Our guest this week was Rob Van Wielingen, President & CEO of Viewpoint Investment Partners, a boutique investment management firm offering systematic strategies to private and institutional investors. Our conversation included:

• The Van Wielingen family background in the oil and gas industry
• Rob’s decision at an early age to focus on finance and technology
• Learning from his grandfather’s experience: “I know what it’s like to be rich – I’ve been rich three times”
• How the family gradually moved from highly concentrated allocations in energy companies to diversified portfolios
• The logical fallacy of active vs passive as the starting point for rethinking their investment approach
• Why the path to becoming rich is diametrically opposed to that of staying rich
• Trial by fire – launching the business during the Great Financial Crisis
• From rudimentary spreadsheets to ‘full blown quant’
• The trouble with lagged and infrequent data
• Embracing the ideas of Return Stacking
• The differences between Risk Parity and Risk Budgeting
• Recursive Risk Parity – drawing the best ideas from different approaches
• Human nature vs systematic approaches
• Carry, Trend, and how asset allocation can be both relative and absolute
• And more

This is “ReSolve’s Riffs” – live on YouTube every Friday afternoon to debate the most relevant investment topics of the day, hosted by Adam Butler, Mike Philbrick and Rodrigo Gordillo of ReSolve Global* and Richard Laterman of ReSolve Asset Management Inc.

*ReSolve Global Inc. refers to ReSolve Asset Management SEZC (Cayman) which is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a commodity trading advisor and commodity pool operator. This registration is administered through the National Futures Association (“NFA”). Further, ReSolve Global Inc.is a registered person with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority.