Didn’t get the chance to head to Vegas for the Global EQD conference. No worries. We’ve got you covered.
We’re teaming up with the one and only Jason Buck (@jasoncbuck) of Mutiny Funds (@MutinyFunds), he of many volatility-focused podcasts and manager of a long vol fund of funds. Together, Jeff and Jason walk through their notes from attending the annual equity derivatives-focused conference put on by the good folks at EQD. Make sure to head over to www.eqderivatives.com and signup for their official notes. Meanwhile, they go deep on many topics, from accessing commodity markets and traders in China, addressing liquidity concerns on execution desks, and exploring the nuances between variable annuities and index-linked annuity products.
Jason and Jeff delve into alternative correlated hedges with cheaper volatility, examine volatility strategies in ETFs, and analyze the role of leverage in finance. Jason also shares his hot takes on various topics, including the allure of Las Vegas to the fascinating world of greenflation and energy, where wind farms and Dr. Copper play a significant role. No EQD stone is left unturned — SEND IT!
P.S. Mark your calendars for Part 2, dropping over on Jason’s Mutiny Investing podcast, where Jeff and Jason will take you even deeper into the fascinating world of finance, energy, and investments.
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Check out the complete Transcript from this week’s podcast below:
Global EQD ’23 Breakdown with Jason Buck (part 1)
Jeff Malec 00:07
Welcome to the Derivative by RCM Alternatives, where we dive into what makes alternative investments go analyze the strategies of unique hedge fund managers, and chat with interesting guests from across the investment world. Hello there, get ready for some good shows. Following this one, we’ve got Corey Hoffstein coming on to talk through his recent thoughts on replication, which I seem to be seeing more and more of in the systematic and trend space of late. And then our taping of RCMs Vegas Vol panel the following week with Cem Karsan, Zed Francis, and Luke Rahbari. So bunch of good guests coming up, subscribe today so you don’t miss a show. On to today’s episode, we have the one and only Jason Buck of Mutiny Funds and the Pirates of Finance YouTube show. We did this last year if you’ll remember and listeners appreciated the color and insight into an institutional-level conference on volatility and derivatives and options. So Jason and I are back this year to take a stroll through our notes from the global EQ D Conference in Vegas a few weeks ago. We split this into two parts with the first part going up here on the derivative. You’re listening to it now and then the second part going up on the mutiny investing podcast. Send it This episode is brought to you by RCMs vix and volatility specialist and it’s managed futures group. We’ve been helping investors access volatility traders like the ones we talked about in this episode for years and can help you make sense of this volatile space. So what I did there, check out the newly updated vix involve white paper@rcms.com under the education menu, then White Papers link and now back to the Show All right, we are here with the one that only Jason buck. Going to do part two I guess we did two parts last year this would technically be part three. But Season Two of our global EQ D Conference review I think we call it last year overheard at of all conferences is overheard at a ball conference, season two and 2023 How are you?
Jason Buck 02:16
Couldn’t be better Jeff, it was throw me off here and you on the honor on a microphone instead of the way we’re normally talking to each other. So exactly. Hearing your your deep beard. Turn on the mic was throw me off for a second.
Jeff Malec 02:28
And as we both know, in this podcasting world of like you have to put on the show show must go on break a leg, even if you’re not feeling the best. So I appreciate it. So let’s jump right in. Now I’d like what we did last year. Let’s let’s do a few seconds minutes on Vegas. My hot take on Vegas this time around was inflation is real. And I’m seeing it in Vegas, the tables at the Wynn were $200 minimum. That’s that’s a big jump from back in the day. Maybe my brain is adult and I can’t remember thinking there was a linear jump between 15 years ago and last year but right $200 minimums at the wind that was pretty substantial.
Jason Buck 03:12
It during the day, did you hear anything like like $50 minimums, or do you see any of that because I mean, typically, you know the winds going to be higher, no matter what. But I remember when we were walking around you pointed that out. I was staying across the street at the Resorts World weather, which is good tip trick for anybody that new Resorts World by Hilton is actually nicely newly refurbished place. I guess they’re really pushing to get like a lot of the DJs and parties there. But other than that, like the room to refurbish to noon, it was actually a lot cheaper and just being across the street from the wind, and then they have a mall inside there. That was you know, it’s kind of analogous to maybe the REM mall or stuff like that. It was pretty, pretty interesting. But like you said, Yeah, I think even walking around there I want to say I saw like 25 to $50 minimums. So maybe that’s where I saw the $50 minimums and so like to your point, inflation The other thing was that I guess I should have been prepared I didn’t realize we were going to Vegas or didn’t register with me but all sudden like It’s like explosion of people by the pool and all that stuff during summertime and so that’s always a highly distracting it’s very awkward to go everybody’s in suits going to all these events and then meanwhile you’re just walking by all these people in their pool attire walking through the casinos as well.
Jeff Malec 04:19
The my Did you see that article this week on Vegas blackjack revenues are up a billion, because most like 70% of them have switch the blackjack odds to six to five instead of three to two. Right? So most people like oh, that’s about roughly the same, but roughly the same and the same is not the same. So and a lot of me thinks that also has to do with the they have all these little side bets now right of like you can bet on your top, your two cards plus the dealer’s card that’s up, all that kind of stuff. So I’m sure that just has super edge.
Jason Buck 04:56
And then flattering to me. Go ahead. Sorry.
Jeff Malec 04:58
Go ahead. Good luck.
Jason Buck 05:00
I was gonna say was concerning to me is like, I’ve been to a couple more I think like finance events at at the wind since last year. And what’s concerning me is how well I’m able to start navigating the wind, like that’s something I don’t do not want to be well versed in is like how to get around like a casino in Vegas.
Jeff Malec 05:17
And to me, you get way more exercise than you think. Right? So you stayed across the street, I stayed across the street the other way at the plot. So it’s a good mile from my room until you get into the conference area of the wind. Right like a quarter mile getting out of your hotel half a mile across quarter mile in anyway, and then
Jason Buck 05:35
always the bathroom breaks and everything. So did you look at your phone? i If I recall correctly, I was getting over just over 15,000 steps in a day, which, and we’re like you said meanwhile sitting in conference rooms for most of the day.
Jeff Malec 05:47
Yeah, I didn’t look but yeah, I would assume it was that my rings were closed on my watch. So. And then my last bit on Vegas SNESs is just I played a little bit of blackjack. The corollary between gamblers and investors has never been stronger. Right? I just saw in my limited time you get a guy comes up and just wants to ride he buys in for $900 plays three hands at $300 and leaves. You get the very conservative person who puts in 250 and plays 50 hours a hand for four hours. And then you get everything in between you get the quants who always hit on 60 and you get the gut feel people who never hit on 16 Right. So it’s like amazing me of like, it feels a lot like investors of like, I’m just going with this because it’s hot. I’d like to do super conservative. I like to do it super quanti I like to go with my gut.
Jason Buck 06:35
But I never I never really played the tables but what always used to bother me like I remember back in the day if like you sit down at blackjack and everything. I like how the people were on the other positions were like yell at you for what you do. Like you affected their cards like it’s,
Jeff Malec 06:46
yeah, we added a guy called a guy. He’s like you’ve jack and a split two’s against the six. I’m like, I’m pretty sure that’s the by the book play, sir. And then he walked up and left but like, right and of course he had lost and if he hadn’t lost he probably right God, I’m a jackass and probably wouldn’t have left.
Jason Buck 07:02
Exactly.
Jeff Malec 07:10
All right, on to the conference. So part of there was some invitation only things with some investors, we’re not going to get into that. The first panel we saw was similar to last year’s. Where do they had the guy was a little more interesting last year to me because there was talking commodities and inflation and trend, right when all the commodities were rocking higher. This had a similar tone, but it was on green inflation and the energy transition which the guy touched on last year, but that was more broad based this was specifically about green inflation. So you got any quick takeaways you want me to roll with that one first?
Jason Buck 07:48
No, I got some some notes on that. But before we even get to that, you know, starting the night night before Sam alternatives did they did a panel discussion with some vol experts. So yeah, you want to talk about that a little bit. Like who did you have on the panel?
Jeff Malec 08:03
I do except that it’s gonna be it’s a whole own podcast. So tune in on this channel later for that. Excellent. Preview, exactly. Jim Carson, of high volatility, Zed, Francis of convex atoss and Luke rubbery of equity armor, and myself hosting him. So yeah, that was a lively conversation. Tried to get into the zero DTE debate which we’ll talk about a little bit more here but didn’t quite take the bait. I thought jam and said we’re gonna go after it a little bit more, but they they politely disagreed whether it’s a big deal or no deal at all. Yeah, I
Jason Buck 08:39
think you’re we’re gonna have that that’s gonna be a through line on almost a lot of the discussions is how you know, that was seemed to be the topic du jour was your DTE. But to preview yours for the podcast comes out. Is that get you you had a great question of like, does it? Is it? Is it really important or does it not matter at all right. And to to your guests who are like it’s very important and other ones doesn’t matter at all. So you have to listen to that to see what happened. And also related to that. I’m starting to I’m trying to relate to Jeff so you know, you had a letter your your smartlace References Smartlist podcast references while you’re doing that panel. So on the way back from Vegas, I was watching the Smartlist tour. I think it was on max HBO max by the way, if I take why in the world would you ever give up HBO?
Jeff Malec 09:24
Why would you ever bought like the one of the best brands in the world? Yeah,
Jason Buck 09:27
I maybe I need to read into this to see what happened. But I couldn’t imagine any scenario why you would get rid of HBO and just go with Max.
Jeff Malec 09:35
Well, I think they went HBO max. And then people were like, That’s dumb. Yeah. So they dropped. Like, well, that’s dumber.
Jason Buck 09:40
Believe like their NPS score and the quality and the reinvention and like they just shows the movies. I mean, why in the world would you ever reach HBO? But I digress. So going back to, to green inflation. It was sock Jen. And so I’m trying to just find exactly Ben Hoff from he was global head of commodity strategies for sock Jen. And so there was it was very commodity heavy, like you’re saying almost like last year. So that had some interesting pieces. Some of the more anecdotes I wrote down is that the all the bovine population in the world produces the same greenhouse gas waste as the United States. So that was just like, an interesting kind of like anecdote or statistic that I found interesting. So he was, he was kind of more moving away from that and talking about other primary issues. And, you know, one of the things is, you know, we’re always talking about supply chain over the last few years. And he was talking about how, you know, the supply chain for rare earths is very difficult. So he was primarily, the top of the conversation was not necessarily green inflation, but it was green inflation in relations to switching to E electric vehicles. So that was the primary kind of focus of the conversation. So he’s talking about, you know, obviously, with electric vehicles, you have the batteries, you have the construction of the of the of the actual vehicle, especially within the battery, you have a lot of those rare earth minerals. And so that’s the primary point of his conversation. So that’s what he’s saying the supply chain is incredibly difficult for that, because you have, you know, a lot of that supply chains is either in China, or Sub Saharan Africa. And so, obviously, you know, we have whether we have a cold, silent war with China right now, or whatever you want to call it. And then also the Belt and Road Road Initiative, where they’re taking over large swaths of Africa. That would lead like they’re saying to maybe conflict over, you know, quality and getting to these rare earth minerals. But what I think is interesting, at least from my perspective, is like, those are the countries that refine the rare earth minerals, where if you do your research, just like the US has tons of rare earths, the problem is politically, and socially and just optically, we’re unwilling to refine them. I mean, it’s very dirty to refine them, and it can be quite toxic. So we actually have tons of errors in the United States, it’s just we don’t have the wherewithal maybe to refine them. So it’d be interesting if we do actually go full on war with China, like, well, we just, you know, kind of spin up, you know, rare earth refining capacity within the US. You mean, doesn’t that
Jeff Malec 12:00
Allah, like, Intel plan outside Columbus, Ohio, and like, chipmaking back in the US, right, which is a similar path. I, to your point, I liked he was moving basically making the point that agriculture isn’t as big of a deal as everyone’s making it right to be right of like you had a pie chart, it was 15 percentage or something, where transportation was really the big, huge piece of that pie chart. And I also appreciate when I hear smart people in that space, it drives me crazy. I’ve corrected my kids, I’m trying to correct their friends. When you drive by a wind farm and they come windmills. Like they’re not there’s nothing being mailed there. It’s not a windmill. It maybe looks like a windmill in your child’s children’s books, but it’s a right a wind turbine. So one of the interesting charts he had up there, what 100 megawatt wind farm, which I looked up is about 60 to 70 turbines is 30,000 tons of iron ore 50,000 tons of concrete, 900 tons of plastic, and 150 tons of copper, for offshore 50 tons for onshore, then he had that interesting stat that was like 70% of the copper is actually not in the turbine itself, but connecting all the turbines to get all the energy from each of the turbines into the grid or whatnot. So I found that super interesting on that panel. And then I’ll just go on, on my other humble
Jason Buck 13:28
bird swatters, instead of windmills like,
Jeff Malec 13:33
and shameless plug from three years ago by head, Jeff, Dr. Jeff masters who’s of Weather Underground on the pod and asked him the question of like, does, right if if we have all those wind farms, and they’re converting wind into energy, what doesn’t that have some effect down stream? Right? Is there less wind? Right, say that we’re all on the California coast, it would no wind get to the wind farms in Nebraska and whatnot. Which he was saying he agreed, like yes, it’s taking energy out of the equation. So that’s always like a big picture philosophical weirdness to me of like, okay, what do we really know what’s happening in the world if we’re taking all this wind energy, solar energy, geothermal wave energy out of the equation, like what’s the other step that happens on there?
