Asked and Answered

An institutional salesperson tells this story: At the conclusion of a strong presentation, a board member asks, “What part of your process is top-down versus bottom-up?” Instead of answering the question, the portfolio manager embarks on a 20-minute discourse on the difficulties inherent in performance attribution.

Of course the firm didn’t get this business. “The prospect was just looking for a straightforward answer, nothing fancy!” laments the salesperson. “Something like, ‘Our process is primarily bottom-up, but we do pay attention to macroeconomic factors’ would have been acceptable.”

Moral: Just answer the question.