Masters in Business

Ranji Nagaswami is chief executive officer of Hirtle Callaghan, a firm that helped popularize the idea of the outsourced CIO. Previously, she was co-head of U.S. fixed income at UBS Asset Management; she also was chief investment officer of Alliance Bernstein Investments, the group’s retail/mutual fund division, and served as chief investment adviser to the city of New York during the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (founder of Bloomberg LP). She discusses the agnostic approach to investing, considering everything from passive management on one end of the spectrum to alternative investments like private equity and venture capital on the other. Nagaswami, who has five women on her executive team, also explains why including women in leadership is important for investment firms, noting that extensive research shows that women are less emotional when it comes to portfolio management, make better decisions, and have better performance.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Matthew Rothman, the head of global quantitative equity research at Credit Suisse and a senior lecturer in finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He was hired a few years before the financial crisis hit to be the global head of quantitative research at Lehman Brothers (and then moved to Barclays Capital, following the Lehman bankruptcy). In the midst of the quant crash in 2007, he published “Turbulent Times in Quant Land,” which became the most highly distributed research note in Lehman’s history. He is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, and as an analyst often weaved song lyrics into his research notes.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews the fascinating Victor Niederhoffer, a nationally ranked squash champion and former Berkeley professor of finance and statistics. An undeniably brilliant man who was still unable to adequately manage risk, he offers crucial lessons for all traders. In his first book, "The Education of a Speculator," he reveals the risk-embracing style that created his first fortune. In his follow-up, "Practical Speculation," he almost -- but doesn’t quite -- accept responsibility for the prior disaster. It was published before the devastating second set of losses suffered during the credit crisis.

Not many strategists begin studying technicals in college, but that was the route Katie Stockton took. As an undergraduate at the University of Richmond, she studied graduate level coursework in technicals, eventually becoming an intern at technical analysis firm Dorsey Wright. Stockton discusses how the total volume of stock-market trading has fallen since the financial crisis. Is it algos or indexing or HFT causing the fall-off? Some combination of all of the above? She describes her favorite indicators (Trend, Fibonacci, etc.) and some of her not-so-favorites (Elliot Wave). As chief technical strategist for BTIG in New York City, she looks at the world as a top-down analyst, considering everything from interest rates to stock prices to economic indicators. But she keeps coming back to charts and the trend as the dominant factor driving all of her analysis. Her work led her to win the 2017 Best Institutional Brokerage for Equity Research at the 2017 Technical Analyst Awards.

 What happens when Paul McCartney asks, “What are you doing for the next few years?” For Lawrence Juber, you think about it for a nano second, before saying “I guess I am playing with you.”  The session guitarist, musicologist, former Wings guitarist and Grammy-award winning composer with 25 albums to his name describes rehearsing with Paul and Linda before their next tour. McCartney wanted to record some tracks, but his favorite studio, Abbey Road, was unavailable -- so he built an exact reproduction of Abbey Road inside his own studio. He explains how composers and performers get paid a meager amount from music streaming, and why the real money is in television and movie soundtracks. The music business model has changed from record sales to live performances and merchandise sales.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Steven Clifford. Compensation consultants are parasites, so says Steven Clifford, author of "The CEO Pay Machine: How it Trashes America and How to Stop it." Clifford is a former tech company chief executive officer who has grown disillusioned with the procedures and practices that serve no corporate purpose other than enriching the CEO and senior management. What was supposed to be pay for performance, he said, has become a scheme to transfer wealth from shareholders to insiders. 

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews  Ellen Zentner, the chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley. She explains why Texas came through the financial crisis so well, courtesy of its rainy day fund. Her career took her from the Texas Comptroller's office to Morgan Stanley, where she leads the North American Economics group. She said starting in government gave her time to think “deep thoughts” and develop her analytical approach. 

