Tiger Great-Grand Cub On The Prowl For New Managers For Its Alpha Capture Platform

Multi-manager hedge funds have been getting lots of attention lately for their ability to adapt to changes in the market, but how do these hedge funds select the managers they partner with?

In an interview with Hedge Fund Alpha, David Stemerman of CenterBook Partners shared what it was like working with Steve Mandel at Lone Pine Capital and details on founding the Tiger grandcub Conatus Capital. He also shared what they’re looking for when it comes to manager selection for their Alpha Capture platform at CenterBook.

CenterBook Partners is an Alpha Capture hedge fund that’s been invested for over four years in two investment strategies. The firm manages over $1.3 billion.

Background on David Stemerman

Stemerman grew up in the Boston suburb of Newton, Mass. during what he called “the Larry Bird years.” He was a big sports fan and continues to be to this day, and Stemerman sees Bird as “the hero of that era.” He also liked Tom Brady of the Patriots.

“What I loved about both of them is they are people who their success came from a lot of hard work and perseverance, and certainly they're very process disciplined in all that they did,” Stemerman explained. “And so those were great lessons for me… I think for being a great investor, yes, you need to have intuition and talent, but a lot of it is hard work, and it's a lot of process discipline, and as I think about for CenterBook Partners, it's really about that combination.”

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He thinks about CenterBook as combining the best of what humans do in terms of bottom-up stock picking and insight with the best of what machines can do in terms of being systematic, sizing stocks, trading them, and managing risk.

“I feel like that's a little bit hardwired for me for my time in Boston with a couple of sports figures as inspiration,” Stemerman added.