David Elms

David Elms is Head of Diversified Alternatives and a Portfolio Manager at Janus Henderson Investors responsible for enhanced index, risk premia, and hedge portfolios. Prior to joining Henderson in 2002, he spent eight years as a founding partner at Portfolio Partners. He was initially based in Melbourne, where he managed derivatives and enhanced index portfolios, and was later seconded to Aviva in London in a corporate strategy role following Aviva’s acquisition of Portfolio Partners. Earlier, he spent three years as associate director at County NatWest Investment Management, Melbourne, where he was responsible for equities and equity derivative trading as well as quantitative research.
David received a BCom degree (Hons) from the University of Melbourne, Australia. He has 31 years of financial industry experience.
Products Managed
Articles Written
Global Perspectives: Seeking to mitigate risk with Alternatives
What can a multi-strategy alternatives approach offer investors when more traditional assets like bonds and equities are both volatile and seemingly correlated?
Multi Strat Webcast – Is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
With both equity and bond markets sharply down year to date, David Elms and Steve Cain discuss the risks and opportunities within a multi-strategy approach as the investment landscape changes.

Alternatives Investment Outlook: The scale of change demands a different mindset
Explore the opportunity for alternatives investing following a year that tested the resilience of traditional strategies built around ‘core’ asset classes.

Alternatives: when diversification doesn’t work, what do you do?
Market change demands a change in investors’ strategies. What can alternatives offer when more traditional diversification models come under pressure?

Anatomy of a short squeeze: causes, outcomes and lessons
What lessons can short squeezes offer about the inherent danger of carrying excessive leverage or short positions during periods of heightened risk and illiquidity?

2022 – optimal conditions for a liquid alternative toolset?
How can a multi-strategy approach to using liquid alternatives help to improve diversification and complement traditional asset class allocations?

Expected drawdowns – How much money should I lose?
Can historical and simulated data provide some guidance to what scale of asset price swings investors could expect over time? In this article Portfolio manager Aneet Chachra and David Elms, Head of Diversified Alternatives, address the value of drawdown probabilities in helping to calibrate our expectations of price moves.

Selling volatility – is the juice still worth the squeeze?
Are investors being sufficiently compensated for taking asymmetric risk? In this article, portfolio manager Aneet Chachra and David Elms, Head of Diversified Alternatives, evaluate changing market conditions for equity volatility in the US and UK.

Factor timing – You’re doing it wrong!
The quantitative finance world has recently been transfixed by its version of the East Coast/West Coast feud. But instead of Brooklyn versus Compton rappers, it’s their suburban cousins Greenwich versus Newport Beach arguing over factor timing.