Using liquid alternatives to enhance client portfolios.

George Matthews is a managing director and co-head of Product for the Systematic Edge Equity team at Allspring Global Investments. In this capacity, he leads global institutional product direction for the Systematic Edge platform. George specializes in factor-based investing and serves as a senior product specialist for the team’s equity group.

He joined Allspring from its predecessor firm, Wells Fargo Asset Management (WFAM). Prior to his current role, George was a senior consultant relationship manager-principal for WFAM. Earlier in his career, he served as a fixed income portfolio manager at Wilshire Associates and at Banc of America Capital Management. George began his investment industry career in 1995.

George Matthews: Key points from a video interview featured on Hubbis

· We’ve obviously had a pretty large sell off so far, but instead of sort of V type recovery, it’s more likely that we’re going to see continued volatility as we work through the geopolitical issues, as we work through the inflation and as well as some of the supply chain issues.

· So, that’s going to translate into probably a more moderate market.

· The type of strategies I think that are relevant in that are defensive type strategies. So, within equities, long short equity; value-oriented strategies, as opposed to sort of growth at any price; and strategies that have low correlation to traditional markets.

· Our systematic strategies tend to favor factors, factors like value and quality, momentum, and in a more moderate type of environment, it’s more of a stock picking market.

· How we do our downside protection: We like to short high beta stocks as a way of providing downside protection. In the long run our expectation is those high beta stocks tend to have low, long term expected return versus the markets.

· Generating income: We run a product called global equity enhanced income, which is an ACWI-based strategy. It tilts towards higher yielding stocks, yet it goes one step further – we use options to enhance the income further. So, the strategy’s designed to deliver about a 6% income – delivering market like results, but with enhanced income.

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