At Wellington, Portfolio Managers Also Code

It's been a long time since there was a hard line between a fundamental active manager and a quantitative investor using advanced computing techniques to uncover ideas. Even as the line has blurred recently, Michael Masdea, head of Wellington Management's Investment Science Group, said his number one job is to preserve the art in investing while bringing in sophisticated computing capabilities to support the firm's active managers. "We think that the balance of art and science is critical. Machines can't pick securities, but they can help a lot with the process around picking securities," said Masdea, who is a former semi-conductor analyst at Wellington as well as an equity portfolio manager. The Investment Science Group is focused on applying scientific techniques, such as data analytics, to everything from how portfolio managers come up with new ideas and implementing them to maximize returns, to developing professional investors, which includes uncovering and mitigating the downside of their behavioral biases.