Mark Kritzman's guest appearances

Mark Kritzman

The Meb Faber Show

Michael Covel's Trend Following

Resolve's Gestalt University

Tom Basso

Eric Crittenden

Larry Swedroe

Ben Carlson

Cullen Roche

Patrick Cleary

Howard Lindzon

Ted Seides

Rob Arnott

Jerry Parker

Marc Faber

Darius Dale

Blair Hull

Annie Duke

Tom Dorsey

OwlTail

Mark Kritzman graduated with a business degree in a time of intense crisis and change in financial markets, and this experience shaped the arc of his career. He has dedicated his professional life to the study of asset allocation and portfolio optimization and his papers on these and other topics have earned over a dozen top awards in finance, including nine Bernstein/Fabozzi/Levy Awards. This conversation between ReSolve’s CIO Adam Butler and Mark is loosely guided by core themes from Mark’s newest book, “A Practitioner’s Guide to Asset Allocation”. Mark describes why he embraces Samuelson’s Dictum and how this has motivated his focus on asset allocation as the most fertile ground for active returns. Relatively small traders can drive mis-priced securities back to equilibrium but asset classes can – and do – stray far from equilibrium because traders lack the capital necessary to correct mis-pricings on their own. This is exacerbated by other barriers to arbitrage like institutional tracking error constraints and benchmark-oriented incentives. Given Mark’s views it’s not surprising that his team at Windham Capital focuses mostly on Tactical Asset Allocation. He expresses the view that the policy portfolio concept is profoundly misguided since markets have highly unstable distributions. Dynamic markets imply that optimal portfolios should change over time in response to changes in expected return, risk and correlation dynamics. Mark makes the case that portfolio optimization gets a bad rap but that most of the protests are disingenuous. Sure, out-of-the box optimization is error-maximizing on portfolio weights but that’s irrelevant for a few simple reasons, most prominently because no one with any sense would use an optimizer out-of-the-box, but also because while small changes in portfolio estimates might lead to large changes in weights, the expected mean and variance of the portfolio would hardly change at all. We address the 1/N arguments and Mark makes clear why they’re bunk. We cover a lot more ground but toward the end Mark divulges that he’s publishing a new paper with mind-blowing implications. I won’t give away the plot here… Mark has forgotten more about finance than most investors will learn in their career. Put down what you’re doing and listen to this right now.

Mark Kritzman graduated with a business degree in a time of intense crisis and change in financial markets, and this experience shaped the arc of his career. He has dedicated his professional life to the study of asset allocation and portfolio optimization and his papers on these and other topics have earned over a dozen top awards in finance, including nine Bernstein/Fabozzi/Levy Awards. This conversation between ReSolve’s CIO Adam Butler and Mark is loosely guided by core themes from Mark’s newest book, “A Practitioner’s Guide to Asset Allocation”. Mark describes why he embraces Samuelson’s Dictum and how this has motivated his focus on asset allocation as the most fertile ground for active returns. Relatively small traders can drive mis-priced securities back to equilibrium but asset classes can – and do – stray far from equilibrium because traders lack the capital necessary to correct mis-pricings on their own. This is exacerbated by other barriers to arbitrage like institutional tracking error constraints and benchmark-oriented incentives. Given Mark’s views it’s not surprising that his team at Windham Capital focuses mostly on Tactical Asset Allocation. He expresses the view that the policy portfolio concept is profoundly misguided since markets have highly unstable distributions. Dynamic markets imply that optimal portfolios should change over time in response to changes in expected return, risk and correlation dynamics. Mark makes the case that portfolio optimization gets a bad rap but that most of the protests are disingenuous. Sure, out-of-the box optimization is error-maximizing on portfolio weights but that’s irrelevant for a few simple reasons, most prominently because no one with any sense would use an optimizer out-of-the-box, but also because while small changes in portfolio estimates might lead to large changes in weights, the expected mean and variance of the portfolio would hardly change at all. We address the 1/N arguments and Mark makes clear why they’re bunk. We cover a lot more ground but toward the end Mark divulges that he’s publishing a new paper with mind-blowing implications. I won’t give away the plot here… Mark has forgotten more about finance than most investors will learn in their career. Put down what you’re doing and listen to this right now.

