主动管理：与人有关

I’ve written many times about the appeal and advantages of index funds. From low cost to full transparency, index funds — even more modern, non-cap-weighted versions of them — will rarely disappoint. They execute on a predetermined methodology. But just like thebias against robo-advisers, sometimes institutional and retail investors want an actual person behind the curtain — especially in volatile years, as is 2016.

I got a chance one afternoon to talk to some of the best active managers as part of亚博赞助欧冠的年度U.S. Investment Management Awards, which honor the best firms in 30-odd equity, bond and alternative categories. For the past few years,we’ve produced a video seriesto get at the heart of these investors’ stories and the personal experiences that inform their approaches. This year’s interviewees didn’t disappoint. The best active management — and why it still works — relies on people, their human judgment, their backstories and the lessons they have drawn from their good and bad experiences. An active manager is the sum of many parts. He or she may have a process, but it has personality and character beyond the models and if-then scenarios.

When you’ve scheduled six videos to be filmed back to back in half-hour increments, it’s never a good sign when your first interviewee is 15 minutes late. Nonetheless, I immediately forgive Bob DiMella, co-head of MacKay Shields’s Municipal Managers, when the disheveled investor tells me it took 20 minutes to go four blocks in a New York taxi to reach the Mandarin Oriental, just off Columbus Circle, at the southwestern corner of Central Park.

I’ve tormented myself many times in New York traffic, doing the mental calculus to determine whether it would be faster to jump out of the car and try to run to my destination or stay in the cab. (Unfortunately, I would say I get out of the taxi a good 80 percent of the time, and likely arrive at my destination far later than if I had stayed for the ride.)

尽管我们的视频导演戴安娜·亚慱体育app潘菲尔认为，如果我们能从下一个主题中抽出5分钟——道歉，我们也许能把迪梅拉和我的对话压缩到剩下的15分钟，Rick Rieder— I really want as much time as possible with him. He co-founded the firm with John Loffredo in 2007 before MacKay Shields bought it two years later. Both worked at BlackRock (Rieder’s firm) before that. Municipal Managers is an active management firm in a segment that has historically been dominated by individuals who plan to buy and hold the bonds forever. DiMella and Loffredo are the guys who sold all of theirPuerto Rico bondsby April 2012, long before they were trading at substantial discounts. I want to hear that and other stories about the huge changes in the once-staid municipal bond world in full. After a little schedule shuffling, I get Bob to agree to come back at the end, when we would tack on overtime pay for the video crew and I would get to talk with DiMella a little longer. (Though you’ll have to wait for the video to find out more, I love that DiMella still keeps the key to the front door of the asset manager he co-founded almost ten years ago.)

里德的公司贝莱德（BlackRock）在“无约束债券”（unconstrated Bond）类别中获胜，他是下一个入选者。尽管我和他谈过很多次关于他的战略收入机会基金的事——有一次是关于我最喜欢的一个故事，一篇叫做“2014年的深度报道”债券投资者的新世界“-我从没见过他本人。全球固定收益公司（global fixed income）首席信息官里德（Rieder）在电话里的声音掩盖了他的娃娃脸，他管理的一只基金与巴克莱美国综合债券指数（Barclays U.S.aggregate bond index）等热门基准指数无关，在全球范围内进行投资，并在不同的证券之间进行转换，以提供多样化和收益率。这是贝莱德对全球金融危机后债券市场发生巨大变化的回应。我很想和里德谈谈塑造他投资思维的个人经历，以及他如何防止自己落入那些似乎连最老练的股票和债券挑选者都会遇到的陷阱。

里德说，这是他减少损失的能力。”在某个情况下，你可能是对的，但在那个时候，市场可能不会认为你是对的。因此，你需要重新评估，也许你应该把它放在一边，摆脱它，并在以后的日期回来，“他说。里德还强调了资产管理中的一个奇怪难题。在学校，我们被教导95%的时候都应该正确。但在市场上，里德承认，他必须习惯在65%到70%的情况下是正确的。我在2013年的文章中写道阿尔法死了吗？击败市场几乎是不可能的”: The markets attract increasingly brilliant people who have developed all sorts of ingenious ways to get an edge on their rivals. Rieder says, “In markets, people have a tremendous amount of acumen.” You just can’t beat them all the time.

