Morry Waked and the rise of an investing juggernaut

Morry Waked revolutionised the funds management industry in Australia. Armed with a natural gift for mathematics and the rigorous training of an actuary, he made the leap from insurance to the equities market and helped turn quantitative investing into a legitimate, powerhouse strategy. By using sophisticated algorithms to strip away emotion and generate above-average returns, Morry has spent over 20 years at the absolute frontier of Australian finance.

In this episode of Success and More Interesting Stuff, I sit down with the man behind the "machine" to trace a career that began at Rothschild and led to him heading up the global active equity business at BGI. We discuss the early days of what some called "black magic" modelling, the high-stakes sale of BGI to BlackRock, and the subsequent birth of Vinva - a firm that now manages a staggering $47.5 billion. From his roots as the son of Lebanese immigrants to his recent move partnering with Magellan, Morry shares the insights that built a quantitative juggernaut.

Listen to the episode by clicking on the player or read a summary below

The "Brightest but not the Coolest"

Growing up in Sydney to Lebanese immigrants, Waked's path was paved by his father, who drove a taxi for 17 hours a day to ensure his children received a strong education. Excelling in mathematics, Waked chose to study actuarial studies at Macquarie University because it was the only degree he could find that required four-unit maths as a prerequisite.

"We certainly weren't the coolest," Waked jokes about his time at Macquarie , but the discipline taught him the analytical problem-solving skills that would later define his career.

Waked’s entry into the equities market was a stroke of good fortune. After a brief stint in insurance, he was hired by Rothschild to join an early quantitative research team. At the time, he knew nothing about the stock market - not even how to trade a share or what the All Ordinaries was.

However, he quickly saw an opportunity to automate the manual, paper-based analysis of the 1990s. By the time Barclays Global Investors (BGI) came knocking in 1997, Waked was ready to lead their Australian active equity business. Starting with just $100 million and a pitch that many Australian investors found "foreign" and "weird," Waked and his team grew the Australian equity business to $26 billion by 2005.

The Lebanese immigrant experience

Waked’s parents migrated from Lebanon in 1970 with no relatives in Australia and no knowledge of the share market. His father worked as a waiter and chef before driving a taxi to establish roots in the "lucky country". Waked recalls rarely seeing his parents growing up because they worked such grueling hours, his mother in a cafe and his father 17 hours a day behind the wheel, all to ensure their children had the opportunities they lacked.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

A turning point in Waked's career was his time at BGI, then the largest investment manager in the world. He credits much of his success to "standing on the shoulders of giants," working alongside global pioneers and intellectual leaders in systematic investing. This environment taught him that quantitative professionals must be "investment professionals first," ensuring every algorithm is grounded in fundamental investment sensibility rather than just raw data.

The GFC "Ghosts" and the risk of crowding

The Global Financial Crisis was a definitive period of learning for Waked. He navigated the stress of market crashes and the unprecedented banning of short selling in Australia, which caused significant pain for long-short funds. Beyond the immediate crisis, he learned the dangers of "crowding" - where too many quantitative managers use similar models on the same data. Today, Vinva uses specific metrics and anecdotal evidence to ensure their ideas remain differentiated from the pack.

One of Vinva's most sophisticated evolutions is the move from local data to "global to local" models. Waked explains that Australian companies don't operate in isolation; they are deeply connected to global supply chains and tech giants. To capture this, Vinva has identified over 12 million linkages across 15,000 companies worldwide. This network allows them to see how information propagates across borders, providing a more robust forecasting model than local analysis alone.

The birth of Vinva and the Magellan Partnership

When BGI was sold to BlackRock, Waked chose to start Vinva to maintain a simpler, single-asset-class focus. Despite an initially stressful legal challenge from BlackRock, Vinva thrived, quickly exceeding its original $5 billion goal. In 2024, the firm entered a strategic partnership with Magellan to handle retail distribution. This allows Waked's team to stay focused on their core strength, investment performance, while Magellan leverages its national network to bring Vinva's "quant machine" to a broader audience.

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