Josh Schein, CEO

Josh Schein is CEO of Global Key Advisors. Josh developed and ran the InsideTrack^® portfolios at Citi Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley from 1996 through 2014 before bringing the portfolios to Global Key. Offered primarily to current and former public company insiders, the portfolios seek to quantitatively identify and track ‘smart money’ through scrubbing and analysis of data from public spheres. Josh brings original perspectives to ‘smart money’ research.  Josh's original perspectives in ‘smart money’ research include, as an example, publishing the first time series analysis conducted on insider trading. His studies showed that insiders over time get worse at acquiring shares while improving at selling, and moreover, that the rarity of an insider’s trading correlates positively to performance.

Josh holds a BA summa cum laude from West Virginia University and a JD from the University of Washington where he co-founded the Washington International Law Journal. During college, Josh spent a year of study in India at Banaras Hindu University and a year in Thailand as a research assistant with Yale University investigating the foraging energetics of three species of Asian honeybees on a project exposing him early to challenges in data collection and analysis. Between college and law school, Josh learned Japanese, later interpreting oral and written communications for Citi Smith Barney management and compliance extending to detailed simultaneous telephone translation of discussions involving undercollateralized fast-moving derivative instruments.

Josh played an integral role in launching Global Impact Communications, Inc., the only existing high speed Internet backbone in the Brazilian Amazon, and he is currently responsible for coordinating institutional efforts toward using this bandwidth to help underserved Amazon communities and to prevent rainforest degradation. Josh also co-founded Pegasus Power Solutions, a turnkey energy solutions provider for customers with large-scale energy needs. Josh is an advisory board member and strategic advisor respectively for Silicon Valley-based Lifeboat Ventures, a private fund targeting disaster mitigation, and TalaSecure, a cybersecurity company focused on ransomware.

In nonprofit, Josh engages actively with two environment organizations, serving since 2015 as a moderator, judge, and mentor for the Cleantech Open, the world’s oldest and largest venture accelerator devoted to clean technology companies, and as a member of the board for Acterra, a 50-year-old organization dedicated to environmental engagement. 

To learn more about Josh’s unconventional segue into asset management, read on.

Lessons from Honeybees: Falling into Big Data Without Knowing It, by Josh Schein