Wes Gray - Compound Your Face Off

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:59)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is a Principal and Portfolio Manager at O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:19)
My guest this week is a version of me, a funnier, cooler version, who also has a PhD and has served as an active-duty Marine. Lots of you will already be familiar with Wes Gray, and those of you who are not are in for a treat. Wes is the founder of Alpha Architect, a firm which manages quantitative equity strategies for clients using factors like value and momentum. He also advocates a more concentrated, pure approach to factor investing, which listeners know is music to my ears. While we share a lot of the same views on markets and investing, you will still find this refreshing. The conversation was easy to structure. I just took all the questions clients and prospective investors always ask of me and my firm and turned them on Wes. These range from very specific questions on quant investing to big, existential ones. I listened to this on the log drive home and laughed out loud in the car at least five times. You're going to love it all.
I closed this introduction by offering you an opportunity, which is not for the faint of heart. On September 16th, I will be joining Wes and his crew on a 28-mile trek called March for the Fallen, which is a small but important way of honoring those who have given their lives in service of our country.
Wes and I invite you to join as well.
If you are interested, check out the post on Wes's site with all the details. I will link to it in the show notes, which you can find at investorfieldsguide.com forward slash Wes. If you are still interested, then email me with the subject heading March for the Fallen. I told you Wes is a cooler version of me and true to form, he will be doing the hike with a 40-pound rucksack. I will be doing the version without a rucksack. Either way, it will be a day of camaraderie and remembrance that we won't soon forget. Join us.
Okay, now on to my awesome conversation with fellow Quant Fanatic, Wes Gray.
Talk about the mindset that gets beat into you or maybe brainwashed into you as a Marine. I've read a lot about Belleau Wood and, you know, Devil Dogs and sort of the mindset underneath it all. Compare that maybe to the rest of some other branches of the service and kind of how the mindset is or isn't an advantage. I don't want to assume you think it is.

**Wes Gray** (3:28)
Yeah, it's your Marine Corps, like kind of their ethos is do more with less.
We're the, you know, guys that always get the scraps. We got to be ornery and mean and internal and I don't know if that's a fair classification, but in general Marines just we like to think of ourselves as, you know, kind of survival list and we can do more with less. So I mean, I think that's I don't know if that's true or not, because when I was in we had GWOT funds and they gave you as much money as you wanted. And if you want to go shoot 10,000 rounds, as long as you were training, you got it. But still that mentality and that culture of doing more with less and winning at all costs and then still permeates Marine Corps versus, you know, the bigger, more bureaucratic services for sure.