Jason Buck 14:15
I don’t know how to set the transmission Right. Like, it doesn’t matter if you have a hydro, wind, solar, you still have that you still have to distribute that across the system and you could have you know, hundreds or 1000s of miles that you had to to transmit that energy over and that can be prohibitively costly as well and then people go well, you know, eventually battery technology will catch up for us to be able to store and harness that better just like now you’re increasing the batteries as well and I’ll give you one the other stats maybe you have this written down so I don’t want to front run you but like part of that what goes into a battery 1000 pound lithium ion battery for an EV requires 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of Nickel, 90 pounds of copper, 110 pounds of graphite, and 400 pounds of steel, aluminum and various As plastic components and then we’re supposed to go from Yeah, we’re supposed to go from 11 million electric vehicles today projected and 2030 to 145 million so that’s 13x growth. That’s a lot of batteries.
Jeff Malec 15:11
A lot of metals Yeah. So that was his whole point of right that’s why it’s green inflation of as we move towards all this greener energy storage and transmission and generation that’s gonna mean a lot more batteries it’s gonna mean a lot more rare earth items he didn’t quite get into the political as you were touching on right of like, yeah, that’s mostly all comes from China today. I hadn’t read some of the stats you add up, some of that is in the US,
Jason Buck 15:40
I just knew that, from from reading, I’m just pulling that out of my ass from reading about her over the years is like, we actually have plenty of rare earths, it’s just optically it’s difficult to refine them and it is pretty toxic thing. So it’s one of those things where we’ve offshore a lot of our you know, toxic refining capacity, and we’ve honestly offshore to a lot of our environmental degradation due to greenhouse gases, etc, right, we offer those to the Third World and then we complain that they don’t adhere to our standards. So it’s a little bit a little bit of both there. But the one thing that I thought was interesting, though, that he you know, as a crowd of investors, traders, etc. And like you’re saying, especially in commodities is that many of these transition metals are spot markets, and they don’t have liquid future markets. So that was kind of the kind of top of conversation I’m not sure if he gave him the answers or if you heard any of like, how do you trade like the the What’s your trade, right? Like if you see this 30 next growth in EVs and you believe in that and you believe all the batteries and what goes into them and you know where we’re headed. If you don’t have liquid futures markets, you’re not necessarily you can’t trade spot markets and then maybe you could then go to resource equities but then now you have secondary and tertiary effects of like who are the people running these companies what’s their debt load though? All those sorts of things that could go wrong making those bets
Jeff Malec 16:59
Yeah, for sure. You want to commodities commodity companies that come with all their hair but I think the answer there is practically proper right copper deep liquid market futures market you have basis risks there obviously I don’t know what some point he may have mentioned you would switch over from copper to some other metal if it became Prime really expensive, right? If it was 50x the price or something? Yeah, but generally speaking I agree with you like yeah, you’re he’s trying to scare investors saying here is green inflation is coming big time. You need to prepare here’s where it’s all going to reflect as in the metals, but I agree that wasn’t answered or even questioned by the audience of like, okay, what’s the trade? How do I trade it?
Jason Buck 17:42
Yeah, that’s like you said without the futures markets makes it difficult. And also the audience is kind of you know, first session of the day so not a lot of questions probably and then I’m curious I don’t think I’ve ever asked you what are your Do you believe in the whole Dr. Copper thesis like you’ve been around you know, physical trading commodities for decades? I’ve never really asked you Would you have any thoughts on Dr. Copper kind of leading the way or and then now the change of coppers ability you know, transition from you know, previous more industrial metals to now Evie vehicle metal?
Jeff Malec 18:11
I believe in Dr. Copper, probably more than I believe in what, what’s gold’s name? Ghastly gold or something?
18:20
Relic? Yes, I
Jeff Malec 18:21
believe in Dr. Copper way more than the barbarous relic. But it’s had some infamous false signals and non signal. So just like anything, have to really hang your hat on. But yeah, for sure. It’s a piece of the puzzle there. And then what that was from last year, which will just bring up like those copper mines have been 2030 years of under investment in building them out and infrastructure. So yeah, I’m all for copper. Buy it up. And as you mentioned it how do you get access to these other metals? I’m going to jump ahead to the third panel today was a guy from Ai la indices. Let’s switch over and tell you what panel that was.
Jason Buck 19:09
Brandon Yao from the carbon commodities. Yeah, which
Jeff Malec 19:12
didn’t, he didn’t really talk about carbon, but part of his was like, Hey, if you want to get cobalt, and lithium, and there’s no liquid futures market, how do you do it? And his group had graded these indices, which basically do different percentages of the liquid markets to mirror and mimic the illiquid markets. So a bunch of trouble there, in my opinion, right of like, well, it worked in the back test, it worked in historically, how do we know where we’re moving forward? There’s basis risk, there’s correlation risk, there’s dynamic, dynamic risk, like if any of that model it has to dynamically adjust. But anyway, that’s I think part of what investors are doing of like, okay, cool, I get it, but how do I trade cobalt? Oh, well, you just trade 60% copper futures and 40% gold futures or platinum futures or whatever. and hold your nose and pretend you’re getting cobalt. Yeah.
Jason Buck 20:04
Yeah, this sounds almost like a DBMS or like kind of replication. But also I would, I’m curious for you This made me think about you guys work with a lot of like Chinese commodity traders etc. Like, is that an access point really to? Because you know that the Chinese markets have much more nuanced or maybe more illiquid markets that we’d really don’t see too much coming out of like London or Chicago. Yeah, definitely.
