Cedars-Sinai Names Pasy Wang as First CIO

Pasy Wang has been named the first CIO for Southern California-based nonprofit academic health care organization Cedars-Sinai, according to a press release.

In the newly created role, Wang will design and manage Cedars-Sinai’s investment portfolio, and will lead the newly created investment office with a mandate to oversee investment policy, asset allocation, portfolio construction, risk management and external investment managers.

Wang joins Cedars-Sinai from the California Institute of Technology, where she was senior managing director of investments for nearly 13 years. The university’s endowment tripled in size to $4.5 billion from $1.5 billion during her tenure.

Pasy Wang

While at CalTech, Wang led the investment team in portfolio management and oversaw all asset classes and direct investments. She also created a formal investment process, instituted a risk-management system and built out the institute’s portfolio, according to the release.

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“Pasy Wang has a well-earned reputation for helping secure the future for nonprofit organizations,” David Wrigley, Cedars-Sinai’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, said in a statement. “Her business acumen, integrity and collaborative style of work will be an asset to Cedars-Sinai.”

Prior to joining CalTech, Wang was an associate director at Pacific Alternative Asset Management Company, where she co-managed a portfolio of opportunistic hedge funds and specialized in event-driven, distressed debt and credit hedge funds. She also researched and recommended hedge funds for the flagship fund of hedge funds among all strategies, and performed due diligence on hedge funds. She started her career as a consultant at Deloitte Consulting, according to her LinkedIn.

Wang received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School. She has also received the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, and is currently a director on the boards of American Business Bank, the Boys & Girls Club of Venice and the Levitt Foundation.

“I’m excited to join another amazing, mission-driven organization and to work on securing the future of Cedars-Sinai for generations to come,” Wang said in a statement.

Wang’s hiring leaves an opening at CalTech, which is looking for a senior investment analyst to perform portfolio analysis, management and monitoring of existing investments. The job also includes conducting quantitative and qualitative due diligence of potential investments and performing investment research across the global public markets and alternative strategies, according to the job posting. The university is also looking for an investment analyst to assist in portfolio analysis, monitoring and reporting across the public, private and alternative markets.

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Tags: California Institute of Technology, CalTech, Cedars Sinai, chief investment officers, CIO, David Wrigley, Pasy Wang

Will September dismember stock portfolios, as its reputation suggests? There’s no doubt, as numerous studies have shown, that the year’s ninth month has the worst returns.

The history: September has averaged a 0.56% annual decline in the S&P 500 and the index’s predecessor, making it just one of two months to run red ink for the entire 77-year span since World War II ended. The other losing month for the broad-market index, February, has lost less, just 0.19%. That dismal conclusion is courtesy of a study by Sam Stovall, CFRA’s chief investment strategist and a long-time student of the “calendar effect,” or how equities behave during different parts of the year.

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Small-cap stocks also tend to take a pounding in September, albeit a less painful one than the large-cap S&P 500’s. The Russell 2000 registers an average 0.31% decline for the month. The only other losing month for the Russell index is July’s 0.24% drop—again, not as bad as September’s showing.

“September stands alone as the only month in which the market fell more frequently than it rose,” Stovall wrote. “What’s more, the best September return places it in the bottom quarter of all months.”

The momentum going into this September, which begins Thursday, is not promising. The two-month market rally that ended in mid-August now seems like a mere interruption to the bear market that has been ravaging investors since January. The Federal Reserve’s hell-bent intent on pulling down high inflation is the chief culprit for the latest market downdraft, in the eyes of many strategists. The S&P 500 clocked a 1.1% drop Tuesday, with its 2022 slide deepening to 16.4%.

Many theories exist to explain why September is the nastiest month for stocks. One is that investors return from summer vacation and decide to adjust their holdings, dumping unwanted shares. Another is that mutual funds, whose fiscal year by law ends October 31, seek to clean out their inventories.

Whatever the reason, September seems to harbor an unusual penchant for market disasters. The crashes of 1929, 1987 and 2008 all began in September. Most memorably, for current investors, the demise of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 touched off the global financial crisis.

In the celebrated and sentimental musical “The Fantasticks,” the song “Try to Remember” celebrates the late-summer loveliness of September, “when life was slow and oh, so mellow.” Alas, investors remember it as anything but.