In exchange for being one of the only assets up in Q1, would you trade being down in Q2? That’s the position managed futures finds itself in after a 2nd straight month of being the only red on the board. Elsewhere, it was RISK ON across the board – although at much smaller levels than […]
Category: Macro Commentary
01
Jul
2020
18
Jun
2020
Noodling on Ensembles, Trend, & Convexity with Newfound’s Corey Hoffstein
Our guest today is the Co-founder & CEO of Newfound Research, host of the popular podcast Flirting with Models, and FinTwit “influencer” – Corey Hoffstein. In this episode, we’re talking with Corey about the impact of “data”, the juvenile meaning behind Flirting with Models, 1000s of flavors of trend, hitting the gym, the founding of […]
12
Jun
2020
Allocating to Alts with RPMs Alexander Mende
We’re flipping the script of our usual hedge fund manager and drilling down on the allocation side. Our guest is Alexander Mende, Senior Investment Analyst and Head of Investment Research at RPM Risk and Portfolio Management. In this episode, we’re covering a lot of ground with Alexander including herd immunity in Stockholm, an allocator’s due […]
02
Jun
2020
Tail Risk Hedging, Part IV
We’ve been talking about alternative investments that perform in a crisis for as long as we can remember. We typically refer to these as ‘long volatility’ type investments, that prefer and perform in periods of increasing market volatility. But we have also thrown around the terms crisis period performer (as opposed to absolute return performer). […]
02
Jun
2020
Asset Class Scoreboard: May 2020
Commodities were the story of May — doing a full 180, reversing from double-digit loses to posting double-digit returns on the back of Crude Oil rallying from its dip into negative territory. But both US Stocks and World Stocks continuing their bounce off the lows was a close second billing – with US Stocks back […]
27
May
2020
The Great Tail Risk Debate
In case you missed it this weekend, there was a big debate/mudslinging argument going on between alternative investing titans Nassim Taleb and Cliff Asness on Twitter over the long weekend. The quick summary was Asness of AQR fame essentially saying Tail Risk funds such as Taleb’s are dumb, and while work every now and then, […]
15
May
2020
Uncovering the Known Unknowns of the Pandemic
In today’s episode, we have a little different structure and three unique guests to bring a fresh twist on The Derivative podcast. Blu Putnam of the CME Group, Rodrigo Gordillo of ReSolve Asset Management, and Dan Deering of Teza Technologies join us to discuss the economic & strategy impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Listening today […]
24
Apr
2020
Chinese Futures Volumes During Coronavirus
Not too long ago we wrote about how Chinese futures volumes had joined the BILLION contracts club, of interest to us in that we’ve been involved for a few years now on getting US and European quant models implemented on these exact Chinese markets for Chinese investors. The idea is that the nascent (but quickly […]
26
Apr
2020
Valuing VIX and Volatility with Joe Tigay
VIX and volatility are buzz words that every trader knows, thinks about, and maybe even utilizes. But VIX and volatility are subjects to not be taken too lightly – experts like Joe Tigay of Equity Armor Investments have spent years and years perfecting an understanding of the VIX curve, skew, and timing to get in […]
03
Apr
2020
Trading Commodity Volatility: A woman’s perspective
Trading commodity volatility is a unique topic all on its own, but add in hedge fund manager Kimberly Rios, and you’ve got what we calculated as a 1 in 10,000 manager; how’s that for unique? Kimberly heads up the Catalyst Hedged Futures Strategy Fund and trades in and out of different volatility regimes in the […]
