Alpha Exchange

Lenin purportedly said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” It’s difficult to understate how highly consequential these past few days have been. We live in an interconnected world of international rivalries, debt, trade, asset prices and economies. All kinds of tail probabilities become more live when a shock of this magnitude occurs. From a market standpoint, however, the higher vol goes, the greater likelihood that government officials blink in some way. The scars from the market chaos of the GFC and Covid remain and the lesson is not to create hard to fix but also urgent problems in the financial system. With this in mind, there could be an opportunity to fade the exceptionally high VIX level. I hope you find this discussion useful.

Best known for his seminal work on the information content of the US Treasury yield curve nearly 4 decades ago, Campbell Harvey has produced meaningful academic research in all corners of empirical finance. In this episode of the Alpha Exchange, I caught up with Campbell, now a Professor of Finance at Duke and Partner at Research Affiliates, on his recent work on gold, an asset near and dear to me. We discuss his piece “Is There Still a Golden Dilemma?", with Claude Erb that updates work they did back in 2013 on the yellow metal.

Our conversation explores the financial properties of gold, with emphasis on its capacity to hold its purchasing power and to help defend against equity market drawdowns. On the first, Campbell makes the point that over the past two decades, gold has easily outperformed inflation. He adds, however, that gold is considerably more volatile than inflation is. Thus, there are periods when gold can also underperform inflation. On the equity drawdown front, Campbell’s work shows that, while not an explicit hedge like an S&P 500 put option is, gold has proven durable during risk-off periods.

We move to the drivers of the gold price and here Campbell discusses the role of both ETFs and Central Banks. Lastly, and importantly, Campbell’s work shows that entry price matters. When the price of gold deviates from fair value, the forward return profile tends to be worse. Today’s substantial rally may easily continue, but investors must be mindful of the risks of buying at extended levels.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Campbell Harvey.

In this discussion, I review the absolutely stunning level of volatility experienced by the S&P 500 right around this time 5 years ago, as the market crash resulting from the Covid shutdowns occurred. No asset – except volatility – can survive the liquidation that took place in March of 2020. I also focus on gold, which, to be clear and to repeat, is not a hedge. A hedge is an insurance contract that you must part money with in order to obtain. There are no positive carry hedges in the world. But there are assets that act considerably defensively for periods of time, are trending higher, have natural buyers (in the case of gold, we can sight Central Banks) and also possess the rare feature of "stock up / vol up"... Gold has all 4 of these right now. I hope you find this podcast interesting and helpful. Thanks for listening and keep the feedback coming.

Now a Portfolio Manager at Acadian Asset Management, Owen Lamont has had a long career in both the markets and in academic research on them. Earning a PhD in Economics from MIT in the 1990’s and then teaching at the University of Chicago shortly thereafter, Owen makes the point that these two storied institutions approach empirical finance from vastly different perspectives, with the MIT approach to explaining market anomalies utilizing behavioral finance and Chicago embracing market efficiency.

Our conversation is about some of Owen’s current work, starting with the observation that equity correlation has been exceptionally low, owing to the manner in which large cap growth stocks are disconnected from the rest of the market. As part of this, we explore the original tech bubble of the late 1990’s, contrasting it to present market leadership. Here, Owen makes the point that the original internet stock craze had dramatically more equity issuance than we see today. Owen puts equity issuance and short interest in a category of factors that have particular significance from an information content perspective, calling both firms and short-sellers smart money.

We talk further about the AI trend in markets and Owen’s concern that the massive corporate spend may be overdone. He points to research in the academic literature that shows that high capex firms have some history of underperformance and offers competing theories on why. He gravitates to explaining excess investment in AI from the lens of over-optimism among both investors and companies.

Among the other topics we cover is Owen’s take on the “min vol” factor – that is, the empirical finding that low volatility stocks outperform the market on a risk-adjusted basis. In a manner similar to the tech stock craze of the late 1990’s, the underperformance of the low factor over the past 5 years owes to the incredibly strong performance of the riskiest stocks during this time frame. On a going forward basis, Owen is optimistic that low vol stocks can deliver better risk adjusted returns.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Owen Lamont.

“This is not your father’s ETF market” would be one statement used to highlight the ever-expanding product mix available to investors via exchange traded funds. Today’s suite of ETFs embeds derivatives, targets non-traditional assets like private credit and crypto and can offer daily resetting leverage as well. Add to this, efforts to deliver exposures to quantitative investment strategies via the ETF wrapper.

With this in mind, it was a pleasure to welcome Roxton McNeal, lead portfolio manager of the QIS product at Simplify Asset Management to the Alpha Exchange. Our conversation begins with a review of Roxton’s background at the UPS Pension and as an active client of the Street’s in utilizing QIS in the plan’s efforts to deliver returns above a fixed income bogey for retirees. We explore a broad taxonomy of types of quantitative investment strategies, rules-based trades that Roxton puts into two categories, defensive and carry.

We spend a fair amount of time exploring the concept of carry, which he suggests results from market frictions, risk aversion and liquidity premia.  He further breaks down the carry bucket into trend, absolute return and volatility carry. Here, and with the pitfalls of back-testing front and center, I ask him to share his thoughts on how he evaluates carry strategies. Stress testing and scenario analysis are critical, especially as they relate to properly sizing exposures. We finish the discussion on what might be coming next to the fast-moving ETF landscape. Here, Roxton volunteers the potential for the tokenization of assets in markets like commodities or real estate, bundled into an ETF via smart contracts.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Roxton McNeal.