The “rule of 72” tells us that a good approximation for the time it takes to double your money can be arrived at by taking 72 and dividing by the interest rate that capital can compound by on an annual basis. Implicit in the calculation is that the initial stack is left untouched and is not vulnerable to a drawdown. In this context, it was great to welcome Jerry Peters, the Managing Partner of Smithbrook to the Alpha Exchange. Providing a risk-managed equity solution to its high net worth clients, Jerry and team are focused on managing downside risk, utilizing an option overlay strategy to mitigate some of the invevitable swoons in equity prices.

Our conversation walks through how index put options – when acquired at the right price – can create gains that help offset portfolio losses during times of stress. Acknowledging that the long term expected value of buying insurance ought to be negative, Jerry walks through how a protective strategy can interact with long risk exposure to create long term return enhancement. Here, he points to how gains from insurance during sell-offs can underpin the “rebalancing bonus”, where capital is moved from winning to losing assets on a systematic basis. We also talk about some of the subtle aspects of financial asset taxation and efforts to maximize not just the pre-tax but also the after-tax return of investment decisions. Jerry walks through some straightforward tax loss harvesting strategies that can add meaningfully to investment outcomes on an after-tax basis.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Jerry Peters.

After a 13-year career at CSFB where she would ultimately head the firm’s equity derivative strategy effort, in 2023 Mandy Xu moved to the CBOE where she’s now Head of Derivatives Market Intelligence and swimming in interesting, complex data sets. Our conversation surveys product innovation, going back to the first option trade ever on the CBOE, call options on July 1973 Xerox, through today’s vastly electronified ecosystem of trading in cross-asset risk exposures.

We briefly review the unbelievable short squeeze in GME from 2021, and here Mandy asserts that today’s exposures are considerably more balanced than the Meme episode in which the retail stampede engorged on call option premium. Our discussion moves to the present-day backdrop for option pricing and the potential impact of mechanical flows resulting from vol being bought and sold in the market.

Noting the substantial increase in AuM for overwriting and option income generating funds in both the mutual fund and ETF complex, Mandy is skeptical that this growth is solely responsible for the low clearing price of measures like the VIX and put skew. Instead, she points to low risk readings in other asset classes, including credit implied vol, as more likely driven by stable macro fundamentals.

We spend the remainder of the conversation on the much debated topic of ODTE and whether there’s an accident waiting to happen. In Mandy’s role at the CBOE, she sees option flow data with great granularity and in the ultra-short-dated category, she sees considerable balance in use cases across hedgers, income generators and intraday traders. The result is a healthy mix of buyers and sellers and, at least for now, a low risk of Volmaggedon 2.0. 

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Mandy Xu.

Kieran Goodwin’s roots go back to the early days of both distressed debt investing and the credit default swap market, two classes of risk he has seen experience significant change over the last 25 years. Our conversation gets underway by exploring the notion of alpha decay in the distressed market, a diminishing opportunity set that has resulted from smarter capital entering the space, equipped with an understanding of the often complicated process around bankruptcy and reorganization. Kieran frames out the option characteristics of distressed investing in an interesting way, suggesting that the short or long profile of the exposure is about whether time is on your side or not while also arguing that it is arming yourself with a margin of safety in price that creates this runway, leaving the trade with more long vol attributes.

Distressed investing today, in Kieran’s view, is an adult swim only business, rife with creditor-on-creditor violence and requiring a large balance sheet to be in the room as indentures are changed or portions of a capital structure are being primed. We spend the remaining part of the discussion on the CLO business and the potential for a credit-widening cycle. Kieran describes the CLO machinery as a captive buyer base for loans that has served effectively as a quasi-index product that has facilitated market growth. While noting that the product has indeed been effective over the years, he points to concentration risk that can lead to a rapid rise in correlations and spreads. He also points to at least some early signs of an uptick in defaults.

Lastly, we touch on the electronification of credit trading and the factorization of credit exposure that technology has increasingly enabled. Involved as an investor in some of the initiatives to facilitate electronic trading, Kieran sees further growth here, accompanied by more continuous trading and price discovery.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Kieran Goodwin.

