112: Fulcrum's Suhail Shaikh – Absolute Return Investing, Market Timing and The Role of Luck
Conversations with Institutional Investors
Release Date: 04/29/2025
128: MLC Asset Management's Dan Farmer – Active Management, Private Equity, AI and the Early Days at Telstra Super
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In this episode, I'm speaking with Dan farmer, who is the Chief Investment Officer of MLC Asset Management. We talk about Dan's early days managing an internal Australian equity portfolio and getting involved with derivatives at Telstra Super, almost straight out of university. We talk about some of his mentors, including Steve Merlicek, and the influence they've had on Dan's investment philosophy. We also touch on the merger between IOOF and MLC and the new capabilities this has brought to his team. __________ Follow the Investment Innovation Institute [i3] on Explore our library of...
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127: Frontier Advisors' Kim Bowater – Consultants in a Changing Industry, AI and Gender Diversity
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In this podcast, I’m speaking with Kim Bowater, who is the Director of Consulting at Frontier Advisors. Kim has spent 23 years at the firm and saw the asset consultant grow from a small advisory firm with just 13 people when she started in 2002 to the leading asset consultant it is today. She is one of the driving forces behind a number of key initiatives that have supported Frontier’s growth, including the establishment of a technology platform that allows clients to access research online and the initial set up of the retirement business. In this episode, we discuss how the continuously...
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126: Professor Scott Donald – Should Trustees Use AI?
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In episode 126, Scott Donald, Professor at the Faculty of Law and Justice of the University of New South Wales, breaks down how artificial intelligence is reshaping the work of superannuation trustees. Efficiency is the big draw, but legal and ethical risks mean trustees are moving carefully. AI is already embedded in parts of the finance sector, from document summarisation to risk management, yet its tendency to hallucinate and behave inconsistently remain serious hurdles. Scott explores where AI can genuinely add value and discusses its application to investment strategy, compliance and even...
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125: The Devolution of Neoliberalism – UTS Finance Department Roundtable
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In this special edition of the [i3] Podcast, in collaboration with the UTS Finance Department, we explore how the neoliberal model of economics, which largely ignored politics and focused on financial metrics, has eroded over time and made way for the rise of populism, which has exerted its influence on economies around the world. Why did the guardrails that neoliberalism provided slowly disappear and what are the consequences of this? Is there any model that will replace it? Political Economist Elizabeth Humphrys, Geopolitical Specialist Philipp Ivanov and UTS Industry Lecturer Rob Prugue...
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124: Fidelity's James Richards – Investing in Energy Transition Materials
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In this episode, I'm speaking with James Richards, Co-portfolio Manager of Fidelity International's Transition Materials Strategy. James runs a strategy that invests in stocks of companies that are exposed to materials that will play a crucial role in the energy transition. And it's not all about copper or lithium. James keeps his investment universe wide and includes commodities, such as animal fats and wood chips. We discussed the spike in rare earth materials earlier this year. We also look at why this is a super-cycle, but unlike the previous, China-led one. And finally, we explore...
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123: Cbus' Linda Cunningham – Pricing Risk in Debt Investments, Private Credit and the Impact of Retail Investors
Conversations with Institutional Investors
Note: This episode was recorded before the release of ASIC's Private Credit Surveillance Report 820. The ASIC report mentioned in the podcast relates to the Private Credit in Australia Report 814, released in September 2025. In this episode of The [i3] podcast, I'm speaking with Linda Cunningham, who is the Head of Debt and Alternatives for Cbus Super. We talk about some of Linda's core beliefs when it comes to debt investing, including the banking 101, to be very careful when borrowing short and lending long at the same time. We discuss the importance of cash flows and ensuring the ability of...
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122: Fidelity's Maroun Younes and James Abela – SMIDs in a World of Large Cap Dominance, Are Things About to Change?
