Behind the Scenes With a Chief Investment Strategist
On this episode of Your Life Simplified, Whitney Reagan, senior wealth advisor, is joined by Jeff Krumpelman, chief investment strategist. He shares his journey to becoming a chief investment strategist, what he does outside of work and his life advice.
Transcript
Whitney: Do you ever sit and wonder what the chief investment strategist of a $250 billion firm does for fun? Well, today’s your lucky day. We get to pick the brain of our very own C-suite investment guru, so don’t go anywhere. Welcome, welcome and Happy New Year. Today is the first episode of Your Life Simplified of 2025. I hope you had a terrific holiday season and a nice winter break. And we’re back to business. I’m Whitney Reagan, and I’m a wealth advisor here at Mariner. And I am super, super excited about our guest today. We have Mariner’s very own Jeff Krumpelman, who is our Chief Investment Strategist and also the Head of Equities. Jeff, how are you doing this fine day?
Jeff: I’m doing great, Whitney. Glad to be here. This should be fun.
Whitney: This should be very fun. I have to admit, I am a little nostalgic about this conversation because in my previous role, I was on the investment team for many years with Jeff, and we had a monthly internal webinar where I used to get to interview Jeff about the capital markets and the economy alongside Bill Greiner, and that was one of my favorite parts of my job, so I kind of missed that, and we got to banter back and forth, and that was for internal associates. So this is for public consumption. We might have to behave ourselves a little bit.
Jeff: I don’t know, Whitney. Whitney, that was one of the events that I looked most forward to, actually doing that monthly call. So it’s great to do that with you, and we probably will get a little serious in moments here and—
Whitney: We might.
Jeff: Maybe relive that a little bit. I don’t know.
Whitney: I like it. Like I said, it’s nostalgic for me. Takes me back just seeing your face. So I like to get our guests a little warmed up with an easy, maybe softball question. So are you reading anything good, Jeff? Anything you can tell the listeners about?
Jeff: Yeah, I have a hard time just boiling things down to one focus item or something. So I’m actually—
Whitney: I think we call that indecisive.
Jeff: Well, no, I don’t think so. I think I call that kind of interesting. Varieties—
Whitney: I like that.
Jeff: I don’t know.
Whitney: Look at that positive spin.
Jeff: Multifaceted. Yeah, there’s better phrases. Yeah, I’m reading a really tough book called Churchill and it’s written by Andrew Roberts, which is considered — he had more access to notes and letters and archives of Churchill’s life than any other author. And it’s about a thousand pages, so that’s hard reading and small print.
Whitney: That is hard reading. Maybe you should tell the audience about a shorter book. I’m just teasing.
Jeff: Well, there are a couple of shorter books that I use to take a break from Churchill, and one is, it’s more about just, it’s a spiritual book. It’s about relationships and how to cope with all the things that life has to throw at you. And it was recommended by a colleague who said it was the best book that he had ever written, and I kind of respect this person. It’s called Letting Go: The Pathways of Surrender. It’s a great book if you want something like that. And then—
Whitney: That sounds like a fantastic book for the new year, maybe for a New Year’s resolution type book.
Jeff: Absolutely, absolutely. And Katrina recommended, so when your boss recommends a book, you kind of go after it, and it’s called It’s Not About the Money by Brent Kessel. And it’s about the way people, we have all kinds of different views and relationships with money. Some people are empire builders, some are guardians and they just want to protect it. Some people want to use it to just give it away. And it definitely impacts your financial plan and how you think about money, how it should be managed, and it’s just a different kind of perspective than just a straight fundamental valuation technicals. Right.
Whitney: Oh, yeah. All good suggestions. And if anyone doesn’t know who Katrina Radenberg is, she’s our Chief Investment Officer here at Mariner and she is a terrific leader. So let’s get into the fun stuff. I’m excited to ask you some of these more personal questions. So I appreciate you being authentic as you always are. What was your path like to get here to the chief investment strategist? Was that always your dream to be in this role, or did you have more of a non-traditional journey to get to be Mariner’s biggest celebrity?
Jeff: I mean, it’s absolutely the latter. It was, what’s the Rascal Flatt song? God Bless the Broken Road.
Whitney: I love that song.
Jeff: Yeah. My wife loves that song. I love country, so I love that song too.
Whitney: So are they speaking about you?
