ABS tells Norwalk Pension Board it favors specialist managers, cites AI and geopolitics as market drivers

Kevin Armstrong of ABS opened the presentation by describing the firm s a $12 billion, employee-owned investment specialist that allocates to differentiated, specialist managers to generate returns across its flagship global equity strategy. "We—uild a global portfolio out of specialized niche strategies that we source from around the world," Armstrong said, explaining ABS—ocus on small, owner-led teams and the benefit of negotiating lower fees that pass through to clients.

Armstrong told the board the broader strategy traces to 2003 and that the specific vehicle the board invests in is about $550 million of the roughly $1.5 billion strategy aggregate. He said ABS typically runs a net exposure roughly around 50% of market beta "so by taking half the risk, we can end up in a very similar spot to the overall index, but with a much smoother route along the way."

ABS highlighted two major market narratives shaping performance in 2026. First, Armstrong said AI dominated market narratives and related hardware (semiconductors, GPUs, memory) had been the strongest contributors: "memory has been the only show in town," he said, pointing to large companies—uilding data centers and spending that has flowed through to vendors. Second, ABS said recent geopolitical events, including the Iran war and higher oil prices, have altered rate-cut expectations and increased near-term market volatility.

On manager selection and monitoring, ABS said it favors early-stage or small managers (median about $1 billion AUM) because being a large early investor allows ABS to negotiate liquidity terms and fees and to influence operational practices. The firm described ongoing due diligence and correlation analysis to detect where managers—xposure might unintentionally track AI or other themes. "If we had found that an industrials manager was basically a tech fund from a correlation perspective, we would have gone to that manager and asked why," Armstrong said.

ABS answered board questions about regional exposure (South Korea, Taiwan) and explained the portfolio accesses those markets through specialist tech managers and local managers in those jurisdictions. On liquidity and reporting cadence, ABS said roughly a third of the portfolio provides daily-level information but most managers report monthly and the firm generally makes portfolio-level decisions on a monthly cadence.

The board asked for supplementary charts and ABS agreed to provide follow-up materials and more detailed analytics. The presentation concluded with thanks and an offer to share the firm ggregate charts and manager-level exposures.

The ABS presentation is informational; no board governance action was required on ABS materials at the meeting.