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What Does Nevada’s $35 Billion Fund Manager Do All Day? Nothing

Reported by Wsj
Oct 19, 2016· 2 min read
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Key Takeaways
  • • Steve Edmundson, investment chief of the Nevada Public Employees' Retirement System, manages roughly $35 billion with no co-workers and rarely takes meetings, according to the Wall Street Journal.
  • • Nevada's passive, low-activity approach is reported to be outperforming pension funds that employ hundreds of staff.
  • • Edmundson's daily trading strategy is to do as little as possible, usually nothing, a stance the WSJ frames as a deliberate contrast to active management.
  • • The story highlights how cost and turnover discipline can translate into relative performance versus larger, more heavily staffed peers.
Summary
A Wall Street Journal profile examines the working life of Steve Edmundson, investment chief of the Nevada Public Employees' Retirement System, which manages approximately $35 billion. According to the WSJ, Edmundson has no co-workers, rarely takes meetings, and often eats leftovers at his desk.

Despite this minimal operating footprint, the WSJ reports that Nevada's pension portfolio is out-earning pension funds that have hundreds of employees on staff. The article attributes this relative outperformance to the fund's passive orientation, which the headline characterizes as Nevada going passive to beat peers.

Edmundson's daily trading strategy, as described by the publication, is to do as little as possible, usually nothing. The approach runs counter to the resource-intensive model common among large public and institutional pension managers, which typically relies on large investment teams, frequent manager reviews, and active rebalancing.

The source article is a short excerpt, and the publisher summary provides limited detail on specific asset allocations, return figures, or benchmark comparisons. Readers seeking quantitative performance data should consult the full WSJ article.

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Sources

1 outlet

AlphaMaven summarised this story from the reporting below. Each link opens the original article.

Wsj What Does Nevada’s $35 Billion Fund Manager Do All Day? Nothing