The Wall Street Lab

Today we have some absolutely non-special guests. We talk to…ourselves.

To celebrate our 50th episode we made our own random episode, talking about our founding story and sharing some background on our professional lives. We also share some of our favourite episodes, books, podcasts, online learning resources and a bunch of nonsense comments. If you expect deep insights into a new financial topic, better wait for the next episode. If you want to know a bit more about us und get some recommendations, please stay and enjoy the episode.

Peter Chun is the founder of Silverbear Capital, a globally positioned consulting and investment banking firm. Peter Chun has nearly 20 years of International finance expertise. He specialises in corporate restructuring, corporate finance, and M&A. He has worked with and represented companies of all sizes and configurations. He also brings listing experience in Korea, Toronto, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, and in the US, as well as experience in the private equity/ pre-IPO arena.

In our conversation we discuss:

* Asian mergers & acquisitions trends * The biggest biggest differences in M&A in US / EU and Asia * The 2020 M&A environment expectations * The COVID-19 effects on the market and expected outcomes * US-China-EU trade relations in 2020 * M&A / IB careers in Asia and differences from US / EU

As always, please do not forget to take 17 seconds to leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Be well and #stayhome!

Luke, Leo & Andy

Disclaimer: Information contained in this podcast constitutes the opinions of individuals and should not be treated as: Investment, Tax, Financial, or Legal advice. We take no responsibility for the accuracy of any statements made in this podcast. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and it does not contain an offer to sell or buy any sort of financial products and should not be treated as advertisement for such. Any copying, distribution or reproduction of this podcast without the prior permission of the creators of this podcast is strictly prohibited.

Howard Marks is co-chairman and co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management a leading global investment firm with deep expertise in credit strategies, which manages more than $120 billion in assets. Howard is the bestselling author of the two highly influential books: "Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side" and "The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor". He is also known for his very insightful investor letters, which has been claimed to be must-read material by many well-known investors, including none other than Warren Buffett. Howard holds a B.S.Ec. degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a major in finance and an M.B.A. in accounting and marketing from the University of Chicago.

"Experience is what you got, when you didn't get what you wanted" – Howard Marks

In our conversation we discuss:

• How Oaktree experienced raising and deploying capital during the GFC of 2008
• The difference between scepticism and negativism
• The similarities between investing and tennis
• The rise of passive investing
• The importance of being a contrarian
• The mood swings of market participants and how that affects one's own investment decision
• Why he writes and what has kept him motivated to write even though his letters once were not as popular as they are today
• And much more!

"When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they're the first thing I open and read" – Warren Buffett

"Howard is a legendary investor" – Tony Robbins

As always, please do not forget to take 17 seconds to leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Be well and #stayhome!

Luke, Leo & Andy

P.s. The content of this conversation is provided for general information purposes only and does not constitute financial, accounting, legal, tax…. advice. You know the drill, right? If you want to listen to the full disclaimer, just skip through the amazing conversation with Howard, and go straight to the end of the episode and you will be highly entertained.

Christopher ("Chris") Schelling is the Director responsible for Private Equity investments at Texas Municipal Retirement System ("TMRS"). Prior to joining TRMS, Chris served as Deputy Chief Investment Officer and Director of Absolute & Real Return at Kentucky Retirement Systems and as an Adjunct Professor of Finance at University of Kentucky, where he taught a class in Alternative Investments.

He If you are an allocator and want to know more about how some of the best in the business go about vetting their private equity fund managers, this episode is for you! Aside from being a well-known columnist for Institutional Investor, and a guy who makes his passion, deep understanding and curiosity for the profession very evident, Chris takes quite a scientific approach to manager selection. We start our conversation by going through Chris' career, we move on to discuss the due diligence process at TMRS in more detail, covering topics such as their sourcing funnel, how they sperate the "wheat from the chaff" and their investment their investment approval process. We then get very specific about how Chis and his colleagues at TMRS evaluate one of the 4 P's of manager selection, the People (the other three being Process, Product and Performance). In fact, Chris wrote a great article for Chief Investment Officer about the topic titled "Psyching out Money Managers", which you can find here and serves as great background for that discussion. Finally, Chris talks about careers as an allocator and what it takes to succeed in this field.

In such trying times marked loneliness and social distancing, give your friends (and your enemies, who knows?) the gift of knowledge and companionship by sharing this podcast with them.

Also, please don't don't forget to take 23 seconds to leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.

By the way – don't take anything said in this episode as investment advice. It is not! We might just as well have made all of this up. Be smart and speak to an investment professional if you are looking for advice. For a full version of the disclaimer, I would recommend you go to the very end of this recording. Luke's sexy British accent alone will make it all worth it!

Be well and #stayhome!

Luke, Leo & Andy

Dan Houlihan is an Executive Vice President and Head of Northern Trust Asset Servicing for the Americas. Prior to joining Northern Trust, Dan spent 19 years in numerous leadership positions across several companies in the investment management, technology, and service space. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board for the National Investment Company Service Association (NICSA) and as a Director on the Advisors Investment Trust.

We talk about the asset servicing business and its various components like custody, fund administration, investor servicing and outsourced solutions across the front, middle and back office. We touch on trends in the asset management industry in regard to outsourcing and technologies and last but not least about diversity in the banking industry.

