Sanjay Ayer, Portfolio Manager and Co-Head of Research at WCM Investment Management, describes the firm's internal tooling built to systematically capture and analyze investment decision data.
0:00 / 1:04exact quote · 64.1s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And one major initiative we actually completed recently to address this feedback quality problem in investing is building out a fully fledged proprietary journaling app that's custom made for investing. And so we've long here at WCM had a journaling culture to help create that raw material for learning. But it was highly scattered. Think Evernote journals, Excel spreadsheets, who knows, sticky notes. And we decided if we really wanted to be serious about high quality, high signal feedback, we needed to really step up and centralize this raw material for learning. So we spent a lot of time, a lot of money building an application. We called Project Everest that centralizes all this learning, raw material, and provides a really easy user interface for analysts to enter your entries. And eventually do analytics on this data over time. And so, you know, really everything we do and all decisions we make, not just buys and sells, but passes, random predictions we make in the office, it's logged in there and tagged with a whole host of custom tags that we've created.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Sanjay Ayer
Insight
Ayer: Long-Termism Is Sometimes a Lazy Crutch for Asset Managers
“Oftentimes playing the long game is the right strategy, the market's myopic, stick to your knitting, but there are occasions where long-termism is a lazy crutch.”
Sanjay AyerOct 27, 2025▶ 6:35Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Insight
Ayer: Wall Street Sector Specialists Fall Into Echo Chambers Blinding Them
“In this market, it's been fun because we are viscerally exploiting or have been the specialist trap, where if you're an industry Wall Street specialist, you've looked at the same industry for 15 years, you're in an echo chamber talking about Peer analysts, man…”
Sanjay AyerOct 27, 2025▶ 34:13Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Insight
Learning the right lesson at the wrong time compounds investment underperformance
“Actually the worst possible outcome, in my view, is learning the right lesson at the wrong time. At least in the medium term, you'll end up compounding the mistake you just made and drag out a hundred performance for many years.”
Sanjay AyerFeb 5, 2024▶ 51:52Sanjay Ayer – Think Different and Get Better at WCM (EP.366)
AssertionSupported
Ayer: Discount Retailer Action Cracked Germany Where Global Peers Failed
“Even the areas like Germany, where no global retailer has had success, they've been able to crack that market.”
Sanjay AyerOct 27, 2025▶ 27:20Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Opinion
Ayer: Financial Analysts Covering 3i Group Do Not Understand Retail
“Three Eye Group is a financial company covered by financial analysts who don't really understand retail for the most part.”
Sanjay AyerOct 27, 2025▶ 27:47Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Insight
Ayer: Industry Incentives Push Asset Managers to Hug Benchmarks and Coast
“Every incentive today is to Enter preservation mode, become benchmark hog, coast on the brand, and now it's really about staying true to who we are, and being different, and getting better, and serving others.”
Sanjay AyerOct 27, 2025▶ 58:02Mike Trigg and Sanjay Ayer – The Discipline of Getting Better at WCM (EP.467)
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 700 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.