Category: Alternative Investment Strategy
Global Financial Cycle – Look for the risk regimes
A recurring theme for our forecasting model is not predicting the future but just identifying the current regime. It is more important to first know where you are before you determine where you might be going. If you have ever been lost, the best solution is to first figure out your current location.
Dollar smile – We are moving to the smile bottom
A good simple approach for framing the longer-term movements in the dollar is through using the narrative of a dollar smile. We have written about this years ago, but think it is relevant today. The dollar smile, first popularized by Stephen Jen, says that currency behavior is driven by two competing regimes. Regime 1 is […]
Concentration, inequality and the status quo – Size matters but not always for the better
A capitalist system is not always competitive environment, but competitive environment is a capitalist system. One key macro issue that is not often discussed is the increasing concentration of businesses in the US and other capitalist countries. While not monopolies, an increasing amount of market share is in the hands of fewer companies and form oligopolies.
Momentum is still a viable strategy – Look at the numbers
There has been a lot of discussion on the lack of success with momentum and trend-following strategies. There is little doubt that there has been greater dispersion in returns across managers. There have been winners and losers with disappointment focused on some larger high profile firms.
Strategies for Assessing ’40 Act Alternative Investment Funds
With the increase in ’40 Act alternative investment fund offerings, there is greater interest in how to use these funds to help diversify portfolio risks effectively. There are a number of classification schemes that often overlap with some traditional mutual fund categories. Hence, there is an issue of how to best classify the set of […]
What will be the cause of the next recession?
There has been increased market talk about the next recession. Many are predicting it will occur this year albeit the dispersion of views is wide. To do a proper assessment for the cause of the next recession investors should go back to the causes of past recessions. This one will be different, but we should assume there will be common features with the past.
Recession probabilities – There is no consensus
What is the chance of a recession this year? Many have tried to build systematic models to give a probability number. This has been a good advancement in thinking about macro forecasting, but the variability of forecast is unusually wide. Different inputs will give different probabilities and there is no consensus on what should be the right inputs.
Where are institutional investors going to put their money? Not what you think
It was a tough year for money managers. All asset classes underperformed cash and most were negative for the year. Equities were a return disaster for December. Hedge funds did not do well for the year. So what will investors do?
Risk Parity – A tough year for this diversification strategy
Risk parity was thought of as a portfolio strategy that would protect investors buffeted with uncertainty. Don’t think about dollar allocations, but risk allocations; it is a better way to manage a portfolio. Unfortunately, theory does not always work in practice. Using a simple benchmark of the average return for mutual funds with 50-70% equity allocation would have had slightly better returns than the 10% risk parity index and would have done much better than the higher vol indices in 2018.
What are shadow interest rates telling us?
We cannot forget that the zero bound on interest rates caused distortions in market price signals. Now in the US rates are above the zero bound so it seems like the concept of a shadow rate is not important; however, it is still relevant for many other central banks and it provides a good measure of where we have come over the last few years. Using the shadow rate as a historic measure of relative tightening, we can say that the Fed has actually been on a tightening policy since the end of quantitative easing.
Just as important as Powell Put – China monetary action; PBOC on the move
One of our major themes for 2019 is that investors should more closely track monetary policy developments in China. The reasons are simple: the economy is big, its trade impact is global, and the PBOC at times has followed a monetary policy at odds with the Fed and ECB.
Facts and Stats – Some facts are interesting but not useful
The end of the year is usually filled with reviews and facts about what happened and speculation on what may happen in the future, yet investors can be cluttered with too many facts. Some facts can be very interesting and great for conversations, but that does not mean they are useful for plotting a course for 2019.
Powell Put in place after AEA comments
Every Fed Chairman has their own variation on the market put strategy; Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen and now Powell. We can call this new one the “everything on the table” put strategy where the guidance of yesterday tells us nothing of what might happen tomorrow. This may be a reluctant put. Powell may have tried to stay the course for tightening, but a bear market can change the mind of many a well-intentioned central banker.