From the Desk of Our CIO
Decoding Macro Trends
Check out this great podcast from Bloomberg Odd Lots and Kris Sidial on the growing popularity of options trading! Kris Sidial notes that along with overall option volume growing, the market maker ecosystem has become more concentrated, increasing the risk of positioning pressure should there be an event that kicks volatility into high gear. A great […]
News & Insights
Price Controls: A Popular Bad Idea
While listening to a Palisades Gold Radio podcast on government spending, debt loads and inflation, the ever-dour John Rubino made note of a recent survey which revealed that 62% of Americans were supportive of government set price controls to control inflation. Although much of the content of the podcast covered some overtly bearish topics like […]
News & Insights
Look to the Stars
Amid resolution planning to start the new year fresh, there is no time like a transition from one year to the next to look forward, and nothing epitomizes a forward-looking viewpoint more than the immortal words of Patrick Stewart (and other Star Trek captains alike), “Space: The Final Frontier.” In the spirit of this forward-looking […]
News & Insights
Strategic Bluffs: Game Theory in Action
Strategic decision making involves the identification and evaluation of choices to determine the best course of action to achieve specific goals. In the early 19th century, John Von Neumann published On the Theory of Games of Strategy, which birthed the field of game theory. This theory has revolutionized our understanding of complex interactions in diverse […]
News & Insights
Funded Status: The Tip of the Risk Iceberg
The rise in interest rates over the past couple of years has caused many headaches for most investors. Stocks experienced significant losses last year, while bonds – normally seen as the safer part of a portfolio – suffered their worst performance in history. There has been almost no place to hide, aside from inflation hedges […]
Research Notes
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), […]
News & Insights
Inflation & Bond Vigilantes
Back in August, when I wrote If It Isn’t Hurting, It Isn’t Working, there was a persistent belief that we had achieved either a “soft landing” or “no landing.” Although these outcomes would be hard to differentiate, they both assume a “goldilocks” outcome where the Federal Reserve – and other global central banks – had […]
News & Insights
The Affirmation of James Carville
In 1994, James Carville, a political adviser to President Clinton, remarked, “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” Almost thirty […]
News & Insights
The Boiling Frog
The boiling frog is a somewhat morbid ‘apologue’ [1] that tells of how a frog will sense and react to changes in temperature as opposed to its absolute level. This means that if you were to put a frog into tepid water and slowly raise the temperature, the frog would meet its demise, feeling no urge […]