In this conversation, I had the pleasure of chatting with John Deniz, the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Paragon Funds Management, a fundamental, high conviction, long-short equity manager, based in Melbourne.

John is a mechanical engineer by training, so it was fascinating drawing out his process driven edge and also talking about Paragon’s investment in Gold related equities in the current environment.

It should be noted of course, that none of this conversation should be considered advice. Before you run off and load up on gold equities or anything else that we discuss, please do your own research or seek your own advice.

Managing money is not all beer and skittles. One of the hardest things as a fund manager is managing all that comes with a performance drawdown. The personal stresses, the external expectations, the mechanics of handling liquidity and redemptions. While Paragon has had stellar returns since its inception in 2013, they experienced a difficult drawdown in 2018. It’s always great to hear with candour how managers handle challenges as well as successes and I’m grateful for being able to chat with John about how he handled this experience and what he learned.

I hope you find the chat as valuable as I did. Enjoy.

John Deniz can be found at:

Website: https://www.paragonfunds.com.au/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-deniz-04448a19/

Podcast Music: The Spiel by Flag Duty. Copyright 2019. https://music.apple.com/us/artist/flag-duty/1473761192