Category: Alternative Investment Strategy

Following the 2008 housing bust, logic would suggest that a more significant increase in mortgage rates might similarly impact home prices and send prices falling. Surprisingly, this is not happening, and the reasons could have far-reaching effects. This is bad news for prospective home buyers who now face a double whammy of rising interest rates […]

Visiting a place like Rome, where history permeates every corner, is truly a remarkable experience. The juxtaposition of ancient columns alongside “modern” apartment buildings and the view of centuries-old defensive walls en route to savor gelato exemplify the captivating allure of this city. However, it is within the magnificent structures such as the Colosseum and […]

There is a common belief that active investors set the pace in the market, while passive indices merely follow their lead. As a result, passive indices can operate with lower fees since they abstain from making subjective judgments about individual companies and instead focus on constructing weights and making necessary adjustments. Given the substantial surge […]

The current headlines include a debt ceiling crisis, inflation issues, rising rates, collapsing home sales, and bank failures piling up at a rate exceeding the 2008 mortgage crisis. With this, the equity market seems nonplussed as it motors along at a pedestrian rate with few days even moving in the 1-2% range, let alone higher. […]

Surging liquidity encouraged by central banks and government stimulus pushed inflation rates to a 40-year high causing surprise to leaders that thought they could support markets without consequence. In a desperate bid to slow these price increases, they are taking a page from the movie industry by removing Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Not on […]

“When the United States sneezes, the world catches a cold.” This saying reflects the dominance of the US markets, and with it comes the gift of producing the “world’s reserve currency.” However, the rise of digital currencies and competitors to the dominant US dollar is becoming a daily conversation. Governments worldwide desire the benefits that […]

We can always count on the government for a few things, including surprise that their policies led to negative outcomes, fixing those decisions by throwing massive amounts of new money at the problem they created, and finally blaming others for the mess that occurred. Inevitably, “the fix” will cause another issue in the future, but […]

Rising interest rates claimed their first big victim last week. The stunning collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was the 16th largest bank in the United States, as recently as last Wednesday took two days of relentless outflows before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) stepped in to shut them down. The lender, known […]

“A politician’s first goal of governing is to get re-elected. It is also the second goal. Everything else comes after that.” While seemingly trite, this phrase was repeated by my professor throughout my business school class on strategy in non-market environments. I often think about this concept as our leaders consistently make decisions contrary to […]

Empires rise and fall. This often happens slowly and then quickly. In hindsight, we can identify critical events that should have raised alarm bells but did not. So, like asset bubbles that can crash an economy, identifying the next catalyst can be difficult. But perhaps the mounting debt of countries like the United States, most […]

Investors flock to high Sharpe ratio managers on sites like IASG.com for a good reason. They display an uncanny ability to put up positive numbers almost every month. Option sellers seem to do this better than anyone, and they stand out when looking through hundreds of managers. If this one marker told the whole story, […]

All economies go through fairly predictable patterns as they go through a business cycle. In simple terms, we go from expansion to peak, contraction, and trough. The depths of this drop vary based on both predictable and unpredictable factors. Let us look at some quantifiable factors as well as some wild cards that can impact […]

The English expression “May you live in interesting times” is claimed to be based on an ironic Chinese curse as most of us would prefer to live fairly peacefully. While some variety is nice, this year, it felt a bit more like the perfect storm of calamity. We covered many events throughout the year, but […]