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In Episode 122 of the [i3] Podcast, Conversations with Institutional Investors, we speak with Maroun Younes and James Abela, co-portfolio managers of the Fidelity Global Future Leaders strategy, about the attractiveness of small and mid-cap investments, a $12 trillion market with significant growth potential. They acknowledge the recent underperformance of small caps due to market concentration in large caps, particularly in US tech, but point out that people are starting to wake up to the risks associated with those concentrations. Are we in an AI bubble, driven by these large caps? The...
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121: JANA's Mary Power – Offices Market Woes, Liquidity and Blended Approaches to Property
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In this episode of the [i3] podcast, I'm speaking with Mary Power, who is the Head of Property Research at asset consultant Jana. We cover the struggles of the property market in the early 90s, when Mary started out in the industry, and the learnings from that time. We take a look at how investors have dealt with 13 consecutive rate rises, starting in 2022 and we cover portfolio construction issues, including blending listed and unlisted property assets, the convergence of real estate and infrastructure, while Mary also predicts that up to 50% of Australian property money might be reallocated...
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120: Stanford University's Ashby Monk - The Future of the Pension Industry
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In this episode, I speak with Ashby Monk, who is Executive & Research Director at Stanford Long-term Investing, a part of Stanford University in California. Ashby has been advising most of the large superannuation funds in Australia on governance, organisational efficiency and knowledge management. He is a regular visitor to our country, and has been here 55 times. We discuss the future of the superannuation industry and the role of innovation. Unsurprisingly, this means that we spend a fair amount of time talking about artificial intelligence and the changes it might bring to the...
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119: Janus Henderson's Richard Brown – Small Caps in a Concentrated World
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In this episode of the [i3] Podcast, I'm speaking with Richard Brown, who is a Client Portfolio Manager with Janus Henderson Investors. And today we are going to talk about global small caps. We look at whether small caps are affected by the increasing concentration of the equity markets, particularly in the US, where technology stocks have dominated returns in recent years. We talk about catalysts for unlocking the current small cap discount versus large caps, including the rate environment and the current business cycle. And we take a look at a few case studies of where to invest and where...
info_outlineSuhail Shaikh is Chief Investment Officer of Fulcrum Asset Management and is the portfolio manager of Fulcrum’s Discretionary Macro and Diversified Absolute Return strategies. In today’s incredibly volatile environment of tariff wars and deglobalisation, investors tend to be more sensitive about the level of their absolute returns, than their performance against the benchmark. In this episode, we delve into the philosophy of absolute return investing, we talk about the role of skill versus luck, the use of Nowcasting, learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic and the ever controversial topic of market timing. Enjoy the show!
02:00 Started off working on the intranet and taught myself HTML
02:30 Internship at Goldman Sachs
03:30 A lot of well-known global macro traders made their money during equity market crashes
05:00 If you are constantly looking for the next accident, then 90 per cent of the time you are wrong. It is important to make money while the sun is still shining
10:00 Crisis risk offset and momentum during COVID
13:30 Leaving the model aside
15:00 Using Nowcasting for analysis
18:30 AI has been more useful to us in portfolio construction, risk management, scenario analysis and stress testing. I’m more sceptical about AI being helpful in alpha generation.
22:30 Behavioural finance and Fulcrum paper: ‘Don’t Bet the Ranch’
23:30 To determine whether someone is skilled or lucky, look at the number of views they take over time
31:30 Sizing [trades] is a complex topic
33:00 The role of dynamic asset allocation
34:00 “The biggest accidents in asset management happen when, in a draw-down, people don’t know whether they are benchmarked or absolute return”
35:00 “Dynamic asset allocation is market timing”
40:00 Global Macro and the Magnificent Seven
42:00 Bitcoin and momentum strategies
44:30 Some clients explicitly prohibit us from investing in Bitcoin
The paper "Don't Bet The Ranch: Hit ratios, asymmetry and breadth" can be found at: https://fulcrumasset.com/insights/investment-insights/dont-bet-the-ranch-hit-ratios-asymmetry-and-breadth/
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