We love movies…so much so that we’ve been known to tweet out asking to bring back movie futures, compared the 60/40 portfolio to Top Gun, and put out the greatest infographic of all time aligning 20 investments with Star War characters. Movies have the innate ability of breaking down barriers and making almost any subject […]
Category: Alternative Investments
11
Jul
2019
The ‘right twice a day clock’ that is gold.
We have long been in the Warren Buffet camp in relation to Gold: “Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their […]
09
Jul
2019
The Pinnacle
The annual Pinnacle awards show put on by the CME and BarclayHedge (now Backstop solutions) does as good a job as any in promoting the industry and awarding those who have stood out in the recent past for their good performance. Which is why we have been proud to sponsor the event for many years. […]
02
Jul
2019
Asset Class Scoreboard: June 2019
It’s like someone put a mirror between asset classes in May and June – with most asset classes performing nearly the exact opposite side of their percentage from the month before. Low volatility continues to persist (as we had suggested at the beginning of the year) bringing in big positives across the board after the […]
26
Jun
2019
Up is down, forwards is backwards, Alpha is Beta
The good folks over at Transtrend (the 12th largest managed futures program in our top 100 managers infographic) are out with a new research piece via the CME that throws the whole Alpha concept out the window. They agree with the classical definition of Alpha as the amount of return not explained by the chosen […]
20
Jun
2019
Why use automated execution algorithms? Here’s why.
We’ve been talking a lot about quants and algos recently – like this whitepaper, this blog, and this blog – which only strengthens the thought that, though necessary, quants and algos can be confusing. Even for us, who happen to share coffee and donuts with a whole in-house team of quants dedicated to working on […]
13
Jun
2019
Remember Bitcoin?
We’ll forgive you if you’ve deleted those files from your brain, but Bitcoin is slowly creeping back into the collective investing consciousness of late. Why? Well, more than doubling from $3,500 to $7,000 in starts to put you back in the conversation. 2019 Returns… Bitcoin $BTC: +111% REITs $VNQ: +20% Nasdaq 100 $QQQ: +18% Oil […]
03
Jun
2019
Asset Class Scoreboard: May
And there we have it folks, the reversal we’ve all been waiting for. After 4 straight months of positive returns, every class aside from Bonds and Cash took some big hits. Managed futures came in in the middle of the pack seeing a -2.33% and Commodities are down almost 9% (no surprise there since we’ve […]
21
May
2019
The Chinese trade war is affecting American soybeans
Sure is tough to be an American farmer these days, with headlines like this popping up around President Trump’s ongoing trade war with the Chinese: Nowhere is this pain being felt more than in the Soybean market, which is the second largest financially important crop in the U.S., with $41 Billion with soybeans grown in […]
16
May
2019
Meb Faber’s Killer Podcast List
We list Meb Faber and his blog at www.mebfaber.com amongst our ‘required reading’ list of books and blogs, and had the opportunity to sit with him and a few members of his unofficial fan club in Chicago last week during the Morningstar Investment Conference. The unofficial Chicago @MebFaber fan club – vol, asset allocation, dividends […]
