Insights

The Buzz on Beans: From Cocoa to Coffee

The astonishing run for cocoa prices has yet to lose steam, with the commodity rising by +21.6% over the month of April, bringing the year-to-date gain to +223.3% as of April 19th. I wrote a note a little over a month ago about the supply issues in the cocoa industry that have caused the parabolic move […]

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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

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 […]

The Buzz on Beans: From Cocoa to Coffee

The astonishing run for cocoa prices has yet to lose steam, with the commodity rising by +21.6% over the month of April, bringing the year-to-date gain to +223.3% as of April 19th. I wrote a note a little over a month ago about the supply issues in the cocoa industry that have caused the parabolic move […]

From Missiles to Metals: Market Volatility in the Face of Geopolitical Tensions

The initial shock from the retaliatory attack on Israel by Iran over the weekend had been well absorbed by markets when trading opened this morning. But as the day progressed, the prospects of rising geopolitical tensions weighed on risk appetite. The communication from Iran was that the barrage of ballistic, drone, and cruise missiles was […]
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