Nov 20, 2025
This Sponsored Insight features Daniel Mahr, Head of MDT, the
$26 billion quantitative equity investing group at Federated Hermes
that oversees a suite of actively managed mutual funds, ETFs,
collective investment trusts, and separately managed accounts. Dan
joined the firm in 2002 as a junior analyst and took over
leadership of the team six years later, guiding its evolution
through vast changes in data, computing power, and investment
methodology.
Our conversation
traces Dan’s path from flipping IPOs as a college student to
running machine learning models across global equity markets. We
discuss the development of MDT’s decision tree framework — a “glass
box” approach to stock selection that blends transparency with
sophistication — and how the team balances analytical rigor with
human judgment. Dan explains lessons from two decades of modeling
markets, including the challenges of overfitting and underfitting
data, and MDT’s steadfast focus on analytical edge, rather than
informational edge.
Learn More
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