MiB: Savita Subramanian, US Equity & Quantitative Strategy, Bank of America

May 17, 2024

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This week, we speak with Savita Subramanian, head of US Equity and Quantitative strategy at Bank of America. She also leads the firm’s environmental, social and governance research. She has been a ranked analyst in the Institutional Investor survey for the last eleven years. Prior to joining the firm in 2001, Subramanian was an analyst at Scudder Kemper Investments in New York and San Francisco. Subramanian is on the advisory board of the UCLA Master of Financial Engineering program.

We discuss what her valuation models are showing: “I think that where we are today is actually a reasonably healthy point for equities…I don’t worry as much about big cap companies that everybody is tracking and watching and monitoring.”

She explains what she is concerned about: “The areas that I worry about are that bottomless pit of “unmarked” assets that have doubled or quadrupled in size and asset allocation… Think about the average teacher or firefighter pension plan – it’s 30% illiquid today versus 5% back in the 2000s. . .

A list of her favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.

You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Jeffrey Sherman, Deputy CIO at DoubleLine Capital, which manages over $100 billion in mostly fixed-income assets. He helps to oversee DoubleLine’s investment management committee implementing policies & processes, He is a member of DoubleLine’s executive management and fixed income asset allocation committee. He also serves as the lead portfolio manager for multi-sector & derivative-based strategies. His podcast is “The Sherman Show.”