News

Renaissance’s Medallion Made a Stunning Shift After Trump’s Election

Renaissance’s Medallion Made a Stunning Shift After Trump’s Election Witherspoon Partners Founding Member Keith Danko quoted in this August 16th Bloomberg piece on the fabled and opaque quant fund Medallion: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-16/renaissance-s-medallion-made-stunning-shift-after-trump-election

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May Contain Artificial Ingredients

If IBM’s Watson can consume one million books per second, does that make it smarter than you? Is the possession of more data and information always an advantage? Big data and algorithms are transforming business and the world as we know it, including investing. Data is the lifeblood of quantitative trading strategies, which in recent …

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Boats Against the Current

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s statement on the human propensity to look back and be confined by the past, the last line in The Great Gatsby, has meaning in many different contexts—including institutional investors’ allocation strategies. Investors seem to be constantly battling against …

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The Letter “O” and the Art of Delegating

This thought piece is brought to you by the letter “O,” which has become popular of late. With the increasingly complex, fragmented, and costly investment landscape facing investors and asset managers, outsourcing has becoming an attractive option for firms of all types and sizes. The result is a proliferation of “O’s” preceding the familiar C-suite …

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Is Trump’s Approach All that New?

President-elect Donald Trump has made abundantly clear that his presidency will be highly expansionary in terms of economic policy and that he will be actively interventionist in the manner that he exercises power. Currently there is great controversy over both these approaches from both sides of the political aisle. From the right: What about the …

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Witherspoon Partners Chosen as Workshop Host, Counsels Emerging Managers

For the second consecutive year, Witherspoon Partners has been invited to present a workshop for emerging managers at the Opal Emerging Manager Summit South, taking place in Austin, Texas on November 7th (www.opalgroup.net). The conference is one of two annual events hosted by Opal specifically tailored to emerging hedge fund managers and those who invest …

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Where Do Hedge Funds Go from Here?

It is our strong view that hedge funds can add significant benefits in terms of risk/return profile, volatility and diversification to any institutional portfolio or to the portfolios of very high net worth individuals. However, it’s no secret that poor performance currently plagues the industry, which has too many funds and strategies that ultimately disappoint. …

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Being Single Can Have Its Benefits: Opportunities in Residential Real Estate

“I would say that housing came back very late after the panic in 2008 and ‘09… it has showed continuing growth and momentum. That continues to this day. Household formations fall off a lot in recessions. People double up and move in with their in-laws, but eventually hormones win out. [laughter]” In a recent interview, …

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Two Votes for Greatness

In May I attended the graduation ceremonies at Duke University, where I was treated to legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski giving his first ever commencement speech. As a complement to this, on the trip down to Durham I read investor and technologist Peter Thiel’s Zero to One. Both Coach K’s speech and Theil’s book offer …

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Postcard from Asia

I recently traveled to Asia to meet with investors and other finance professionals. The 16-hour flight from New York to Hong Kong reminded me that while it may be a small world, it still takes a long time to travel across it. It also gave me time on the return trip to reflect on the …

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