ReSolve Riffs: Geopolitics, Financial Nihilism and the New World Order

This is “ReSolve’s Riffs” – live on YouTube every Friday afternoon to debate the most relevant investment topics of the day, hosted by Adam Butler, Mike Philbrick and Rodrigo Gordillo of ReSolve Global* and Richard Laterman of ReSolve Asset Management.

“There are two types of truths – one that can be derived from first principles, and another that emerges from a common set of beliefs or a shared narrative.”

It was our great pleasure to speak this week with Demetri Kofinas, host of the popular Hidden Forces podcast. We have been keen listeners to Hidden Forces for some time and have admired Demetri’s ability to dive deep into topics as diverse as epistemology, philosophy, global macro and digital assets, to name just a few. Our conversation included:

  1. Demetri’s background in media and journey to establishing Hidden Forces
  2. Disillusionment after the Great Financial Crisis and conspiracy rabbit holes
  3. Is the fracturing US political system beyond repair?
  4. The Trump Phenomenon – cause, symptom or catalyst?
  5. Hyperrealism, information bubbles and the struggle to find common ground
  6. Fiat news and narrative wars
  7. Defining truth – the trouble with epistemology
  8. Digital assets, financial nihilism and generational divide
  9. US, China and Russia – the geopolitical backdrop

Demetri also walked us through his process for generating ideas for episodes and cited memorable guests that have helped shape his understanding on many of the subjects we touched upon. It was a truly fascinating conversation and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Thank you for watching and listening. See you next week.

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Adam Butler, CFA, CAIA
Adam Butler, CFA, CAIA
Adam Butler is Chief Investment Officer of ReSolve Asset Management, sub-advisor to an alternative allocation strategy at Rational Funds. He manages ETF and futures based strategies including a global risk parity ETF, two Adaptive Asset Allocation funds, and a multi-strategy hedge fund. Adam is also author of the book Adaptive Asset Allocation: Dynamic Global Portfolios to Profit in Good Times and is ranked in the top 1% of authors by paper downloads on SSRN. He has authored over a dozen papers and dozens of articles on asset allocation; factor investing; quantitative methods; and portfolio optimization. Adam holds both CFA and CAIA charters and appears on BNN Bloomberg and CNBC.

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