YouSaid · the spoken record

Ed Perks

lines on the record: 63
first: 2026-03-06
most recent: 2026-03-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, I think the desire would be to tune out that noise, to largely ignore it. But the reality in markets, those examples that you've given drove some pretty significant movements, even if just for a short period of time, I would use the major banks, those that are more focused on issuing credit cards as an example yesterday and stock price activity. Last week, maybe some of the large defense contractors, how they were impacted by some of the announcements, those are some pretty significant swings that we do have to pay attention to and do have to think about whether or not there's the opportunity. But I think if you can step back, think about it a little bit more rationally. Clearly, we want to engage and get the insights from our dedicated.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reactive components of risk. And we do think right now policy matters a lot. And it might be fiscal policy, monetary policy. Regulatory policy, but we're reminded almost on a daily basis now that there's a lot of other factors, foreign policy, geopolitical risk, that certainly influence markets. It doesn't mean we're going to make wholesale changes to the portfolio, but being able to engage and get our investment team focused on where opportunities might be is a big part of the day-to-day role.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, we really think there's kind of two components to what we need to do. And, you know, one I would put in is more kind of where we can be proactive. It's the extent to which we think there's risk on the equity side of markets, credit risk in markets, or macro or interest rate risk. Those are the three kind of big risk components that we actively try to think about. I would say that sets our kind of compass for how we want to allocate the assets. And even though over long market cycles, we may be pretty equally split between fixed income and equity assets in our strategy at times, even in the last five years. That's been $75, $25 one-way, and then flipped the other way. So there is a tremendous amount of latitude. And then I think on a date more daily kind of basis, certainly something that we're experiencing in pretty good dose to start the year, is those more”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I would say that's actually kind of our ideal situation. And we are in that today. I think there was a lot of a long period of time post-financial crisis 2008-9 where almost the intent of the policy was to eliminate large sectors and the fixed income markets from being attractive to investors. Tina, right? Exactly. I really kind of viewed today and the bond market being back was announced pretty loudly in 2022. So today the fact that we can look across the swath of fixed income markets and find interesting areas, it may be more income focused, i.e. if we're not expecting a significant downtraft in interest rates, the total return potential from fixed income might be more muted, but they can play a really interesting role in generating that kind of stable core part of total return that we expect income to be.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, fundamentally, you're just doing a different type of analysis. And I mean, one of the things that we found kind of most fascinating over the years is given we have an internal team of equity analysts and an internal team of credit analysts, that opportunity when you're meeting with company management and you'll sit down with both analysts and companies typically come to investors thinking they're on an equity roadshow or a fixed income roadshow. And when you sit down and now you want to talk about it from both perspectives, that's some of the most interesting meetings we've had over the years with companies. They, in fact, do have kind of different stories for those different investor groups. So I think it gives you that broader perspective of what the capital allocation decision-making process looks like at a given company and ultimately what we're doing is trying to figure out what money they will have, i.e. what our margins, how are profits growing and what they'll do with that capital.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can pursue investing in convertibles, which are hybrids, which have fixed income characteristics and have an equity tie as well, and seek out investments that have the potential for positive asymmetry. So securities where with a given time horizon and a certain move in the underlying common stock, you'll do better on the upside than you will get hurt on the downside. And it was just something that really appealed to me, and I think is a core component of what we've done historically and tried to do in our multi-asset income strategies.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the first thing was really kind of understanding who you are as an investor. And I'm a pretty firm believer in this. Over time, I came to understand that I like a certain type of investing. I like buying things that trade at reasonable valuations that might not have an immediate catalyst, but something that you can look out over a longer period of time by having that longer-term investment horizon, income naturally became something you'd focus on in terms of just thinking about it from the standpoint of getting paid to wait while your investment kind of performs the way you think it has the potential to. So that's something that certainly started to resonate at the early part of my career. But I would say actually getting involved in convertible securities was a pretty significant defining moment for me in that”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think it was a key component of it. I really was drawn to early days. I was drawn to the different type of analysis that you would perform based upon the kind of company you were following or industry you were following. And we did have a broad cross-section of strategies managed at Franklin. So as an analyst following companies, you kind of always had something to pitch a given portfolio manager on. And that was something that really attracted me. So whenever we had some movement in the group or growth adding resources in a certain area that was interesting, I kind of was inclined to put my hand up. And that led to a lot of the progression of the career. Ultimately, moving out of the analyst role in 1997 and taking on the duties of portfolio manager for that dedicated Franklin convertible securities fund.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And that was premature, but there were still plenty of time to go in it. But it was a very exciting time to be out there, not just in the tech community, but thinking about some of the regional investment banks, Montgomery Securities and Hamburg and Quist and Stevens. So you had a lot happening. The economy as a whole, I'd say, at that time was far more diversified than it is maybe today, obviously. Technology is such a dominant player within Northern California.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that did plant a little bit of the seed. And I knew I had work to do to kind of prepare myself for a role ultimately in pursuing research. And after about a year and a half and taking one of the CFA exams, I was able to get that junior role as a research analyst in the Franklin Equity team.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think at the time I maybe hoped that it was a bit more of a typical stocks for Jock's kind of class. And in fact, it was not.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, when I loaded the car up on Long Island, I drove a small Mississippi Mirage hatchback across country, no satellite radio, right? No air conditioning. No cell phones. So it was a different time, but got out to California, really had the thought that I might experience the West Coast for a year and a half or two years and make my way back to New York and get the real job, so to speak. And I was really fortunate to land at Franklin at a time of just tremendous growth, not just in the industry, but for our firm overall. I actually joined the original Franklin funds prior to the Templeton merger. Yeah. Wow. So that certainly dates me and makes me, I guess, a little OG. So I think what was really interesting, and I landed at first and took a role in marketing research. I knew very little about the industry structure, and I wanted to learn. And it gave me a great cross-section of different investment strategies. I had taken.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it certainly wasn't finance. And, you know, at Yale, I really kind of certainly had a broad cross-section of studies like many of my classmates. I think if it wasn't med school, it was either law school or going into government. I think that's kind of some of what I was thinking during school really didn't transition to trying to pursue a career in finance until actually after I graduated. And at that time, I moved out west. I wanted to experience a different part of the country, particularly in the early 1990s, the San Francisco Bay Area had a pretty robust financial services community. And so I headed out after graduation without a job and was able to land at Franklin.”
2026-03-06 · Masters in Business · Franklin Templeton's Ed Perks on Fixed Income Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source