AJK HFB EP. 11: Mansoor Ijaz, founder of Crescent Investment Mgmt. shares his extraordinary life story. - a podcast by Ali Khan

Mr. Ijaz is an American investor, entrepreneur, citizen diplomat, physicist, engineer, father, husband, and founder of Crescent Investment Management, a hedge fund management company that has run his proprietary trading system, CARAT, for 33 years now. He is by far one of the most influential Americans of Pakistani origin in the country. Born and raised as a kid of color in 1960s rural America, Mr. Ijaz was educated as a physicist and neuro-mechanical engineer at the University of Virginia, MIT, and Harvard Medical School. In the late 1980s, without any formal knowledge or training in business, he entered the world of high finance quite by accident. He would later adapt his human biomechanics models developed at MIT to the extreme volatility in financial markets following the 1987 stock market crash. Crescent Investment Management was born soon after in 1990. He made a substantial fortune managing other people’s money in the 1990s, and soon turned his energies to politics in troubled regions of the world – he says he felt the guilt of his wealth in wanting to right wrongs in faraway lands where disaffected people, particularly in the Islamic world, had no voice. He worked closely with the Clinton administration in opening counterterrorism channels to Sudan’s Islamist government and co-authored the blueprint that led to a historical ceasefire in the troubled region of Kashmir. Often blamed for the fall of several powerful governments in Pakistan, he has now quit global politics and spends his time managing mostly his own wealth while raising his family in the United States... oh, and lest we forget, he was also an All-American Powerlifter while at UVA.

In this episode, Mr. Ijaz takes us on a candid journey through his life from growing up as a first-generation American in Virginia in the 1960s and 70s to reaching the pinnacle of the financial and political world. He discusses the events that led him to Wall Street and opened opportunities for him to use his MIT algorithms. He shares with us the work he did with the Clinton administration, his thoughts on cryptocurrency, his time as a powerlifter, and his principles for the success he has enjoyed in life, as well as much much more.

 It was a pleasure, and an absolute privilege, to talk to him.

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