PA Adviser takes a walk in the life of Yoram Lustig, head of multi-asset solutions EMEA & Latam at T Rowe Price, who diarises his week at work.
Monday
Breakfast: Water, banana, vitamins.
I arrive at the office at 06:30. I haven’t been using an alarm clock for years, naturally waking up before 06:00 every day, including weekends. I love starting the day early, getting some work done before the hustle and bustle begins.
While drinking coffee, I think of trade ideas and update some supporting material to discuss with my team today, ahead of Thursday’s investment committee meeting.
10:00: Talk about customised solutions in a webinar. Describe how we can design and manage bespoke portfolios fitting the specific needs of clients, at one hand of the spectrum, or offer a full partnership, at the other end.
14:30: Daily team meeting. We catch up and discuss what we have on our plates, divide the work among us and plan ahead.
15:00: Meet our risk manager. I enjoy these meetings because it’s insightful to get a different perspective on our portfolios.
Tuesday
Commuting to work on the Tube, read the Financial Times and four-to-five other online newspapers.
Send out trade ideas and supporting documents to members of our UK and Europe investment committee. The monthly discussion starts today via emails, culminating in a meeting on Thursday.
10:00: Meet with UK distribution, which is working with my team to formulate a plan to offer more partnerships to selected clients across the region. Having one of the world’s largest asset managers as a close partner comes with some advantages to both sides.
11:30: Film a promo video for our forthcoming quarterly client webinar with Michael, a member of our team.
14:30: Bi-weekly meeting with the project team on the ongoing onboarding of one of our partnerships. It’s a collaboration across distribution, operations, marketing, legal, compliance, product management, client reporting and investments. We have several working streams on the investment proposition, marketing support and operational infrastructure. We want to help our partners; their success is our success.
15:30: Catch up with Louise, our director of talent acquisition. Plan the next steps of hiring a new solutions strategist to our team.
Wednesday
08:00: 5K run. I try to run three times a week, 5K each time, not more, not less. While running, I listen to a podcast on the latest UK inflation figures, the market reaction to central bank rate decisions, and Nvidia’s continued dominance of AI.
12:00: Weekly meeting of the global investment solutions team. It’s an opportunity to hear news from the North America and Asia Pacific regions. The most important benefit of this meeting is for our different teams across the world to communicate, so we can collaborate and help each other.
14:00: Complete drafting the investment proposal of new strategies, incorporating client feedback on the investment objectives. We’ve proposed derivative overlays as an additional element. One overlay aims to boost yield by selling covered options. Other overlays aim to mitigate downside risk.
Thursday
09:00: Performance review meeting with one of our clients in the Nordics. We talk about markets, the structure of the portfolios, performance and attribution. We have a number of follow up items.
14:00: UK and Europe monthly investment committee meeting. We have members from our fixed income, equity,and multi-asset divisions. We’ve decided to use cash to buy inflation-linked bonds. This way we efficiently add duration as well as some hedge against the risk of rising inflation. We agree other changes to our positioning.
Update materials reflecting the investment committee’s decisions. We need to ensure everything is in order and documented before sharing the committee’s decisions with different internal and external stakeholders.
Read the thought leadership paper that team member Niklas wrote on target date funds (TDFs) in Germany. Retirement is one of our strategic objectives and strengths.
Friday
Happy Friday. 5K run in the park. Listen to a podcast on markets and the global economy. The second part of the podcast discussed the future of cryptocurrencies, after bitcoin reached another new high.
Michael and I map the investment committee’s decisions to the different portfolios we manage.
10:00: Catch up with Anne, the head of PR for EMEA, to discuss potential press opportunities.
Send updated positioning of our model portfolio to Mattioli Woods, one of our partners. Next week we will meet to review our proposed changes to the tactical positioning, as well as discuss plans for future developments.
Send a summary of our tactical positioning to other strategic partners. We’ll meet in early April to have our monthly discussions on markets.
Review slides that Michael has put together to present to our UK distribution team about our solutions and the capabilities we can offer to intermediaries.
Saturday
06:00: Write the market weekly recap. I finish and send it before others in the house wake up, except for the cat, who loafs on the couch next to me.
Watch another episode of Shogun with my wife. I like the new version of the series, but I still fondly remember the original TV miniseries from the 1980s and the impact it had on me as a child, fascinated by the culture of Japan.
Sunday
5K run in the park. This time the podcast is The Rest is Money with Steph McGovern and Robert Peston.
My son is visiting home from university. My daughter is studying for her A levels. Lunch with my wife, son, daughter and the cat.
See also: The asset allocator diary: David Coombs
