Phil is a co-founder and unremunerated non-executive director of Ricardo Research.

Phil has 18 years’ experience in the pensions and investment industry. Before co-founding Ricardo Research, Phil was a Partner and Global Director of Strategic Research at Mercer. In that role, Phil had responsibility for developing intellectual capital on strategic and dynamic asset allocation, new asset class ideas and broad themes relating to the economic environment. Phil has worked with large institutional investors in many countries to help them address a wide range of investment challenges.

Phil is a regular speaker at conferences and industry events and is often quoted in the financial press. Phil holds a first class degree in Mathematics from the University of Warwick and is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.

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Giant funds and market mispricing

The short-termism of corporate managers has been a recurring concern of policymakers for decades due to the close tie with mispricing in capital markets. This article shows that a root cause of mispricing is the tight tracking of asset managers to market cap benchmarks. This seemingly prudent practice is commonly adopted by giant pensions, sovereign-wealth funds and endowment funds. However, it gives rise to momentum trading, excessive focus on short-term price movements, high volatility for overvalued assets, and overvaluation for the aggregate market.

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Giant funds must curb short-termism

Many of the problems of present-day finance have their origins in the horizons set along the investment chain. The key players in this chain are the giant pension, sovereign wealth and endowment funds who appoint external asset managers, who in turn invest in companies. If these funds invest with their eyes set partially or largely on the short term, it sends a clear message down the line and embeds similar standards throughout the capitalist system.

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