Marshall Wace’s Latest Moves

Nina Zdinjak

Back in 1997, Paul Marshall and Ian Wace launched their own hedge fund called Marshall Wace. The fund is headquartered in London, England while providing additional offices in New York, and Hong Kong. The fund’s investment philosophy combines quantitative strategies with basic investment principles for the purpose of delivering strong returns to its clients. Its co-founder and CIO, Paul Marshall previously worked at Mercury Asset Management as a Director and Chief Investment Officer for European Equities. He earned a BA (Hons) from St John’s College at Oxford, and an MBA from INSEAD Business School. The fund’s second co-founder, Ian Wace is its CEO and CRO. Prior to Marshall Wace, Ian Wace was Global Head of Equity and Derivatives Trading at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell. In this article, we are going to take a look at Marshall Wace’s latest portfolio changes.

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Marshall Wace’s Latest Moves
Marshall Wace’s Latest Moves

Paul Marshall of Marshall Wace[/caption]

Insider Monkey’s flagship strategy identifies the best performing 100 hedge funds at the end of each quarter and invests in their consensus stock picks. This way it is always invested in the best ideas of the best performing hedge funds and is able to generate much higher returns than the market. Since its inception in May 2014, our flagship strategy generated a cumulative return of 103%, beating the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by nearly 38 percentage points (see the details here). Our best performing hedge funds strategy also returned 26.4% year-to-date and outperformed the S&P 500 Index by nearly 12 percentage points. We take a closer look at hedge funds like Marshall Wace in order to identify their best and worst ideas.

At the end of the first quarter of 2019, Marshal Wace’s diversified equity portfolio was valued at $14.1 billion. Among top positions that were initiated during the quarter were bluebird bio, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLUE), Worldpay, Inc. (NYSE:WP),Beacon Roofing Supply, Inc. (NASDAQ:BECN), eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY), and Rio Tinto Group (NYSE:RIO). The fund also raised its stakes in Zoetis Inc. (NYSE :ZTS), Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE:BSX), Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE), and Sealed Air Corporation (NYSE:SEE).

The top exists in Q1 2019 included Texas Instruments Incorporated (NASDAQ:TXN), Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE:MO), and iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSE:EEM). Marshal Wace also reduced its stakes in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), and UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH).

Disclosure: None.

This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.