Jeff Malec 20:26
Yeah, access those rebar. So concrete, and they have, I can’t remember the name but some plastic nickel. So for sure the trick is, and we’ll try and be short on this. But basically, the trick is they’ve opened up 11 of those markets, I believe, to outside money, except none of the onshore futures brokers will take us customers. If you’re a non US investor, and most likely institutional, not a two legged investor, you could open and get the get the access to those markets direct through China. And yeah, as Jason mentioned, our Sam’s doing bunch of stuff, trying to create that path also through it came in vehicle and add some protection. So you’re not just sending money to a random Chinese broker and hoping it comes back? Yeah, I think that’s for sure. And why do they have those which comes full circle? Why do they have those futures markets because it’s there in their country? Right there. They’re refining and producing most of that action. All right. panel to panel one. That was even the pre panel but right because it wasn’t even a panel. It was just a talk. But the first main panel was my guy Braj, who I love, multi asset and a time of multi uncertainties. So they had Sarah Pollack of s&p Dow Jones indices with Brage. Ag Ra, the Goldman Sachs lady wasn’t there, right? She was on the agenda, but she wasn’t up there. Devang Cambre, wala PGIM and Sue Got this are car of FM Global. So this is always a fascinating space to me of these are big, huge institutional, hedgers, essentially, different flavors of it of like, okay, they’ve got a huge liability portfolio, they have premiums coming in, they have payments going out, they’re bouncing those items with the volatility of the market, with their expected monthly quarterly annual bogey for returns and risk. So my note was they didn’t talk much about multi. Right. The panel was the topic of multi asset. They talked mostly about equity, Vol. And a little bit of rates fall, I guess, but yeah, what are your thoughts on that panel? So
Jason Buck 22:50
like, to your point, like the panel that Raj was on last year was probably our favorite, right? Because they’re talking about things that we don’t have much purview in and not necessarily things that either of us are associated with, or trade or invest in. And so that was a really interesting panel last year to hear, you know, how these enormous insurance companies are hedging or running their book. And we were they were talking about some of the new rules and what the outlook was, this year, the panel was kind of a dud, I don’t want to like, you know, disparage anybody on the panel. But it was kind of a it was kind of all over the place. And not a lot was said, and maybe they’re talking about some of the nuances and some of the rules, they had to deal with that. But it wasn’t there wasn’t a lot. I didn’t take a lot of notes. One thing that Brage said was it was kind of the he said rate ball is too expensive to buy, but then too hard to sell. So that was interesting how like, you know, that’s going to be another three lines, people talking about rates while versus equity ball. But I think Brage kind of nailed that. One is like, you know, where it’s running now, it’s too expensive to buy, but too hard to sell. So it was it was an interesting point that sometimes vol gets to a place where balls medium or medium to high. And you don’t want to be on either side of that trade. And so that’s kind of using like, this is a time to step away. And then Braj was the first one that’s going to come up many times is to bring up zero DTE options. But the way he was talking about is basically they were using them for positions they established a week or two before and they’re using to kind of close out or hedge the position on like the final day going into expiration so it wasn’t really the uses of zero DTE. And he said he but he did feel that those your DTS were very liquid, but they were being very specific and choosy about which current counterparties they work with. And I’m sure maybe we’ll get into this a little bit later. You know, there’s a lot of liquidity there a lot of volume there. And things 10 Are seem to be fairly equally weighted and benign. But as soon as things start to break, you’re gonna be very concerned, I guess about who you’re who your card, who the Counterparty is, and how that can create a cascade of consequences even if you’re on a listed exchange.
Jeff Malec 24:55
Yeah, for sure. I think that was the first I don’t consume news. At least as much content as you do so you may have heard someone else but that was the first time I’ve heard a institutional investor actually say the words out loud of like, yeah, I trade zero DTE. Right, we’ve all been dancing around it. Like who’s on this side? Who’s on that side? Is it all retail and institutional? So that was first time we’ve heard institutional say, Yep, here we are. And then I his favorite thing I wrote down was him just complaining about some of the junior traders on execution desks. And I guess they call and they say, they get a mark, right? They’re saying like, I need to buy 50,000 options at whatever and they give him a mark. And he’s saying these junior traders are calling back like it moved. It moved. It’s three points. Now what do I do? He’s like, relax, this is what it was like in the old days. I know you’re used to zero realize ball. So he was having fun at their expense explaining that. And then on the rate swapping Yes, shut
Jason Buck 25:48
- That was a shout out to old school traders, right that like you set them give a quote and then the market will move tremendously and you still have to fulfill that quote. So that’s what he was kind of joking around about.
Jeff Malec 25:59
And then on your raid swag point is great point because we want to sit there and talk to ball managers and right okay, I get the model when falls low you buy when balls high, you sell as everything. Not quite that simple. Right? In this case, they don’t want to sell because they’re scared, I tie and could go higher. And they don’t want to buy because it’s high and could go likely gonna go much lower. Right? Seems like it’s peaked out. But with any type of all you never know how high it can go. It’s like it’s convex to the upside, right?
Jason Buck 26:30
Yeah. And then well, the other part of that is like, none of this is investing advice. But like the irony is that like, a lot of times actually low wall environments, actually when you want to be selling ball, but that’s scary shit. Yeah, like same thing, Gene flip is like the the applied or realized spread, you know, like a 2017. Like you crush it when you’re selling ball. But like, it’s really hard to sell ball, you know, it’s in the single digits, because it can just explode in your face. But those tend to be the richest times to be selling ball. So ironically, people want to sell it one tire. But like you said, if it’s higher, you kind of expanded the distribution and can still rip your face off.
Jeff Malec 27:04
And then I believe these guys also got into a little bit of the liquidity. And that you see the top of the order book in ES or something right. And it shows there’s not a very deep market, but they were saying they have no problem getting off huge size. So we’ve talked about that before on different pods and right what you see on the screen, especially in today’s day and age is not the true measure of the liquidity of the market because of algorithmic execution because of people being smarter than just showing their whole hand on the screen. So I think a lot of that in the old days was handled by humans of not showing your whole hand maybe in the early days of being on screen. They showed a lot on the screen and now it’s kind of transitioned into this I’ll show it when I need to show it but that was an interesting point that they have no problem getting their size done
Jason Buck 27:53
yeah that was a consistent theme throughout the few days is like execution and liquidity was seemed to be just fine for most people.
Jeff Malec 27:59
Next one was after a nice networking reception sponsored by my ex the spikes futures guys how are higher rates regulation and liquidity affecting insurance hedging programs so maybe we can talk about this I don’t quite understand the difference between these guys. And the previous panel, I think the previous panel they’re a little more the traders in and around the right the traders inside these things were these people were more of the insurance people themselves. But I’d love this guy LT grant of Protective Life Insurance. He was kind of one the panel in my opinion. I couldn’t be here.
Jason Buck 28:46
So I want to say this is why I think you’ve seen this because I may be misremembering it but I think last year Brage was on the panel with the manual LT and font like so that was maybe part of as well like Lt. Like you said it’s a very straight talker, which is appreciated.