Jeff: Sort of, a little bit. There were definitely a lot of switchbacks on this path to chief investment strategist at Mariner. And I mean, if you go way, way back, I’m not going to go back to the day that I was born, but when I was younger, my father was a self-made businessman and very successful in commercial and residential real estate, insurance, banking. And he never taught me anything about business, but certainly, I just admired watching him get up and put on the power suit and go make things happen. And I think just instinctively I felt like business was probably what I wanted to focus on. And so I go to college, I’m an econ major, probably recognizing that organic chemistry, I couldn’t make it through and I hated the sight of blood, but that worked for me. And when I graduated, I took a job with a bank and went through two different departments as part of their management training program. One was the trust and investment group and the other one was commercial, lending, and corporate advisory. And I, at that point in time—
Whitney: So you were working two different roles or you did those at different times?
Jeff: Different times. You did two six-month stints.
Whitney: Oh, it was like a rotation.
Jeff: You’re getting exposure to one area and then another area and then kind of mutual selection. You then went on to either focus on lending or on the trust investment side and—
Whitney: Okay. I think I see where this is going.
Jeff: Well, I ended up going the corporate lending path. It was kind of interesting.
Whitney: Really?
Jeff: Yeah, it was part of the broken road that I’m talking about, and I think it was a godsend that that actually happened. Went back and got my MBA and coming out of that MBA program, also was selected into corporate advisory and commercial lending. And I did that for about half a dozen years. And so you learn all about cash flow and balance sheets and technically you know accounting and economics and all that kind of stuff.
Whitney: I think that’s a really important skill because my husband was actually in the lending side too, and you just learn how to deep read financial statements.
Jeff: Absolutely.
Whitney: And it just kind of becomes second nature to you. That’s interesting.
Jeff: Absolutely. But I can tell you after you are involved in several transactions, there was just something missing with what I wanted to do. And I love the trust and investment assignment that I had. When I was a teenager, Louis Rukeyser on Wall $treet Week [SB1] was the only show that was stock-market oriented on TV. We didn’t have CNBC, we didn’t have a lot of stuff. And there was just something about Louis Rukeyser and the way that room just oozed wealth management. And I just thought it was fascinating. So I started—
Whitney: Stocks are cool.
Jeff: Stocks are cool, man. So I asked the CIO, I just bugged him to death to go to lunch, see if I could find my way over into the investment group. And finally, he said, “Jeff, you seem like a nice guy, and I appreciate all these lunches and the conversation we have, but I got to tell you, I’m looking for serious people. If you want to work in my group, I’m looking for serious people. We have CFAs. Have you heard of the CFA program?” I said, “Yeah, I’ve heard of the CFA program. I’m a level three CFA. I’m sitting for level three.” And as soon as I said that, the guy completely changed, set up an interview, and the next thing I know about two months later, I’m managing $400 million as a high net-worth portfolio manager in the investment group.
Whitney: So he started taking you seriously because of the letters CFA, and for anyone that doesn’t know that it stands for Chartered Financial Analyst and it’s a very extensive three exams that you have to pass to become chartered. So he thought that was a big deal, and he took you seriously after saying that.
Jeff: Thought it was a big deal, and what it did for me was, that was 1990, so we’re talking over 30 years ago. They wouldn’t do that today. They would not take a lender today and say, here’s $400 million of 1990 dollars. Good luck and we hope you do a great job. That just wouldn’t happen and so—
Whitney: That sounds like a lot of pressure.
Jeff: Well, you know what, here’s what it did, though. So I realized at that point in time that yeah, I knew cash flow, I knew balance sheets, I knew all about what a good business model was, but I didn’t have experience managing a portfolio or communicating with clients in that regard. So I went around to each of the portfolio managers at what was really a very talented group in this investment department, and I started saying, “Okay, what’s your philosophy? What are the major tenets here?” And I noticed that of the dozen or so people that were in that group, everybody had a little different view. And so you learn about value investing and growth investing and just different processes that each one employed. They didn’t have a pitch book. They didn’t have a story. And so I said, “Hey, you know what? Is it okay if I assemble a pitch book and put all of these ideas, the best ones on one sheet, memorialize this and then we can use it to present to clients?” Said, “Yeah, Jeff. Yeah, that’s a good idea. Why don’t you do that?”
Whitney: So you were the marketing guy.
Jeff: Well—
Whitney: You created the story.
Jeff: It’s about communication. And you’ve heard me say today that the role of a portfolio manager or investment team is dual. It’s twofold. Generate good investment results, but be great communicators. And coming from outside, that’s where all that started. And then I started asking questions like, “Well, do we have an investment commentary or a newsletter here? I don’t see anything.” “Well, no, Jeff, we don’t. Why don’t you do that?” Yeah.
