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New Managers June 2016

PROFESSIONALS NEED ONLY APPLY: The intangibles

 

In previous columns, I've encouraged you to attend conferences and events. In order to help you sort out the many events that now exist in ourindustry, I've added to my column an occasional review of the highlights of some of the conferences I've recently attended.

Today's column highlights what I saw and heard at the BattleFin Discovery Day event, which was held on the Intrepid Sea,Air & Space Museum on June 15thin NYC.

BattleFin is a platform that sources, evaluates and allocates money to emerging managers. It operates as a competitive platform, and scores emerging managers based on their ability to consistently generate alpha. It also helps "incubate" the managers by continually monitoring their risk and by holding small,exclusive events of no more than 150 people.

What struck me about the event was the focus of both the speakers and the side bar conversations. It wasn't about alpha. It wasn't about trading or even about trading risk. It was about the "intangibles":

People buy people Frank Pusateri, co-founder of CTAExpo: "There's no logical way to pick 1,2,3,4 traders out of 1,000. You have to look for reasons to say "No" and, unfortunately, they're easy to find. Managers think investors buy track records, words on a piece of paper, statistics and performance. But the reality is... people buy people. "

The emotional effect of information determines the buying decision

Bryan Johnson, marketing guru from Johnson & Company, spoke to the issue of information overload and exactly what kind of information investors want. Don't give investors a history lesson, he says. They already know what's happened in the markets. What they don't know is what you're about, what you see happening now and what you believe will happen in the future.Speak to the present, don't regurgitate the past. Imagine three buckets; the first o......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.
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