Jeff Malec 29:01
Yeah. And he he had a great think we’re going to show it here but he had a great chart up explaining the whole insurance industry in terms of hedging. And then they went deep into the product side of it right of the variable annuities, fixed indexed annuities. I don’t know what it stands for, but Rila is a new type of annuity. They were saying there’s tons of growth there. Tons of growth and the FIA is kind of talking through and they every time they talk through this, they talk through Oh, we have this legacy product, this annuity that was paying x so it’s interesting to me right of like, the whole concept, right is the insurance company has a bunch of money. Premiums are coming in but they have to grow that money in order to pay out future liabilities, right. So how did they do that? One way to do is sell annuities out there and they get a fixed string of income coming in. And then these guys have to hit Should the risk of that annuity so it does blow up. So I lost my train of thought.
Jason Buck 30:07
Did you take a photo of that? I thought I took a photo of that chart, but apparently I didn’t. Because yeah, like Rila was one of the ones I was talking about most. Now it came with acronym stands for, we’ll pull it up, pull it up, other than other than what I did write down is really equals, selling puts to increase yield. But I want to know what that acronym stands for. What it’s probably going to sound the opposite of selling quotes to increase yield, registered
Jeff Malec 30:33
index linked annuities.
Jason Buck 30:37
So I just have, like, some anecdotes, I wrote down and one of them was from fun, he was saying that there’s been record sales in the last like year plus in annuities, and you’re saying they the returns are getting up in the 12 to 14% range, which was kind of shocking to see how how high they’re kind of getting. One of the ones that Sonam pointed out is that people have been switching from equity link to fixed income link. And so that’s interesting, you’re seeing across the planet, across asset classes, or across vehicles, you know, when we’re talking to pensions and endowments lately, you know, they’re they’re really focused on their LDI fixed income ladders than they are in equities anymore. And it sounds like someone was saying, you know, the insurance companies are, are switching their annuities from, you know, equity linked to fixed income linked to hopefully, I think they in theory would be to reduce fall. But we could argue if that reduces bowl or not. Sorry to say something gone,
Jeff Malec 31:33
I think realized, basically, just linked to the index purely versus the fixed index annuities, they give you a floor, it’s more of like a buffer note inside of there. So it has a floor, but then it also has a cap. So the real products will give you unlimited upside, you know, going as high as the index will go.
Jason Buck 31:53
As for your selling puts, like to also juice that income a little bit. So no wonder they’re giving you all the upside, but that that downside is going to be quite painful.
Jeff Malec 32:02
Yeah, but in to your point on this panel was highlighting for me of like, why are people gonna buy equities when they can do some of these insurance like products and get, like you’re saying 5678 10%? So you’re saying there’s a huge, huge demand from investors, retirees all across the board on these yields on these things? So a lot of times when we want to say okay, yields are higher, what did that do to your model? Is that killed your model? And they’re basically like, No, we have the same spread. And now the investor gets higher yield. So they’re flooding in they they wanted way more. And then that was that spread? Yeah. And there was talk in this panel and elsewhere of like, with yields is high, there’s not we don’t have to get as creative, right, we don’t have to do as many complex things in order to generate the yield to meet our requirements to meet the investment requirements, which made me feel a little safer. I think last year was some talk of like, well, yeah, but for we have 100 year forecast. So if there’s the markets down 40%, we don’t really care all that much. Now, it’s kind of like, well, the rates are high enough, where we can just give them a yield. And, and we’re all good.
Jason Buck 33:09
Yeah, it was almost like a throwback to a bygone era, right, where they can, you know, play around with fixed income and equities and that way in and create more balance, and like you said that as long as they have that spread, then they can really hone in on more LDI and fixed income products, and do much better as an industry than having to go out the risk curve and really focus on on the on equities. And for example, like Emanuel said, like they’re moving. They’re moving also to like call spreads on the s&p 500. So, you know, they still have that equity exposure, but he said, they’re also moving to like, one year out. And two, well, I say moving to it’s actually that’s their shorter term. Like you’re saying the 100 years is like, we trade short term, it’s like, Can you define that? And he’s like, one year out call spreads on the s&p 500. So that’s, that’s kind of their idea of short term. And then the other thing is that good,
Jeff Malec 33:58
I was just saying our world that’s like, what one year out that’s it, hence Tensley long term, but anyway,
Jason Buck 34:05
and speaking to like, even longer out, like LT said, there’s been the liquidity has been smooth and one to five year options. So as soon as like, for those who don’t know, like, you can go beyond leafs and get you know, is the contracts and you could trade seven to 10 year options. But lt was talking about they’ve mainly been trading in the one to five year option range and liquidity has been great. And isn’t, you know, historically they they’ve been worried more about like that long dated Vega flow. But he said right now they’re, they’re, they’re willing to just just wear that risk. So that was another thing too is like, like you’re saying they’re getting back to quote unquote, more normalized times. They’re not quite hedging as much and they’re, they’re willing to wear a little bit of a risk and move the book around, you know, across fixed income and equity so they can they can warehouse some of that risk themselves instead of really trying to offset a lot of it.
Jeff Malec 34:50
Yeah, I think their comment there was finding alternative, quote unquote, correlated hedges that they can work with when involved with cheaper vol. Right, which comes back to that rates conversation, but that was there was sort of bleeding into that equity ball has remained pricey as well on implied right, the the realize has been low, but the implied is still been high.
Jason Buck 35:14
And I thought it was, is a trait that relate to that, like sewn in said that they’ve actually been rolling shorter term now she’s even been coming inside a year because equity realized wall has been so low.
Jeff Malec 35:25
And then there was also the comment that they’re starting to rebalance into just outright equity exposure, right? Like as it gets lower, and throughout 22. Okay, which we’ve seen, right, which helped keep a lid on Bob, like, cool, I’m gonna monetize. And I’m gonna buy back the actual thing that I’m hedging, which also timed out with gold as well.
Jason Buck 35:45
Yeah, related to that, like I brought up earlier like pensions and endowments, as they become they’ve gotten closer to funded or fully funded or near funded, is like they they reduce that equity exposure, like we said, so that’s why you saw almost just that consistent stair step down in 22, where you didn’t see any liquidity crashes, because everybody was pre positioned for like 2022. And so there’s not a lot of rush for the exits or rush to hedge. But it was interesting, like Emanuel was saying that they he does see the stress, if we did have a equity down rates down environment. That’s right, we could see some stress pick up. But also, this is just a total left field anecdote, but I thought it was still interesting is like, as we move from LIBOR to sofr. They said they’ve seen the liquidity picking up so quickly in Sofer that he thinks everything’s just gonna be just fine with that transition.
