Investment Research Analyst Sam Smith joined EQIS in 2020. We caught up with Sam to find out more about him and how his work on the investment team benefits advisors and end investors.
Tell us about your day to day.
Sam: A lot of our responsibilities relate to keeping tabs on markets, watching macro level trends, and seeing how asset classes are moving and interacting, and then using that information to translate to the EQIS models. Also, we write market commentaries. We spend a significant part of our time consumed by investment manager and model strategy due diligence, talking with the managers about organizational changes any potential issues to make sure that we are confident in the managers and satisfied with investment performance.
Tell us more about the EQIS due diligence process.
Sam: We want managers with well-qualified and experienced people with a strong background who have been in their roles for a long time; that is key on the organizational aspect. When it comes to process, we want to make sure there is a well-defined investment process that is repeatable and predictable, so that way it makes it easier to have an expectation of how the investment strategy will perform. We want to see process and risk controls, asset class controls, and position controls.
We are monitoring regulatory compliance issues, if there are SEC audit findings and litigation, and monitoring performance to make sure that the manager is doing what we would expect, given its investment approach and the current environment. We also want to make sure the manager is sticking to its process and not deviating because something is not working, making sure that it maintains confidence in the defined process. That involves thorough questionnaires that we read through and then multiple calls annually where we discuss findings, issues and changes, as well as performance.
What do you love about your job?
Sam: It’s getting to gather a lot of information on markets, manager and investment strategies and then translating that to something that our advisors can use. My majors in college were economics and international affairs, so I get to apply some of what I learned in economic theory, international trade and international finance to our investment research work.
What is your most often-asked question?
Sam: Currently it is which of our investment strategies may help to provide downside protection when we are experiencing high volatility in the markets.
What is one interesting fact that most people don’t know about you?
Sam: A fun fact is that I studied abroad in Santiago, Chile during college and at one point was actually pretty good at Spanish, but not anymore. It is gone.
What is the best advice you ever received?
Sam: It was to check out the Chartered Financial Analyst program. In my first job out of college my manager saw what I was capable of and said I should check this program out, and I am really glad that I did. I learned a lot directly about markets and it helped me advance my career as well.
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