Paul Black is Co-CEO and portfolio manager at WCM Investment Management, a $26 billion manager of global equities that he joined when it was a $200 million boutique in 1989.  With so much of the institutional world, including my own training, focused on value investing, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about a large, high performing growth stock manager located in a non-descript building in Laguna Beach, California. Our conversation starts with Paul’s trial-by-fire entry into the business and turns to growth stock investing, including defining a great growth company, searching for widening moats, assessing a culture tied to competitive advantage, creating a positive culture, learning from mistakes, identifying tailwinds, and protecting the downside. Paul embodies the principals he preaches and offers some tasty food for thought.   Learn More Join Ted's mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast   Show Notes 2:54 – How Paul got started in the business 4:52 – Lessons learned in the early years of his career             5:56 – Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings             6:01 – Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor             6:05 – The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel 7:49 – What works about growth stock investing 9:01 – What constitutes a great growth company 13:47 – Defining and measuring a company’s competitive advantage 17:50 – How does he assess a company’s culture             19:41 – The Culture Cycle: How to Shape the Unseen Force that Transforms Performance 20:26 – Questions that help assess company culture 21:57 – Any data to back up claims that companies with good cultures perform better over time 22:46 – Culture aligning with competitive advantage 24:30 – Looking at WCM’s moat and culture 31:23 – The landscape for active management 33:53 – Weathering tough periods for the firm 37:02 – How do they think about culture in other countries 39:01 – Why does growth stock investing work when the data shows otherwise 40:47 – What is he excited about in growth stocks 43:45 – Tailwinds at the sector level 45:10 – Downside protection in the portfolio 46:38 – Patterns of positive and negative allocator behavior 48:35 – How do they manage the change in the portfolio going from 200 million to 26 billion 49:53 – Closing questions

Michael Cembalest is the Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, a global industry leader with $2 trillion of client assets under management. Michael is also a member of the Investment Committee for J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management and the Investment Committee for the J.P. Morgan Retirement Plan that covers the firm’s 250,000 employees. Before taking on his current seat in 2012, he spent eight years as Chief Investment Officer of J.P. Morgan’s powerhouse Global Private Bank. Prior to his work on the buy side, Michael worked on the sell side at J.P. Morgan Securities as head strategist for Emerging Markets Fixed Income. He started his thirty-year tenure at the firm as a member of the Corporate Finance division. Our wide-ranging conversation begins with Michael’s early career that included watching a financial crisis unfold in the late '80s and side-stepping another in the late '90s, and turns to his role as CIO of a large, global private bank. We discuss differences in asset allocation and implementation between private clients and institutions and along the way come across his evaluation of Bernie Madoff, the creation of his strategy piece - Eye on the Market, the chart that everyone hates, the impact of politics, government debt, and energy on the markets, and views about active management. Lastly, you won’t want to miss an amazing story Michael tells in answer to a new closing question. Learn More Join Ted's mailing list at CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com Write a review on iTunes Follow Ted on twitter at @tseides For more episodes go to CapitalAllocatorsPodcast.com/Podcast   Show Notes 3:14 – Michael’s start at J.P. Morgan 4:12 -  The creation of the first Brady Bond 6:14 – How did starting his career during a crisis impact his views on the world 8:10 – Early career roles 10:07 – Transition to the buy side 16:30 – Differences in managing money for a public company from managing money as an independent asset manager 17:25 – Transition to CIO 18:30 – First steps in changing the private bank investment structure from a closed model 22:21 – Overseeing a diverse group of clients 29:15 – How does he stay informed about everything impacting the markets 27:54 – Assessing Bernie Madoff 28:19 – Hedge funds and the tax difference they provide 30:28 – Differences in how Michael views various asset classes between taxable and tax-exempt pools 31:40 – Shift to strategy work and writing 34:09 – How does Michael describe Eye on the Market 35:20 – Domestic politics and geopolitical impact on the markets 38:52 - Looking at the high corporate profit landscape against the enormous debts of governments, nationally and locally 42:31 - Any way out of the debt problems we are seeing at state and local government level 47:31 – Entitlement spending in other countries 48:33 – Research on energy and consumption 51:44 – Use of technology to distribute his research 53:43 – Thoughts on active management 56:30 – Closing questions