Rowan Williams-Short, head of fixed-income at Vunani Fund Managers, was my special guest on the Investment Community podcast. You can listen to the conversation with Rowan here.

In this episode (part 2 of 3), Rowan tells:

  • How his investment performance improved when he stopped trying to be a hero, i.e. when he deliberately decided to not be quite so ambitious about his numbers.
  • How making forecasts in financial markets is a perilous activity: you have to be both right and in the minority.
  • How he found only 10% of the international hedge-fund managers that he interviewed to be “intriguing”. The rest were “desperately underwhelming” or worse.

We also discussed:

  • That large investment teams do have the advantage of better coverage than small teams, but that is not necessarily helpful in generating better returns.
  • That the CIO of a large team will tend to inadvertently rebuild their index in client portfolios, ironically because of a deficit in people skills.
  • That hiring the right people for your investment team is the most important investment decision, requiring significant amounts of time and energy.