Whitney: You got to be careful. Anytime you ask questions, then you’re voluntold that you’re going to create it.
Jeff: I was definitely voluntold. And then after the CIO who I’d been taking to lunch for years, read the newsletter, he goes, “Jeff, I do this broadcast internally weekly, three to five minutes, which you’re aware of, but I need a backup. And it seems like you kind of like this stuff. How about you prepare a three- to five-minute script and you got to nail it down and maybe would you want to kind of back me up occasionally when I can’t do this?” I said, “Sure. Well, yeah, absolutely.” So I guess that—
Whitney: Doors just kept opening for Jeff Krumpelman.
Jeff: Well, it actually, it did take me on a path that where I’ve gone, this kind of combined position, being involved down under the hood in the weeds where you get involved in portfolio construction and stock selection combined with telling the story and trying to do it in a way, I don’t care if you’re managing a billion dollar portfolio or an institutional investor or a million dollar portfolio for your mother or just an individual. You got to make what you’re doing come to life and make people realize that you’re trying to achieve a goal that they embrace. And how you are doing it or if you’re not at that moment in time, you’re a little disconnected, why they should still have confidence in you.
And that just stayed with me throughout my career. So I was lucky enough to be courted by Riverpoint and then asked by Katrina to fill the role of head of equities, and we implemented these things that started back at that little bank in Cincinnati, Ohio. Just the idea of having, I think, strong communication pieces, commentaries and fulfilling that dual role of good communication and trying to generate strong investment results. So that was my kind of broken path.
Whitney: No, that was a little bit nontraditional, and I couldn’t agree more on the communication piece and bringing the story to life and helping clients understand and really putting it into words and stories that are familiar to them because we’ve talked a lot on this podcast about how there’s so much financial jargon, and it’s silly. You want clients to trust in you, so you put it into those stories that they can understand.
Jeff: Absolutely.
Whitney: So I definitely agree with that. Okay, I’m going to switch to a little bit a different type of question. What does Jeff Krumpelman do for fun? And you have to name a hobby that is not related to stocks, fundamentals, valuations or technicals.
Jeff: Yeah, few people know this. So I am a Formula One race car driver, and I’ve won the Monte Carlo Grand Prix twice. You aren’t fact-checking this, are you? Are you fact-checking this?
Whitney: Yes, we are.
Jeff: Hopefully you’re not. No, no, no, no. Okay, so seriously, I love sports of all kinds, and I think a lot of people know that I’ve run a number of marathons and 10Ks, done that. In the beginning, it was all about setting PRs and time and all that kind of thing, and then that shifted into fundraising for charities. And so I’m really gratified that I’ve been able to do that, but now my knees are shot and so I’m a gym rat now. But I do love — I’m a mile wide and an inch deep as they say, and I don’t care if it’s basketball, baseball, swimming, tennis, golf, body surfing. Victoria, my wife, and I love to play Pro Kadima, which is a beach paddle game, and I think—
Whitney: That sounds fun.
Jeff: We believe that we have the world record in Pro Kadima, but—
Whitney: We believe. Does anybody else believe that?
Jeff: I haven’t checked the Guinness Book, but we have, I think set a record on most consecutive strikes of the ball. You got to keep the ball from hitting the ground and it’s just, you’re like 20 yards apart. You just hit the ball back and forth in the air.
Whitney: Okay, let’s switch gears a little bit. What’s the best advice that you’ve been given? And to make it fun, what’s the worst advice?
Jeff: Wow. So on best advice, kind of like with my books, I’ll give you three.
Whitney: In true Jeff fashion.
Jeff: In true Jeff fashion. The first would be push yourself, step outside of your comfort zone.
Whitney: I do love that.
Jeff: And I would tell you that early in my life, one of the things you do have to do is public speaking, a fair amount. And I was a definitive introverted, shy kind of guy.
Whitney: That’s surprising. I mean, that is surprising to me because of all of the media that you do and that you’re involved in and all the presentations that you do, and you’re so articulate. So it’s surprising to me that you weren’t always that way.
Jeff: Well, I appreciate you saying that. I think that after a while when you do it, if you talk to anybody that has to present a lot, they’ll probably tell you that they do get energy from it. It took me a long time before I got energy from it. And so I did Toastmasters, I did Dale Carnegie Training. The various firms that I’ve been at, I was blessed to have presentation coaches that would come in, but they were not shy about just absolutely undressing you with criticism and tear you down to build you up kind of stuff and—
Whitney: You have to be good at taking constructive criticism if you want to get better, right?
