Damien Bisserier
Managing Partner & Co-CIO, Evoke Advisors. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Damien Bisserier spent nine years at Bridgewater Associates advising major institutional investors before co-founding ARIS Consulting and Evoke Advisors alongside Alex Shahidi. He is best known for implementing risk-parity asset allocation frameworks and co-creating the RPAR Risk Parity ETF.
1shows
1appearances
20statements
2resolved
2supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Damien Bisserier said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Bisserier: The traditional high-fee wealth management model is no longer sustainable
“Allocating to active equity managers and muni bonds. That is not going to justify the fees in our industry, which are frankly too high. Especially now that assets are all time highs and interest rates are near zero. You're almost taking the entirety of the yie…”
Bisserier: Most hedge funds fail to hedge, lock up capital, and overcharge
“There's alpha, which we really refer to as hedge funds that actually hedge. Most hedge funds don't. Most hedge funds give you more like the first category and they charge high fees and they lock you up.”
Bisserier: Leveraged credit fails to provide true diversification against equities
“Risk parity in our mind is not just holding a bunch of line items at similar risk because a simple example is credit is if you hold credit in a leveraged fashion, you could make it have a similar risk level to equities, but it actually performs very similar to…”
Bisserier: Japan shows low-yield bonds deliver attractive returns via steep curves
“There are historical examples in Japan, for example, where yields have been low for a long time. And returns have actually been quite attractive because you've had persistently steep yield curves. And as you've rolled down the yield curve, you get the yield pl…”
Bisserier: Bridgewater's win rate on trades was 55% to 60%
“Bridgewater's success rate with any given trade in a given year was 55 to 60%.”
Bisserier: Capital outflows make now a good time to enter reinsurance
“And now all the capital's leaving, it's probably a good time to come back into the space.”
Bisserier: Most investment success is driven by luck rather than skill
“I think skill or success in investing isn't something you can measure over short timeframes. People love to attribute success to skill. Most of your success, sorry to break it to the listeners, is probably a function of luck. And some skill, but there's a lot …”
Bisserier: Alex Shahidi was among Bridgewater's most sophisticated institutional clients
“In fact, at Bridgewater, I would say he was one of our most sophisticated investors, including all the sovereign wealth funds and pension plans that we worked with.”
Bisserier: Ray Dalio sought to hire Alex Shahidi after an initial meeting
“Early on, he was meeting with Ray in our office in Westport, and afterwards, Ray grabbed me in the hallway and said, that guy I was talking to, he's got good common sense, we should hire him, which is about the most positive thing I've ever heard from Ray afte…”
Bisserier: Most investment portfolios lack true diversification during crises
“If you think about most investment portfolios, they have lots of line items, but those line items are actually very closely related, particularly in really bad environments like 2008 or Q one of 2020. And so in practice, investors don't have that much diversif…”
Bisserier: Balanced index achieves 1% rebalancing premium over underlying components
“What we found is that the average portfolio return is about a percent higher than the average returns of the components. And that comes from a rebalancing benefit that you're consistently buying assets that have fallen in the process of rebalancing and selling…”
Bisserier: Very few investors can truly hold through market downturns
“And so a lot of people have this philosophy that I can hold through the bad periods, but in practice, very few can. And you end up with the very worst outcome if you have a client or an investor that sells at the lows and changes course.”
Bisserier: Reinsurance losses can be equity-like, triggering investor capitulation
“In the case of reinsurance, the losses can be equity like, and they're different and people don't, they're not as familiar with that. They're less likely to hold on.”
Bisserier: Inexpensive near-zero debt creates a major market mispricing
“I'd say also that there is a major mispricing in markets that exist today in the sense that debt is very inexpensive. It's pretty close to zero to borrow, and private strategies utilize that to their benefit.”
Bisserier: Evoke-ARIS requires hedge fund managers to be their own largest investors
“So we specifically look for managers that are their own largest investors, that close their strategies, that are not distracted by other businesses, that are terrified of losing money”
Bisserier: 2020 quant hedge funds fell 20-40% while discretionary gained 50-100%
“You have really well-respected, very well-resourced organizations in the quantitative space that are down 20, 30, 40%, and then you have discretionary managers who are up 50, 60, 70, 8000% this year.”
Bisserier: Evoke-ARIS buys healthcare royalties and explores affordable housing bonds
“For instance, right now I'm looking at affordable housing bonds, which is a very unfollowed space, but actually has the potential to generate very attractive tax exempt yields, or earlier this year we did healthcare royalties.”
Bisserier: Evoke-ARIS leverages client relationships to access exclusive venture funds
“Access too is very helpful if we have some clients who are in the venture space and those funds would be otherwise inaccessible to us, but we can leverage that relationship to gain access.”
Bisserier: Evoke-ARIS prefers investment managers who do not market at all
“I'd say we are more attracted to the managers that don't market at all, that just do what they do at the highest possible level, and that we get referred to by, as I said, clients or friends or other investors that we respect.”
The other half of the tape: Damien Bisserier's own voice is left out of every number here. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Statements about Damien Bisserier, by other people (1)
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Damien's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Managing Partner & Co-CIO, Evoke Advisors | 1 | 20 | 100% 2/2 | full record on Capital Allocators → |