There is a way to beat the clock, however: To be not just on time, but early. That’s exactly what Mike Roos, who runs communications forArtisan Partnersin Milwaukee, did in true Midwestern form. Roos and I became fast friends once he learned I grew up one state over, in suburban Minneapolis. With a smile on his face, he is quick to point out that he had gotten Matt Kamm, a portfolio manager on Artisan’s growth team, to the Mandarin well in advance of our 4:30 p.m. appointment. Alas, at that point I knew we were thoroughly behind.

戴着大眼镜、留着浓密鬓角的卡姆给自己的选股工作带来了不同的视角。在进入投资管理领域之前，卡姆是一位医生的儿子，他在杜克大学学习公共政策，并进入医院管理，包括在纽约大学兰贡医学中心工作。2003年，他加入Artisan，担任医疗保健分析师。尽管Kamm说Artisan寻找的是具有外部视角的人，但他承认，他希望团队中的人在职业生涯早期还没有接触到其他人的投资流程。卡姆回应里德说，他不可能总是对的，但“我们的过程有助于减少我们错误的严重性。”

市场确实吸引了有成就的人。下一位是黑石集团（Blackstone group）对冲基金解决方案组风险管理和技术主管吉迪恩•伯格（Gideon Berger），他是对冲基金类基金的赢家。伯杰，他有博士学位。在纽约大学库兰特数学科学研究所的计算机科学专业，当他在瓦萨学院读本科时是一个卡片柜台。除此之外，它还帮助他买了啤酒，他说。

Berger says investment managers are like baseball teams: They all do the same thing, have the same number of players and want to win the World Series. At the end of the season, though, one will be in first place, one in last. The wins come from the disciplined execution of the game. What comes to mind, though, is those ubiquitous interviews with professional ballplayers after a game, asking why a team lost. “I just didn’t locate my pitches well,” says one, or “I didn’t execute on the fundamentals well enough,” says another.

With his enviable background, I expect him to talk about an investment edge coming from intellect or smarts. Instead, he says there are so many smart people, and he tells the story of a summer intern at his firm from Harvard Business School who made a great presentation on an investment idea after just one month of learning about Blackstone’s process. Although Berger was impressed, he notes that these skills must be commoditized if someone can do them after a year in business school. “So what can you do to differentiate yourself?” he asks. Hard work. “We talk a lot about Masters of the Universe, but what we don’t see is all the work that goes into it. I think it’s that simple: Do the work, do it every day, set high expectations, and pay close attention to every detail.” Maybe it really can be about the meticulous execution of the same game. Perhaps the ballplayer just wasn’t working hard enough when his team lost.

这是一个漫长的一天in a crowded suite at the Mandarin, but Gilbert Garcia of Garcia Hamilton & Associates in Houston is on fire, making everybody laugh and ready to talk. Garcia, whose firm has won in the Intermediate-Term Fixed Income category, got his start on Wall Street in the early 1980s when an organization called Sponsors for Educational Opportunity helped him get a job on the trading floor of Salomon Brothers. He echoes Berger in that he learned “hard work, to be early, be prepared, dress well and sit in the front row.” For him, though, he made one big mistake, and he’s never let go of the lesson. In the late 1990s, he purchased Yankee bonds without understanding currency or geopolitical risks. With the Asian financial crisis in 1997, he realized he had gotten caught in the mania. “From that moment on, we’ve avoided the hype,” he says in his signature voice.

不过David BoothDimensional Fund Advisors的联合创始人和Gilbert Garcia都有着普通的背景，两人的区别再大不过了。当我告别吉尔伯特，一个得克萨斯州，他用他洪亮的声音和回答与视频工作人员，我欢迎终身成就奖得主布斯，他的公司培育和建立了一个围绕有效市场理论的业务。他不是一个蓬勃发展的得克萨斯州-即使三维是总部设在那里。也许这反映了他在堪萨斯州的成长经历。不用说，我很高兴能和布斯交谈，他的公司成为战略测试亚慱体育app的发源地。

一如既往地,布斯是一个测试版的家伙:unexcitable但intellectual. Booth and I talk about a range of issues, including politics. I laugh when he tells me that the active-passive debate is now a whole lot less emotional than it was 45 years ago. “Active and passive can coexist,” he says. “Unlike Congress,” he throws in. What has changed, Booth says, is that a couple decades ago, institutional investors assumed they could find managers who could consistently beat the market. “Now there is a lot of doubt they can do that. Nonetheless, the managers themselves are undeterred.”

是的，我刚和他们谈过。

Follow Julie Segal on Twitter at@朱莉·塞加尔. Visit our亚慱体育app视频中心on June 15 to watch the first video in our 2016 Money Masters series.