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Matt Wallaert, a behavioral scientist who works at the intersection of technology and human behavior. After several years in academia and two successful startups, he joined Microsoft, where he led a team of experts using technology to help people live happier, healthier lives. During his time with Microsoft, he was a director at Microsoft Ventures, the firm’s venture capital arm. He sits on the boards of a variety of startups and nonprofits. Wallaert and Ritholtz discuss the role of behavioral psychology in startups. This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Richard Clarida, a global strategic adviser for PIMCO and former assistant secretary of U.S. Treasury. His first day at the Treasury Department was Sept. 11, 2001, and he describes what it was like to start work during such a chaotic period. He also reminds us that during the financial crisis, many were originally concerned with a deflation scare. He gives the Fed high marks for crisis management during the Great Recession, but says that since the recovery has begun, it has been too slow to normalize and not very clear in its communications.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Rich Barton, the Microsoft engineer who developed Expedia while working for Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in the 1990s. Barton then co-founded real estate app Zillow and jobs site Glassdoor, and joined the board of directors at Netflix, where he remains to this day. Barton tells Ritholtz that his companies bring transparency to industries that have traditionally lacked it. “Power to the people” says Barton, is not a political slogan, but “a technological one.” This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Alan Shaw, founder of the Market Technicians Association and former managing director of the technical research department at Smith Barney, tells Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz that he's happy he's not working today: It's much more difficult to be a technician and be in institutional sales than it was when he was working.\u0010\u0010(Note: This is a podcast extra which will not air on Bloomberg Radio.)

Jesse Eisinger, the Pulitzer-winning journalist now working at ProPublica, tells Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz how the collapse of Arthur Andersen, Enron and WorldCom led to a neutered Justice Department. The title of his new book, "The Chickenshit Club," comes from a speech that then-Southern District U.S. Attorney James Comey gave to prosecutors saying that if they were never losing, they were only taking on easy cases. This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Ed Thorp, one of the most storied people in finance. A math professor at MIT and UC Ivine, Thorp figured out how to beat Las Vegas at blackjack and baccarat, created statistical arbitrage, and ran a hedge fund that not only beat the market by a wide margin, but never had a losing quarter. He is the author of several books, including "Beat the Dealer" and "Beat the Market"; his latest book is "A Man for All Markets." Thorp tells Ritholtz that the secret to beating the market is having an edge that's specific, definable and mathematical. If you don't, you should be in index funds instead. This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Duff McDonald, a journalist and author of two critically acclaimed books, "The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite" and "The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business." McDonald tells Barry Ritholtz why the elite institutions that feed into government, business and finance are broken, and what must be done to fix them. This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Chris Anderson, a co-founder and CEO of 3D Robotics, and the founder of DIY Drones. He was with the Economist for seven years before joining WIRED magazine as the editor-in chief. Anderson tells Ritholtz that the dot-com collapse masked the organic growth of the internet by real users. The innovations of the late 1990s are obvious at Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple, but there is a new crop of disruptive and innovative technologies coming up right behind them. This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Anindya Ghose, a professor of information, operations and management sciences as well as marketing at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, tells Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz that technology is changing things even more rapidly than we might have guessed only a few years ago. The future as envisioned in such science fiction films as Philip K. Dick’s “Minority Report” isn’t several decades away -- it's only two or three years away. And it is profoundly changing economies. This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Ned Davis, a senior investment strategist who founded the Ned Davis Research Group (NDRG). He is the author of "Being Right or Making Money" and "The Triumph of Contrarian Investing." This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Daron Acemoglu, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT. He is the recipient of several awards, including the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal. He is the co-author of "Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty" and among the most cited economists in the world. This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews William F. Sharpe, the STANCO 25 professor of finance, emeritus, at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Sharpe is a past president of the American Finance Association and received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1990. This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.

Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University. Professor Greene is world-renowned for his groundbreaking discoveries in the field of superstring theory, including the co-discovery of mirror symmetry and the discovery of spatial topology change. He is the director of Columbia’s Center for Theoretical Physics. This interview aired on Bloomberg Radio.