“China has four excesses, it’s a bit like Japan pre-1989 or the U.S. Financial Crisis in 2007”
🔔 Hit SUBSCRIBE button and be the first to get new videos 🎬 Stay tuned on upcoming 120 unique new educational videos covering various aspects of financial markets and artificial intelligence. Join us on this journey of knowledge and innovation at the BERYL ELITES conference!
🗓️ Save the date for the BERYL ELITES 6th Annual Alternative Investments conference, happening in NYC on Oct 28-29. Immerse yourself in 18 dynamic panels featuring 85 esteemed speakers from top financial, investment, and technology companies.
INTERVIEW 🎙️ featuring:
Michael Oliver Weinberg, CFA, Adjunct Professor, Columbia University
Some salient points from the interview:
❖ What are your views on the alternative investments?
I started in the hedge fund industry in 1998 at Soros Fund Management and at that time hedge funds were tiny. Since then the growth has been exponential. Hedge funds are largely mature now the growth is in private credit that will be growing materially.
What do you think about ESG?
❖ ESG is very controversial, in fact in the US it’s almost become polarized, Red State – Blue State. I think it can be very effective but you need to implement what we call Optimal ESG, for example engagement not exclusion. There are many nuances to it, let’s look at governance, the G part of ESG. It has become highly politicized but it can add a lot of value if implemented well and I’ve written articles on what we call Optimal ESG.
What’s your views on current investment opportunity set?
❖ There’s a great opportunity now in private equity secondaries, private credit, particularly stressed, distressed … I think VC is interesting again having largely been washed out, other than AI, I think there’s sort of a mini bubble in AI VC. I would also avoid late stage, if you look for instance Instacart recently came public, now 75% down. But broadly in VC I do think there’s a great opportunity set and it’s a great time for those that have capital to invest, whether it’s stress, distress, private credit, distressed real estate, private equity secondaries.
What’s your views on the China’s economic situation?
❖ I’ve been investing in China for multiple decades. I’m proponent of China, spent much considerable time there, it’s super interesting. I think there are inefficiencies that are interesting to invest in. There are four challenges that they’re now faced with and they’re: real estate, infrastructure, manufacturing and natural resources. They’ve invested considerably in all four of these areas over the past decades. It’s a bit like Japan pre 1989 or the U.S. pre-Global Financial Crisis in 2007. They have these four excesses and they’re going to pose quite a challenge for their economy.
What’s your opinion on AI pertaining to investment management?
❖Some years ago, I co-founded a company called Move 37 and the concept was machine learning and alternative data would revolutionize investment management. In fact, we called them autonomous learning investment strategies. And here we are seven years later and that’s exactly what’s happening. I think our hypothesis was correct that this confluence of four factors – exponential growth in data machine learning, data science and record low processing and storage costs – would revolutionize investment management. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing where all investment managers will have to adapt and include machine learning and alternative data, otherwise they’ll risk being effectively disintermediated by those that do so. I think it’s here to stay.