David Berns
David Berns is the Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Simplify Asset Management, where he leads the development of novel investment strategies that help advisors produce better outcomes for their clients. Berns is an innovative thinker and emerging thought leader in asset allocation and behavioral finance. Throughout his career, he has been dedicated to developing quantitative solutions for the advisory community, with a heavy focus on asset allocation and risk management across liquid and illiquid asset classes. He is the author of “Modern Asset Allocation for Wealth Management”, and Founder and Inventor of Portfolio Designer, a cost-effective cloud-based solution for real-world asset allocation. Previously, he served as Managing Director of Nasdaq, where he created web-based research content and portfolio management tools to help advisors tactically manage client portfolios.
David Berns Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer
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Managing Director
Academic History
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Ph.D., Physics
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B.S., Engineering Physics
Berns co-launched Simplify to provide an innovative ETF provider focused on helping advisors build better portfolios.
He leads Simplify in making institutional-grade alternative strategies available to all investors through the low-cost and transparent ETF vehicle.
The firm specializes in the scientific use of options, offering a new generation of options-based investment strategies built for the specific outcomes advisors demand.
PORTFOLIO DESIGNER
As Founder of Portfolio Designer, he helps advisors clearly define their investment philosophy and process with world class methods at minimal costs.
He provides expertise in helping advisors easily manage a large number of highly personalized client portfolios that are all optimized for performance.
Portfolio Designer lets advisors build highly personalized client portfolios and manage underlying investments in just a few simple steps.
EARLY CAREER
Berns began his finance career at a $5 billion multi-family office where he developed cutting-edge asset allocation, portfolio management, and risk management systems for managing private and institutional wealth.
He then developed short- and intermediate-term investment strategies that help improve both return and risk characteristics of a strategic asset allocation.
At Nasdaq, he also developed systematic, ETF-based asset allocation strategies for deployment within ETF, SMA and model platform wrappers.