By Ken Akoundi, PhD Introduction Earlier we shared the first part of our Knowledge Stack, covering our daily reading on investments and well-being. Please find below the second release of our Knowledge Stack. It includes our sources on pension knowledge, geopolitics, and one of our pet pleasures: Data Visualization — what…

BY Ken Akoundi, PhD Introduction For over 23 years, Investor DNA went out to 25,000+ people, 6 days a week — that’s a whopping 170 MM emails. In that time, we developed an efficient process to read everything we thought worth reading to produce a news aggregation email with “worthy” links…

By Ken Akoundi PhD & Brett Friedman Markets continue to push pensions and endowments to hire risk managers. And yet, most don’t have a clear idea of their exact role. They should. Ask 100 traders or portfolio managers what a risk manager is supposed to do, and you will get…

By Ken Akoundi and kartik uchil “There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.” ― Mahatma Gandhi Introduction It has been increasingly apparent that investment offices need to define certain basics to have a more efficient dialogue with vendors. …

By Ken Akoundi “Ignoring facts does not make them go away.” — Fran Tarkenton What’s happening? Technologically speaking, something has happened in the last few years. The long-term investor community has gone through a shift: they are upgrading their investment office technology out of the 1990s into the 2010s. What does this…

By Ken Akoundi and Kartik Uchil [0] “We have to understand the ubiquity of energy in everything we do.” - Ernest Moniz Introduction The Selfish theme has been on my mind, thinking of one of my earlier readings, Selfish Gene, where all genes by definition and for survival have to take…

Originally appeared in the June 2009 Edition of Journal of Risk (Defunct). Risk management is relatively simple in its essence: what is the probability of an event occurring, and, if it happens how badly will it hurt? However, if we consider how we estimate probabilities and losses, the answers to…

By Ken Akoundi and Kartik Uchil “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” ― Socrates Knowledge in the investment office It has been increasingly apparent that investment offices need to define certain basic definitions to have a more efficient dialogue. …

Why tech implementations fail and how to avoid them. — By Ken Akoundi and Josh Smith “I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.” - Ruth Bader Ginsburg “We are not perfect, nor should we pretend to be.” - Dr. Travis Bradberry Most institutional investors have been or will be exposed to a technology decision at some…