Quantitative Investing: The Solution to Human Bias (Wes Gray)

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Human Bias
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Today we are joined by Wesley Gray who is the CEO of Alpha Architect, a firm in the US that specializes in concentrated factor strategies. Having completed his MBA and PhD at the University of Chicago – the Harvard of the finance world – Wes is an authoritative voice when it comes to quantitative research and factor investing. Incredibly, he took a 4-year break during his PhD, joined the marines and went to Iraq, and has also written several books. He went from value investor and stock-picker to having a strong quant focus and realized that it was possible to eliminate the human biases while still capturing the factor premiums. Our talk with Wes illuminates the nuanced nature of factor investing, behaviour versus risk-based factor premiums and active management versus passive and indexing. He discusses the process of collecting data for his PhD, the rules according to which they structure portfolios, how their boutique firm differs from larger advisor companies and who their ideal client is. Wes also shares his views on selecting the best quant model, hedge funds, value premiums and market-cap indexing. Join us for another insightful episode!

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