Langdon Bleecker Wheeler – 50th Reunion Essay

Langdon Bleecker Wheeler

48 Lake View Avenue

Cambridge, MA 2138

langwheeler@gmail.com

617-529-5264

Spouse(s): Kathy Metcalfe (January 1981–present)

Child(ren): Bleecker Langdon Wheeler (1982), Katherine Hancy Wheeler (1984), Olivia Hope Wheeler (1988)

Education: Harvard Business School MBA 1974

National Service: US Navy Supply Corps, 1969–1972

Career: Founder, President, Chief Investment Officer, Chairman, Numeric Investors 1989–2009, Chartered Financial Analyst

Avocations: Restoring old buildings, restoring civility and sanity to American politics, income inequality

College: Calhoun (Hopper)

I’m going to talk about the passions of our lives. I am still married to Kathy Metcalfe, whom I first met in Athens, Georgia, in 1969. Kathy was completing her BFA at UGA and I was at Naval Supply Corps School. We have been married 38 years and have three married kids but no grandchildren yet. Kathy continues to paint. We have lived most of our married life in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We are still healthy and vigorous but we both have had orthopedic repairs and a brush with cancer. We know we’re mortal and slowing down.

Kathy and I share a passion for renovating houses. We have done 25 renovations in our marriage, including a 40,000-square-foot inn in Rhode Island, which we still own (with a partner) and operate (with expert help). We love the intellectual challenge of taking a neglected, antique building and restoring it to its original intent, but with modern fixtures and layout.

We also have a passion for collecting—American country furniture, classic sports cars, oriental rugs, and early-20th-century photography. We are drawn to these art forms and our collections adorn our lives.

My career was much more exciting and lucrative than I expected leaving Yale, because it took until my mid-30s to find my passion. I was an engineer at Yale and took computer courses that proved central to my career. Following two and a half years in the navy, I enrolled at HBS, where I studied marketing, finance, and entrepreneurship. With an MBA and engineering degree, I entered the job market in 1974 without a clue as to what I should do. I worked first as a management consultant and then in sales and marketing. None of that lit my fire.

In 1981, three days after our January wedding, I was fired but paid half my salary for a year if I did not take a job with our principal competitor. Being forced to stay unemployed, I bought an Apple II computer and a Value Line subscription and began modeling stock returns. We spent four years on our farm in Vermont, changing the diapers of our two new babies, splitting firewood, gardening, pressing apple cider, and refining these stock selection tools.

In 1985, quantitative investing was considered lunatic fringe, which is why it worked so well. The models I developed got me hired at State Street Bank, where I deployed my models and ran institutional portfolios with startlingly good results. Clients wanted to hire me but would not while I was employed at a big bank. So in 1989, I launched Numeric Investors, with two employees and two $20 million portfolios invested in US stocks. Today Numeric has $32 billion under management and 120 employees, trading equity markets around the world. I hired my successor in 2006 and retired in 2009. In 2014, the Man Group, based in London, bought Numeric. All that began with my passionate curiosity about stock returns, and the computer skills learned at Yale.