Insights

A Great Day for Bird Lovers: Powell Appeases the Doves & the Hawks

Today’s interest rate announcement from the Federal Reserve (Fed) was highly anticipated, given how the economic picture has evolved over the last month. Economic growth has remained steady, if a bit uneven, while inflation has been stickier than the markets and the Fed would like to see. Over the last month, market participants have dialed […]

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Research

Risk Parity & Pension Portfolios: A Perfect Match

Geek Level: Read Time: The Speed Read: Growth sleeves within a pension’s asset-liability framework are built with the intention of improving funded status, but depending on the path of different macroeconomic drivers, these portfolios can lead to adverse outcomes due to risk mismatches. Key risks in future pension liabilities include growth (both wage and economic), […]

Make Sure the Free Lunch Isn’t Moldy

Speed Read: The concept of diversification has a long history and is often considered “the only free lunch” in investing. The benefits of diversification are well studied in academic literature, but in practice, correlations between traditional assets like stocks and bonds can change, affecting the effectiveness of diversification. The correlation between U.S. stocks and U.S. […]

“Peeky” Blinders

When individuals have uncertainty about a specific product or idea, they will often look to what their peer group is doing to help them decide. Social proof is a behavioural bias that can lead to decision making errors. By embracing a process-driven research flow to guard against behavioural biases and data peeking, Viewpoint can distinguish between true and false alpha.
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News & Insights

Nurturing Responsible Wealth Inheritors

One of the great challenges that all parents face is how to raise independent, self-sufficient, motivated kids. This concern can be exacerbated among families of affluence, as inherited wealth comes with its own opportunities, challenges, and pitfalls. For individuals who have created wealth through entrepreneurial endeavours, hard work, and risk taking, the fear of how […]

Unraveling Market Mysteries One Equation at a Time

Using Greek letters, numbers, and equations to describe the world is strange. Before I embarked on a near decade-long academic pursuit in the field of theoretical physics, I distinctly remember thinking about this peculiarity while sitting in my high school physics class staring at Newton’s laws of kinematics. It really is strange that we have […]

Election Economics: Fiscal Frenzy & Market Musings

Much of the focus in financial markets over the past few months has been on the Federal Reserve and forecasts for when they will start to cut interest rates. At Viewpoint, we’ve been keenly interested in the interplay between monetary and fiscal policy, and the implications on the health of the economy. With election year […]
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White Paper

Revisiting Shrinkage: Covariance Matrix Estimation in the Modern Age

One of the great truisms in modelling is "garbage in, garbage out." In few places is that more important than in financial modelling.
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From the Desk of Our CIO

A Great Day for Bird Lovers: Powell Appeases the Doves & the Hawks

Today’s interest rate announcement from the Federal Reserve (Fed) was highly anticipated, given how the economic picture has evolved over the last month. Economic growth has remained steady, if a bit uneven, while inflation has been stickier than the markets and the Fed would like to see. Over the last month, market participants have dialed […]

Commodity Chaos: Cocoa Collapses & Copper Surges

Those with a sweet tooth breathed a sigh of relief yesterday as cocoa prices retreated from their nosebleed levels in the biggest one-day drop in 65 years. The violent collapse in prices sent the actively traded front month futures contract down -15.7%, effectively erasing most of the gains made in April. The meltdown was felt […]

Is It Time to Start Buying Duration?

At Viewpoint, we’ve been in the camp that the current macroeconomic backdrop isn’t conducive to the Federal Reserve (Fed) being able to skirt a recession and reduce interest rates back to a long-term equilibrium, all while inflation remains under control. This is what would otherwise be known as a “soft landing.” Back in March, I […]
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