ALO24: Managing Money Through Structural Shifts ft. Richard Urwin
Top Traders Unplugged
Niels Kaastrup-Larsen
4.8 • 715 Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2024
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Richard Urwin, Chair of the Investment Committee at Saranac Partners, the $6bn UK wealth manager, joins Alan Dunne in this episode to discuss how he is approaching asset allocation at the current juncture. They discuss how long term valuations and asset class return forecast help inform Saranac’s strategic asset allocation and delve into some of the structural forces that may influence the economic outlook and asset class returns in the coming decade. While shifting demographics, climate change, high deficits and rising debt levels all have the potential to contribute to higher inflation and higher bond yields, Richard is cautious about being too pessimistic about the outlook and sees good opportunity in credit and alternative assets and strategies. They also discuss how Saranac think about selecting and sizing hedge funds in their portfolios and how this has changed in a higher interest rate environment.
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Episode TimeStamps:
02:45 - Introduction to Richard Urwin
06:31 - A noticeable shift?
08:49 - What is Saranac's investment philosophy?
13:06 - Dealing with structural shifts as an asset allocator
18:07 - How confident are they in forecasts?
24:24 - Balancing competing forces
30:08 - How Saranac builds balanced portfolios
33:55 - Do they consider supply shocks in their portfolios?
40:00 - The dangers of pessimism
44:27 - Their approach to alternative assets and strategies
48:38 - Their perspective on high-risk managers
51:15 - Their manager selection process
55:06 - How does the current environment dictate investing?
58:13 - About Urwin's PhD on option pricing
01:02:40 - Advice for other allocators
01:05:16 - Thanks for listening
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Managing money, it's a bit more like entering a dark room and you know you've got to the |
| 0:11.6 | other side and you know there's lots of obstacles in the way. |
| 0:16.2 | And one thing you don't do is go, well, we've identified our past we're going to take and |
| 0:20.5 | we're going to sit to it. So you navigate a bit, you hit an obstacle, you work your way around it. And I think |
| 0:26.1 | that's how a lot of successful money managers operate in practice. They might, in terms of |
| 0:32.8 | describing what they're doing, go heavy on the big theme stuff, because it's fascinating and it's really |
| 0:38.4 | interesting, but it's not necessarily the major source of returns for that many managers. |
| 0:46.1 | Imagine spending an hour with the world's greatest traders. |
| 0:50.0 | Imagine learning from their experiences, their successes, their successes, and their failures. |
| 0:54.5 | Imagine no more. |
| 0:56.4 | Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged, the place where you can learn from the best hedge fund managers in the world, |
| 1:02.6 | so you can take your manager due diligence or investment career to the next level. |
| 1:07.2 | Before we begin today's conversation, remember to keep two things in mind. |
| 1:19.6 | All the discussion we'll have about investment performance is about the past, and past performance does not guarantee or even infer anything about future performance. Also understand that there's a significant risk of financial loss with all investment strategies, and you need to request and understand the specific risks from the investment |
| 1:28.3 | manager about their product before you make investment decisions. Here's your host, veteran hedge fund |
| 1:34.0 | manager, Nealz Kostrup Larson. For me, the best part of my podcasting journey has been the opportunity to speak to a huge range of extraordinary investors from all around the world. |
| 1:50.4 | In this series, I have invited one of them, namely Alan Dunn, to host a series of in-depth conversations on the topic of what it takes to be a world-class allocator. |
| 2:00.2 | In today's world, portfolio construction is fast moving to the top of the agenda |
| 2:04.6 | of many investors as they try to analyze and understand the riskiness of their portfolios. |
| 2:09.6 | And with ever increasing uncertainty around the globe, |
| 2:13.6 | being well diversified across many different strategies and themes in your portfolio can mean the difference between ruin and survival when the next crisis emerge. |
| 2:23.7 | The aim of these conversations is to try and understand the experiences that have influenced these highly specialized allocators |
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