Money Maze Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Simon introduces Cliff Asness, Co-Founder and CIO of AQR (Applied Quantitative Research), highlighting the firm's systematic approach to investing in a variety of assets.

Cliff Asness shared his background, mentioning that he was initially an underachiever in school but transitioned to a highly driven person during college at the University of Pennsylvania.

He explained that market efficiency is a spectrum, and even Fama admitted that markets are not perfectly efficient, despite what many might assume.

Discussing current markets, Asness emphasized the importance of global diversification and noted that the U.S.'s prolonged outperformance mostly stemmed from its increasing valuation premium over international markets.

He highlighted "volatility laundering" in private assets, where the infrequent marking of private investments creates an illusion of lower volatility, cautioning that this could lead to misinformed investment decisions.

Asness touched on philanthropy, saying he finds joy in charitable giving despite the difficulty in assessing the best use of funds and mentioned the importance of concentrating philanthropy for more impact.
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The Money Maze Podcast is kindly sponsored by Schroders, IFM Investors and the World Gold Council.

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In this episode we have the huge pleasure and privilege to talk to General Sir Patrick Sanders, who until June of this year served as Chief of the General Staff.

As the professional head of the British Army he had responsibility for over 100,000 troops (including reserves), steering this key component of the UK’s defence apparatus through an increasingly fractured world.

The mission in this interview is to orchestrate a rapid and highly effective tour of the key challenges on the minds of politicians, populations and the planet. 

Patrick discusses Russia and assessing what next, China and how a peaceful co-existence can operate, as well as Iran, Israel & The Middle East; weighing up if a brighter future here is possible. He then covers North Korea and its unpredictability, as it moves from defense to offense.

The General goes on to enlighten us on cyber threats, AI’s role on the battlefield, leadership & motivation, before answering some challenging questions from his peers and (possible) friends!

General Sanders joins a wider squadron of Money Maze Podcast geopolitics speakers, such as General Petraeus, General Sir Nick Carter & Lieutenant General Sir Tom Beckett!

​​The Money Maze Podcast is kindly sponsored by Schroders,IFM Investors and the World Gold Council.

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Research demonstrates that diverse companies outperform their less diverse peers. The 30% Club’s mission, led by Chairs and CEOs, is to increase gender diversity at board and executive committee levels. 

In this episode, current 30% Club Global Chair Hanneke Smits, assesses the shifts underway to increase female representation across the corporate landscape, why PE lags public investing in this regard and what still needs to be done.

She also reflects on working in both PE and public markets, the future trajectory of passive & active, and the challenges each presents to investors. She then discusses the qualities needed as a leader and mentor, including the difference between “being liked and being respected”. 

​​The Money Maze Podcast is kindly sponsored by Schroders, IFM Investors and the World Gold Council.

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In this Private Equity Miniseries, we examine why P.E. has grown to become such a significant artery in both the investment world and wider economy.

We discuss if this growth is secular, and an investment environment which continues to lead to rethinks of asset classes available for investors.

In this episode, I am delighted to speak to Robert Hamilton Kelly, Global Co-Head of Petershill Partners (part of Goldman Sachs Asset Management). They have raised over $10bn of P.E. capital since 2007, investing in private equity and alternatives businesses at the GP level.

Robert explains how and why Petershill own their investments and the characteristics they seek. He speaks about their approach to partnering with firms and the mutual benefits that develop, whilst also explaining the value of permanent capital.

He talks about some of their transactions, their decision to list in London, how investors have assessed the valuation case and why he is excited by the long term opportunities he believes are available through their approach.


The Money Maze Podcast is sponsored by Schroders, Bremont Watches and LiveTrade.


Schroders is a global investment and wealth manager, with a purpose to provide excellent investment performance to clients, through active investment management.

Bremont is an award-winning British company that produces beautifully engineered chronometers, designed to appeal to those who share the appreciation of a beautiful mechanical wristwatch.

LiveTrade has changed the way fine wine is bought and sold worldwide. You can instantly buy and sell - or place bids and offers on - key wines from Bordeaux, Champagne, Italy and other world regions.

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In an investing world where the “new thing” can too easily grab investor attention, sometimes it’s the case that an institution, especially one almost 200 years old, may be considered less relevant.


So in this episode we welcome on Sir Nigel Wilson, one of the longest serving FTSE 100 CEOs. He was knighted for his contributions to finance & regional development, and for running the 2nd largest institutional asset manager in Europe.


