Invest Like The Best
Episode 274 Building a Better Model
Invest Like The Best

Episode 274: Building a Better Model

Invest Like The Best

Episode 274

Building a Better Model

Dmitry Balyasny is the Managing Partner and CIO of Balyasny Asset Management. We cover the origin story of his unique multi-strategy firm, the common traits that great portfolio managers share, and how to incentivize talented investors.

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[00:02:53] - [First question] - The origin story of his firm and the key stages of evolution

[00:06:43] - Describing the difference between good and great in platform hedge funds 

[00:10:25] - How a multi-strategy, multi-investor group works and managing capital allocation

[00:13:58] - What he’s trying to solve at the end of the day as their CIO

[00:16:21] - How close they are to their idealized end-state 

[00:18:26] - Typical amounts of leverage associated with these types of models

[00:20:22] - Lessons learned about incentivizing talented investors

[00:22:39] - Ways he tends to attract risk takers and their levels of variance

[00:28:15] - Other characteristics that are common amongst great PMs

[00:30:42] - The nature and source of edge and how it’s changed most over time

[00:33:19] - Some of the hardest portfolio and business decisions he’s had to make 

[00:37:59] - One of his most important business decisions on the firm side

[00:40:09] - How they’ve thought about shorting as a firm in general and more recently

[00:43:52] - How interest rates affect this style of investing

[00:45:29] - His view on the opportunity set in private markets and what does and doesn’t excite him about it

[00:49:42] - How reading Ayn Rand most shaped his thinking

[00:50:36] - Things Ayn most got right and most got wrong in his mind

[00:51:24] - What the war in Ukraine has felt like for him as a Ukrainian-American

[00:52:08] - Ways the future still has him excited as he continues to build his firm

[00:53:53] - Where his trading instincts draw him today and areas of interest

[00:55:11] - His most memorable trade of all time

[00:56:37] - In which order the major asset classes will be affected by digital innovation

[00:58:13] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him

Building a Better Model

Introduction

Patrick
My guest today is Dmitry Balyasny. Dmitry is the managing partner and CIO of Balyasny Asset Management, otherwise known as BAM. BAM runs a multi-strategy multi-PM model that aims to produce consistent, absolute returns. Since its founding in 2001, it has produced only one negative year and become one of the largest firms of its kind. Please enjoy my conversation with Dmitry Balyasny.

BAM's Origins and Differentiating Characteristics

Patrick
So, Dmitry, this is my first opportunity to talk to somebody that runs an investment firm structured and built like yours. There's lots of names for these. I think the original name was sort of the platform model, multi-strat, pod shop, there's all these names that float around the professional investing community and yours is one of the largest. Maybe you can just begin by giving me a little bit of the origin story of the firm. And I always love telling these stories in sort of chapter headers, like what you view in hindsight as the key phases of the evolution of the firm. Because I know you focus both not just on investing, but also on building the firm. So, give us that origin story with a few of those key way points along the way.

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