Beginnings
- After starting his career at Chicago Title and Trust in his hometown of Chicago, Dave Marvin moves to Minnesota for a job at Investor Diversified Services (IDS)* which was the biggest mutual fund in the world at the time.
- He had his first big professional break by moving out of the Nifty Fifty (FAANG equivalent) before the market crashed in the mid-70s.
Important Events
- 1st use of price screens as an important tool.
- Dave makes his first international investing trip to Japan in 1973.
- Dave meets Stan Palmer. They would become partners for over forty years.
*IDS is now known as Ameriprise Financial
DuPont Pension Fund
- Dave is hired by DuPont to run their Pension fund at the age of 35.
- Makes DuPont's pension team more markets-focused in contrast to the rest of the company.
- While Dave was in charge, the fund grew from $2.2 B to $10.5 B.
Important Events
- Makes his first international investment when he allocated funds to Japan in 1981.
- Dave moves to Delaware where he has become deeply involved in the community over the last fifty years.
Founding
- Inspired by his entrepreneurial spirit, Dave decides it is time for him to go off on his own. He is grateful for the opportunity that DuPont gave him, but found running an investment team within an industrial company to be challenging.
- He found that international investing is not only his passion, but also underserved market with a big opportunity.
- Dave, along with Stan Palmer and Karen Buckley, leave to start Marvin & Palmer (MPA).
Important Events
- Dave starts our Advisory Board, which has been the bedrock of our global macro perspective for decades. His former boss, DuPont CEO Irv Shapiro, was one of the original members.
Dynamic Growth Period
- Over the next 25 years, Marvin & Palmer became one of the world's premier experts on international equites.
- At our peak, we held $15 B AUM, $12B of which had a global/international mandate.
Important Events
- MPA successfully navigated the crash of 1987, even in its infant stage. It would be the first of many market crashes the firm and its PMs would experience.
- Todd Marvin, Jay Middleton and Steve Marvin join the business between 1989-1994.
Rise & Fall: Lessons Learned
- The most important lesson we learned was the importance of risk controls. Our thematic style allowed us to identify trends early and ride them with concentrated portfolios. Unfortunately our concentration also exposed us to bigger drawbacks on the downside.
Restructuring & Reemergence
- We realized that our concentrated thematic portfolios needed stronger risk controls. To confront our biggest flaw, Steve received his FRM (Financial Risk Manager) designation and the firm tweaked its processes to integrated risk control into our portfolios. One of our products (MPA Asia) is a risk controlled product that has stayed within its risk range throughout its 9 years of existence. Our other products are subject to weekly risk reports and strong focus from our PMs to match our conviction to our exposure.
- With our bare bones operations, we got back to doing what we love. Investing. From 2015-2021, we employed no marketing or externally focused employees. It was refreshing to get back to why we started this business initially.
- Once we felt comfortable in our new process, it was time to begin finding new clients. That brings us to today.
Important Events
- Todd is seeded by Tiger Management Advisors LLC/Julian Robertson in 2013 to start MPA Asia.
- Dave and Steve launch the Global Opportunities Strategy in 2016.
*As of June 2016, Tiger Management Advisors LLC is no longer invested in the Fund.