Hawaii Retirement System Names Elizabeth Burton CIO

Elizabeth Burton

The $16.5 billion Hawaii Employees’ Retirement System has named Elizabeth Burton, managing director of the quantitative strategies group at Maryland State Retirement and Pension System, as its new CIO effective Oct. 1.

Burton replaces Vijoy Chattergy, who, according to the system, resigned as chief investment officer of the Employees’ Retirement System effective February 22, 2018.

“Burton is dynamic and highly regarded by her peers in the investment community,” Catherine Chan, chair of the system’s board of trustees’ CIO search committee, said in a release. “We are confident that Ms. Burton will serve our state and county members, retirees, and beneficiaries well.”

Prior to joining the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System in 2016 as a senior investment analyst, Burton owned William Street Advisory, a strategic advisory practice she founded in 2013. Prior to that role, she was a senior economist with Criterion Economics, and a consultant at First Annapolis, where she worked on mergers and acquisitions transactions, and consulting.

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Burton’s previous positions also include co-portfolio manager and quantitative risk analyst with a South Africa-based fund of hedge funds, a trader of fixed income securities for a risk management firm, and a portfolio management associate with a quant-focused fund of hedge funds. She is a chartered alternative investment analyst charter holder, and was named as one of CIO’s Forty Under Forty in 2017.

The Hawaii Employees’ Retirement System has a total state and county membership of more than 138,000 and pays annual benefits in excess of $1.3 billion to more than 46,000 pensioners and their beneficiaries.

Tags: CIO, Elizabeth Burton, Hawaii, Hawaii Employees' Retirement System

To the growing chorus of bearish views, add that of Morgan Stanley. The mammoth investment firm believes that a stock selloff is coming that will be at least as deep as last winter’s.

In late January through early February, the market fell more than 10%, which means it went through a correction. Since then, stocks have fitfully nudged up to match the January 26 record high. The S&P 500 closed slightly up on Tuesday, and needs to rise 2% more to reach the peak.

The villain of the winter slump was a reaction to a higher-than-expected employment report and wage growth, which spooked investors into thinking that the Federal Reserve would overreact by jacking interest rates up quickly. Since then, the Fed under new Chairman Jerome Powell has made clear that it intends to proceed on a gradual regimen of rate hikes.

This time, Morgan Stanley wrote in a research note, the problem is the weaker-than-usual showing of some signal tech stocks that have led the rally.

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Chief US equity strategist Michael Wilson conveyed his unease in the note this way: “The weaker earnings beat from several tech leaders and outright misses from Netflix and Facebook were simply additional support for our call.” In other words, failing to beat analysts’ expectations by the usual wide margin is cause for concern.

A new market dip would rope in consumer discretionary and small-cap stocks, as well as tech, Wilson contended.

To be sure, earnings results, aside from some once-high-flying tech companies like Netflix and Facebook, are healthy so far this season. But the question has long remained: Will they ebb in the year’s second half? And the stock market is always more concerned about the future.

Tags: Earnings, Morgan Stanley, Stock Market