Mark Kritzman: The Case for Optimal Portfolios (EP.01)

Michael Covel

My guest today is Mark Kritzman, a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management, founding Partner and Chief Executive Officer of Windham Capital Management and serves as a senior partner of State Street Associates. Mark has written six books, his latest titled “A Practitioners Guide to Asset Allocation”. Mark began his career on Wall Street in 1974 and was immediately drawn toward systematic trading. At a time when there were not many quantitative traders, he was affectionately titled a “token quant” within his company. Over the years Mark has been an advisor to many funds. The topic is his book A Practitioner's Guide to Asset Allocation. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss:  Definition of an asset class Actively managed portfolios Passively managed portfolios Time diversification Portfolio diversification The fallacy of large numbers Leverage Value at risk Risk management Fear and greed Risk and reward Exposure to risk  Jump in! --- I’m MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I’m proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I’d like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/ You can watch a free video here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/ Can’t get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast My social media platforms: Twitter: @covel Facebook: @trendfollowing LinkedIn: @covel Instagram: @mikecovel Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

My guest today is Mark Kritzman, a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management, founding Partner and Chief Executive Officer of Windham Capital Management and serves as a senior partner of State Street Associates. Mark has written six books, his latest titled “A Practitioners Guide to Asset Allocation”. Mark began his career on Wall Street in 1974 and was immediately drawn toward systematic trading. At a time when there were not many quantitative traders, he was affectionately titled a “token quant” within his company. Over the years Mark has been an advisor to many funds. The topic is his book A Practitioner's Guide to Asset Allocation. In this episode of Trend Following Radio we discuss: <ul> <li>Definition of an asset class</li> <li>Actively managed portfolios</li> <li>Passively managed portfolios</li> <li>Time diversification</li> <li>Portfolio diversification</li> <li>The fallacy of large numbers</li> <li>Leverage</li> <li>Value at risk</li> <li>Risk management</li> <li>Fear and greed</li> <li>Risk and reward</li> <li>Exposure to risk</li> </ul> Jump in! --- I’m MICHAEL COVEL, the host of TREND FOLLOWING RADIO, and I’m proud to have delivered 10+ million podcast listens since 2012. Investments, economics, psychology, politics, decision-making, human behavior, entrepreneurship and trend following are all passionately explored and debated on my show. To start? I’d like to give you a great piece of advice you can use in your life and trading journey… cut your losses! You will find much more about that philosophy here: <a href="https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.trendfollowing.com/trend/</a> You can watch a free video here: <a href="https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.trendfollowing.com/video/</a> Can’t get enough of this episode? You can choose from my thousand plus episodes here: <a href="https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.trendfollowing.com/podcast</a> My social media platforms: Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/covel" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">@covel</a> Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/trendfollowing/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">@trendfollowing</a> LinkedIn: <a href="https://linkedin.com/in/covel/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">@covel</a> Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/mikecovel/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">@mikecovel</a> Hope you enjoy my never-ending podcast conversation!

