YouSaid · the spoken record

Sam Masucci

lines on the record: 28
first: 2018-07-22
most recent: 2018-07-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“ETFMG.com. You'll find a listing of all of our funds and pickers. We have a dedicated sales and research team that is always happy to speak to anyone interested in learning more about our funds.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“is enough to apply AI to yet. I mean, we'll get there look, we launched in the US the first medical marijuana ETF, MJ, the $400 million fund that we launched at the end of the year. Even that one, when I think about what's being studied, there aren't that many global players in the space. It's going to grow because regulation continues to improve around it. But there it's about evaluating kind of local laws, regulations, consumer sentiment. I think at some point there will be an AI application there, but it's probably premature.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that will happen as these markets develop. Our whole business is about somatic investing. And thematic ETFs are about narrow concentrated slivers within industry groups. So we don't look at all technology. We look at those sectors of technology we think are the most interesting, fastest growing, whether it be gaming, cyber, mobile payment, Israeli technology. Those portfolios are anywhere from what I would say on the low side. 30 stocks on the high side, maybe 50 stocks, AIEQ is one of the larger. We have a socially responsible investing fund. That's larger. That's almost 400 stocks in it. But typically we're looking at very, very narrow exposures. And I just don't know the breadth of research and opportunities.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. Yes, it is. So there's a translation component to it. There is the geographic normality that it needs to pick up as if you had multiple portfolios of managers in each of these jurisdictions. Cassandra is doing. So yeah, it's very, very, again, it would be very, very difficult to replicate that in human form.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I think about then applying machine learning to it, I don't think it will replace indexing and I don't think it will replace all active managers, but it certainly is going to be a standard and a benchmark that investors are going to use to measure the performance of their funds, their non AI funds against. And artificial intelligence is already being used across many, many different portfolio managers. In the case of AIQ, that's unique in that everyday Botson and Equibot are sending us a trade tape on our portfolio team is executing on those buys and sells. So there really is no human intervention other than the actual portfolio execution. That makes it unique.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, I've been ETF space since 2004. I've been in the structured financial product space since the late 80s. And there has been a seismic shift in the way that people think about how they want to invest. It used to be that you paid up for a star manager. You were expecting that star manager was going to outperform the broad market, and that justified sometimes multiple percent or greater expense ratios. It was more black box and didn't offer the kind of intraday liquidity that ETFs now do. So I think that ETFs have really changed the investment landscape. They're highly liquid. They're highly transparent. They're highly tax efficient. And they're very cost efficient. And so it's difficult whether it's indexing or active in another wrapper.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That has been the base that they have operated off of. I compare it to, say, a house. So Watson serves as the foundation and the folks at Equibot then built the home or the portfolio model on top of that Watson Foundation.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, we're not AI specialists, so our partners in Jim Rogers and his team for Biker made the selection on how to best develop the machine learning portfolio model. In the case of Equibot, same kind of thing. So they were a licensee of Botson. They're under their user license program. And that's the way that model has been developed. But the model is continually evolving. I know that there are other players now, Google DeepMind is another kind of out-of-the-box participant for machine learning bases to build models on. And I know that Sheetah and his team also employ a very large team in India that is constantly improving upon the model. So it's not inconceivable at some point that they migrate from a IBM Watson model to their own.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Case by case, and that's really being done by our portfolio management team. So we're told on an index rebalance what the weightings and holdings are. We then, with our research and trading team, look at that position and come up with a best execution strategy.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a combination, so we'll buy the other ETF if it's cost efficient from an execution standpoint to do that. If not, then we can replicate the country ETF by buying the underlying.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's certainly not dynamic in that the frequency or the velocity of the trading is going to be less than a daily actively managed fund. But we're looking at country exposures, not individual company exposures. And so it seems like the right application for the type of exposure, the global macro exposure we're getting access to. And that certainly was Jim's approach.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Every 30 days rebalances at the end of the month, it just so happened that when we launched, that was 10 days after the initial launch. But then when you look at kind of what's been going on internationally, impacts of threats of Washington tariffs, certain concerns about other international events. And what I would call, I wouldn't say a cooling off outside the U.S., but clearly not growing at the rate the U.S. is, which is impacting some of these foreign markets, and that's what this model is saying. So we're going to go to cash, which really Freemostreas, and we're going to look for an opportunity to buyback in.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we did speak to Jim and his team about it. The fun. So that is a monthly rebalanced index. And it's event driven. And so 10 days after our initial launch was its first rebalance period. And Cassamandra, which is the name of its artificial intelligence bottle, decided to have a significant reduction in some international weighting. Because as a global macro with kind of a, if you think about like an MSCI earal world type of exposure, this is a model that's looking at optimizing global macro exposures across developed countries, but it's clearly an allocation model. So if it gets concerned about a particular market's drawdown, it will go to cash. Wait for that drawdown and use it as an opportunity to buy back in. And that's certainly what the model did when we rebalanced at the end of June.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've been talking to Equibot about a number of ideas. We do love the AI space. If you're not familiar with it, we launched our second AI fund a few weeks ago. And our partner there is Jim Rogers from Quantum Fame. That's a brand new fund. It also applies artificial intelligence. But in that instance, we have worked with Jim Rogers and his team to take what he's learned over a substantial and very successful investment career looking at global macro opportunities and applying that to their model. And so that's then our next artificial intelligence ETF opportunity, if you will. That one is a little bit different because that can go to cash and in fact has been increasing its cash positions.