Jeff: Yeah. And you got to step outside of your comfort zone. I’m a terrible dancer. Okay, so go take some dance lessons. I can foxtrot now to probably rap music, but what I’m saying is you got to be willing to make a fool of yourself, be a little vulnerable and look stupid and prevail in that. So I think that that’s great advice. Don’t sit back, push yourself. My mom said moderation in all things. And I can tell you that I think we do have a different message here at Mariner, which is say no to negativity. We talk about that and the skeptics out there, they’ve been calling for a recession for the last, what, five years consecutively because they just extrapolate. And if you get one bad data item, they go to worst-case outcomes and extremes are not helpful. Extreme views in this industry are not helpful. You have to stay objective. So Mom helped me out in a big way, I think in that regard.
Whitney: Everything in moderation, I like it. What’s the third piece of advice?
Jeff: And then Walt Whitman, yeah, and Ted Lasso reminds me of this when I read or look at some of his episodes, be curious, not judgmental. And I can tell you right now for us, and I’ll apply this straight to investing in that regard. When my team walks into that room, they embrace that kind of philosophy. You can have a process, you can have a philosophy, and that’s great, but at the end of the day, it’s half a dozen people or more collaborating together, respecting one another and making good judgments together.
And if you are jumping to judgment right away, when someone has a view that’s different from yours, you shut down conversation and you create chaos. If someone has a different view, instead of immediately telling him no or her you’re wrong, here’s what I think. Instead, you say, wow, that’s a little different. Why do you feel that way? You get all these data points. It may make you change your view appropriately or it may ground you more in your beliefs and you’re able to communicate that to the other person. But regardless, you got to listen and you got to be open.
So I can tell you I’ve seen investment teams absolutely collapse because there was too much ego in the room and they didn’t do that. They rushed to judgment on one another. You can’t do that. So that’s been very critical to success wherever I’ve been.
Whitney: That absolutely resonates with me, the be curious and non-judgmental. I can lean into that one. I love it.
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.
Whitney: Okay. Worst advice?
Jeff: Relax. Relax. No, that sounds risky, Jeff. I can tell you that whether we’re talking about earlier kind of—
Whitney: You mean someone told you to relax?
Jeff: So I’m in lending at this bank in Cincinnati, and I talked to my boss and I tell him I’m taking the CFA, but I’m a lender. Okay, I’m a lender. I’m taking the CFA. “Jeff, why would you do that? Go have a beer, son. Go out and have some fun. Are you dating anybody? Relax, Jeff”
Whitney: None of your business, boss.
Jeff: I’m at a bank and an investment group and being approached by registered investment advisory firms and people that I know. “Jeff, you got your 401(k)? You’re a senior portfolio manager. Why would you take the risk to go over to that registered investment advisory firm that’s a startup? Why would you do that?” Well, maybe because it made sense to me that with the talent, they could go from zero in assets to $25 billion in about five years. I’m part of that success. I mean, I could go on and on again where, oh, and by the way, that bank was acquired and a lot of the people were dismissed and let go. And so I have found over time that probably you don’t take reckless risk, for God’s sakes, but the biggest risk that you can take is not taking the risk, and it doesn’t always pay off, but if you’re good and you’re working hard and you’re thoughtful, it probably is going to work out. And even if you fail, even if you fail, you’re going to learn so much that you can take somewhere else. So I’d say, yeah—
Whitney: It’s okay to fail. Learning from the mistakes. That’s what I always tell my kids.
Jeff: Yeah.
Whitney: Thanks for those pieces of advice and, I guess, pieces of advice to avoid, right? I’m going to change it up a little bit in this episode and do a little kind of like lightning round, rapid-fire with questions, if that’s okay with you, Jeff?
Jeff: Yep.
Whitney: Okay. One of my favorite questions to ask people when I facilitate group meetings is if you could eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Jeff: I would have spaghettoni with pancetta for the main dish. My wife Victoria made some mean spaghettoni, and for dessert, I would have Kentucky bourbon bread pudding.
Whitney: Oh, my gosh, that sounds fantastic. I don’t think I’ve had any of that. So I’m coming to your house to visit.
Jeff: Anytime.
Whitney: Okay. What is, another one of my favorite questions when I’m doing icebreakers, what is your superpower?