Jeff Malec 36:32
Right? I had that down as well, like they were saying, like, it was just called Tuesday, we’re switching. And it just much just switched over there was like, they thought there’d be a little more pushback or trouble in the systems and whatnot. And even I find myself, right, like, I don’t know if I knew exactly what Sofer was two years ago. And now I’m like, Just it’s part of the normal lexicon, right. And like, Oh, I’m so far opposed to so proposed.
Jason Buck 36:56
Yeah. Is that all finance? Like? Yeah, it isn’t that it becomes part of the lexicon, and you pretend like you’re an expert in it.
Jeff Malec 37:03
And then they did spend a couple minutes talking about how insurance didn’t have the contagion effect of SPB in the regional banks and whatnot. And just talking through the sticky nature of the, basically their revenues, right, so they don’t, you can’t just move insurance companies like you can move banks on your phone, especially. So the sticky nature of the of the assets. But then also, he was there touting their own horn, but the long term experience and risk controls and everything they do on a day to day basis, much better. And we’ve seen the SVB congressional hearings and all that stuff of like, yeah, there wasn’t a lot of sophistication there in terms of hedging the interest rates and whatnot. So that was an interesting side note to have, like, hey, we watched it, interestingly, but mainly, what it was doing the rates fall in equity, Vol. Not in terms of our assets are at risk or anything like that.
Jason Buck 37:56
Yeah, it’s I think the same reason why we like these panels last year, too, is because it just gives us an entirely different perspective. Like they said, they use allegedly us like 100 year time horizons, right? And they, they, they’re building these huge books. And so like you’re saying, like, they’re these large, enormous cargo ships. So they move very slowly, in turn very slowly. But it was yeah, that’s why it’s always interesting, because it’s dramatically different perspective to the things like we work on.
Jeff Malec 38:17
I just had a little New Yorker cartoon pop in my head of like, they’re the cargo ship, and there’s like a little boat sinking SVB guys, like save me.
Jason Buck 38:27
Oh, by the way, I wanted to before we move on to the next one, I want to give a shout out that was moderated by Dan Corcoran at bolos. And I was telling Dan later, like his, his depth of knowledge on multiple subjects is is incredibly solid, especially when they’re really you know, the products that are creating bolos are totally outside that realm of kind of like insurance linked products. So it was always fascinating to me, like where you can kind of cross crossover and run a conversation like that.
Jeff Malec 38:52
Right? It was like how do you do that? You just plug right in and no this time. And then I did have one more note here. Sorry, that which echoed the previous panel of like, hey, No, we’re fine with higher rates. These are allowing us to have greater hedge budgets, right, which you don’t think I’d be like, Okay, I can spend more on premium. Now basically, I can spend more on my bleed because I’m getting more interest on the other side of the book. Caps and participation rate. So also like okay, now more people want to buy the annuities and whatnot. So I have more revenue coming in. I don’t have to get creative, which we talked about.
Jason Buck 39:26
Well, that related to that whether people want to agree or disagree is not the point. But like, Warren Mosler you know love him or hate him when he talks about when interest rates get raised. He said he calls it UBI for the rich because now that more income right like you said, it’s just normalizes not normalized, that would be in quotes, things to like, where people now are just moving over to fixed income and right because they just want that yield. And so he calls it universal basic income for the rich because they’re the only one with assets that can actually capture that yield and actually increases their income. So whether that’s insurance linked products or is having a large asset base as an individual.
Jeff Malec 40:04
But they seem to be doing fine with no rates either. So yeah,
Jason Buck 40:08
that’s what you get you get both right you get the you get the use your you have enough wealth to accumulate assets. And today equities that go up in the last few years and then you also on the other side, your book, then when rates go up, you got a, you got an income stream,
Jeff Malec 40:22
right pocket? For sure. There’s a lot of that going on, right? Like, what what age would you be where you’re like, Screw it, I’m just throwing this all in T bills, or right to
Jason Buck 40:32
today? I don’t know, like I I’m always like, I’m fascinated by LDI ladders, right, and attenuate him to your liabilities. Yeah, it’s very fascinating. And you know, plenty of people have done research where even you know, bonds have outperformed stocks over multi decade time horizon. So
Jeff Malec 40:49
it’s always interesting, almost like you should have some of that exposure in the cockroach.
Jason Buck 40:55
It’s almost like we do
Jeff Malec 41:02
alright, I touched on this next panel was the whatever I said his name was on these custom index products, which was somebody Yeah,
Jason Buck 41:12
that AI la indices. And there was carbon and commodities. I unfortunately had to step up for meeting during that, but sounds like I should have been one sounds like you found was interesting.
Jeff Malec 41:25
Interesting, but like brings up all those questions, like you said with bbmf. And like, how far can you push replication actually? Like it seems to work until it doesn’t. Do you want to be first in next in last and I don’t know if there’s a
Jason Buck 41:39
lot of Talladega Nights you’re not first. You’re last your last.
Jeff Malec 41:42
Right. But to me, it seems like you want to get in first until it stops working right? Like okay, yeah, so the next panel volatility volatility strategies built into ETF wrappers. So John black, a friend of ours over at NASDAQ hosting this with Jason, have you ever heard of this guy Corey Huff Steen? No, I’ve heard he’s really short and real. So yeah, sure. Not muscular, pretty ugly. Pop Kim. Co Founder, CEO of simplify and Noah Smith. Manager We work with over at convex am complex asset management. So again, the title didn’t quite match the discussion. Right? They touched on volatility, but mainly it was just a discussion about the kind of nuts and bolts of ETFs it felt like which Paul in particular, totally qualified to talk to. was interesting. No was saying, hey, yeah, I’m not sure why I was on that panel. That’s not really what I don’t run an ETF. But he more than held his own, in my opinion, with some good comments, and even though they weren’t totally in the ETF realm, and then Korean
Jason Buck 42:54
volatility strategies, and then yeah, exactly. Cory and Paul stuck to that bill in ETF wrappers.
Jeff Malec 43:02
You weren’t, you’re supposed to blend them not take them separately. And then yeah, Cory was Cory started off with his probably you’ve heard it 17 times joke about I run the burning with models podcast, which the main comment is, there’s way too few flirting on here. There’s no flirting on here, what’s going on? As well as some other good jokes that I can’t remember at this time. So yeah, fireworks take it.