In Lori Calvasina's role as Head of US Equity Strategy at RBC Capital Markets, assessing the interaction between macro variables like rates with top-down factors like the equity market multiple is critical. But important as well is an evaluation of markets from the bottoms up. And here, she not only seeks to pull together the views of colleagues doing strategy work in sector verticals, but also to actually read earning transcripts during reporting season to get a sense of what companies are saying. Her broad assessment of the outlook for corporate America is generally optimistic as she sees companies having come out of multiple stress exercises - trade wars, the Covid shock, and the inflation and monetary policy response in the Pandemic's aftermath among them - with a stronger defensive plan. Companies are harnessing technology and managing costs more effectively, leaving them less likely to be forced to reduce headcount. The result is a consumer holding up quite well.

Our discussion touches on the Mag7 and how today's top-heavy portion of the market is similar and different to the highfliers of the tech bubble. For Lori, the valuation premium for names like NVDA and other mega cap tech stocks is justified by the premium of earnings growth they've been able to consistently deliver. We explore the impact of higher rates on the market's multiple and the relative performance of sectors as rates rise or fall. She likes energy, both for its high dividend yield, its strong relative performance as rates rise and the potential for a geopolitical tailwind. On this last front, asked about the market risks that she worries about, it is uncertainty on the global political front along with the US election. She also cites sentiment that may be too bullish and positioning that appears stretched. Lastly, we touch on Lori's recent recognition as one of Barron's Top 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance. Asked about industry efforts to empower female careers in finance, she's optimistic, arguing that it's critical to have not just a mentor but a sponsor as well to push you to the next level.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Lori Calvasina.

George Orwell once said that writing a book is a “horrible, exhausting experience…that one would never undertake if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand”.  Ok then. Let’s all agree that writing a book is a heavy lift. Let’s also agree that the personal finance advice industry is littered with gurus making outlandish statements about profit opportunities and often giving unsound advice on wealth management.

With these in mind, it was a pleasure to welcome Jared Dillan back to the Alpha Exchange. Jared is the Founder and Editor of the Daily Dirtnap and the author of a recent book, “No Worries: How to Live a Stress-free Financial Life”. While many of the podcast discussions are in the weeds on high finance topics like monetary policy, hedging and correlation, my conversation with Jared emphasizes the basics: how to get the big decisions right and, in the process, enjoy more peace of mind. The foundations of our discussion are debt and risk, the two main sources of financial stress, in Jared’s view. On the debt side, he emphasizes three critical transactions, the house, the car and student loans.

On the risk side, he advocates for the “awesome” portfolio, a blend of stocks, bonds, gold, real estate and cash. While not returning what stocks have historically, this combination has considerably smaller realized drawdowns. Overall, Jared’s book is easy to consume with plenty of nuggets accessible to the non-Wall Street types.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Jared Dillian.

Our final segment of 25 Sayings on Vol and Risk is upon us, and with it, 5 fresh pithy principles that I often turn to in trying to make sense of this chaotic sport we call markets. Along the way, in typing out these more than 20,000 words over the series, I’m probably out more than 50 dollars in espresso inspired drinks from Starbucks lead by the dirty chai latte and the caramel machiatto. But I’ve learned some stuff and had some fun and I hope you have as well.

Sayings 21 through 25 are…
 

1. “When I see a bubble forming, I rush in to buy.” (George Soros)
    
2. “Vol is the only anti-fragile asset.”
    
3. “When financial markets implode, convexity can be found lurking at the scene.” (Harley Bassman)
    
4. “The correlation of vol and the vol of correlation are not your friend.”
    
5. “Vol has memory, vol mean reverts.”
    

Hope you Enjoy!

The task at hand is simple….make further progress on our 25 Sayings on Vol and Risk. I’ve certainly had some fun with the first 15. Somehow, in the context of this exploration of market risk philosophy, I’ve managed to quote both former President Ronald Reagan and Seinfeld hack comedian Kenny Bannia, summoned the wisdom of Wolf of Wall Street’s Mark Hannah and referenced both Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman and Optionseller.com’s James Cormier.  My promise remains to get you in and out in under 30 minutes, less time than an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Sayings 16 through 20 are…
 

1. “The money money makes, makes more money.” (Ben Franklin)
    
2. “ROMO is the risk of missing out.”
    
