Topic: Identifying Tradeoffs of Investment Selections
Speaker: Joel Schneider, Deputy Head of Portfolio Management, North America
Their will be a Trading Room Tour, led by a Dimensional Portfolio Manager, immediately following the meeting for those interested: Opportunity to see a day-in-the-life of Dimensional Portfolio Managers and how the different teams work together to facilitate and execute trades within our live portfolios. (Tour is about 20 min)
Description: In a landscape crowded with investment products and performance claims, advisors need a clear, disciplined way to evaluate asset managers and select investments that truly serve their clients’ best interests. Join us for a practical, research‑grounded program that breaks down the real drivers of portfolio returns—and the hidden frictions that quietly erode them. You’ll learn how to assess asset managers using a framework that goes beyond headline performance to examine philosophy, process, implementation quality, and cost efficiency. From asset allocation and factor exposures to trading costs, taxes, and management fees, this session equips you with the insights needed to make smarter, more defensible investment decisions.
Learning Objectives:
- Evaluate the impact of investment costs
- Identify and explain the primary drivers of portfolio returns
- Apply a structured framework for assessing asset managers
- Analyze the tradeoffs between active and passive investment approaches
- Integrate return‑enhancing and return‑detracting factors
About the Speaker: Joel Schneider is Deputy Head of Portfolio Management for North America at Dimensional and serves on both the Investment Committee and the Investment Stewardship Committee. He helps lead the team overseeing US and non‑US equity strategies, contributes to product and strategy design, and regularly engages with clients on Dimensional’s philosophy, process, and custom solutions.
He joined Dimensional in 2011 after working as a management consultant at ZS Associates, where he developed statistical models for resource allocation and ROI measurement. Earlier, he held engineering and business development roles at Lockheed Martin, developing communication systems for the US Navy and Air Force.
He holds an MBA from Chicago Booth, an MS in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Minnesota, and a BS in computer engineering from Iowa State University.
Questions: Contact Sarah at admin@austinfpa.org