Jason Buck 43:29
So right away, like your timing, it was more about the structure and where the trends have been in in ETF products and how people are able to stuff derivatives and ETFs. And obviously, both Paul and Corey are kind of at the vanguard of this. And Paul was talking about just to have a better regulatory environment than we’ve ever had for ETFs. And Corey reiterating, part of that is like a lot of the new rules have allowed for better derivative guidance. So in the past, it was just like, you didn’t, it was kind of a gray area, it was like, I can put derivatives in there Can I can tie and it was it was a mixed bag, and there wasn’t clear guidance. But now there’s pretty clear guidance with the bar rules and what can and can’t be in there. And then the market makers, I think, is what I don’t have it maybe I don’t have notes on this, but like, I think that the market makers have gotten better and better too is like as you have Wolverine vertue Citadel, like their ability to make markets and more derivatives or exotic products has been unbelievably they’re creating tight spreads everything. So it’s everything dramatically improved with regulatory guidance with better market makers. So it has really opened the door for a lot more interesting strategies going into ETFs. And Paul reiterated that by saying that the he feels exotic product trends are just beginning. He mentioned you know, one things I think I can move they’re working on or he said he could see people working on it’s like, an ensemble of Qi s strategies like so, you know, basically quantitative factor strategies are a way that can be put in there. But then, you know, Corey was talking about other things too, about You know, Cory, and I’ve talked about this many times privately as well. So surprised I took notes on it. Is that how many firms like all the big firms are copycatting product. I mean, you’ve seen this a million times, I’m gonna how many people have called you guys up to or they’re like, Hey, you see this product over here? How can we replicate it, but put the slight, you know, twist on it. And then we’ll launch are similar product. And this is why you have like four to six products coming to market at the same time, they’re essentially doing the same things. And so there’s just like this, there’s a red ocean of competition and ETFs right now. And so if a big firm wants to copycat your product, like good luck to you, and so like Corey was talking about is like, if you don’t have a clear path, value, add value, prop and sales, tech strategies, distribution, etc. To get to billions of dollars, you might just get copycat of the existence and it’s a credibly incredibly tough environment. And, and then I’ll maybe to you after the next section, is that Corey did mention that not every strategy is great for an ETF. So I’ll start with the little caveat that like just because it’s an ETF doesn’t make it tax free. So that will maybe tee you up for maybe strategies that aren’t perfectly suited for an ETF.
Jeff Malec 46:08
I’m going to put that one on hold for a second. And just to your point, I had three things on Paul’s comments are like one in terms of the leverage and the new rules, he was basically saying you could put as much leverage as you want. He’s like he couldn’t see a scenario where someone would want more leverage than what the rules allow you to do. Right? So he’s like 2x, three, all these things can totally fit inside the new rule. And then in near terms of what Cory is talking about, of like, too small, I wrote down. If you’re too small, you won’t make it. If you’re too big, you won’t make it right. So you’re too small, you can’t get the scale, you can’t get the distribution, you can’t get the market makers to tighten the spread, you can’t get all that going on. And you’re not going to get a lot of assets if you’re too big. To your point. Vanguard, BlackRock, they’re all going to see the strategy and try and copycat it and then likely put you out of business because they’re the big fish in the room. So that was interesting to me of like, okay, if I’m trying to get into this business, then how do I do it, I have to come in right to Goldilocks and be right in that middle lane, but not get any bigger not get any smaller. So and
Jason Buck 47:10
as you and I both know, you have to be 20 million just to break even probably get to 100 million to even be able to pay your staff and so like, it’s just a really, really tough business. But they said about the regulatory environment being clear, I still don’t understand the four rules like yeah, you can use like a 20 day look back for your var or then you can’t exceed a certain standard deviation of your reference index. But I’m like, What’s your reference index? Is it you or your firm? Or do you get to make it up? Like it was? Yeah, it was still clear as mud to me as far as what the just specific var rules are, especially if you had, you know, multiple trading strategies within a singular ETF.
Jeff Malec 47:48
And I take an understanding like if, or there’s like a safe harbor of use the s&p basically as the reference index, and you can go basically two point something x over the s&p, which is, which is kind of like the, do you really need any more of that?
Jason Buck 48:04
Can you use like a Bitcoin index and go, you just can’t exceed two and a half x the the VAR of a Bitcoin index.
Jeff Malec 48:13
And then on the market makers, and also what you were saying, okay, managed futures trend following, maybe not necessarily the best thing for an ETF, which is what Corey was kind of leaning into as well. You’re gonna get, they roll the contract, right, so you’re getting income every year. So you don’t get this long hold period that you get an ETF, you’re gonna get a k one, most likely. You’re trading a bunch of different markets, some markets can’t even be held inside the ETF. So you have to put them through a caiman blocker. The same thing happens at the mutual fund, but that creates a little less liquidity. And then what Paul touched on and touches in with this too, the more complex you get. So they were saying like, this is, right, this is the new wave of ETFs, everything’s great. But the same time, you want to say like, Oh, I could do this, and I could do that I could, but these guys stretched, the more complex you get, the less ability that market maker and we’re saying these guys have done great, but the more complex it is, the less ability they have to actually make a market. And so just imagine you have some super complex ETF the market makers like I’m going to make it a 2% wide spread, you’re not going to get the day trading volume you’re not going to get the volume in there because no one wants to pay 2% going in 2% going out so that’s an important concept there to have like okay, it’s not just have to be random Paul was a little bit more on the like, we’re just finding client fits. It sounded like to me right, like we find client fits things we think have a market and we launch those think Korea is a little more on the trading side of like, okay, I’m trying to find something that is a good quantitative model that I think works in ETF wrapper, and kind of if I build it, they will come a little bit more.
Jason Buck 49:55
Yeah, yeah, I think Well, there’s several things in there like I think if you if you to do much more vanilla indices, like obviously, they can make markets and those. And then if you’re doing pretty vanilla options, they’re getting much better at making markets in those. But like you said, if you start talking about commodities going long, short, and using any of the implicit leverage or margin there that you have to put in the game and blocker, as soon as you pull it in the game and blocker, they can’t really make a market on that, which is going to increase your spread, where and I think Paul may be hinting at that what you’re saying. And I’ve talked to Paul migraine about this as like, I’ve actually kind of come around to is like, if you stuffed it with a lot of product and a lot of more exotic products, and a lot of things that are, you know, more complex, is I’m not sure that that spread is necessarily a terrible thing. If people want trade in and out that spreads a terrible thing. But if people want to buy and hold for the long term, I mean, that spread that is more just like the liquidity preference for having such complex products stuffed inside of a single vehicle. And I’m not necessarily sure that that’s a terrible thing.
Jeff Malec 50:54
Yeah, like we’re going with that of like, yeah, sure you vote. But how is he going to get into it? Right? How is he going to get access? The question there is okay, do I is someone want to buy that if there’s only 15 million in the ETF because the traders in the market makers can’t get in and out?
Jason Buck 51:11
Well, that’s another problem to have, like Corey saying is like that, unless you have a clear path to billions like it’s exceedingly difficult, right? And the more assets you have in there, the tighter the spreads are able to make.
