Help investors make better investment decisions using analytical techniques to capture return advantages documented by academic researchers.

After growing bored with accounting, Ray Meadows set his goal to spend a lifetime learning and teaching by becoming a professor of finance. Doesn’t the idea of being a professor sound great?

You have the time and freedom to study interesting topics while enjoying the stimulation of sharing your interest and learning with the next generation – who are eager to hear your wisdom.

After 4 years in graduate school, the shine was off of the pure academic career. Professors at the top universities are supposed to write elegant mathematical models targeted at their peers, not help students prepare to solve real world problems. Ray left the finance Ph.D. program at Berkeley with the realization that he wanted to apply what he’d learned in the real world (and teach in an environment where really helping students was the main goal).

After working for the big banks as a quantitative analyst on Wall Street, Ray founded Berkeley Investment Advisors to help high net worth investors achieve their goals. This is a fantastic way to help people but Ray realized he wanted to reach a wider audience. He joined the faculty at Hult International Business School (part time) to teach Quantitative Methods and Investment Management.

Interacting with students inspired Ray to think about how to help a much larger set of people. As easy-to-use software development tools proliferated, Ray decided he could help a wider audience by providing “Do It Yourself” (DIY) investors with his quantitative expertise via online analytics. Hence, Kazio was founded.

The idea is that Kazio can be the “professor next door” to help with your investing homework.

The methods we implement in our first product – the Rising Stars Newsletter, are based on a research paper written by Cremers and Pareek: Patient capital outperformance: The investment skill of high active share managers who trade infrequently. Kazio pulls the data and analytics together so that anyone can find the mutual funds that will perform best in the future.

Ray Meadows CPA, CFA, MBA

Ray Meadows, founder of Kazio, is an investment manager and a former Wall Street quantitative analyst. Mr. Meadows taught Quantitative Methods in the MBA program at Hult International Business School. Ray has a keen interest in creating tools to allow investors to use quantitative techniques from academic research as practical tools for investing. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a CPA, a licensed real estate broker, and a registered investment advisor in California. Mr. Meadows began his career in the international tax department of Price Waterhouse Coopers where he structured real estate transactions. Ray earned an MBA specializing in Real Estate and Finance at UC Berkeley, then spent two more years in the Finance/Real Estate Ph.D. program. He earned a Master’s in International Economics before leaving to join Wells Fargo Bank. Mr. Meadows later moved to Wall Street as a credit risk quant, first at ING Barings and later with Citigroup’s credit risk analytics group. In these positions, Mr. Meadows devised models for quantifying and pricing risks inherent in various types of capital markets instruments. In 2002 Ray founded Berkeley Investment Advisors where he currently manages money for wealthy individuals. In 2009, Ray Meadows developed analytical software that calculates optimal terms for residential mortgage modifications using a mathematical algorithm. Mr. Meadows co-authored “Strategic Loan Modification: A Rational Response to Strategic Default”, an academic paper on the analytics of modifying mortgage loans.

A site as ambitious as Kazio requires multiple talents to put together. Kazio includes a team of five recent graduates from Berkeley’s Master of Financial Engineering program. In addition we are allied with a software development company that provides expertise for our data gathering infrastructure. We owe our website design to Satoko Yoshioka of Sentimental Image.