Gene Balas, CFA® is an Investment Strategist in SEIA’s Investment Research department. In that role, he helps manage multi-asset portfolios, including performing research on individual stocks and alternative investments.
He has over thirty years’ experience as an investment strategist, portfolio manager, due diligence analyst, and author in the media. He has created portfolios for several members of the Forbes’ “400 Richest Americans” list, as well as delivered a double-digit annualized performance advantage managing modeled multi-asset investment strategies.
He most recently was Vice President, Investment Oversight at Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management, where he oversaw its $28 billion platform to identify unintended risks to clients or to the firm. He analyzed individual stocks and performed due diligence on alternative investments.
Previously, as Vice President, Portfolio Manager at United Capital, which supervised $26 billion in assets for high-net-worth clients, he managed separate accounts of individual stocks and bonds. He also wrote a weekly client-facing blog covering economics, which he also published on Seeking Alpha.
Earlier, as Director of Investments at Genworth Financial Wealth Management, Gene helped manage $14 billion in assets in modeled strategies as an investment strategist and portfolio manager, determining tactical asset allocation decisions and overseeing manager due diligence functions.
Prior to Genworth, Gene was Director, Investment Management & Guidance at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York. At Merrill Lynch, Gene led a six-member quantitative analysis team and served as the asset allocation strategist for the firm’s Institutional Consulting Group, which oversees $350 billion in assets with an average account size of $130 million for pensions, endowments, and foundations.
He began his career in 1989 at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York as a research analyst. He has also written over one thousand columns published on TheStreet and on Seeking Alpha.
He earned an MBA in Finance from Columbia University in 2003 and a BBA in Finance from the University of Houston, where he attended on a full National Merit Scholarship. Gene is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He is a member of the CFA Society of Dallas. He maintains a Series 65 Registered Investment Advisor license.