Sir Nigel Wilson discusses the business today, and how it has evolved. He explains their asset management and asset origination, marrying long-term capital with a strategic vision. He also covers their investments in key areas of infrastructure, housing, and the growing pension risk transfer market.


He goes on to explain their approach to inclusive capitalism, their expansion overseas, how the market views their valuation, the stock’s important yield and why he has had such long tenure as a CEO.


The Money Maze Podcast is sponsored by Schroders, Bremont Watches and LiveTrade.


Schroders is a global investment and wealth manager, with a purpose to provide excellent investment performance to clients, through active investment management.


Bremont is an award-winning British company that produces beautifully engineered chronometers, designed to appeal to those who share the appreciation of a beautiful mechanical wristwatch.


LiveTrade has changed the way fine wine is bought and sold worldwide. You can instantly buy and sell - or place bids and offers on - key wines from Bordeaux, Champagne, Italy and other world regions.

Sign up to our newsletter for more in-depth insights | Follow us on LinkedIn


Ray Dalio has described today’s guest, “as a vacuum cleaner of learning”, and in this episode Karen Karniol-Tambour exhibits a formidable grasp of the challenges of today’s investing environment.


The conversation begins with a review of the current monetary challenge facing the Fed and leads into the dilemma for investors weaned on variations of the 60/40 benchmark.


She explains Bridgewater’s enthusiasm for inflation protection, for owning important exposure to broad commodities, through to the role gold should play. At the same time she explains succinctly why US equities might be the worst performing asset class in the decade ahead.


She discusses why currencies could be an important source of return in a world of lacklustre performance, in a re-visit of the 1970s and 1980s.


Karen finally explains how Bridgewater think about the systematic and fundamental way of approaching sustainable investing, as well as the sustainable fund that they have developed.


The Money Maze Podcast is sponsored by Schroders, Bremont Watches and LiveTrade.


Schroders is a global investment and wealth manager, with a purpose to provide excellent investment performance to clients, through active investment management.


Bremont is an award-winning British company that produces beautifully engineered chronometers, designed to appeal to those who share the appreciation of a beautiful mechanical wristwatch.


LiveTrade has changed the way fine wine is bought and sold worldwide. You can instantly buy and sell - or place bids and offers on - key wines from Bordeaux, Champagne, Italy and other world regions.

Sign up to our newsletter for more in-depth insights | Follow us on LinkedIn


To celebrate our new sponsorship with LiveTrade, Bordeaux Index's new world-leading fine wine trading platform, we're pleased to be replaying our episode with Gary Boom. Originally recorded last summer, he discusses why he started the business and examines the investment opportunities in the fine wine and spirits market. 

In this episode Gary Boom, CEO of Bordeaux Index starts by explaining how the poorly organised, past its sell-by- date old model of wine trading has been revolutionised by Bordeaux Index over the last 20 years, with the introduction of scale, liquidity and expertise underscoring the investment attributes of fine wines and whiskies.

The conversation examines long term data provided by Credit Suisse who found that post-World War Two, collectible wines have delivered returns of circa 10% nominal, and real returns of around 7% USD (per annum) . Gary discusses the composition of returns and the indices used to measure them, and explains why consumption creates a virtuous circle, where replacement and scarcity provide strong tailwinds. He talks about the liquidity provided by Live Trade, which they established and which provides narrow bid/ask spreads in over 500 wines.

He talks about the Chinese influence in buying high-end Bordeaux wines, the Champagne and Burgundy markets’ evolution as well as how challenges around counterfeiting are being met.

With reference to the late Stephen Spurrier, he discusses the rise of some of the great new world wines which wines he believes will prove good investments and how family offices and wealthy individuals can build significant portfolios of wine to take advantage of its lower correlation to other assets.

He speaks about climate impact on wine producing regions, his gloomy view on UK wines and why Bollinger Group has taken a stake in their business.

Finally he talks about why wine has proved and continues to be a great career for both sexes, some advice for today’s youth, and whose wines and their owners he would most like to meet and drink.

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Today we have a different conversation. Michael Lewis and Simon Brewer go back to graduating from the LSE in 1985, when they were both seeking a place on the fabled Salomon Brothers training programme. Michael’s success in securing that job allowed the world to have the enduring classic, ‘Liar’s Poker’, and from there to write 16 best sellers (three of which have been made into major Hollywood films).


