The 2018 Hedge Fund Symposium

A CFALA & CAIA Sponsored Event

An Alternative Investments Group Event

Event Recording (Members-Only)


Hedge Fund Symposium

Join us for panel discussions on the outlook of the hedge fund industry and an update on the investment landscape. You'll hear a breadth of views from a panel of allocators and a panel of managers. We'll discuss the environment for hedge funds as a whole, which strategies are working and which ones seem to be challenged, whether regulatory changes are having an impact, and where hedge funds fit in a portfolio. This is an Alternative Investments Group Event, sponsored by CFALA and CAIA. Don’t miss our future events: Liquid Alts Symposium, Private Equity Symposium, Venture Capital / Fintech Symposium. Back To Top ^^


Panel 1: Allocators

MODERATOR:

Michael Nicks | Michael Nicks is the Director of Investments for Pepperdine University’s Endowment. He is responsible for the endowment’s hedge fund investments, including the portable alpha strategy and a diversifying portfolio of market-independent investments. In addition, he is responsible for modelling, quantitative analysis and special investment projects for the overall portfolio. In 2015, he was named one of Trusted Insight’s Top 30 University Endowment Investors in Hedge Funds. He began managing this portfolio in 2005, and has been with the University since 2003. In addition to his investment duties, Mr. Nicks has taught investments at Pepperdine, served as a senior grader for the Chartered Alternative Investments Analyst (CAIA) designation, and is a current member of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) Investor Steering Committee. Mr. Nicks earned his B.S. and M.B.A. (Finance) from Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business, and holds both the CAIA and CFA charters. Back To Top ^^



PANELISTS:

Katharine "K.C." Krieger, CFA | Katharine "K.C." Krieger is the Chief Investment Officer of The Broad Foundations. Working closely with founder Eli Broad and the foundations’ investment committee, she manages $2.5 billion in assets for The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and The Broad Art Foundation—as well as overseeing the Broad family’s personal investments. In this role, K.C. leads asset allocation, manager due diligence and investment selection across asset classes. Before joining Broad, K.C. was a senior consulting associate with Cambridge Associates, an investment advisor to non-profit institutions and high-net-worth families. K.C. is a CFA® charterholder and graduated with a B.A. in Economics magna cum laude from Colby College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, was a George F. Baker Scholar and received the Christian A. Johnson Award in Economics. K.C. and her husband live in Los Angeles with their three children.

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Lara Magnusen, CAIA | Lara Magnusen is a Senior Investor in J.P. Morgan’s Private Bank. Lara is responsible for advising, crafting, and implementing investment strategy for high net worth families, individuals, foundations, and privately held businesses. Lara previously served as a portfolio manager for several alternative investment mutual funds at Altegris Advisors where she was also the firm’s Head of Investment Strategy. Lara has eighteen years of investment experience, including her tenure as a junior portfolio manager for an LA-based credit hedge fund as well as her time as an analyst at Goldman Sachs & Co. Lara has been frequently quoted in several publications including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Investment News, and CNBC.

Lara is a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) and a member of several women’s investments groups. Lara has a BA in Economics with a minor in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley as well as an MBA from the University of California at San Diego. She is also an Advisory Board Member of the Unusual Suspects Theatre Company, a non-profit that provides arts enrichment to underserved communities. Lara, her husband, and two children, live in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.

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Robert Motoshige | Robert Motoshige is Director and Sector Specialist for the Fixed Income Relative Value strategy at PAAMCO. He is responsible for manager selection and portfolio construction within fixed income relative value, macro, and mortgage strategies. He is responsible for the creation of certain structured products at the firm. In addition, he also serves as the main point of contact for certain institutional investor relationships in Asia.

Prior to joining PAAMCO, Robert ran his own consulting firm, helping investment banks and hedge funds with research and due diligence. Prior to that, Robert traded Japanese Government Bonds at Morgan Stanley, and covered hedge funds as Asia Head of Hedge Fund Sales at Dresdner Bank.


