Inside Active by Bloomberg Intelligence

Touchstone’s Paulin on Looking Beyond Performance

Sep 15, 2026
Tim Paulin, senior vice president at Touchstone Investments, specializes in researching and evaluating investment managers. He explains how Touchstone searches for talent, tests whether performance reflects genuine skill, and uses holdings to verify a manager’s process. They also discuss active-management standards, handling underperformance, avoiding performance-chasing, and what makes an enduring investment partner.
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ADVICE

Build Manager Research Before You Need It

  • Build a manager pipeline before an urgent replacement search begins, combining relationship archives with database screens.
  • Touchstone maintains historical records on roughly 400 managers and supplements them with composites, factor screens, and direct conversations.
INSIGHT

The Five Pillars Behind Repeatable Alpha

  • Sustainable alpha depends on organizational stability, personnel, discipline, infrastructure, and results rather than recent performance alone.
  • Rolling results across different market environments reveal whether returns reflect repeatable skill or temporary style tailwinds.
INSIGHT

Separate Skill From Style Tailwinds

  • Attribution must explain why a manager outperformed or lagged, not merely identify which sectors contributed.
  • A high-growth manager should not be faulted when low-growth stocks lead a sector if the portfolio remained faithful to its mandate.
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