Stacie Mintz – Turning Qualitative Fundamentals into Quantitative Factors (S7E33)

Hey, everyone. Corey Hofstein here. Before we get started, if you're into capital efficiency and smarter portfolio construction, mark your calendar. The second annual return stacking symposium is coming to Chicago on 10/28/2026, headlined by Cliff Asness, founder and CIO of AQR. It's a full day of conversations on how to stack return streams, put your capital to work more efficiently, and rethink the way you build portfolios. Whether you're an advisor, allocator, or just curious about return stacking, this is the room to be in. Head to www.returnstacked.com/symposium to learn more and grab you

Alright, Stacy. Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Alright. Three, two, one. Let's jam. Hello, and welcome, everyone. I'm Corey Hofstein, and this is Flirting With Models, the podcast that pulls back the curtain to discover the human factor behind the quantitative strategy.

Corey Hofstein is the cofounder and chief investment officer of Newfound Research. Due to industry regulations, he will not discuss any of Newfound Research's funds on this podcast. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Newfound Research. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Newfound Research may maintain positions and securities discussed in this podcast. For more information, visit thinknewfound.com.

My guest this episode is Stacy Mintz, managing director and head of quantitative equity at PGIM Quantitative Solutions. Stacy has spent thirty three years at PGIM, and she's been there for every defining moment of the firm's quant equity effort. A first strategy born from a client's challenge to move beyond indexing, a 1999 decision to abandon Barra and bring the risk models in house, surviving the quant quake of August 2007 and the post GFC realization that in a crowded factor world, it's not enough to be a quant, you have to be a different quant. We dig into what PGIM's fundamental quant lab

Thank you for having me. I think it's an exciting time to be a quant, so I'm happy that we're getting together on this.

I'm biased. I think it's always an exciting time to be a quant, but particularly in the last couple of years, I think it's gotten a little bit more exciting. Excited to touch all those topics. Though we'll start, I guess, rewinding the clock because you have actually been with PGIM for, correct me if I'm wrong here, just a little over three decades. You started your career at PGIM and that gives you the wonderful perspective of getting to see how the entire quantitative equity group has grown within PGIM to become what it is today. And you told me a story in our pre call that sort of the origi

At the time, we were a quant manager but focused on multi asset strategies and this happened to be one of our multi asset clients. Their active managers didn't have the consistency of performance they were looking for and we were managing an index fund for them. At the time, there was a lot of discussion around behavioral biases and how they were explaining some well known anomalies in the market such as, you know, the low PE effect and high momentum effect. They were anomalies that people were aware of, but this is where investors are starting to connect this idea of behavioral biases that ha