About

Dr. Bruce I. Jacobs, G’79, GRW’86, is principal and co-founder of Jacobs Levy Equity Management, established in 1986. Jacobs Levy Equity Management is a leading provider of quantitative equity strategies for institutional clients globally, including corporate defined benefit and defined contribution plans, public retirement and sovereign wealth funds, Taft-Hartley plans, endowments/foundations, and sub-advised funds, many of which are included in Pensions & Investments’ top 200 largest retirement funds. He is co-chief investment officer, portfolio manager, and co-director of research.

In addition to his recent philanthropy to establish the Dr. Bruce I. Jacobs Master of Science in Quantitative Finance, he co-founded the Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research, where he serves as Chair of the Advisory Board, as well as the Jacobs Levy Equity Management Dissertation Fellowships in Quantitative Finance and the Wharton-Jacobs Levy Prize for Quantitative Financial Innovation. An advocate for the launch of the MBA major in quantitative finance, he established the Dr. Bruce I. Jacobs Professorship in Quantitative Finance and the Dr. Bruce I. Jacobs Scholars in Quantitative Finance.

Jacobs’ articles on equity management have appeared in the Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of Investing, Journal of Investment Management, Journal of Financial Perspectives, Japanese Security Analysts Journal, Operations Research, Annals of Operations Research, and Journal of Impact and ESG Investing. He has received several Graham and Dodd Awards from Financial Analysts Journal and his article, “Disentangling Equity Return Regularities: New Insights and Investment Opportunities,” co-authored with Ken Levy, was featured as part of the 25 selected influential articles in the Financial Analysts Journal 80th Anniversary Editors’ Collection.

The impact of the innovations brought forth in their articles is evident in the industry’s adoption of many of their terms and concepts, including “market complexity,” “disentangling,” “multidimensional market,” “pure versus naïve returns,” “smart alpha versus smart beta,” “law of one alpha,” “integrated long-short optimization,” “trimability,” “unique risks of leverage,” “leverage aversion,” “mean-variance-leverage optimization,” “mean-variance-leverage efficient surface,” and “enhanced active equity long-short (130-30) strategy.”

Jacobs is author of Too Smart for Our Own Good: Ingenious Investment Strategies, Illusions of Safety, and Market Crashes, which was translated into Chinese by China Machine Press, and Capital Ideas and Market Realities: Option Replication, Investor Behavior, and Stock Market Crashes; co-author with Ken Levy of Equity Management: Quantitative Analysis for Stock Selection, which was translated into Chinese by China Machine Press, and Equity Management: The Art and Science of Modern Quantitative Investing, 2nd ed.; co-editor with Ken Levy of Market Neutral Strategies; and co-editor of The Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Awards: Five Years of Award-Winning Articles from The Journal of Portfolio Management, Volumes One through Five. He was a featured contributor to How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street’s Elite.

He serves on the Ambassador Advisory Board of the Journal of Portfolio Management, the Advisory Board of the Journal of Financial Data Science, and is an advisory editor for the Journal of Impact and ESG Investing. He has also served on the Financial Analysts Journal Advisory Council, and was an associate editor of the Journal of Trading.

Jacobs has a bachelor’s degree from Columbia College, a master’s degree in operations research and computer science from Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University’s Graduate School of Industrial Administration, and a master’s degree in applied economics and a doctorate in finance from the Wharton School. He served for several years on the finance faculty at the School.