On Wednesday. March 4th -April Crude Oil futures closed at 46.78, which left it down -22% on the year… not a good look. Monday, March 9th at 12:30 in the morning, Crude Oil was down -41.6% from that ugly close just 2 business days earlier, putting in a low at $27.34 !! Wow. That is […]
Category: Education
09
Mar
2020
27
Feb
2020
Protecting Against a Market Mutiny with Tail Risk, Convexity, & Long Vol
Has anyone been having fun the past few days? The “market”, as if there’s only one, has been in free-fall as the world tries to figure out what this Corona Virus will look like in terms of a possible global pandemic, down -8% in a week. That’s not a terribly huge move in the grand […]
25
Feb
2020
5th Biggest VIX spike past 20 years?
Did that feel like the 5th scariest day in the markets the past 20 years to anyone? Sure didn’t here in our shop, with groups like Breakout Funds, Deepfield, and others scoring gains on the Covid-19 fueled sell off. But the VIX saw it’s 5th largest spike on a daily basis in the past 20 […]
06
Mar
2020
Asset Class Scoreboard: February 2020
Well…that was a rude awakening. Volatility came back with a vengeance in Feb, logging the 5th worst VIX spike in the past 20 years. And it wasn’t just stocks… world stocks, real estate, and commodities all got smacked into the red. Coronavirus fears spiking, Presidential election twitter posts…..all the things we mentioned in our 2020 outlook […]
06
Feb
2020
Asset Class Scoreboard: January 2020
“And down goes commodities….early in the first round….” That’s no way to start a 12 round bout, but commodities go as crude oil goes , and energies were shooting down in January on the heels of economic and travel worries behind the Coronavirus scare. On the flip side, U.S. Stocks & U.S. Real Estate picked […]
02
Jan
2020
Are Negative Interest Rates coming in 2020? Do we care?
Welcome to early 2020, where we have a whole year of TBDs and fill-in-the-blanks ahead of us. One of the big unknowns for us in the US is whether the negative interest rate experiment will spread from Asia and Europe onto our shores. We covered what this could mean for alternative investments in our Global […]
09
Dec
2019
Commodity Performance Over the Decade (2009-2019)
Just 22 days left in the decade, and we’re going to use a good portion of those to look back on some of the top performing markets, asset classes, and alternative investment funds over that time. First up, commodities, which would likely rather not be mentioned at all. Talk about a lost decade….2010 through 2019 […]
02
Dec
2019
Asset Class Scoreboard: November 2019
While it sure doesn’t seem like it given how high most asset classes have risen this year, a full 5 of the 8 asset classes we track were down in November (albeit slightly). The wet season and late harvesting had put a big damper on commodities especially in November, and U.S. Real Estate has taken […]
19
Nov
2019
Johari Blind Spots & Behavioral Finance
“…the investor’s chief problem and his worst enemy is likely to be himself.” Benjamin Graham The Johari Window was designed to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and others. Created in the ‘50s by two psychologists, it’s main function is for self-help groups. You pick from a number adjectives and insert them into […]
04
Nov
2019
Asset Class Scoreboard: October 2019
Last year at this time we were labeling the asset class scoreboard Red October due to dismal returns by nearly every class. So, what should we label it now? Pos-i-tober…..? Mehh, we’ll keep working on the name while Managed Futures needs to get to work on creating some positive returns. Hopefully we finish out the […]