Ep. 605: Mark Kritzman Interview with Michael Covel on Trend Following Radio

In Episode 51, we welcome Mark Kritzman. Per usual, we start with Mark’s background. He tells us a bit about his 40-year career in investing, leading to Windham, where he focuses on asset allocation and risk premia strategies. But it’s not long before the guys jump in, starting with Mark’s 7th book, A Practitioner’s Guide to Asset Allocation, which will be coming out soon. Mark describes the process of asset allocation, starting with the basics, then taking us a layer deeper, discussing asset allocation as a way to balance the goal of increasing wealth while minimizing drawdowns. In essence, you need to identify the asset classes you want, evaluate their expected, long-term returns, then estimate the volatility of each and – just as importantly – estimate the correlation between the asset classes. With all this, you then find the particular allocations that give you the highest return for the same level of risk – the efficient frontier. Next, the conversation takes a turn toward investing fallacies, including the idea that asset allocation drives more than 90% of performance. Mark tells us there are some flaws with this idea, then explains in detail. Another fallacy discussed is that of time-diversification – the assumption that investing over the long-term is safer than investing over shorter periods. Again, Mark provides details that call into question this belief. The guys then get into investing in illiquid assets, and how to appropriately structure them in an asset allocation. It can be hard to maintain a balanced portfolio consisting of illiquid assets. Mark’s approach is to treat liquidity as a shadow investment. In essence, you attach a shadow asset as well as a shadow liability to the appropriate parts of the portfolio. You’ll want to listen to this part of the episode for all the details. This dovetails into hedge funds, since hedge fund investing can also be illiquid. Meb asks how Mark thinks about hedge fund investing, and given limited information, is an investor’s only recourse to be able to pick the best managers? And if one doesn’t have that ability, should he/she just stick with investing in the S&amp;P? Mark has a great answer about how most of the historical premium of private equity over public equity can be attributed to the sector exposures of private equity funds. So investors can build a portfolio of public sector ETFs in a way that can approximate much of the hedge fund sector allocation. You’re probably going to be surprised at just how much of the premium of private equity over public equity doing this which would have delivered to an investor.   As usual, there’s plenty more in this episode: the role of fees and taxes… the concept of “turbulence”… the absorption ratio, and how we can use it to evaluate risk… and lastly, what Mark’s most useful idea is for listeners. What is it? Find out in Episode 51.

In Episode 51, we welcome Mark Kritzman. Per usual, we start with Mark’s background. He tells us a bit about his 40-year career in investing, leading to Windham, where he focuses on asset allocation and risk premia strategies. But it’s not long before the guys jump in, starting with Mark’s 7th book, A Practitioner’s Guide to Asset Allocation, which will be coming out soon. Mark describes the process of asset allocation, starting with the basics, then taking us a layer deeper, discussing asset allocation as a way to balance the goal of increasing wealth while minimizing drawdowns. In essence, you need to identify the asset classes you want, evaluate their expected, long-term returns, then estimate the volatility of each and – just as importantly – estimate the correlation between the asset classes. With all this, you then find the particular allocations that give you the highest return for the same level of risk – the efficient frontier. Next, the conversation takes a turn toward investing fallacies, including the idea that asset allocation drives more than 90% of performance. Mark tells us there are some flaws with this idea, then explains in detail. Another fallacy discussed is that of time-diversification – the assumption that investing over the long-term is safer than investing over shorter periods. Again, Mark provides details that call into question this belief. The guys then get into investing in illiquid assets, and how to appropriately structure them in an asset allocation. It can be hard to maintain a balanced portfolio consisting of illiquid assets. Mark’s approach is to treat liquidity as a shadow investment. In essence, you attach a shadow asset as well as a shadow liability to the appropriate parts of the portfolio. You’ll want to listen to this part of the episode for all the details. This dovetails into hedge funds, since hedge fund investing can also be illiquid. Meb asks how Mark thinks about hedge fund investing, and given limited information, is an investor’s only recourse to be able to pick the best managers? And if one doesn’t have that ability, should he/she just stick with investing in the S&amp;P? Mark has a great answer about how most of the historical premium of private equity over public equity can be attributed to the sector exposures of private equity funds. So investors can build a portfolio of public sector ETFs in a way that can approximate much of the hedge fund sector allocation. You’re probably going to be surprised at just how much of the premium of private equity over public equity doing this which would have delivered to an investor.   As usual, there’s plenty more in this episode: the role of fees and taxes… the concept of “turbulence”… the absorption ratio, and how we can use it to evaluate risk… and lastly, what Mark’s most useful idea is for listeners. What is it? Find out in Episode 51.

#51 - Mark Kritzman - “We Have to Question the Assumptions that Underpin Our Models... Nothing is Simple"