资产经理，停止责备别人为自己的懒惰

Originally published April 28, 2017.

2016年，Blackrock ASF Sterling Concellent押金基金损失了43％，并被晨星评价为最糟糕的积极管理基金。金融时报向Blackrock提出了评论的基金的表现，并被告知，“鉴于Sterling去年陡峭的堕落，2016年资金返回符合性能预期和基准。与客户的其他控股相结合，该基金实现了在其投资中中和货币风险的目的。“

BlackRock deserves some credit: At least it had the fortitude to give an inventive explanation for its underperformance.

一般来说，当要求主动经理证明他们的持久性能证明时，他们似乎正在阅读一个常见的借口列表，包括廉价的杠杆，低波动，算法交易，被动投资，ETF，资产类别或因素的相关性增加，以及拥挤。

当然，投资很难。生产alpha非常困难。But the fact that active managers blame their struggles on exogenous circumstance reveals not only their hubris but also the weakness of their investment processes.

让我们采取一个借口 - 拥挤 - 根据摩根士丹利调查，这是对冲基金经理引用的糟糕表现最常见的借口。

在某种程度上,这种辩解是有意义的。墙的钱have poured into active strategies to the point where it is difficult to generate meaningfully differentiated returns. We all know size is the enemy of performance. But we should not be so easily duped.

首先，在南希里根的建议之后，个人积极管理人员可以自我弥补挤出问题：“只是说不。”他们可以选择在资产收集之前举办卓越投资。

但更从根本上，拥挤 - 以及所有其他借口 - 是一种衍生现象。

拥挤不是通过管理层的资产增加而是由懒惰的增加来造成的。经理人不够努力工作。

I’m not talking about long hours or high conviction. These are merely overt expressions of tenacity. No, I mean they settle for the status quo, which is the very cause of their underperformance.

My conversations with asset owners reveal a consensus view: Our industry is mired in an intellectual malaise. Not some operational cabal, but a Stepford wives–like conformity. Active managers are, by and large, a homogeneous group: men and women of a certain age, who studied similar subjects at university, went to the same business schools, and earned CFAs. Their professional careers tend to follow similar paths, and their personal lives have situated them in similar milieus.

These sociological factors produce a uniformity of thought, a groupthink manifested most clearly in the commonality of the data and methods used to make investment decisions. The propaganda of modern financial theory leads active managers to largely see price, economic, and financial information as the totality of available and acceptable data sources, and linear multifactor models and mean-variance optimization as the exclusive methodologies to extract investable insights from these data.

If managers are going to gain the informational edge necessary to generate alpha, they will have to move beyond the artificial constraints of their current data and methods.

幸运的是，对于活跃的经理 - 我不确定他们应该得到这么好的财富 - 一个寒武纪的新数据和新方法的爆炸在这个中，他们最黑暗的小时。由于创新的技术发展，公共领域有数以千计的非传统，非结构化数值，文本，语音和视觉数据集。在活动经理嘲笑这些数据集的公共方面无效，识别出（i）这些数据集的数量，类型和类型是巨大的且不断扩展，特别是由于互联网的指数增长事物;（ii）根据麻省理工学院技术审查高级编辑Antonio Regalado，只有大约5％的非传统数据的分析。

在此分析点，伴随着数据爆炸，在计算方法中存在革命性的发展。机器学习和深度学习模型已经（并继续）开发并成功地应用于在其他垂直的非传统数据中汲取有价值的商业洞察。

所以回到我作为活跃经理的原始罪恶的懒惰的索赔。这些新的数据和方法完全可用于活动管理器。不可否认，克服加入和将它们纳入投资流程的大量障碍将需要努力，并且本工作将无法确定这些新数据和方法将提供所需的优势。从根本上，作为jordi visser，Weiss多战略顾问的Cio告诉我，“它需要积极的管理者来意识到他们认为他们不再重要的事情。”而这一实现要求经理的深度灌输世界观。

但让我们承认我们在积极管理中达到了一个N​​adir。管理人员必须承担任何努力工作来开发和部署其技能。抱怨不再是一个选择。他们要么适应或死。