The Chinese market is a secret well-kept, with stringent rules and difficult entrance rates. But those who’ve kept their heads down, drudging through the weeds now hold the key, and have opened up opportunities to get access to the Chinese market for investors across the globe. As we recently wrapped up our virtual conference: “Capitalizing […]
Category: Why Alternatives?
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 […]
29
Jun
2020
Do Hedge Funds Suck?
We got off a call with an investor the other day who mentioned that the past two+ years have been a great microcosm of different full cycle market environments – with: 2018 = SPY -4.56% = a down stock market in 2018, including the volatility explosion in Feb of 2018 and odd sell off with […]
25
Jun
2020
$TVIX gets Terminated – What^%$# on The Derivative
Similar to how we quickly grabbed some experts to discuss Crude Oil going negative, we grabbed some VIX experts as soon as the news hit this week that Credit Suisse was pulling the plug on one of the biggest VIX tracking exchange traded products. What will this do to VIX futures volume, liquidity, and the […]
23
Jun
2020
Tiger Woods(ing) your Alts Portfolio
We came across this great post recently on the Breaking the Market Blog comparing Tiger Woods strategy on avoiding errors is just the sort of thing to apply to an investment strategy. Golf is often pretty clear at telegraphing the penalty for misses. Water on one side is more penalizing than the open green to […]
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 […]
09
Jun
2020
Move over Nasdaq, FANG+ is here
Everyone who had a betting ticket for U.S. markets back at all-time highs before lockdowns ended – please raise your hand. This was the mother of all White Moose, galloping down the stream right as everyone was screaming about Black Swans and Gray Rhinos. The move off the March 23rd lows has been nearly as […]
05
Jun
2020
Navigating Market Volatility on The Derivative
$VIX lovers/followers/haters/enthusiasts – this one’s for you. In this episode, we’re joined by a powerhouse group of volatility experts consisting of Kevin Davitt, Wayne Himelsein, Jason Buck, and Bastian Bolesta & Jeff Malec discussing Navigating Market Volatility. Providing more than just witty banter, you’ll to these guys talk about how crazy volatility was during March/April, […]
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). […]
