John DeTore

John DeTore is a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he teaches Institutional Portfolio Management.

DeTore’s investing career began in the quantitative investing operation of the Boston Company, where he conceived of and built Wellington Management Company’s quantitative research effort. For more than eight years, he developed this effort into a unit that has produced a 1,000 basis point spread per year in buy versus sell recommendations. DeTore founded United Alpha and started the European Fund in 2003, and his firm joined forces with GRT Capital Partners in 2006. He is currently chief investment officer for GRT United Alpha and portfolio manager for the European Fund.

DeTore created and managed two new products for Wellington before being lured to Putnam in 1994. Putnam challenged him to build the industry’s best quantitative research effort and product engineering unit. During his tenure, the unit redesigned a number of existing investment funds and designed seven products focusing on international and small cap areas. These funds grew to over $10 billion in assets, and were among the best-performing and most profitable products in the firm. Eventually, his unit grew to 30 people and helped shape one of money management’s great performance and asset growth records. DeTore was a key figure in active process design, risk control, investment strategy, and personnel development. In addition, he served in strategic management, where he helped realign the $70 billion smaller cap line-up and redesigned the investment approach to their $20 billion plus high-yield investing when the firm was the largest buy-side high-yield manager worldwide. He is a member of the Boston Securities Analysts Society and the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute.

DeTore holds a BS in civil engineering and an MS in transportation from MIT.