3. “Risk-on and risk-off are curious cousins.”
    
4. “Accident-free finance promotes the selling of accident insurance.”
    
5. “Price is the only fundamental.”  (Someone)

Our journey to 25 Sayings on Vol and Risk continues, folks…and as UFC’s Bruce Buffer is known to emphatically tells us…”It’s TIME!”… for our third segment…sayings 11-15. We’ve got some good ones ahead of us and, as always, I aim to share some of my thinking on markets, overlay a dose of history and pop culture and, perhaps, give you a chuckle in the process.  We’ll be in and out in under 30 minutes, i.e., shorter than a Powell presser, a five-block cab ride from the east side to west side, and no doubt less time it takes Windows to update the drivers on your PC.
 

Sayings 11 through 15 are…
 

1. “If history is a foreign country, the history of risk is another planet.”

2. “By definition, there’s a winner to every back-test.”

3. “Price is a liar.”

4. “Volatility is an instrument of truth.”

5. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Hello! You’ve reached part 2 of our 5 part series “25 Sayings on Vol and Risk”. Over the first half hour episode, we kicked off with the first 5. Over these 30 minutes, we shall explore sayings 6 through 10. The task at hand is to make headway on our sayings, and, hopefully, entertain you a bit in the process. My goal, share some of what I’ve written down on the back of napkins over the years to help me tie together what I’ve observed and experienced in markets. Through these aphorisms as one might call them, I’m hoping to give you some stuff to chew on and expand your thinking on matters of risk.

Here are our second five:
 

1. “The next crisis to occur is the one that happened longest ago”
    
2. “There are no bad securities, only bad correlations”
    
3. “Equities are short the straddle on rates”
    
4. “In markets, it’s move fast and things break”
    
5. “Greenspan was right, sort of”

Efforts to understand the “why” of the motion in asset prices consume our time and attention in markets. To be sure, traditional sources of risk – namely the economy, the path of corporate profits and changes in the interest rate cycle – do matter. But, as Matt King argues, especially since 2012, we increasingly need to monitor what’s happening in the financial plumbing where Treasury and Central Bank driven fund flows can be responsible for powerful liquidity dynamics.

Serving sometimes as a headwind and at others a tailwind, flows like QE as well as changes in the TGA and Reverse Repo facilities influence the manner in which investors interact with risk assets. After a nearly two decade stint at Citi, Matt recently founded Satori Insights, an independent firm helping institutional investors navigate today’s uneven and complicated waters of risk. A main aspect of our conversation is his take on the resilience of the US consumer and broader economy in 2023, set against one of the fastest tightening cycles on record and the Fed’s QT program. Matt’s work suggests that tying favorable asset price results in 2023 to this resilience leaves out a critical point.

He states that while the Fed’s balance sheet was nominally reduced by roughly a trillion last year, markets wound up enjoying a trillion in new liquidity. His framework, tying a trillion dollar increase in reserves to roughly a 10% increase in the equity market, helps explain the dislocation between asset price performance like tighter credit spreads and traditional fundamentals like defaults. Through the lens of liquidity that Matt utilizes, the risk asset outlook for 2024 is less favorable. He cautions that the Fed may have done more on the hiking front than they should have, underestimated the impact of their balance sheet policies on asset prices.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Matt King.

I wanted to share with you some of my thoughts about the current state of market risk as this new year is now sufficiently underway. A number of years ago, I created a list that I call “25 Sayings on Vol and Risk”.  In the spirt of 7 minute abs and 12 holiday recipes, I think lists are an easy way to connect concepts. Twenty five is a lot to get through, so we are going to simply divide them into 5, creating a series of half hour episodes. I do hope I can keep your attention and, again, make a positive contribution to how you think about markets over 30 minutes. 

Here are our first five:

1. “Big Moves Matter Most”
2. “Theta is the Rent on Gamma, and the Rent is Often Too Damn High”
3. “Hedge When You Can, Not When You Have To”
4. “Stock Returns, Like Politics, Are Not Normal”
5. “Financial Market Insurance is Not Like Hurricane Insurance”

Hope you Enjoy!