Ep. 128: Karl Massey on the End of Investing as You Know It

Karl is Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and Mentor at Creative Destruction Labs (Saïd Business School, University of Oxford). He began his career at JPMorgan trading fixed income. In 1996, Karl oversaw Banco Santander’s Global Asset-Liability activities in Madrid. In 2001, he returned to London as Global Head of FX for HSBC Asset Management. From 2003, he held Senior Portfolio Manager roles at Brevan Howard, UBS O’Connor, Deutsche Bank’s Cross Asset Trading group. In 2012 he joined Barclays Bank Treasury in London as Head of Euro Liquidity Management. In 2017 he joined LPP, Local Pensions Partnership, where he managed the Fixed Income portfolio. In 2018, he was a Participant at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. Karl holds two degrees; Physics from Imperial College, London and Molecular Biophysics from University College, University of Oxford. In this podcast we discuss:

1. Capital-ism vs income-ism
2. The demographic problem
3. Importance of the scientific method
4. The end of mean reversion
5. Investment uncertainty vs risk
6. The risk of correlation changes
7. How today’s crises are different to GFC
8. A coming asset crisis
9. Phase transitions
10. Central bank, real economy and political regime changes
11. What the performance of the 60:40 portfolio tells us
12. Solving for lower future market returns
13. Demographic – climate change – machine learning shocks
14. The failure of factor investing
15. Have a plan A, B and C
16. Career risk
17. Books mentioned: The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets (Mandelbrot), The Upside of Down (Homer-Dixon), The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Sacks)

Karl’s LinkedIn account is here , some of his writings can be found here, and you can contact him here.

Make sure to subscribe to the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you go for your podcasts. You can follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

(The commentary contained in the above article does not constitute an offer or a solicitation, or a recommendation to implement or liquidate an investment or to carry out any other transaction. It should not be used as a basis for any investment decision or other decision. Any investment decision should be based on appropriate professional advice specific to your needs.)