🔊 STS 017 – Wes Gray: Don’t try too hard, have a long horizon, be patient and trust the process

Wes Gray after serving as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps earned an MBA and a PhD in the finance from the University of Chicago where he studied under Nobel Prize Winner Eugene Fama. He worked as a finance professor at Drexel University. He then found Alpha Architect — a research-intensive asset management firm with a focus on high-conviction value and momentum factor exposures. In this interview, we talk about why it’s so important to have a process, trust it, be patient and to have a long-term investment perspective. Wes explains that no strategy works all the time and that pain is always a part of successful investing.

In this episode

• Who’s Wes?
• What’s the mission of Alpha Architect?
• How the military background drives certain character traits that are useful in the investing world?
• What does Wes think of the efficient-market hypothesis?
• Why would even God get fired as an active investor?
• What is the main difference between Systematic Investing vs Discretionary Investing?
• Why people are so poor at decision making when it comes to investing?
• How can we use experts in a better way?
• Do you think it’s possible to replicate value investing using quantitative approach?
• What does Wes think about passive investing
• Is it worth to try an active investing approach?
• What is factor investing?

People mentioned in this episode

• Eugene Fama
• Gary Antonacci
• Benjamin Graham
• Warren Buffett
• Peter Lynch
• Tobias Carlisle

Wes Gray (Bio)

After serving as a Captain in the United States Marine Corps, Dr. Gray earned an MBA and a PhD in finance from the University of Chicago where he studied under Nobel Prize Winner Eugene Fama. Next, Wes took an academic job in his wife’s hometown of Philadelphia and worked as a finance professor at Drexel University. Dr. Gray’s interest in bridging the research gap between academia and industry led him to found Alpha Architect, an asset management firm dedicated to an impact mission of empowering investors through education. He is a contributor to multiple industry publications and regularly speaks to professional investor groups across the country. Wes has published multiple academic papers and four books, including Embedded (Naval Institute Press, 2009), Quantitative Value (Wiley, 2012), DIY Financial Advisor (Wiley, 2015), and Quantitative Momentum (Wiley, 2016). Dr. Gray currently resides in the suburbs of Philadelphia with his wife and three children.

Useful links

• Alpha Architect
• The University of Chicago
• Drexel University
• Value Investors Club
• Marine Corps

Recommended literature

• Quantitative Value – Wesley Gray, Tobias Carlisle
• DIY Financial Advisor – Wesley Gray, Jack R. Vogel
• Quantitative Momentum – Wesley Gray, Jack R. Vogel
• The Sustainable Active Investing Framework: Simple, But Not Easy – Wesley Gray
• Are You Trying Too Hard? – Wesley Gray
• Momentum Investing, Like Value Investing, is Simple, but NOT Easy – Wesley Gray
• Trend Following: The Epitome of No Pain, No Gain – Wesley Gray
• Factor Investing is More Art, and Less Science – Wesley Gray
• Even God Would Get Fired as an Active Investor – Wesley Gray
• From the Frontlines to Finance: How the Marines Shaped Our Investment Philosophy – Wesley Gray
• Tactical Asset Allocation: Beware of Geeks Bearing Formulas – Wesley Gray
• Distribution Economics: Understanding Wall Street’s Conflict of Interest Problem – Wesley Gray
• Understanding How ETFs Trade in the Secondary Market – Wesley Gray
• Mission Impossible: Beating the Market Forever – Wesley Gray
• Momentum Investing: Ride Winners and Cut Losers. Period. – Wesley Gray
• Value Investing: Never Buy Expensive Stocks. Period. – Wesley Gray