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Monthly Archives: January 2019

Managing Me Event Recap

22nd January, 2019 · CFAMNEB · Leave a comment

By Matt Chruscielski, Society intern, recent University of St. Thomas MBA graduate and CFA level III candidate

It’s a new year which means it’s time for resolutions to become better versions of ourselves. One thing I’m sure we all struggle with is managing our time. Much like losing ten pounds, it’s something many of us want, but few achieve. Balancing time between family, career and ourselves can seem like we are on a treadmill repeating the same steps over and over without getting closer to our long-term goals. In the Managing Me session put on by CFA Society Minnesota last week, University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management Professor, Arthur Hill, talked about how it is possible to identify the trivial things that eat up our time. Time that could be spent doing the important tasks on our to-do list.

In the hour session, Professor Hill led an engaged audience through an interactive presentation on the six steps to better manage ourselves: aim, sort, select, do, review and break, all summarized below. Professor Hill’s process encourages one to write on sticky notes to help visualize the steps and ideas, because what’s in our heads does not seem as daunting once it is written down.

Aim: Define roles and responsibilities. Set daily, weekly monthly and longer-term goals that are regularly assessed. Schedule more difficult tasks early in the day and save easier or favorite tasks for later making up energy with passion.

Sort: Process inputs through filters to assess when to respond. Professor Hill described six filters related to how valuable, actionable, incremental, outsourceable, timely and capable the input is along with a filter for new projects.

Select: Use goals to pick the best task from the list. Only consider tasks that we have the time, energy and tools to do in the present. Prioritize tasks based on importance and urgency. Avoid multitasking when we are trying to complete a task that has a high cognitive demand.

Do: Complete selected tasks with focus and discipline. Focus on just a few goals. Take breaks but avoid distractions and interruptions as it can take up to ten minutes to get fully focused once disturbed. Avoid reading emails first thing in the morning. Emails can quickly derail a day as some of the audience attested to having over a thousand emails unread emails that day.

Review: Reflect, evaluate, celebrate and improve. This is to help with Aim. Did we take a step closer to goals this day, week, month? What did we learn? How can we improve? This is where we can keep track of our habits and create new ideas the next time we Sort. Don’t forget to celebrate reinforcing the good habits we want.

Break: Take breaks to recharge both at and away from work. We need to take regular breaks to replenish our attention and refresh our energy throughout the day. Pursue activities that boost energy. When away from work, really unplug. Don’t sneak a peek at the work email. Live in the moment and enjoy the time with family and friends. Work on a hobby or new skill to keep the mind fresh.

Overall, the session provided helpful tips and tools, and will hopefully allow for better time management in 2019. As Professor Hill said, “we are all guilty of letting ourselves get overwhelmed by the amount of noise in our lives which is why it is so important to have someone teach us how to filter out the small things so that we can focus on what really matters.” Judging by the large crowd in attendance it seems we all can use a friendly reminder now and then.

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Posted in Hot Topic Commentary | Tags: Carlson School of Management, CFA Society Minnesota, Managing Me, Professor Arthur Hill, time management, University of Minnesota |

Event Recap: AI and Machine Learning in Investment Management

8th January, 2019 · Tom Crandall, CFA, CAIA · Leave a comment

Rick Roche, CAIA, of Little Harbor Advisors, entertained a full house as he presented an overview of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in the Investment Management Industry. The audience was diverse, ranging from industry veterans to a Senior in High School (I must admit that I wasn’t as forward-thinking at his age). For Mr. Roche this was a homecoming of sorts, having lived in Linden Hills for 22 years before moving to Boston last year.

Though Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is complex and often begs to be gone through with fine detail Rick presented a view that was “a couple feet deep and a mile wide” – for the 43rd time in the last 13 months we were told. The hour ranged from 1) a history lesson of Machine Learning to 2) the fascinating amount of data and capabilities currently available and 3) some thought provoking views of the disruption that may (will?) be caused by the uprising of the machines and those who run them.

Mr. Roche parroted Gary Kasparov in his book “Deep Thinking”, where he reflected upon losing to IBM’s “Deep Blue”, blaming it on “Losing emotional control … and never getting it back” — for those in the investment industry this emotional control may strike close to home. That the Wealth Management industry is a laggard when it comes to the adoption of the advanced techniques (as reported by PricewaterhouseCoopers) is odd as it has two of the key ingredients necessary to foster the revolution, high margins and emotional participants. A quick poll of the audience seemed to support this idea that the industry lags behind as only about a quarter of those present had some exposure to machine learning with most of these having only done some light reading on the topic.

As a CFA charterholder, and someone who is not looking to be displaced by a robot in 10 years, some of the more riveting aspects of the presentation focused on the world around me, including:

  • Algorithms developed through Machine Learning techniques account for more than 98% of the trades happening on Wall Street and have sped up to the rate where 40,000 trades can now execute in the time it takes to blink our eyes.
  • By 2025, 163 Zettabytes of digital data will be available (roughly equivalent to the storage capacity of 635 billion of the top of the line iPhones) — to put this in comparison it is estimated that the totality of human speech in all of history would cover 42 Zettabytes (if digitized as 16 kHz 16-bit audio).
  • Algorithms have been developed to understand how much fuel is being transported based on reviewing satellite images to see how low tankers sit in the water.
  • The keywords of “Data Scientist” are bigger than “Quant Analyst” and “Fundamental Analyst” on Indeed by a factor of three, and growing
  • More than half of the people surveyed would consider becoming a client of Google, Apple, Facebook or Amazon if they were to offer wealth management services — and this number increases if you were to ask Millennials and those with over $20MM net worth.
  • Alibaba has the World’s Largest money market fund

In the words of the legendary investor, Paul Tudor Jones, “No man is better than a machine. And no machine is better than a human with a machine”. In the words of another legendary investor, BlackRock co-founder Robert Kapito, “Apple was not in music industry, Google was not in mobile phones, and Amazon was not in groceries — until they were”. Mr. Roche’s presentation highlighted the risks for those who are not willing or able to transform and inspired those who are willing and able to become, what he called, a Computerized Financial Analyst.

That we came together on Halloween and enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast may be a bit of a foreshadowing that blending two seemingly foreign concepts, humans and computers, can work if you sent apart your preconceptions and embrace it.

For those who were unable to come to the event, and for those who would like to see it a second time, please watch the video through the link below. For those who are interested in the topics of programming, machine learning, artificial intelligence, etc. please send an e-mail to the Society (events@cfamn.org).

View the session video here:
https://penxy.com/widget/?e=xelol

-Tom Crandall, CFA

Articles Referenced:

Asset Management Firms are Laggards in ML Adoption

Asset & Wealth Management Revolution: Embracing Exponential Change


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Posted in Hot Topic Commentary | Tags: AI, CAIA, CFA Society Minnesota, CFAMN, investment management, Machine Learning, Rich Roche, Tom Crandall |

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