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the model is down, but the model was down significantly less than the SP because while it can't go to cash, it can certainly select for non-correlated assets. And there were assets that were non-correlated within the 6,000 names.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was most surprised about Preston was the breadth of the industries. So it's industry agnostic. It has texture instruments in there. Its second largest holding is Forest City, which is Arit. Amazon, Walmart, it has SEI in there, SEI Investments is a bank service company. So it really is not looking at one particular industry, but it's looking at the individual names. And I think that's another advantage that machine learning has because it's very difficult. applying deep learning to portfolio man”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're certainly looking at Sharp and other metrics for risk adjusted returns, but it's most interested in outperformance of the S&P with S&P medium to large cap type returns while doing it with less fall. So there are a number of statistic metrics.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they are looking to optimize a portfolio that starts with six thousand stocks. I will tell you that when we first launched, we had less stocks in the portfolio. It was somewhere between 50 and 75. But as the model has been developed and as it continues to learn from prior trading experience, we're finding that the optimal holding now is, like I said, 75 and 150 holdings out of this same universe.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. It is taking advantage of data and correlations of different bits of information that you and I would never see as valuable to a particular investment.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, what the folks at Equibot did is they first developed the machine learning capabilities and its application to equities, and then they loaded 20 years worth of data. They backfilled back into the group back testing. How would this have behaved in various markets with access to this information? And what they found was amazing. And if you think about it, 20 years ago, the information that was available was very different than the information that's available today. So they saw a positive correlation, not only with being able to review and benefit from these millions of pieces of information, but also as public access to information has grown by way of internet, blogs, just publicly available corporate information. They've noticed that the machine gets better. It certainly benefits. from access to greater information”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like I said, 100 to 150 stocks, and that's what it's owning. And even a room full of analysts would not have the ability to digest this information, properly rank the opportunity, and do it without any biases.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The industry. And so a great application of deep learning is to be able to funnel in a tremendous amount of this information. And even though these are U.S. companies, they're impacted by global events, both within their industries, competitive companies, trade tariffs, many, many things are impacting these individual names. And again, because this machine is able to review the portfolio on a daily basis, digest all this information, do it without any personal biases, because that's the other problem, no matter how qualified individuals are at portfolio management, they typically get married to names and they tend to, especially in certain market events, kind of drift away from fundamentals. And the machine doesn't do that. The machine clearly just looks at the 6,000 stocks, ranks them,”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can. I can give a cursory view. There's a great video that we put together with Equibot that's on the website that goes through what I would call the basics of machine learning and how the decision process works. But if you think about it, right, investing in any company and certainly portfolios of 100 or more companies requires the portfolio manager to look at as much information as possible that could possibly affect an individual company.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then it ranks them by way of investment opportunities because at the core, the belief is that most managers don't have the ability to just digest that kind of information on a daily basis. And in addition, they tend to get in late and get out early. Equibot is designed to be able to digest millions and millions of bits of information, buy in at the right time, sell at the right time. And that did require some market experience.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's intuitive, right? I mean, the machine and the portfolio was built on historical experience, but it didn't really start to learn in current markets until it started to trade every day as an active fund. This fund does trade, not every day, but pretty much every day. And so it clearly was learning from the prior day's experience, as well as absorbing a lot of information. The fund looks at and the machine looks at 6,000 stocks and it narrows that down to somewhere between 50 and 150 stocks. And the narrowing process is that it's looking at many, many millions of bits of information, whether it's social media, corporate reports, earnings, economic indicators, and the like, it factors that in across the 6,000 stocks.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“interest rate easing that had gone on and a lot of the stimulus. Now we're really seeing what happens when you start to allow both equity and fixed income markets normalize. And we're happy to say that AIQ has delivered really on that initial concept because it is outperforming the S&P. It is doing it with lower volatility. And it's been widely accepted by the investor public.”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Finance and portfolio management. So we were very excited to discover them, partner with them, and then launch the fund. We were looking to hit a very broad swath of the investor public. So most people have at least a portion of their money within S&P 500-like instruments. They're looking for that broad U.S. exposure. So what Chida and his group at Equibot had done is they looked at developing a portfolio that would offer S&P-like exposure with an outperformance after expenses and less volatility. And it's built on the IBM Watson platform and that it would then be launched and learned every day from different activities within the market. And this is an interesting time to be looking at the market because we really are in uncharted territories when it comes to things like”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Happy to do that. So we launched AIEQ with our partner Equabot back in mid October of last year. We had the benefit of being the first fully AI managed ETF to hit the market. So whatever possible we do like to have that first mover advantage. And we have looked at a number of different AI ideas prior to deciding to work with Equibot. What we really liked with that partner is that the principles, particularly the main principle, TETA, had spent more than 20 years in the artificial intelligence department at Intel. And so he really did have a tremendous background when it comes to machine learning and building models that are machine learning oriented in many, many applications and his focus for a number of years had been on”
2018-07-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP200: AI and Deep Learning with ETFs - Guest Sam Masucci from AIEQ (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT