YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeffrey Sherman

lines on the record: 117
first: 2024-05-30
most recent: 2024-05-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“If they just weren't available. Well, they weren't available at those prices anymore. That's for sure. So the difference is when you buy them at par, it's a lot different than buying at 50.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, actually, the bulk of that period transpired at TCW. So the 2708 for sure. But even in 09, even 09, there was still, this was kind of the bounce back, as we all know, the lows were in March of 09. But what you found was that we left in December of 2009. At that point, things were starting to have more clarity. Now, massive uncertainty in the world. And there's the old adage that investors fight the last war. Always. They're still fighting the last war, right? Every time.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I have a degree in financial engineering, and I took one accounting course. Right. And so the statement analysis never made sense to me. It still doesn't, you know?”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I've had a lot of roles throughout my career, even though it's a very narrow team, right? Instead of worked at the same folks forever, you know, I've trafficked in a lot of markets. I mean, at one point, I worked for a guy that wrote a very similar piece on commodities. And so we created commodity products. We ran those for a few years. Again, as I said, we've worked in asset allocation. I've helped build a lot of our quantitative strategies. We run at Double Line as well. And so it's not just me. I have a good team around me too. And so I've always been able to surround myself with people who can think about these ideas. And I'm a really kind of big picture folks, but it can also get into the minutiae. And so, not shockingly, I like quants, right? I feel like we vibe. You know, we can get together, but I like the way that the quants think, you know, and so I've never, I struggled when I took the CFA exam, not with the whole curriculum, but obviously the accounting.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's sequential. You know, I started as a quant, and then you get these corporate titles as things go along. But ultimately, I liked being on the Fort Flow management side. And so devising strategies, coming up with ideas, and trying to figure out different ways to execute them. That was always of interest. And so I worked a lot on the asset allocation side.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As I was doing like risk analytics and working to help support some of the marketing staff and do that, I gravitated to that side of the business a little bit. So my goal was to work for Mr. Gunn. Like I did not on day one, but I always felt that like there was something in there just analyzing returns, looking at the history, looking at the team. And my goal was to try to get on that team and effectively I did.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. I mean, in the middle of it, obviously, we had 9 11. You had all kinds of crazy stuff that happened in the world. And so I've noticed that the people that came a few years after me tend to be more risk-takers, right? Where we were a little bit more risk-verse. So I think there's this anchoring of when you start one's career sometimes, of how you get into a side of the business. Now, obviously, we can redefine ourselves, right? But I do think that there is something to be said about that. So again, this was a world where interest rates, you know, you got paid, unlike the last time we were here talking, right? When we had that true financial repression for like 12 years. And so there was something that was interesting about it. And inherently, it's more mathematical in nature. And so...”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he was a lot older than me. He was not a kid at the time, too, but he definitely had Gravitas around the firm. And I think there's something about finance, too, that you get defined into your roles as a function of essentially your entry point in the industry. And so I've noticed that. Me coming in 2001, think about it. Not really a great equity market.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my first job was there, and I've worked with the same crew effectively ever since. So that was in 2001, early then. And then ultimately I've been working with the same team around me for about 25 years now”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was. It was. So when I was in the master's program require an internship as part of it, and I got it at Trust Company to the West. So TCW. Oh, and so.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's finance in a nutshell, right? So definitely, you know, again, that's just being young and naive as well. But you should always gravitate to some of your internal skill set. And that's what I did. But I think the people who told me that you can always do stuff with the math degree, but I also really curse them for a while is not tell me what that exactly was. And by the way, when I heard you can become an engineer, I never wanted to drive a train, right? And so no one ever told me what an engineer was actually doing. It's that the definition of engineer is using math to solve problems. Exactly. Right. Real world problems. And so I don't know if financial engineering holds up as well because I don't know if the real world problems, but I definitely know there are problems there and there are things we can help in the world by doing so.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And also, it was something that I was always kind of gifted with, right? The math came easier. The reason I became a math major, Barry, is that I actually disliked reading by the time I got to college. It was really, and obviously think about it finance, never have to read, right? We don't have to read anything in there. But I was actually floored by when I got my first job as an intern and the amount of reading that I had to do in a given day. And I was like, wow, you know, I chose math because it was very simple. It came natural. It was like, you know, you read a couple pages, you do some problems, it's over. I don't have to read, you know, hundreds of pages of a novel. But very quickly, I learned that you definitely have to read day in, day out.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which again, I didn't have a lot of exposure to these prestigious universities and didn't know about a lot of this. And so I was looking like a Carnegie Mellon the like. So I ended up going back to a school in LA called Claremont. And they had a financial engineering program there. And so I was always concerned, well, I haven't studied accounting finance over the time. And the advisor there gave me some great advice and we can teach mathematicians finance. We can't always teach finance majors math. And so funny. It's so true. There is something about it. It's an easier transition. I won't say you can't teach them. It's just the finance was a lot easier when you studied a lot of math for a long time. And the applications were absolutely directly applicable.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what it was, so as I said, with applications, there's many applications of math. And the usually obvious one is physics. And I really hated physics. I never really liked physics. And it was just something that didn't intrigue me. So I spent a lot of time in probability and statistics, which probability is very wonky. People think they're the same. They're completely different, absolutely different fields. But I've done a lot of econometrics and things like that. And so from the standpoint of statistics, that was one of my specialties in addition to calculus. And so really I was focused on applied during the route of differential equations and calculus-based stuff. And at the time, this was the late 90s. Obviously, quants were becoming bigger and bigger part of the financial industry. And so there was starting to become these programs on like financial math and more applied. Usually it was like a University of Chicago.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I realized the repetition, the redundancy, also the lunacy of trying to babysit teenagers. And so I was very turned off by it. And so that was actually the transition too to applied mathematics to try to find a different career. And what they don't tell you about applied mathematics is you can apply it to things, but it's not blatantly obvious what said application is. And so effectively, by the time I became a senior, I didn't really know what I wanted to do and time was rolling around and I really hadn't applied for a job. So the natural thing was, well, let's just stay in academia. And so that's what I did. I actually started off in a PhD in applied mathematics. And I like to say I'm a dropout. I didn't really see the path of becoming a professor at the, you know, kind of at the university level because, again, I still felt there was that redundancy and it just didn't, it didn't seem to.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, but also, like, there's a lot of overlap between philosophy and a pure mathematician as well. And again, it comes down to logic and the deduction of arguments. But you moved to applied mathematics. I did. And I did looking for something different. And I just didn't see much there. And further to that, I was on the track to become a teacher. So I thought, you know, hey, I'll be a high school baseball coach, high school teacher. Seems interesting. And I have to think the university for forcing us to go actually sit in classrooms. And so, and I don't mean attending class for your own education, but I meant if you want to teach, you have to go to the local school.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, prior to going to graduate school, I was looking at becoming a teacher. Everybody told me that if you get a degree in mathematics, the world's your oyster. And I didn't really see it, to be honest, originally. Really? Because I started off in what was the discipline of pure mathematics. So pure mathematics for the uninitiated is essentially proving everything you've already learned. And so you go back and you have to go back to the basics and the principles. And it's just a lot of logic at the end of the day. And trying to make that connection to how to be employed, very difficult, especially for a 1920-year-old who has no clue what's out there in the world.”
2024-05-30 · Masters in Business · Jeffrey Sherman on a Mathematician's Journey Into Finance · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source