Adam Butler, CFA, CAIA

As is often the case with sharp and curious minds, our guest this week travelled a meandering route through his career. While studying meteorology and public health in university, Eric Crittenden (CIO of Standpoint Asset Management) stumbled into an economics class and fell in love with complex dynamic systems.

This week we were joined by Lawrence Hamtil, founder and principal at Fortune Financial Advisors, author of their popular blog, as well as an active member of the FinTwit community. His power lifting hobby and contrarian nature permeate his writing and investment philosophy.

Although most of us like to think that we will rise to the occasion when the moment comes, various studies show that the vast majority of people will sink to the level of their training in the heat of battle. A systematic response to dynamic scenarios, removing one’s emotions from the equation, has been the standard approach in the military for millennia. In the world of investing, rules-based methodologies remain a contentious topic, even though a majority of the most successful asset managers are quants. Rob Carver (Independent Systematic Researcher and Author) knew early on that his investment career could only take the ‘systematic path’.

Our guest this week was none other than Ted Seides, host of the popular Capital Allocators podcast. Ted began his career under the tutelage of endowment legend David Swensen at Yale University Investments, then went on to found Protégé Partners, investing and seeding small hedge funds.

“Drink once every time someone says “rebalancing”, twice for “geometric”, thrice for “ergodicity”. Leverage these amounts by 2.7x for the full Kelly experience”. This was the opening salvo from our guest, the once anonymous author of the popular Breaking the Market Blog, now revealed as Matt Hollerbach (founder of Pronghorn Analytics).

This is “ReSolve’s Riffs” – live on YouTube every Friday afternoon to debate the most relevant investment topics of the day. Interest in cryptoassets, and specifically Bitcoin, has skyrocketed in the last few years. From its humble beginnings Bitcoin has grown into a behemoth, leading some to wonder if it will eventually become a contender for the role of global reserve currency. Our guests for this episode were Greg Foss and Magdalena Gronowska, early adopters of Bitcoin and part of the team that launched the very first Canadian crypto ETF on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Almost three decades since the very first launch, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) have grown to a multi-trillion-dollar segment of the market, with more than seven thousand spread across the world. The US market is home to approximately 30 percent of them, spanning the passive/index-tracking, actively managed and thematic categories, not to mention a handful of more exoteric niches. We drew on the expertise of our friend Eric Balchunas (Senior ETF Analyst at Bloomberg) for an update on the current state of the ETF.

Over the last few years, the topic of mental health, once taboo, has been recognized as a crucial component of our general well-being. Yet depression, anxiety and other ailments of the mind remain largely a silent epidemic, and the last twelve months have been particularly hard because of the loneliness many have endured due to the lockdowns. Our guest this week was Matt Zerker, former Portfolio Manager at ReSolve and now Founder & CEO of tethr.

This week we had the great pleasure of hosting none other than Lyn Alden (founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy), one of today’s most prominent macro strategists and thinkers.

An almost USD 2 trillion fiscal bill is moving ahead in Congress, while breakeven rates rose above the 2 percent mark for the first time since 2018 (with no signs of relenting). It is no wonder that inflation is now top of mind for investors. Uncertainty isn’t limited to whether it reawakens after almost four decades, but how it might manifest and how investors should protect themselves.