ALO07: CIOs on the Edge of Finance ft. Katherine Molnar & Andrew Spellar
Top Traders Unplugged
Niels Kaastrup-Larsen
4.8 • 712 Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2022
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today’s episode, Alan Dunne is joined by Katherine Molnar, CIO of Fairfax County Police Officers Retirement System, and Andrew Spellar, CIO of Fairfax County Employees Retirement System, to discuss how asset allocation is handled by one of the best performing public pension funds, how they manage risk and balance their portfolio through diversification, how the current instability in the markets has shaped their investment strategy, expectations of returns for different investment strategies, running portfolios using a risk parity framework, moving into digital assets, manager selection and much more.
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In this episode, we discuss:
- How asset allocation is handled in a successful public pension fund like Fairfax County Retirement System
- How they manage risk and create balance in their portfolios
- How instability in the markets has shaped their strategy
- How they look at return expectations
- The (brave) move into digital assets
- Manager selection
- Skills and challenges of being a CIO
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Episode TimeStamps:
00:00 - Intro
03:05 - Overview of Fairfax County’s asset allocation strategy
14:27 - How has the current market affected their strategy?
19:35 - The growth of risk mitigation strategies
28:42 - Setting return expectations
37:02 - What scenario keeps Molnar and Spellar awake at night?
39:38 - Digital assets in a public pension plan
51:05 - Manager selection...the insight scoop
58:00 - Skills and challenges of being a CIO
01:04:30 - Advice on becoming a better allocator
01:08:08 - Thanks for listening
Copyright © 2025 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Over the long term, being consistent about your strategy, and not consistently sort of changing it with, you know, a new board that has a certain agenda or, you know, sort of forcing turnover at the CIO level. |
| 0:22.3 | And then you get somebody that else that comes in and doesn't quite see things, you know, |
| 0:26.9 | and they start to try and implement. |
| 0:27.8 | And probably that is in response to some sort of level of underperformance that is probably |
| 0:32.7 | going to change in the near future. |
| 0:35.1 | So that's been just a tremendous asset for us. |
| 0:41.0 | Imagine spending an hour with the world's greatest traders. Imagine learning from their |
| 0:46.0 | experiences, their successes, and their failures. Imagine no more. Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged, |
| 0:53.5 | the place where you can learn from the best hedge fund managers |
| 0:56.5 | in the world so you can take your manager, due diligence, or investment career to the |
| 1:01.0 | next level. |
| 1:02.1 | Before we begin today's conversation, remember to keep two things in mind. |
| 1:06.0 | All the discussion we'll have about investment performance is about the past, and past |
| 1:10.2 | performance does not guarantee or even infer anything about future performance. |
| 1:14.6 | Also understand that there's a significant risk of financial loss with all investment strategies, |
| 1:18.6 | and you need to request and understand the specific risks from the investment manager about their product before you make investment decisions. |
| 1:26.6 | Here's your host, veteran hedge fund |
| 1:28.8 | manager, Niels Kostrup Larson. For me, the best part of my podcasting journey has been the |
| 1:39.3 | opportunity to speak to a huge range of extraordinary investors from all around the world. In this series, |
| 1:45.5 | I have invited one of them, namely Alan Dunn, to host a series of in-depth conversations on the |
| 1:50.7 | topic of what it takes to be a world-class allocator. In today's world, portfolio construction |
| 1:56.4 | is fast moving to the top of the agenda of many investors as they try to analyze and understand |
... |
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