Sir Paul Marshall
Chairman and CIO, Marshall Wace. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutiveauthor@areopagus123 ↗mwam.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Sir Paul Marshall co-founded Marshall Wace in 1997, building it into a prominent alternative asset management firm and pioneering the MW TOPS system. Beyond finance, he owns media outlets including The Spectator and UnHerd, supports philanthropic educational initiatives, and authored 10½ Lessons from Experience: Perspectives on Fund Management.
1shows
1appearances
35statements
6resolved
4supported
1contradicted
67%fully supported
Everything Sir Paul Marshall said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Fundamental managers beat systematic strategies during the Brexit and Trump shocks
“And the big advantage I would say that fundamental managers have over systematic investing generally is their ability to React quickly to a new paradigm. And so when you get a big event in markets, you're typically at least for two or three months. And we had …”
Fund manager failures almost invariably stem from character, not lost skill
“We have a long-term conviction that skill is persistent, that if somebody is good, They stay good. Unless, almost invariably, when it goes wrong, it's actually a character thing rather than a skill issue.”
China's 85% retail market offers better theoretical alpha than the US
“That leads you therefore to look at China as a better source of alpha, theoretically at least, than the United States. Which is the most professionalized market.”
Success ratios between 50% and 60% prove skill is statistically persistent
“If you begin to see that the individual not only Consistently delivers alpha, but their success ratio is consistently between 50 and 60%, so they're consistently getting it more right than wrong. There's a skew in there, and then you can look at how that works…”
Marshall Wace became Europe's largest hedge fund by constantly capping capacity
“And the paradox about Marshall Waste is we've grown to be the largest equity hedge fund in Europe, Because, in my opinion, we constantly closed. Because other people grew to be big and blew up. Because they were too big.”
Mainstream economics' excessive reliance on axiomatic thinking will ultimately become discredited
“Excessive belief in the power of reason and the excessive reliance on axiomatic thinking, which is what happens in the economic profession. Ultimately, because it's flawed, it will become discredited.”
Marshall: The US education system 'absolutely stinks' at equality of opportunity
“And by the way, I think the US education system absolutely stinks in terms of providing equality of opportunity, and Britain's in a better place on that.”
Sell-side broker portfolios generated substantial alpha in Marshall Wace's initial trial
“And much to my surprise, because I was pretty skeptical about it, I had the typical arrogance of a buy-side guy, They actually generated a lot of alpha.”
Systematic contributors outperformed internal fundamental managers during the COVID-19 pandemic
“But I would say in the coronavirus, actually, it's been the other way around. The tops contributors did better than our fundamental managers in reacting to COVID.”
Marshall: Marshall Wace optimizes portfolio construction and capital allocation to alpha, not returns
“The thing you're optimizing is not a return objective. It's an alpha objective. So it's the performance of those ideas against whatever the benchmark is. And you create information ratios and risk manage around the alpha. And for our managers, it's actually th…”
Paul Marshall: Few stock pickers hold over 20 high-conviction ideas
“My view is that most Managers, few managers have more than 10 or 20 high convictions at any one time.”
Marshall Wace's Eureka Fund generated 9% long alpha versus 3% short alpha
“And if you look at the long-term record of the Eureka Fund as a proxy, our long-term annualized alpha on the long side is about nine percent, and our short side about three percent.”
Marshall Wace was the second-largest disclosed short seller in Wirecard
“We actually just had one of our best ever experiences as a firm on the short side, which was Wirecard, where we were the second biggest disclosed short.”
Post-2008 monetary regimes made shorting weak companies significantly harder
“For the last 10 years, the monetary regime Means that companies can just, even today actually, raise capital at the drop of a hat. There's always capital to help to bail out weak companies. Whereas there was a time when, I think pre 2008 actually, when if a co…”
Paul Marshall: Crowded Shorts Signal Quality but Spike Squeeze Risk
“The irony, of course, is that a crowdedness of a short Is a sign that it's a good short. Ah, it's going to go down, because smart money thinks you should be short. But, crowdedness of a short causes it to be much more volatile in the market. And when you get t…”
Marshall Wace expects ESG strategies to be a rich source of alpha
“We launched an ESG fund, and that's a very exciting area, which we, having been pretty cynical about it as an alpha source, we now think actually it's going to be pretty alpha rich.”
Marshall: Beyond a critical mass threshold, fund size is a disadvantage
“Although you need a certain amount of size to have critical mass and pay the bills, beyond a certain level, size is most of the time a disadvantage. And so it's a sadness to me in a way that there are so many barriers to entry now and that it is getting more c…”
Hedge fund egos are worse in America where wealth equals worth
“It's a very, it's a pretty ego driven industry for management, especially the hedge fund. And I would say it's even worse in the U S than the UK, because in the U S people equate your wealth with your worth.”
Paul Marshall: Genuine classical liberalism requires committing to universal education equality
“If you don't really commit to trying to Make education work for everybody, then you're kind of a fake, in my view, in terms of being a traditional classical liberal.”
Marshall: Undervaluation alone is insufficient without a market catalyst
“It's never enough for me to just be looking at understanding a long-term undervaluation, you've got to have a catalyst which will draw people's attention to the valuation.”
George Soros provided half of Marshall Wace's $50M launch capital
“We raised fifty million dollars of rich half was from Soros.”
US equity retail participation fell from roughly 85% in 1907 to 15%
“I think the US has gone from in the 19 seventies, 50% retail to today, 15. And I think in 19 oh seven, it was something like 85% retail.”
China's stock market is 85% retail and 15% professional investors
“And China today, Is 85% retail and 15% professional.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Sir'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 | Chairman and CIO, Marshall Wace | 1 | 35 | 67% 4/6 | full record on Capital Allocators → |