"You better check your ego at the door if you're going to learn finance from these folks, and you'd better not make the same mistake again," Gerard O'Reilly, the 42-year-old co-CEO of Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA [profile]) tells the Financial Times about what it was like joining the Austin-based asset manager. "You can make it once, and they're happy that you can make it once, but don't make it twice. That's the type of culture, philosophy that we have — it keeps you humble."

Gerard Kieran O'Reilly Dimensional Fund Advisors LP Co-CEO, Chief Investment Officer

In an interview with the FT, O'Reilly sheds light on his unusual background: after talking with a fellow wedding guest, he joined DFA as his first post-grad school job, after getting a PhD in aeronautics and an MS in high performance computing. O'Reilly also talks about aiming to grow the company to $1 trillion in AUM. And he discusses DFA's tough 2018, in which the firm saw a 10.4-percent AUM drop to $517 billion. He puts those woes in the context of DFA's emphasis on being a long-term investor to help investors avoid making "rash decisions or decisions based on very short-time-period data."

"All returns data is noisy," O'Reilly tells the paper.

Avid DFA watchers may want to dig into the full article. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE