Australia's $24 billion dollar fund manager giving retail investors an institutional edge

If you could change one thing about how you invest to boost returns, what would it be? 

Market-leading analysis tools? More detailed company data? Access to management teams?

Even if you had all of that, chances are you don’t have the time or resources to fully take advantage.

Morry Waked, Managing Director of Vinva, has spent decades refining a systematic approach to investing, using powerful technology to uncover inefficiencies in global markets. 

Over a 24-hour period, Vinva’s proprietary tech processes the equivalent of 200 hours of data. Each year, it scours more than 50,000 financial statements and 3 million news articles.

It sounds daunting. But what Vinva’s journey has uncovered is a simple constant in markets, one even the humblest investor can harness: emotion.

Waked says volatility, like the recent tariff-driven sell-off, can be unnerving. But the “signal to noise” ratio in those events is often very low.

“If you’ve got a process and a philosophy and something that you’ve researched and embedded in your portfolio, you want to stick with it. Equity markets are volatile by nature. They’ll have their ups and downs, but if you stay, on average, invested in the markets, you’ll earn greater rewards than trying to time the market. That’s our approach, and that’s what history has told us over many decades.”

Vinva may not be a household name in Australian investing circles, but it probably should be. 

Founded in 2010, the firm has largely flown under the radar. Yet it has quietly grown into a $24 billion investment powerhouse.

Vinva uses a systematic approach, a style made famous by the likes of Jim Simons and the Millennium Fund.

There’s still some mystery around systematic investing. But Waked says Vinva’s approach is grounded in common sense.

At its core is a simple belief: markets are inefficient.

Outperformance can be achieved by repeatedly identifying and exploiting those inefficiencies.

Exceptional talent and proprietary tech

It’s easy to picture a quant fund filled with robots, complex algorithms, and more screens than JB Hi-Fi. 

Yes, technology is central to Vinva’s edge. But it doesn’t make the investment decisions.

Waked says the firm puts a premium on talent and forward thinking.

“Technology and data don’t come up with the investment ideas. They give you the platform to implement those ideas and the scale to act on opportunities.”

Vinva looks at the same building blocks a fundamental analyst would: earnings, balance sheets, and cash flow. 

The difference is scale. 

Vinva actively analyses over 15,000 businesses, scanning for inefficiencies.

Investor sentiment also plays a role. By digesting thousands of company filings, analyst reports, and news articles, Vinva’s system can spot when sentiment disconnects from fundamentals.

Taking it to the next level

One example of how Vinva uses data is through company linkage analysis, a map of how companies are connected commercially.

In 2024, Microsoft bought around half a million GPUs from Nvidia. That made it Nvidia’s largest customer – more than double Meta, the second-largest.

“Understanding Microsoft, its business, growth, and demand, gives us insight into Nvidia and its ability to sell GPUs to Microsoft.”

The chart below shows how global companies are interconnected. Vinva is using these insights as part of its process.

Bringing institutional solutions to retail investors

Since 2010, Vinva’s growth has been fuelled by strong returns and backing from large institutions.

In 2024, the firm signed a distribution deal with Magellan to offer two of its international equity strategies to wholesale and retail markets. Waked says the move is about reaching a broader audience.

Vinva excels at systematic investing, not distribution. With markets and technology evolving rapidly, Waked is happy to lean on Magellan’s expertise so he can stay focused on staying ahead of the market.

“If you look at the investment process and what we’re using to rank stocks today, and compare it to 2010 or even 2020, there’s very little overlap. It’s about constant innovation. The data has changed, the information available has changed, and the competition has changed. You have to keep moving forward.”