Jeff Malec 51:20
Yeah, and then so you mentioned it like part of that was also okay, what am I doing with options inside of these ETFs and that’s where Noah was coming in and basically like yeah, I’d see the volume is there. The liquidity is there the recording is there, like there should be no problems and there has been no problems of getting these options into the ETFs whether investors really understand what that means some of the products out there have like, right we saw in 2022 I’m buying this long ball binding this option trading strategy Oh, it didn’t make money in 22 when the market was down, why not? And then you gotta go in the whole discussion it was more of a gamma trade than a Vega trade it was involved in pop. So which they were big on right have like, tons of education, tons of education needed then go from there.
Jason Buck 52:09
Yeah, I think that that issue of like Caveat emptor you know is like it everybody always brings it up but I’m not sure how many people dig into any ETF I mean there’s so many what you consider rather vanilla ETFs or like a sector ETF and then you don’t realize like you have like Chinese exposure in there or whatever like because nobody does the due diligence actually look do a look through what’s in the ETF and like you everybody always references like the guy like cabbie or whatever it was like I got or Uber driver as I got a great stock for you the XIV. You know, like, like didn’t like realize but like, so that that’s kind of always gonna happen. So it’s not as concerning for me. But then like you reference No, was another one that brought up brought us right back to zero DTE. Right. And there’s also no saying is it’s not scary trades every day. He does think it mutes like to close to close ball, right? And you’re not really noticing the intraday volatility. So he didn’t see any systemic risk. But Paul kind of fired right back with, he sees a potential for systemic air gaps. So you might not call that systemic risk. But, you know, if everybody’s kind of on one side of a trade or just not quite evenly balanced, you’re gonna see some air gap systemically across zero DTE. But then the question is, does a an issue or blow up at zero DTE does that have a systemic risk to the entire financial system, those are two totally separate things. So they’re kind of you know, talking past each other in a way,
Jeff Malec 53:32
nor was coming back mentioning XIV and be like, the products are much better structured these days, much more risk control, everyone in the in the game, including the market makers, including the sponsors, including the trading advisor who came up with the model is much more in tune to the actual risks there, were bringing up how XIV was structured poorly, had basically a floor that if it went below, everyone knew it was gonna get blown out. So there was also
Jason Buck 53:58
um, there’s ways to ask questions at the end via the app or via QR code on screen. And when the one of the people asked Paul, about Bitcoin, is there going to be a Bitcoin spot index? And he said, there probably be no spot BTT index for a while. And he just said, you know, until we get you once again, clear guidance, whether it’s, you know, a commodity security, etc. He doesn’t see anything in the near future for a spot BTC BTC ETF? And then when the last comments Paul made as they were talking about how to, you know, grow these firms or you know, be a new entrant into ETFs, like you’re saying too small or too big, is that brands matter and asset management. And so you’re just speaking my language. Yeah. So it’s interesting how like, people don’t realize like, yeah, most most even finance is just is branding, right? Whether you want to talk about Vanguard and Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, like if a lot of it is branding, and that I think, simplifies doing a great job but their branding for what for what they’re trying to put out.
Jeff Malec 54:58
But then also, weren’t they saying In. I can’t remember who said this, but I think there was some talk about. We’ve gotten it used to be first mover advantage, right? Like, okay, I got an idea. I got the ticker, I launched the ETF, I got most of the assets. And then hopefully I survived, like the copycat scenario was the patent. He’s like, now it’s become a lot more sophisticated. And it’s how is your model going to do? Do you have the branding that matches the model? Do you have the education that matches the model? Do you have the commentary monthly comment, everything, all those pieces does that match? What the model is doing? Is the model easily understood by the investor where they want to put more money into it? So that was interesting. Just like tickers. I think someone’s head up. They’re like tickers don’t matter anymore. Right used to be like, I’ve got the the tail ticker, or the half ticker throughout to immense tickers. But I’m sure there’s another good one. Right? I’ve simplified the CTA ticker for managed futures. Like, I still think it matters personally. But that was interesting there that I’m saying like, it’s from here on out, it’s going to be more, it’s going to be more Morningstar based like a there’s three managed futures ETFs, and you’re going to pick the one who’s performed best, or who has the lowest risk, or has the risk that matches best with you or, you know, it’s going to come down to investor appetite. And like, how does that match with what you’re actually trying to do?
Jason Buck 56:14
Well, that’s where the preaching of the choir there because that’s what we’re saying to you is like you obviously, if you can get a great ticker, get it. And there’s great ones out there, like that are taken, but at the same time, it’s it’s education, right? And part of education is that that social media marketing, what we’re doing right now, podcasts, webinars, etc. Like, that’s what simplify and newfound research are both very good at is like, it’s about education. And as as Cory constantly is point, I always say we’re all just entertaining each other. Right? So like you said, if you have three, copycat ETFs, you’re gonna go with whichever one you like to cut it to their job. And how do you do that? Well, you do that through education, and social media, marketing and branding. So that’s why I firmly believe in what Paul was saying about simplify. And that’s how, you know you try to have a more sticky customer base, is because you put a face with a name, you educate you help you assist, you do everything you can to work symbiotically with clients where historically, right like those larger firms that just put out tickers and like stuffed them through their distribution chain. And there’s no a person related to it. There’s no education related to it. There’s no follow up. There’s there’s nothing.
Jeff Malec 57:20
Yeah, I was in a meeting once with one of the ETF firms, they’re telling me about the might have been triple inverse yen or something like that. Right. And they’re like, oh, it sat there for six years with $5 million in it. And then the Yen had a big year in it, or a big down year. And it was all of a sudden at the top of all these top 10 tables. And $350 million, or something came into so that’s kind of that old school of like, yeah, just having to take her have it surviving, it’s on the shelf, it’s gonna pop into a top 10 table and a bunch of people are gonna jump at it. This seems like a much more measured and smarter, personally smarter approach of like, No, we actually want to get buy in from the investors and not just rely on being on the top of a table. Although that’d be nice to know. But that would be that would just double it up like cool. We have all the all the sticky money all the good investors who understand what we’re doing, and then boom, now we have all the hot money that’s just chasing the latest return.
Okay, we’re breaking it there for part one. Remember, part two will be over on the mutiny investing podcast, so make sure you go add that to your playlist and subscribe to that one and this one, so you get to hear part two. Thanks to Jason. Thanks to Ed for having us at the conference. Thanks RCM for supporting the pod and thanks to Jeff Burger for producing. PEACE.
This transcript was compiled automatically via Otter.AI and as such may include typos and errors the artificial intelligence did not pick up correctly.
