21 | Matthew Ruber, Melding the Quantitative and the Qualitative

Compounding Curiosity

My guest today is Matthew Ruber. Matthew is the founder of Enlihtan Capital Management. At Enlihtan, Matthew employs a research-intensive "bottom up" selection process, in order to find excellent businesses at prices which represent excellent business sense. Before Enlihtan, Matthew was a senior trader with Macquarie Bank in Australia and Hong Kong. And then successfully ran a multi-strategy proprietary trading business for CLSA in Hong Kong, focusing on merger arbitrage, volatility trading and value-based special situations.

In this conversation, we cover how he melds Quantitative and Qualitative characteristics when finding investments, asking the right questions of your investments, and some stories and lessons from AGM’s.

Super fun and varied one today, I know I learned a tonne so I hope you do to. So please enjoy my conversation with Matthew Ruber.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page on https://compoundingpodcast.com/ep21

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Show Notes:

[00:00:45] - [First question] - Most surprising thing about running your own fund?

[00:05:10] - Matthew’s quant background

[00:08:06] - What led Matthew to qualitative investing?

[00:11:24] - Matthew’s scorecard changes

[00:14:04] - Do you push back against a scorecard?

[00:16:08] - Lessons from AGM’s

[00:22:36] - Why move from Quantitative to Qualitative?

[00:24:26] - Approaching volatility after being a quant

[00:29:02] - Any aspects of investing that come easily to Matthew?

[00:33:20] - Why start your own fund?

[00:41:31] - Life outside investing?

[00:43:01] - Most undervalued life experience?

[00:44:56] - Influential books or resources?

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Connect with Matthew:

Enlihtan’s Website: http://www.enlihtan.com/

Connect with Matthew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-ruber-09ab5338/

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