Jeffrey Sherman and Sam Lau welcome Allen Sukholitsky, chief investment officer at art investment platform Masterworks, to DoubleLine’s The Sherman Show to discuss art as an asset class. Mr. Sukholitsky kicks off the discussion recounting how his background in researching asset classes led him to move from what he calls “traditional investment management” into the art space (1:30). They then get into the democratization of the art investment space (4:18), how Masterworks’ proprietary database guides its investment process (6:24), the price range the firm focuses on and why it prefers post-World War II pieces to Old Masters (10:53) as well as Damien Hirst’s Sharpe ratio – “literally close to zero,” says Mr. Sukholitsky (13:50).
Other topics covered by the group include a look at selling and momentum strategies in the art space (15:32), art’s correlation profile and performance as a portfolio diversifier (19:27) and portfolio management (26:33). On investing in NFTs, Mr. Sukholitsky says that Masterworks has not figured out how to value digital art, noting, “I’m not sure anybody has sorted that question out.” This episode was recorded Aug. 30, 2022.
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Jeffrey Sherman, DoubleLine’s Deputy Chief Investment Officer, is a thought leader, portfolio manager and public speaker in the industry. Mr. Sherman is a member of DoubleLine’s Fixed Income and Global Asset Allocation committees, and he serves as lead portfolio manager for the firm’s multi-sector and derivative-based strategies. In his role, Mr. Sherman guides the investment teams in developing top-down macro views and collaborative asset allocation processes throughout a market cycle. Additionally, he is a member of DoubleLine’s Executive Management Committee. In 2018, Money Management Executive named Mr. Sherman as one of “10 Fund Managers to Watch” in its yearly special report. Prior to joining DoubleLine in 2009, Mr. Sherman was a Senior Vice President at TCW, where he worked as a portfolio manager and quantitative analyst focused on fixed income and real-asset portfolios. Prior to that, he was a statistics and mathematics instructor at the University of the Pacific and Florida State University. Mr. Sherman taught Quantitative Methods for Level I candidates in the USC/CFALA CFA® Review Program for many years. He holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of the Pacific and an M.S. in Financial Engineering from Claremont Graduate University. Mr. Sherman is a CFA® charterholder.
Mr. Lau joined DoubleLine in 2009. He is a Strategist on the Fixed Income Asset Allocation (FIAA) Committee and a contributing member on the Global Asset Allocation and Macro Committees. Mr. Lau is a Portfolio Manager on DoubleLine’s strategic commodity strategy while working in portfolio management and trading for derivatives-based and multi-asset strategies, including DoubleLine's Shiller Enhanced CAPE®, Shiller Enhanced International CAPE®, Real Estate and Income, and Multi-Asset Trend strategies. He also co-hosts the Sherman Show (Twitter @ShermanShowPod, ShermanShow@Doubleline.com) and Monday Morning Minutes (Twitter @DLineMinutes, Minutes@Doubleline.com) podcasts. Prior to DoubleLine, Mr. Lau was a Vice President at TCW where he worked under Jeffrey Gundlach as a Research Analyst in the Mortgage Group. He holds a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