Jeff: Ten thousand hours. By that, what I would tell you is the book by Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers. You got to put in 10,000 hours, you got to earn being in the room. It’s just time and effort. The Beatles became who they are, is they played at bars, jazz, all kinds of music, 10,000 hours. So you reach that, you’re in good shape. That’s my superpower, just—
Whitney: Ten thousand hours. Spend 10,000 hours on something to get to where you feel confident. You’re in the room, you deserve to be there. I like it. Okay. You’ve had a lot of exposure in the media, Bloomberg, CNBC, so on and so forth. You name it. What’s the weirdest question that you’ve been asked that you weren’t prepped for in your answer of course?
Jeff: “Jeff, three options. Door number one, unemployment of ten percent for one year, seven and a half percent unemployment for three, six percent unemployment for two years, Jeff. Which solution will cure this inflation? Larry Summers says one of those three, which is it, Jeff?” So that was just the way it started, and I laughed like you are. I just kind of laugh and I said, “Look, I really respect Larry Summers. He’s a super articulate guy. Brilliant. But you know what? Larry Summers has made some investment mistakes, and I think all three of those are ludicrous. We don’t need any of that stuff. That’s crazy. We’ve only had 10% unemployment. You got the Great Recession and the Great Depression. Outside of that, we’ve never had 10% unemployment. This is ridiculous. The fundamental valuations and technicals look pretty daggone solid to me, and inflation is calming. Larry needs to go, I don’t know, take a sedative.”
Whitney: That’s ludicrous. Oh, that’s a good one.
Jeff: Right.
Whitney: Okay, last question. Market predictions. You’ve had your outlook on the market. Every year you do your outlook on the market and you’ve had a pretty darn good track record. I believe counting this year, going back six years, you’ve been correct on your market outlook.
Jeff: Okay.
Whitney: Okay. I guess my question would be what kind of pressure does that put on you when you’ve been right so many consecutive years, and am I going to be right again? Just tell me what it does to you kind of psychologically.
Jeff: Well, first of all, I appreciate the question. I mean, that’s like a great way to tee up a question to me on this topic. I don’t feel any pressure going in, and maybe some of it is that we’ve had a pretty good message, and so you’re not always going to be right, but I think we set ourselves up for success. I don’t think you can just go in and say, this is the scenario I see. You might be right, you might be wrong. Well, that’s not what we do. We go in and we say, we have a base case, we have an optimistic case, and we have a pessimistic case, and here’s our base case. That’s the highest probability event, and here are the assumptions and these are the risk items that we got to monitor. And if some good things happen, we could go way up here, this optimistic case, but if things don’t go the way we envision, if this happens and this happens, we could be down here.
Low probability. That’s not what we’re thinking, but we reserve the right to go in at halftime and adjust that view. Fortunately, our base case has been really right in all but that 2022 kind of scenario that you were talking about, and we can come back to that if you want, if we have time, but I think we go in and say, we’re going to reassess at midyear, and these are the things to follow, to look at. If they happen, we’re going to adjust our view. So you set yourself up for success and then people know what to look out for. And I think that’s a pretty solid message. In 2022, we said the wild card was inflation. No one was predicting runaway inflation, but we said that could be a risk item, and that would concern us if it happened. And oh, by the way, we just had three years of 26% annual compounded return.
You know what, we do expect a correction. You don’t have four in a row. We expect a correction. What we got right was we did have one. We said it would be a magnitude. What we got wrong was we didn’t expect it to last the whole dang-on year. We thought that it would be a several-quarter event. We went on to new highs in 23, and we were bullish as could be in ’23. But we got the timing a little bit wrong on exactly when the recovery would happen, but we told people to pair back. We said, if your allocation’s gone above norm in 22, cut back the norm.
Whitney: I appreciate how humble you are, but you and your team have done a terrific job, and I think you are perfect in the role. I also loved hearing all about your personal life, and I appreciate you being authentic. Speaking of market outlook, if you want to see Jeff Krumpelman in action in his day job, you can join us in our crystal ball webinar. It’s scheduled for Thursday, January 16th, and to register, you can go to mariner.com/live-webinars and please register because if you happen to miss it, then we’ll send you a recording. But I had so much fun today, Jeff. It brings me back to the good old days, and I really enjoyed our conversation and getting to learn more about you personally and professionally.
Jeff: Thanks, Whitney. No, I really enjoyed it. Thanks for putting up with me, and it was great.
Whitney: And thank you to the audience. Thanks for joining us as always. And if you don’t want to miss out on any more market insights from guests just like Jeff Krumpelman, please like, subscribe, or follow wherever you listen to your podcasts, and we hope that we’ll see you again next time. Have a terrific rest of your week and again, happy New Year.
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