FYI: (Slide mouse to 17:55 minutes for Mary Ellen Stanek interview.)
M* Nominee For 2019 Fund Manager Of The Year:
Mary Ellen Stanek
Baird Asset Management
Manager Tenure: 20 years
Stewardship is the centerpiece of Mary Ellen Stanek’s approach to investment management. Over her 35-year career (including two decades at Baird), Stanek has been a staunch advocate for low fees, circumspect capacity management, and incentives to encourage analysts' career development.
Stanek and her team’s disciplined process of security selection and sector rotation might look staid in comparison to more-complex strategies plied by some rivals, but it shines in part because of these efforts. This team invests only in areas where it believes it can construct thorough investment ideas, which has led it to avoid some thornier sectors of the bond market used by some competitors. Low fees, however, disincentivize outsize risk-taking and facilitate nuanced research within the team’s core areas of expertise: corporate credit, asset-backed securities, and mortgage-backed securities. Meanwhile, Stanek’s commitment to employee development and Baird’s employee-ownership structure foster a tight-knit team culture with little turnover. These attributes have enriched the team’s investment process over time and facilitated the funds’ strong long-term performance.
Stanek’s willingness to stick to her knitting, foster a team culture, and add depth to team’s core areas of competence is uncommon and commendable
Episode Info
On the first day of interviews from the Morningstar Investment Conference, Chuck covered a wide range of subjects with five different experts, highlighted by Brian Levitt of OppenheimerFunds, who was bullish on the domestic and emerging markets, but realistic about the upcoming election year posing potential problems. Still, he noted that investors should not be swayed by election-related news, as 'Hating the government is not an investment strategy.' Also on the show, Tom Lydon of ETFTrends doing a live variation on his ETF of the Week, Mary Ellen Stanek of Baird Funds, Rich Woodworth of PGIM Investments, and Kristen Mierzwa of FTSERussell.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/moneylife-with-chuck-jaffe/e/60580942?autoplay=true
