ReSolve Riffs with Robert Cantwell on the Active Management Renaissance & ETFs

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*.

Our guest this week was Robert Cantwell, founder and CIO of Upholdings, the first hedge fund in the US to be converted into an ETF. His career arc, beginning on the institutional side of the business and then actively seeking out more experience as a business operator, armed him with the flexibility of both mindset and strategy to embrace disruptive new trends. The conversation included:

• The differences between building a company and managing money
• Why ETFs, the modern vehicles, aren’t yet wholly embraced as the premium vehicle
• Size matters – margins vs scalability
• The future is unconstrained by geography or time-zones (and probably lives on the blockchain)
• The tradeoffs between a nimble portfolio and tax implications
• Doing your homework – speak to the five people that know the most about a given company or topic (yes, much easier said than done)
• Time arbitrage – the best alpha you can have is a longer investment horizon than most market participants

We also discussed the time-varying nature of the market’s fear over specific industries and investment categories, seizing the opportunity provided by low rates and volatility spikes, and why the US government’s “business model” is fundamentally flawed. Robert also shared a couple of stories from his experience working with Bono Vox, as well as a take on U2 that you would probably never expect.

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