Meet the Team: Hunter Hayes

A classically-trained pianist, Intrepid portfolio manager Hunter Hayes understands that investing, like music, is more of an art than a science. We sat down with Hunter to talk about what he learned as a kid working for his family’s business, the importance of always refining and adapting one’s process, and how his multidisciplinary upbringing has informed his investment philosophy.  

What was life like for you as a kid? 

I grew up a few minutes south of Intrepid’s office in Jacksonville in a neighborhood called Fruit Cove. My dad moved to Florida in the 80’s, and he started a security camera company when he got here. One of the most interesting parts of my childhood was seeing the business grow to one of the biggest sellers of security systems in the region. Most days my mom, who was also very involved with the business, would pick me up from school and take me to his office where we’d help him with odds and ends as he was finishing things up for the day. When I was 11 or so I started helping him with everything from telemarketing to laying cables for new projects. Laboring outside in the Florida summers definitely wasn’t my favorite part of the job, but I loved being part of a family business. Intrepid has the same sort of feel to it, where everyone’s got each other’s back and is willing to put on whatever hat is needed to get the job done.  

How did your parents shape your view of the world?  

My dad was an entrepreneur in spirit but conservative with his finances. He was also fascinated with the traditional value school of investing. It sounds cliche, but he gave me a copy of The Intelligent Investor when I was in middle school, and to gratify him I’d read through it and marked it up where I had questions. I was definitely not one of those prodigies who started compounding capital before I could drive, but I think that book is what planted the seed in me to become an investor.  

My mom was very much the creative type, and super influential in getting me going with piano. She studied film at NYU and went on to work as a casting director in Hollywood for about a decade on various films and TV shows.  

Talk about your experience with piano? 

I was taught with a program called the Suzuki Method, which emphasizes learning through listening, especially in the early years. For the first six or seven years I listened to the same set of classical pieces over and over again and was able to develop a good sense of relative pitch and an understanding of various harmonic and melodic relationships. Kind of like the language software Rosetta Stone, but for music. 

I started practicing daily around age 4. My parents would put the timer on the piano and if they didn’t hear sounds coming out of it over the next hour, I’d get reprimanded. Most of the time I just wanted to be outside with my friends but now I’m thankful they pushed me to stick with it. When I was in middle school everything sort of clicked for me and I started to love what I was doing. 

Who were your musical influences? 

As a teenager I loved composers from the Romantic period-Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Rachmaninoff-and also some the later Impressionistic stuff. Later on, I discovered jazz, and I became a huge fan of everything that was coming out of the New York jazz scene in the 1950’s and 60’s. My wife tells me I have an unhealthy obsession with Bill Evans. 

How did your musical journey inform your investment philosophy? 

There’s a famous quote from Miles Davis about how the best musicians learn all the theory, and then forget it. I think this applies to investing too: you can go through business school or the CFA program and learn how to do perfect fundamental analysis and value a security down to the penny, but that doesn’t mean you’re good at making money.  

One thing I find interesting is that from an academic perspective, most investment study is retroactive. We can only evaluate what the tape has shown us in the past. Of course, we can glean lessons from history and evolve our understanding of what may drive future returns, but there's also the reality that things get arbitraged out over time. I find that music is similar to investing in the sense that the more we learn about theory and what makes things “work”, the less applicable that knowledge becomes. Like music, investing is more of an art than it is a science – both are more fundamentally behavioral than methodical in my opinion.  

What was your college experience like? 

Going into Auburn I was pretty determined to pursue a career in finance. At the same time, I’d invested so much time in piano, and also my other main interest, running, and I wasn’t ready to give up on either of those. I wanted a school that had a strong finance department, a great music program, and competitive track & field and cross-country teams. Auburn checked all those boxes. I had a great experience there, but I also had this sense, given I was balancing so many commitments, that I only had one foot in the door with everything I was involved in. In retrospect, now that I’m spending nearly 100% of my time managing investments, I’m very happy that I got to have such an interdisciplinary experience. 

How’d you break into the investment world? 

By the time spring semester of senior year rolled around, I realized I didn’t have much of a plan. I went to a career fair and met a Deloitte recruiter who was looking at people for their advisory practice and they asked me if I’d be down to move to Boston. I was eager to try living somewhere outside of the southeast, where I’d grown up, and I ended up taking the job. It was modeling intensive work, and I got a lot training that I hadn't been exposed to in college. It was only after I got there that I realized the role was, for most people, a bridge to something else. Most people would leave to go to investment banking or back to school. I was set on moving to the buy-side. 

How’d you find your way to the buy-side? 

My big break actually came from Craigslist, of all places. When I moved to Boston the first thing I did was buy a piano, and being entrepreneurial, I thought I’d teach some piano lessons on the weekends. I put up a Craigslist ad and started working with a family on Beacon Hill. The mom had a friend who put me in touch with a recruiter at Eaton Vance, who also happened to be a musician. A few interviews later I got a job focused on high yield debt, with a focus on the energy sector, and immediately knew that it was the right space for me. There’s an endless amount of creativity that goes into underwriting and analyzing this type of debt.  

What do you like to read?  

Outside of investment-related stuff I really like science fiction, particularly the books that came out in the sixties and seventies. Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, all those guys. That era of science fiction is just so interesting, and they’re fantastic writers too. I enjoy books that challenge the way people think or enable different modes of thinking.  

Do you have a favorite travel destination?  

I had so much fun when I traveled to Japan. My brother speaks Japanese and spent a year there at his high school’s sister school. When I was living in Boston, he was going to college in Boston, and we went together to Tokyo and did some hiking. It was just incredible. Tokyo is like New York on steroids, miles and miles of neon lights and vibrance and so many people and things going on. If I had to pick somewhere new that I’d love to travel to, it'd probably be Scandinavia.