Dennis Lynch, Head of Counterpoint Global at Morgan Stanley Investment Management

In this episode, Dennis Lynch, Morgan Stanley’s head of Counterpoint Global, discusses the investment trends accelerated by the pandemic, his approach to building his investing team, and why a key lesson from his career is thinking about the sizing of his investment positions.

On investment trends accelerated by the pandemic: “In a few cases, [acceleration] seemed a little more obvious. And ecommerce is an example… But there are other cases where, you know, it wasn't as obvious. And sort of the intention for companies to move more quickly to digitizing their IT in order to enable remote computing and distributed work essentially and communication.” 

On greatest lessons from his investing career: “The one lesson [that] I think has had some consistency in terms of mistakes is… sizing of positioning. Knowing that you're in a situation where the company requires external help almost by definition is something to be wary of because if you run into a 2008 or a 2020 and suddenly you don't have access to the capital you thought you did. Having said that, there are some great ideas that start off in that bucket of needing capital, and they wind up being massive home runs. So I think one big lesson is just when you're dealing with situations like that, really thinking about sizing of a position both individually and also in aggregate at the portfolio level.”

Transcript