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 […]
Category: Macro Commentary
05
Aug
2020
03
Aug
2020
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 […]
23
Jul
2020
Seeking (VIX) Certainty with Certeza’s Brett Nelson on The Derivative
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 […]
01
Jul
2020
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 […]
18
Jun
2020
Noodling on Ensembles, Trend, & Convexity with Newfound’s Corey Hoffstein on The Derivative
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 on The Derivative
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 on The Derivative
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 […]
