Ken LaFreniere

Founded in 2002, Empirical Research Partners LLC (ERP) is an independent investment research firm located in New York City. The firm provides services to institutional clients. ERP's research approach is based on empirical evidence. They seek to combine the macro and micro and the short- and long-run evidence into a comprehensive viewpoint. The firm employs inclusive, proprietary databases and sophisticated stock selection models that are based on judgments about human nature. ERP's ongoing research effort attempts to determine how best to translate those judgments into useful decision-making rules. The firm's portfolio strategy is based on microeconomics and seeks to exploit a variety of anomalies to identify stocks that should outperform the market. These anomalies may include misvaluation, overinvestment or retrenchment by management and excessive extrapolation of trends by investors. ERP employs a proprietary, customized database that contains large quantities of company-level data. The firm looks for situations in which the current state of affairs is untenable and the reward for patience is great. ERP's quantitative research seeks to help active portfolio managers make better decisions by exploiting recurring aspects of human nature. Their tools quantify these variables and combine them into screens or formal multifactor models that identify companies with desirable or undesirable traits. The models balance conflicting signals in a dynamic fashion, putting greater emphasis on the factor with the highest expected return at each point in time. The firm's research approach with respect to the developed markets outside of the U.S. is similar, but not identical, to the process they use in researching U.S. companies. ERP's international research considers the economic, legal, accounting, cultural and historical differences within each region and covers the broad range of issues affecting stocks and markets globally. Their stock-selection models combine measures of valuation, capital deployment, earnings quality and market reaction into a single expected return. They compare each stock to its peers within the global sector, within the geographic region and to all stocks across the entire market.