A few months back we were talking about the “Hogdiculous” market moves created by the African Swine Flu and sending the Hog market into a frenzy. ASF is highly contagious –as in if 1 or 2 of your pigs shows symptoms, you’ll have to get rid of your whole lot kind of contagious – and […]
Category: Education
19
Sep
2019
03
Sep
2019
Asset Class Scoreboard: August 2019
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
17
Jun
2019
The new AI –> AT, Artificial Trading
One of the best follows on non-financial Twitter is Salesforce.com’s Chief Digital Evangelist: Vala Ashsfar. He comes up with inspiring lists highlighting what it means to be a good mentor, what money can’t buy (happy home, manners, etc.), and companies founded by immigrants (Apple, Google, Amazon to name a few). Not to mention his mesmerizing […]
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 […]
30
May
2019
This is what Non-CORNellation looks like
It’s been raining a lot here in the Midwest this spring. Like, only 5 little league games have actually been played instead of 15 scheduled, a lot. For most of us, that means some severe weather, tornado threats, and flooding. But for those who plant the world’s Corn and Soybean crops in the Midwest, that […]