ReSolve Riffs on Return Stacking with Corey and Rodrigo – “Ask-Me-Anything” #AMA

ReSolve Riffs on Return Stacking with Corey and Rodrigo – “Ask-Me-Anything” #AMA

Traditional portfolios are faced with the prospects of depressed expected returns in the coming years, as implied by current stretched valuations of stocks, and near record low rates and credit spreads for bonds. Our recently released paper – Return Stacking: Strategies for Overcoming a Low Return Environment – co-authored by Rodrigo and our good friend Corey Hoffstein, shows how investors may materially improve their chances of success by allocating to uncorrelated managers that may offer more ‘bang for your buck’ and free up valuable ‘portfolio real-estate’. Fielding questions from the ‘Twittersphere’ as well as our live audience, this episode covers:

  • The pitfalls of emulating large institutions with limited portfolio agility and mandate flexibility
  • Stellar returns and recency bias – why so many investors remain anchored to the ‘60/40 portfolio’
  • Why stocks and bonds are structurally not designed to thrive in high inflation and/or low growth environments
  • How loose fiscal policy, layered atop highly expansive monetary policy, strengthens the case for persistent inflation
  • A trip down portfolio theory memory lane
  • Risk transformation and financial alchemy
  • Leverage aversion – concentrated bets vs capital efficient diversified return streams
  • Structural diversification, tracking error and absolute returns
  • Return stacking as a form of liability hedging for advisors
  • Finding structural edges and tilting the odds in one’s favor

The team also discussed the importance of separating the underlying components of any strategy, not only across asset-classes, but also beta, alpha, styles, and tilts, in order to use them as building blocks to create tailored portfolios with desired exposures.

There’s also an “Easter Egg” where Adam discusses the results of a forthcoming paper on the shockingly large potential benefits of trade and fee netting in multi-strategy products.

If you haven’t read our Return Stacking paper:
Strategies For Overcoming a Low Return Environment

DOWNLOAD here!

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

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.

Latest

Can Markets Keep Their Cool? July 2025 HANDLS Monthly Report

Politics Trumps the Numbers, Can Markets Keep Their Cool?

The Calm Before the Storm: A Volatility Pro’s Reflection on Markets at All-Time Highs

We’ve lived this movie before. Last August, AAII bullish sentiment struck a 52-week high right before the Fed launched its September rate cutting cycle.

The Ripple Effect: How Smart Money Uses the VIX to Beat Market Panic

An options trader’s perspective on why the “fear index” is actually your portfolio’s best friend

The Volatility Trader’s Reality Check: Markets Do What Markets Do

For those curious about how a volatility trader who also manages portfolios thinks, let me cut through the noise.

Newsletter

Don't miss

Can Markets Keep Their Cool? July 2025 HANDLS Monthly Report

Politics Trumps the Numbers, Can Markets Keep Their Cool?

The Calm Before the Storm: A Volatility Pro’s Reflection on Markets at All-Time Highs

We’ve lived this movie before. Last August, AAII bullish sentiment struck a 52-week high right before the Fed launched its September rate cutting cycle.

The Ripple Effect: How Smart Money Uses the VIX to Beat Market Panic

An options trader’s perspective on why the “fear index” is actually your portfolio’s best friend

The Volatility Trader’s Reality Check: Markets Do What Markets Do

For those curious about how a volatility trader who also manages portfolios thinks, let me cut through the noise.

Navigating Trade Winds: HANDLS Indexes Showcase Resiliency in May 2025

The HANDLS Indexes Monthly Income Report for May 2025 underscores notable recoveries across sectors, propelled by easing tariff and trade uncertainties.
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.

Can Markets Keep Their Cool? July 2025 HANDLS Monthly Report

Politics Trumps the Numbers, Can Markets Keep Their Cool?

The Calm Before the Storm: A Volatility Pro’s Reflection on Markets at All-Time Highs

We’ve lived this movie before. Last August, AAII bullish sentiment struck a 52-week high right before the Fed launched its September rate cutting cycle.

The Ripple Effect: How Smart Money Uses the VIX to Beat Market Panic

An options trader’s perspective on why the “fear index” is actually your portfolio’s best friend