About Charles
Founder & Portfolio Manager
Charles A. Bettendorf
Founder & Portfolio ManagerI started Greyfield in 2018 after investing for eleven years. I manage portfolios in separately managed accounts — IRAs, 401(k) rollovers, trusts, individual accounts, and accounts for charitable organizations.
I began studying investing the way many do — reading the gurus. I was drawn to the rules-based frameworks that could actually be tested — as opposed to the qualitative fluff. While studying the philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh, adjacent to Carnegie Mellon, I came across the advances happening in machine learning. I realized that by feeding decades of historical data into machine learning algorithms, intelligent rules could be discovered instead of invented. It turns out that much of the received wisdom is indeed correct — buy at low price-to-earnings, demand strong balance sheets, insist on a margin of safety, favor low enterprise value multiples, seek high returns on invested capital — but there are also new frontiers in quantitative factors that, while explainable, are far too complex to make a bestselling investment book past or present. Computing makes crunching the numbers a breeze in a way that Benjamin Graham could have only dreamt. Yet the diligence in cleaning data, the wisdom to task machine learning algorithms with rational and economically meaningful targets, and the discipline to execute are no small task.
Most hedge funds, private equity firms, and advisers have offerings that are either completely inappropriate — illiquid vehicles loaded with leverage — or completely inadequate — index funds, which have only ever worked for US markets. Savers don’t have any need to short stocks — they saved so they could own capital stock in the first place and receive the benefits that accrue to it. Nor should savers buy everything, just because it’s public. Savers shouldn’t pay exorbitant performance fees that only incentivize managers to take wild risks. Nor should they pay advisers who can’t even bother to report their performance. Intelligent savers were not being served. Greyfield was built to serve them.
Machine learning powers our global search for overlooked businesses. I’ve trained state-of-the-art machine learning models on three decades of company fundamentals across dozens of countries since our inception in 2018. Due diligence is done the human way — reading filings, assessing business strategy, and evaluating management integrity. Man and machine are greater than either alone.
We offer truly active management with low turnover and no leverage, custom tailored to client-specific risk tolerances. Nothing should be in a portfolio by default — we don’t own companies just because they are listed on an exchange or put in an index by a committee. We own them because they are great businesses or great values, or an attractive combination of both.
- B.A. Classics, Reed College
- Graduate Study, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh