Symmetry Partners, LLC Celebrates Milestone

As Symmetry turns 20, co-founder Patrick A. Sweeny, reflects on how his alma mater, Fairfield University helped him develop the investment principles Symmetry is rooted in. Fellow alumnus and Symmetry Director of Research Dana M. D’Auria, and Marketing Project Manager Alissa Mebus also share how their Fairfield and Jesuit education has impacted their careers.

The attached article was originally published in the Dolan Update, Dolan School of Business, Fairfield University, Winter 2015

Alissa Mebus, Marketing & CommunicationsAs a member of Symmetry’s marketing team, Alissa develops integrated marketing campaigns and resources for financial advisor and investor audiences. She also services as the Publicity Chair for Writer’s Block Ink, a New London, Connecticut non-profit organization that encourages youth to use writing and performance as tools to address personal and social challenges. Alissa graduated from Fairfield University in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication.

Dana M. D’Auria, CFA, Director of ResearchMs. D’Auria manages the Symmetry Partners Research Department, overseeing portfolio engineering, due diligence, security monitoring and analysis of the firm’s portfolios as well as supporting the efforts of Symmetry’s Advisor Services Group. She is also a member of the firm’s Investment Committee, which is responsible for setting the firm’s investment policy.

In addition to working on Symmetry’s white papers and research notes, Ms. D’Auria regularly delivers educational presentations to Symmetry’s advisor network. Prior to joining Symmetry, she worked in public relations and as a financial journalist. She joined Symmetry in 2006 as a research analyst. Ms. D’Auria received her BA from Fairfield University in 1999, and her MBA in finance from Fairfield in 2007. She was awarded the CFA charter in 2010. Ms. D’Auria was recently published in the Journal of Financial Planning for an article she co-authored with John B. McDermott, Ph.D. entitled “What do We (Really) Know About Small Caps.”

Patrick A. Sweeny, Principal and Co-FounderPatrick A. Sweeny, Principal, is a founding partner of Symmetry Partners. He is a member of Symmetry’s investment committee. Prior to co-founding Symmetry Partners in 1994, Mr. Sweeny spent a number of years on Wall Street with Weeden & Company and Dean Witter Reynolds in institutional trading and sales in both the equity and fixed income markets. Additionally, he was a member of the Commodities Exchange as a floor trader with Paine Webber.

Mr. Sweeny is a recognized speaker on asset class investing and transforming advisor businesses into more efficient models.He speaks at industry conferences and is a guest lecturer at the university level. He received his BA in economics from Fairfield University.

Symmetry Partners, LLC, is an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm only transacts business in states where it is properly registered, or excluded or exempted from registration requirements. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions. The article contains the opinions of the author(s) but not necessarily Symmetry Partners, LLC. Please note that you should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this article serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from Symmetry Partners.

Symmetry team members featured in the attached article:

www.fairfield.edu/dsob www.fairfield.edu/dsob

Winter 2015Update

Twenty years ago, Wall Street businessmen Patrick A. Sweeny ’83, and David E. Connelly Jr. questioned the stan-dard operating procedure for managing clients’ wealth and wanted to change how business was done.

“There was a period of time where I was investing through active managers on behalf of my clients. The firm I worked for was selling proprietary products through their broker-age system. We could sell other mutual funds, but it was frowned upon by the firm. Back then, that was how busi-ness was done. Still, the more I learned about how academia looked at investing and how Wall Street was practicing it with the retail investor, the more difficulty I had reconciling the differences. I thought that maybe there’s another way to look at this,” said Sweeny.

Now celebrating their 20th anniversary, Symmetry Partners LLC, an investment advisory firm registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, employs nearly 100 people and holds more than $8.4 billion in assets under man-agement.1 The Glastonbury, Connecticut-based investment manager attributes its success to a unique investment philos-ophy and its steadfast commitment to the firm’s core values.

Symmetry Partners works with independent financial advi-sors looking for a client-focused, fee-based approach. The firm specializes in offering marketing, branding, technologi-cal and operational support to advisors to help them gain visibility in their marketplace, increase efficiency and maxi-mize productivity to effectively grow their businesses.

“The advisors we work with recognize the importance of the client-advisor relationship to asset management,” said Sweeny. “Financial advisors should spend the majority of their time talking to clients, meeting with clients, and understanding what is going on in their lives. Symmetry provides the support advisors need in order to dedicate more time to those activities.”

Symmetry’s long-term success can be attributed both to strong leadership plus a conviction in using academic research as the basis for their strategy.

“Instead of trying to predict the market, we leverage the work of Nobel Prize-winning researchers for our investment strategy. We’re not going to change our portfolios just to make them more interesting or sexy; Symmetry’s portfolios are firmly rooted in academia,” said Dana M. D’Auria, CFA, director of research, who received her MBA from the Dolan School of Business in 2007.

With that outlook, it’s not surprising that many members of Fairfield’s network have found their way to Symmetry. “As a graduate of a Jesuit institution, I believe that your job

should be more than just a place you go from nine to five,” said Alissa Mebus ’09, senior project manager in marketing and communications. “When I interviewed at Symmetry five years ago, I asked Pat what made him excited about coming to work every day. He said for him it was the opportunity to help people manage their money the right way.”

Symmetry has also granted a number of Dolan School students the opportunity for hands-on learning through internships, and Finance professor John McDermott, PhD has advised the firm on investment strategies.

“One of the reasons Dave and I struck out on our own was because we shared a common belief about how our clients should be served, and how we should be investing,” said Sweeny. “Fairfield equipped me with the fundamental skills I needed to launch a successful business. My Jesuit educa-tion provided me with a greater ethical, moral, and global context for my work.”

1 Includes combined assets under management and sub-advised assets as of September 30, 2014.

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The Barone Campus Center became a building zone for 29 students in Dr. Michael Cavanaugh’s senior capstone man-agement course.

Students in his course spent several months working in teams to plan, prototype, and build six architectural struc-tures, each using about 3,000 KEVA Planks (cuboid wooden blocks).

The course is “Critical Issues in Management, aka Manage-ment Theory In Vivo,” and focuses heavily on experiential learning and team dynamics. Dr. Cavanaugh said, “This idea came out of my desire to have students out of their seats and using their hands to learn – but not by using their hands with technology. The Dolan School has always been open to different forms of pedagogy and students today are as far away from lectures as ever.”

Joseph Wik ’15 said, “I was drawn to this course because of the innovative teaching style. It’s about learning through doing, making mistakes, and revising.”

Team building zone: Minds under construction Symmetry Partners LLC celebrates milestone

LEFT: (L-R) Dr. John McDermott, CIS, and Pat

Sweeny, principal, Symmetry Partners LLC

RIGHT: Dana M. D’Auria, CFA, Director of Research at Symmetry Partners and

graduate of the Dolan School’s MBA program.

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Throughout the course, students gain a first-hand under-standing of the resourceful, contingent, and iterative nature of solution-driven thinking and doing. Teamwork plays a large role in this course and students experience “intense group dynamics,” according to Dr. Cavanaugh. The course has drawn the attention of outside media, including the Financial Times, noting that this building project exempli-fies the Dolan School’s emphasis on creativity and “cross-disciplinary learning.”

The KEVA plank donation of 18,000 pieces is the largest donation ever given to a university by KEVA Planks Inc. Ken Scheel, founder and CEO of KEVA Planks, even visited one of Dr. Cavanaugh’s classes to talk with the students. This project was also generously supported by Dolan School

Advisory Board member Michael Ferrante ’90, and O&G Industries, Inc.

When it comes to the team designs, the sky’s the limit. Dr. Cavanaugh said most students planned towers with their 3,000 planks, which creates many possibilities. KEVA’s website noted that just 200 planks is enough to build a

tower that reaches the ceiling.

Working with KEVA blocks presents inherent risks in that the structures could collapse, but Dr. Cavanaugh said that’s the nature of building. “KEVA is all about the process and builders are aware of every brick. It really makes you think like an engineer.”

Inevitably, half the fun of building a tower is the demolition. On December 8, the last day of the course, students finally built the towers they had planned all semester, then ceremo-niously demolished them. Even Dean Gibson got into the act of destroying a tower. “It felt great,” he said.

Wik said, “My team built a central tower with a self-collaps-ing spiral built around the structure. The tower remained standing after the spiral around it collapsed. We collapsed the spiral wall using a domino effect started by having planks in the shape of Fairfield’s crest.”

Joseph Wik (left) works with a teammate on their cascading KEVA structure.

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