His new book, ‘Premonition: A Pandemic Story’, tells the enthralling tale of the US pandemic preparations that started under President Bush, but which failed when COVID-19 struck, thanks to a mixture of institutional and political failings.


Michael brings the cumulative missteps to life by narrating the story of the real people involved, their extraordinary decisions, and what went wrong.


He continues this fascinating conversation by discussing two of his other books, ‘The Undoing Project’, and ‘Moneyball’, and explains how decision making is driven by varying degrees of data and/or human interactions - from sport to finance – resulting in unpredictable consequences.


The Money Maze Podcast is sponsored by Schroders, LiveTrade and Bremont Watches.


Schroders is a global investment and wealth manager, with a purpose to provide excellent investment performance to clients, through active investment management.


Bremont is an award-winning British company that produces beautifully engineered chronometers, designed to appeal to those who share the appreciation of a beautiful mechanical wristwatch.


LiveTrade has changed the way fine wine is bought and sold worldwide. You can instantly buy and sell - or place bids and offers on - key wines from Bordeaux, Champagne, Italy and other world regions.

Sign up to our newsletter for more in-depth insights | Follow us on LinkedIn


The world of quantitative investing is a varied one, ranging from “statistical arbitrage” funds that seek to exploit miniscule and often fleeting market mispricings, to systematically exploiting timeless return patterns.


Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) is in the latter camp. Founded by Rex Sinquefield and David Booth - two pioneers of index funds - DFA primarily harnesses “factors” that drive market returns in the long run. Here, Savina Rizova, Global Head of Research at DFA, explores the world of multi-factor investing with the FT’s Robin Wigglesworth. 


Savina was recently named as one of 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance by the magazine Barron’s, and was nominated by none other than Robert Merton, a Nobel laureate in economics. Merton described the Bulgarian-born quantitative researcher as a standout in his more than 50 years of working with some of the best quantitative analysts and investors in the field of financial and economic research applied to real-world solutions.


In this conversation, Savina helps clarify the often muddied terms surrounding factor investing, and reveals the uncomfortable truth that many of these market-beating signals are nothing more than an artifice of data mining. 


Savina also explains why DFA is excited about the opportunities in systematic fixed income investing, and covers the firm’s decision to jump into the ETF industry and build its own in-house “direct indexing” business (it now competes head-to-head with investment giants like Vanguard, BlackRock and Morgan Stanley on this front). 


The avid petrol-head also explains why Formula One is an entirely natural interest for any quant, given its combination of technology, data and human skill!


The Money Maze Podcast is sponsored by Schroders and Bremont Watches.


Schroders is a global investment and wealth manager, with a purpose to provide excellent investment performance to clients, through active investment management.

Bremont is an award-winning British company that produces beautifully engineered chronometers, designed to appeal to those who share the appreciation of a beautiful mechanical wristwatch.

Sign up to our newsletter for more in-depth insights | Follow us on LinkedIn


Man Group is one of the world’s biggest hedge fund managers, and by some distance the largest listed one, with $148.6bn of assets under management. But the crown jewel of the City institution is Man AHL, a quantitative investment firm that alone manages over $57bn. 


AHL was initially started by three pioneers of systematic investing, Mike Adam, David Harding and Martin Lueck. Today, its band of programmers, data scientists and algorithmic traders are overseen by Russell Korgaonkar, who was named Man AHL’s chief investment officer in 2020, alongside Man AHL CEO Matthew Sargaison.


If Russell had had his way, he would have been lighting up Formula One or the Premier League. But sadly his sporting talent didn’t quite match his aptitude for mathematics, and after a degree in physics at Oxford he joined Man AHL as a researcher in 2001.


However, as Russell stresses in this conversation with the FT’s Robin Wigglesworth, it is a misconception that the cultural hinterland of quants consists solely of chess and vintage computer games. 


Another misunderstanding is that quants can relax on the beach while the machines do all the work. As Russell explains, successful systematic investing is hard work, requiring continual refinement of models and sniffing out new sources of returns in the chaos of financial markets.


The Money Maze Podcast is sponsored by Schroders and Bremont Watches.


Schroders is a global investment and wealth manager, with a purpose to provide excellent investment performance to clients, through active investment management.

Bremont is an award-winning British company that produces beautifully engineered chronometers, designed to appeal to those who share the appreciation of a beautiful mechanical wristwatch.