Q&A with Geoffrey Dancey, President & Portfolio Manager, Cutler Capital Management
Photo | Matt Volpini
Geoffrey Dancey, president & portfolio manager, Cutler Capital Management, Worcester
Geoffrey Dancey first came to work for Melvin Cutler at his investment advisory firm when Dancey was an intern out of Clark University. As an intern, Dancey’s main role was to advise Cutler on ways to grow his Cutler Capital Management in the Worcester community, beyond managing money for family and friends. Dancey’s primary recommendation was for the firm to hire an analyst, preferably out of the Clark MBA program. Cutler then hired Dancey to fill that role and, after 14 years with the firm, promoted him to president. Dancey lives with his wife of four years, Rashida Garcia-Dancey, and their 2-year-old daughter, Nia.
Out of college, what was the biggest learning curve about the capital management business?
The biggest learning curve was taking what I learned academically and applying it to the market for publicly-traded securities.
It is one thing to learn how things should be done in a controlled environment, and another thing to implement it in a live environment with information that isn’t perfect – messy data, where we are learning information about companies sporadically.
Less than a year ago, you succeeded David Grenier as president of the firm. How has the transition been?
The learning curve has been on the client relation side. I have known a lot of our clients for a long time, and now being the one who has the primary contact with them, that has been great. I have enjoyed that part of it.
I really like the investing and focusing on research and learning about our companies and industries, but the ability to meet people and to learn from our clients has been fantastic. A lot of our clients are successful small business owners themselves, so learning about their businesses and what they have succeeded or failed in has been a tremendous help.
What is your favorite aspect of being president?
My favorite thing is my ability to implement change when I want to do it.
I have tried to make it so our efforts are maximized toward the investing and research sides of the business. A lot of the activities that exist in a research firm like ours are focused on the investing but also include trading, portfolio management and client relations. The key is having as much of our time go toward the research and investing as possible to minimize the time we spend on activities that don’t add a lot of value.
The client relationship is always going to be something that deserves a lot of our focus. The rest of it is trying to optimize the rest of our time to go toward investing.
How do you maximize Cutler’s culture toward this goal?
In terms of running the firm, what motivates me most is creating an investment environment where the other investment professionals in the firm really have a competition of ideas. What securities we should be buying and what securities we should be selling.
Nothing is black and white; it is just about the strength of your opinion on why your argument is the best. You have to have conviction in your argument.
What advice would you give to interns today looking to break into this business?
You get out what you put in. It is a competitive industry, and there are a lot of people who work really hard, because they like it and because it does take a lot of effort.
If you don’t have both the passion for it and the work effort for it, then you probably won’t succeed.
Where do you see yourself in 15 years?
Leading a larger Cutler Capital.
How do you get there?
Growing client by client. The key for us is really is strong performance and strong client relationships. When investing with high-net worth individuals, it is a referral business. We need to make sure we are investing well for our current clients so they feel we have done well by them, and then they will refer their peers to us. That is the slow but steady way to success.
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Q&A with Geoffrey Dancey, president, Cutler Capital Management
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