Ouch – after months of rallying classes, September was a rough one (almost a callback to our red wedding in March, but a little better). The September sell-off was all we needed to make nearly all the asset classes head right back into the red, and with anticipated volatility surrounding the election, and now with […]
Category: Macro Commentary

Bull Markets, Behavioral Biases, and Blogs with Baird’s Michael Antonelli
If men are from Mars and women from Venus, it often feels like stock/bond investors are from Earth and us Alternative Investment folks are from Vulcan. We’re digging in with the Bull and Baird blog’s author and Baird market analyst Michael Antonelli to hear how the earthlings (aka wealth management clients) actually think about investments, […]

Sequencing, Skew, and (Option) Strikes with Hari Krishnan
We’re joined by option guru and author of ‘The Second Leg Down’ in this episode to talk through the real-time test of market crashes and volatility dynamics we’ve witnessed since February. Is our guest’s theory on volatility sequencing proving its worth in this environment of bigger VIX spikes, oil going negative, and retail trader flow? […]

A Professor, Prop Trader, & Risk Manager Walk Into a Bar, with Victor Canto
The “bar” we walk into in this episode is one that specializes in blending the unique flavors of beta and alpha, and our mixologists are Victor Canto, Chief Economist of Cadhina & Co, and Donn Stobierski & Jim Kleinops, the Founders and Managing Members at Black Bear Capital Advisors joining us to talk about convexity […]

Asset Class Scoreboard: August 2020
July to August was probably the least movement across that board that we’ve seen so far in 2020. U.S. stocks continue to top the board month over month, as well as U.S. real estate and commodities continuing to trail in the red. Are commodities going to be able to move out of double digit red […]

Debt, Dollars, and Deficits with CME’s Blu Putnam
It’s a job all in itself to be able to look at data – especially data that affects all of us on a daily basis – and be able to interpret that to make sense to yourself. Take that and have to turn it into something that makes sense to everyone else – well that’s […]

Just a Spoonful of (Beta) Sugar
Our own Jeff Malec relayed a story on a recent podcast (if you haven’t checked our The Derivative yet…get on over there) about telling his 10 year old son that “we’ve been in drawdown your whole life”. He was referring to managed futures, of course, and this rather un-even, lumpy, lots of flat/red bars chart […]

Asset Class Scoreboard: July 2020
It’s hard to believe we’re in the 2nd half of this horrid year, already; but here we are reporting the first month of Q3 (July), which itself was the first month of 2020 to see every asset class we track positive. A big turnaround from how the first half of the year started out, to […]

Seeking (VIX) Certainty with Certeza’s Brett Nelson
In a #ThrowbackThursday of sorts, we’re bringing you an episode recorded pre-pandemic where we hit the road and traveled to Utah to interview the brain behind Certeza Asset Management, Founder and CIO – Brett Nelson. Brett is another guest deserving of the moniker VIXpert – having been trading the VIX since it first entered the […]

Asset Class Scoreboard: June 2020
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 […]