Look who’s up there enjoying the double party after a strong August. It’s Managed futures turning in the negatively correlated performance people yearn for in a bumpy month for stocks. US real estate continues to go bonkers, while commodities and bonds are perhaps the biggest surprise YTD near 10% gains. Hedge Funds, meanwhile, continue to […]
Category: Alternative Investments
03
Sep
2019
27
Aug
2019
Book Review – Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts
Man, were we excited to pick up Annie Duke’s book on game theory and how she approaches life (and poker) by thinking in bets. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts After all, that’s what a good alternative investment strategy does. It “thinks” in terms of an asymmetric […]
22
Aug
2019
A different angle to the China story
While everyone is talking about the risks in China, with them ratcheting up stakes in the trade war with a Yuan devaluation, and threatening troops in Hong Kong to squash protests, many in the quant space are busy analyzing the Chinese markets for investment opportunities. Now, we’re not talking about picking the next Tencent IPO […]
20
Aug
2019
Risk Parity + Trend Following = ?
Bridgewater & Associates is commonly known as the world’s largest hedge fund, with more than $140 Billion in assets under management and close to 1,500 employees. Its founder Ray Dalio is about as eccentric as you would expect from the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund – penning his own manifesto, and installing a […]
15
Aug
2019
Hedge Fund Fees: Should 1 or 30 be the new 2 & 20
For as long as anyone can remember, the classic hedge fund fee structure has been two and twenty. Or more formally, a 2% annual management fee and a 20% performance fee. The management fee is to allow for the manager to operate their business, invest in technology, and pay their quants. The performance fee is […]
13
Aug
2019
Should Jon Corzine be allowed in the financial industry?
Think not…? Then email chairmanoffice@sec.gov and let the SEC know. For those of you who don’t remember Jon Corzine, he’s the ex-Goldman senior partner-turned US Senator-turned New Jersey Governor-turned CEO of futures clearing firm MF Global. Just one little problem with this story…as the picture below alludes to, his tenure at MF Global saw him […]
08
Aug
2019
August shall now be called VIXust
What a way to get August going. First, we had this happening last Thursday = Since Trump announced his China tariffs, the markets have plummeted https://t.co/uVHztmpL5o pic.twitter.com/OAkOPIpwD3 — David Nir (@DavidNir) August 1, 2019 That left us down about -1%. Then, there was a little more of the same on Friday, although nobody on Wall […]
06
Aug
2019
Basics for Building an Alternative Investments Portfolio
Just throwing something into a portfolio labeled an Alternative Investment is likely going to be a mess. But a lot of times, that’s what happens. A client listens to the words Alternative Investments, but hears the words diversification and stabilization and all the rest. Before you know it, some random Alts strategy is in a […]
02
Aug
2019
Asset Scoreboard: July
Not the greatest start to the third quarter of the year. After the returns in the second quarter of 2019, July gave some pretty dismal returns. For the first time this year there isn’t a double-digit return on the board. Managed futures had the best return of the month, and luckily all of the classes […]
30
Jul
2019
900 year old Algorithms!
We’ve been talking a lot about algorithms of late, mostly as to how they are used and relate to so called Quants, as covered in our recent whitepaper. Algorithms Algorithms (or Algos for short) are the tools quants develop to make the lives of traders easier. You can’t get very far in one without the […]
