Bob Doll Joins Faith-Based Investment Firm

Months after retiring from Nuveen, Doll has returned to the asset management industry.

Bob Doll (Chris Goodney/Bloomberg)

Bob Doll

(Chris Goodney/Bloomberg)

Less than three months after announcing his retirement from Nuveen, Bob Doll is back to work.

On Wednesday, faith-based investment management firm Crossmark Global Investments announced that it had hired Doll to work as the firm’s first chief investment officer.

Doll, who was known for publishing weekly and annual market commentary, will continue the tradition at his new employer under the moniker Doll’s Deliberations, according to the announcement.

“The size, meaning relatively small, creates an entrepreneurial culture that’s exciting at this time at my career,” Doll said of Crossmark. He added that he was looking forward to working for a values-based investment firm, noting that he had previously done some work on values-based investing and found it “intriguing.”

Doll will be opening a Princeton, New Jersey office for the Houston-based firm. His first day was Tuesday.

Crossmark manages $5.7 billion, according to a spokesperson. Of that, $2.33 billion is institutional capital.

Sponsored

According to the announcement, Doll will focus on new actively managed products. “The universe I pretend to know something about is the Russell 1000, which is deeper than the S&P 500,” Doll joked. “The large-cap U.S. market will be the space that I will manage here at Crossmark, both long and long-short strategies.”

Doll believes that right now, the market is strong, but “reality and perception” have started to align more than they recently were. “I think the market has got a bit of a tug of war,” he said. “You have the tailwinds of an amazingly strong economy as a function of aggressive monetary and fiscal policy, results of vaccination, and reopening the economy.”

However, he warned that inflation and interest rates could present hurdles for the market. “If we continue higher, I think it’s going to be bumpier,” he said.

Within an equity portfolio, Doll thinks that cyclical companies are more attractive than defensive ones, while value stocks are more appealing than growth ones. He also suggested continuing to put capital to work overseas, as the recovery in some areas has been slower than in the United States.

Doll was most recently the chief equity strategist and a senior portfolio manager at Nuveen Asset Management, where he worked for eight and a half years managing large-cap equity strategies. Before joining Nuveen, Doll was the chief equity strategist at BlackRock, president and CIO at Merrill Lynch, and CIO at Oppenheimer Funds.

“He is a powerhouse and thought leader among the investment community and will bring his outstanding 41-year track record to our investment team here at Crossmark,” Mike Kern, president and CEO of the firm, said in a statement.

Related