次在餐桌上举行时，嘲笑法语。
“我会把它送到射门，那么可能所有这些家伙都会告诉我我是多么错了，”代表下一代的人雷德托说 - 并且谁将决定该一代人是否会在其创始人的脚步上继续。
“我认为任何人都不会有任何对跑道不全的公共公司的东西，”雷德托说。“这个想法，你必须每季度向分析师报告，是短期思想家 - 没有必要。我不是说这将是，但如果它将成为公众，那么我肯定的是一家伟大的公共公司。但有很多可能性 - 可能是私人，公众，许多可能性。“
展位说：“最后一次基因和我谈到它，他说，”让我们等到我们必须做点什么，一个大事件' - 就像我掉出飞机。“
“所有权结构：你可能认为这是重要的;我说不，没关系。这是文化，这就是我亚慱体育app怎么下载们对客户的考虑，“雷德托说。
“如果发生了糟糕的事情，我们花了很多时间思考 - ”法语说。
“糟糕的事情会发生！”展位说。
“真正的问题是在我们三个人之后发生的事情。。。“家庭说。
“我不打算去任何地方，”法国人说。
“那里有一个很好的模特，但那么问题就是你如何通过它？”Fama问道。
“就是这样，”展位说。•