LifeX: A New Product Line That Could Change the Way Investors Think About Retirement with Nate Conrad of Stone Ridge Asset Management

Episode • Mar 5, 2024 • 47m

Today, Rusty and Robyn are joined by Nate Conrad, Head of LifeX at Stone Ridge. Nate formerly served as the Head of Markets at Stone Ridge and as the President of NYDIG. Prior to joining Stone Ridge in 2016, Nate worked at Goldman Sachs as a vice president in the Interest Rates Trading business. Nate received his BSE in Computer Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Key Takeaways

[02:53] - Nate’s professional background and career highlights.
[04:18] - What differentiates Stone Ridge Asset Management as a firm?
[06:38] - How does LifeX work and how might it be a game changer for financial advisors and investors?
[08:30] - What is the concept of “longevity pooling” and how does it work to improve retirement outcomes?
[12:48] - What are some of the unique implementations or use cases for LifeX?
[15:57] - How might the aforementioned use cases drive higher investor confidence and better investor behavior?
[17:40] - Who is LifeX most appropriate for and who might it not be appropriate for?
[19:25] - When should an investor use LifeX and when should they use an annuity instead?
[21:20] - What are the pros and cons of using LifeX vs. annuities?
[24:20] - What are some of the most common investor concerns or questions that they get about LifeX?
[26:55] - The tax treatment of LifeX distributions.
[30:15] - How has LifeX been affected by falling interest rates?
[34:33] - Rules of thumb for sizing the position of LifeX in one's portfolio.
[36:08] - How can investors and advisors get access to these mutual funds?
[37:15] - Nate’s favorite investment idea currently.

Quotes

[08:28] - "So, longevity pooling…[is] this idea that you take a bunch of people, you pool them together…each individual in the pool, they don’t know how long they are going to live…but if we pool a bunch of people together of the same age and gender, our ability to predict the lifespan of that group, on average, is incredibly precise. " ~ Nate Conrad

[20:48] - "If you look back to…the adoption of index funds over time, it took about 50 years from, you know, the birth of the ideas behind index funds to the first index fund hitting a billion dollars. I hope we’ll go faster than 50 years and…really kind of evolving the way we approach retirement in our industry and we’re trying to do our part to help it along. " ~ Nate Conrad

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Compliance Code: 0217-OPS-1/29/2024

Disclosure(s)

Orion Portfolio Solutions, LLC, an Orion Company, is a registered investment advisor.

The LifeX Funds are not annuities or other types of insurance contracts, and the distributions provided by the LifeX Funds are not guaranteed or otherwise backed by an insurance company or by any third party.

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