Should More Pensions Adopt Tampa Police and Fire’s Pure Stock-Picking Approach? MPI Analysis Finds its Results Could Easily be Replicated through a More Diversified Approach Instead
SUMMIT, N.J. | July 01, 2025 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Markov Processes International, Inc. (“MPI”), a leading provider of investment technology, analytics, research and indices for the global investment management industry, today released significant institutional research analyzing the $3.2 billion City of Tampa Fire and Police Pension Fund that shows that the fund, long known for returns through a stock-picking approach uncommon in pensions and endowments, actually is a validation of the less risky principles of broader diversification and index investing.
Tampa Fire and Police has been an outlier among pensions and endowments, using a single manager in Bowen, Hanes & Co., and employing an investment approach that relies heavily on selecting single stocks. Traditionally, pensions and endowments take a more diversified approach, and their investments follow Modern Portfolio Theory, which stresses the importance of diversification in managing risk. MPI’s study represents the first rigorous, data-driven examination of Bowen’s performance, offering quantitative clarity after decades of unchallenged praise and lingering doubts about its authenticity.
MPI’s proprietary analysis, calculated using MPI’s Stylus Pro software, performed a returns-based analysis of performance of Tampa Fire and Police – which has notably outperformed or matched its benchmarks in nine of the last 10 years – and found that it could be replicated with a more diversified approach. Indeed, MPI’s Stylus Pro created a long-only portfolio of market indices which credibly (and predictively) mimics the fund’s return.
“While the eye-popping stock-picking has made the managers at Bowen seem like modern-day Warren Buffetts, the truth is much more mundane and instructive for other institutional money managers,” said Michael Markov, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MPI. “We know that once a portfolio reaches a certain size, individual stock picks blend into thematic exposures, like the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks. Active managers spending their days on bottom-up research might rather want to concentrate on whether similar results could be obtained in less risky ways, such as through a basket of ETFs.”
The analysis did show that Bowen’s approach did present moderately higher risk than other pensions and endowments, but it was only moderately higher than other equity-heavy public pensions. And, in terms of efficiency, the fund’s Sharpe ratio was better than its benchmark.
Still, the findings of MPI’s analysis indicate that managers who base their diversified strategies on the Nobel-prize winning Modern Portfolio Theory have the potential to achieve similar returns, without having to hustle to pick the right stocks.
“Diversification works,” Markov said. “Whether or not one believes in volatility or correlation matrices, our analysis validates what Modern Portfolio Theory suggested. There’s little true alpha left in managing a $3 billion liquid portfolio through stock-picking alone.”
The full report can be found here.
For additional information on MPI’s research or to get a demo of its Stylus Pro software, please contact MPI at +1 (908) 608-1558 or info@markovprocesses.com.