Daniel Crosby is a New York Times Bestselling author with books like "Personal Benchmark", "The Laws of wealth", and "The behavioral investor". He is also the Chief Behavioral Officer of Brinker Capital. He spoke at TEDx in Huntsville and hosts the podcast "Standard deviations". Daniel holds a PhD in Psychology from Brigham Young University.

We talk about his role as Chief Behavioural Officer, the insights of his several books and how to apply the learnings from behavioural finance in real life. We dive into the psychology of human beings, how investors can stick with their portfolio during difficult times and how to outsmart yourself and other investors. We touch on hedge funds like Long Term Capital Management and Renaissance Technologies and the merits of active and passive investing.

Paolo Sironi is the Author of several books including "Financial Market Transparency" or "Fintech Innovation". He is a Fintech Advisor for IBM, Fintech Thought Leader, co-host of the podcast "breaking banks europe", and member of the advisory boards of several companies. In the past, Paolo founded his own fintech startup as a joint venture of German Private Bank Sal. Oppenheim and Fitch ratings. Before that he was working as Director of Risk Management at the large Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo. We talk about his different books, the insights he gained from his research and how his views developed over time. Paolo shares with us the biology of how humans make investment decisions, the importance of financial market transparency and how banks and fintechs can leverage those insights to succeed in the coming years. This episode was recorded in December 2019.

Links

Paolo's website: http://www.thepsironi.com/

Paolo's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thepsironi/

IBM: https://www.ibm.com/us-en/?lnk=fcc

Breaking Banks podcast: https://breakingbanks.com/

Fitch Ratings: https://www.fitchratings.com/site/home

Intesa Sanpaolo: https://www.intesasanpaolo.com/

As always, make sure you share the podcast with anyone you think might benefit from the information. And don't forget to leave us a 5-Star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Please keep in mind this is not investment advice. Full disclaimer at the end of the podcast.

Luke, Leo & Andy

Michael O'Sullivan is the author of the book 'The Levelling' - What's Next After Globalisation? He has a blog with the same name. He is a World Economic Forum Global Futures Council member and Forbes contributor. Michael holds a PhD from Oxford and is the former Chief Investment Officer for International Wealth Management of Credit Suisse.

We talk about his different roles, like being an equity strategist and of course his work as CIO for Credit Suisse. We talk about education and Michael lets us in on his career advice, what it takes to succeed in Finance and the skills a CIO needs. We then jump into Michael's book "The Levelling" and speak about economics, the impact of globalization, the global financial crisis and many more interesting topics.

Jorge Tavio is the Market Development Director, Wealth EMEA for Refinitiv. Refinitiv is one of the largest market data providers on the planet with more than 40,000 clients in 190 countries. In his current role Jorge is leading the wealth market development team in EMEA. He and his team are connecting the dots between new technology, regulation, new business models and innovative customer experiences. His previous roles included being the Head of Partners and Digital Innovation Continental Europe and several Specialist roles within Refinitiv (former Thomson Reuters).

The episode was recorded in July 2019

With over 20 years of experience in the financial data industry we dig into the history of delivering market data and how the business changed over the years. We learn how market data helps financial institutions to make decisions and powers financial markets. Jorge shares with us the latest trends in technology, the big challenges of all industries, especially the wealth industry and his thoughts on hiring and learning.

Jorge's profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorge-tavio-ascanio/

Refinitiv: https://www.refinitiv.com/en

As always, make sure you share the podcast with anyone you think might benefit from the information. And don't forget to leave us a 5-Star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from.

Please keep in mind this is not investment advice. Full disclaimer at the end of the podcast.

Luke, Leo & Andy

Christina Qi serves as Founding Partner at Domeyard LP, among the longest running HFT hedge funds in the world, and CEO of Databento, a unified data discovery platform. She started Domeyard 8 years ago with $1000 in savings. Domeyard trades up to $1 billion USD per day. Her company's story has been featured on the front page of Forbes and Nikkei, and quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNN, NBC, and the Financial Times. Christina is a contributor to the World Economic Forum's research on AI in finance. She is a visiting lecturer at MIT, including Nobel Laureate Robert Merton's "Retirement Finance" class since 2014, and and alongside President Emerita Susan Hockfield and Dean David Schmittlein in 2019. Christina teaches Domeyard's case study at Harvard Business School and other universities.

Christina was elected as a Member of the MIT Corporation, MIT's Board of Trustees. She was elected Co-Chair of the Board of Invest in Girls in 2019. Christina also sits on the Board of Directors of The Financial Executives Alliance (FEA) Hedge Fund Group, drives entrepreneurship efforts at the MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association (MIT SBAA), and serves on U.S. Non-Profit Boards Committee of 100 Women in Finance. Her work in finance earned her a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 and Boston Business Journal 40 Under 40 lists. She holds an S.B. in Management Science from MIT and is a CAIA Charterholder.

Please keep in mind this is not investment advice. Full disclaimer at the end of the podcast.

We speak about High Frequency Trading, (Alternative) Market Data, the difference between High Frequency Trading and Quantitative Finance, the use of technology, Giving back and philanthropic efforts like Invest in Girls or 100 Women in Finance. Christina also shares her tips for Time Management, Life, Career and how to make people stay.