Robert received his MBA from the University of California, Irvine and his BA in Economics from Stanford University. Robert enjoys travel, outdoor activities, and has lived on four continents.

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Panel 2: Managers

MODERATOR:

Eli Sokolov, CFA | Eli Sokolov is Managing Director at Cliffwater, LLC, and a member of the hedge fund research team. Prior to joining Cliffwater in 2007, Eli was a Senior Associate at MSCI Barra, where he conducted research in the areas of trading cost, securities analyst skill, real estate risk, firm valuation, and alpha forecasts. Eli earned a BA in Astrophysics and Economics with distinction from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA with highest honors from The Anderson School at the University of California, Los Angeles. Eli holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation and is a member of the CFA Institute and CFA Society Los Angeles. Back To Top ^^

PANELISTS:

Natalie Smith | Natalie Smith is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Arts & Sciences Investment Management, a recently launched, Los Angeles based hedge fund. Arts & Sciences employs a long short, fundamental investment approach, thematically investing across the capital structure with a deep cognizance for the macro path and narrative. Prior to Arts & Sciences, Ms. Smith was the Head of Business Development at Commonwealth Opportunity Capital – a $2.3bn discretionary global macro hedge fund with offices in Los Angeles, Greenwich, CT and London, UK. At Commonwealth, Ms. Smith oversaw the firms Business Development, Marketing and Investor Relations functions. Prior to Commonwealth, Ms. Smith worked in the Capital Introductions team within Morgan Stanley Prime Brokerage where she was responsible for the Continental European investor base and hedge fund relationship management within the prime brokerage division. Ms. Smith received a MA in Land Economy & Economics from St Catharine's College, Cambridge University.

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Seth Wunder, CFA | Seth Wunder founded black-and-white Capital LP in 2016 and is the sole portfolio manager. Before black-and-white Capital, Seth was a founding partner and portfolio manager at Contour Asset Management LLC, which managed the Manticore Fund. During the almost seven years of operating Contour, assets grew from roughly $500mn in AUM to over $1.5Bn in assets, in part due to returns. Contour was started in 2009 in partnership with both David Meyer and Brummer & Partners. Before the creation of Contour, Seth was part of the investment team within Brummer & Partners. Prior to joining Brummer & Partners, Mr. Wunder was one of the founding members of Tracer Capital Management LLC (“Tracer”), a hedge fund dedicated to investing in global equities within the TMT sector. Mr. Wunder’s main responsibilities included overseeing all investments within various sub-sectors of TMT including software, IT services, enterprise hardware and for-profit education. Prior to Tracer, Mr. Wunder spent several years as an analyst at both Oppenheimer Funds and Morgan Stanley Investment Management group, covering the broader enterprise technology landscape and some aspects of financial services. Mr. Wunder holds a B.S. in Applied Economics and Business Management from Cornell University.

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Lisa Wheatley | Lisa Wheatley is Partner, Senior Research Analyst and Portfolio Manager at Nicholas Investment Partners, which she joined in 2014. Lisa is the lead portfolio manager for Healthcare Opportunities. She also contributes to the investment team’s fundamental research and due diligence process as a specialist in the healthcare sector, given her extensive experience and contacts in medical devices, genetic testing and biotech. Previously, Lisa spent five years as Co-Head of M&A at Life Technologies Corporation, a NASDAQ-listed life science company with $14 billion in market capitalization, later acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific. In this role, she was responsible for analysis and recommendations of potential mergers, acquisitions, divestures, equity investments and other strategic partnerships for the management team thereby gaining valuable insight in the healthcare sector, especially genetic testing, drug discovery and development, and medical devices. Prior to that she was an Investment Analyst and Deal Originator at Silver Point Capital, an Associate at Tennenbaum Capital Partners, and an Associate with Oaktree Capital Management’s high yield research team. She started her career as an Analyst in J.P. Morgan’s Leveraged & Syndicated Finance Group. She earned a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Business Administration with a Finance concentration from the University of Richmond. Lisa has 16 years of investment experience. Back To Top ^^