Didn’t get the chance to head to Vegas for the Global EQD conference. No worries. We’ve got you covered in Part II of the Global EQD ’23 Breakdown.
We’re teaming up with RCM Alternatives Managing Partner and host of The Derivative Podcast, Jeff Malec. Together, Jeff and Jason walk through their notes from attending the annual equity derivatives-focused conference put on by the good folks at EQD. Make sure to head over to www.eqderivatives.com and signup for their official notes.
Meanwhile, they go deep on many topics, from accessing commodity markets and traders in China, addressing liquidity concerns on execution desks, and exploring the nuances between variable annuities and index-linked annuity products.
Jason and Jeff delve into alternative correlated hedges with cheaper volatility, examine volatility strategies in ETFs, and analyze the role of leverage in finance. Jason also shares his hot takes on various topics, including the allure of Las Vegas to the fascinating world of greenflation and energy, where wind farms and Dr. Copper play a significant role. No EQD stone is left unturned — SEND IT!
P.S. Head to Jeff’s Derivative Podcast to catch up on part I of the Global EQD ’23 Breakdown.
Listening options:
- Listen on Stitcher
- Listen on iTunes
- Listen on Spotify
- Listen on TuneIn
- Android users can grab our RSS feed here.
Have comments about the show, or ideas for things you’d like Taylor and Jason to discuss in future episodes? We’d love to hear from you at info@mutinyfund.com.
Transcript Global EQD ’23 Breakdown Part 2:
Taylor Pearson:
Hello and welcome. This is the Mutiny Investing Podcast. This podcast features long form conversations on topics relating to investing, markets, risk, volatility, and complex systems.
Disclaimer:
This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect opinions of Mutiny Fund, their affiliates, or companies featured.
Due to industry regulations, participants of this podcast are instructed to not make specific trade recommendations nor reference past or potential profits. Listeners are reminded that managed features, commodity trading, forex trading, and other alternative investments are complex and carry a risk of substantial losses. As such, they’re not suitable for all investors and you should not rely on any of the information as a substitute for the exercise of your own skill and judgment in making a decision on the appropriateness of such investments. Visit mutinyfund.com/disclaimer for more information.
Jason Buck:
Welcome to part two of the global EQD 2023 breakdown with myself, Jason Buck, and Jeff Malec. If you’d like to hear part one, please head over to the Derivative Podcast with Jeff Malec. In both parts, we break down what we thought were the most interesting pieces to the global EQD event at the Wynn this year in Las Vegas. I hope you enjoy the show.
Jeff Malec:
So the last, this was tough because I wanted to say that LT panel was my favorite one, but then our guys, Corey was good on that panel. And then this panel is typically my favorite with some all-stars here. So this was leaders in volatility, and talking about monetizing dislocations globally. So it was Natalie Reed of CBOE, which I still call C-B-O-E. I’ll get around to it eventually when you guys change it. And that’s Will Bartlett, CEO of Parallax, Robbie Knopp, head of S&P options training at Optiver, Vishnu of Volar Capital Management who used to be at Citadel, and Chase Muller or Muller, I’m not sure, head of global macro at One River Asset Management.
So a couple billions of dollars there on stage. And actually the people who actually make the decisions for those billions of dollars. I’ll leave that be, but yeah, give me your quick thoughts on this panel. This was the same crew last year, I believe, right?
Jason Buck:
Fairly close. It wasn’t Robbie from Optiver, you had the CEO, I can’t recall his name right now. And wasn’t Vishnu, it was Ben Ifer.
Jeff Malec:
Oh, yeah.
Jason Buck:
I can’t remember if Chase was on the panel or not.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, I think it might have been this, but Ben Ifer instead of Chase.
Jason Buck:
I have a few pages of actually anecdotes that we can go through. And right away, actually they started with a poll on this one, What is the biggest risk the audience felt was in volatility markets or that could affect volatility? And it was Fed policy, was the poll.
Jeff Malec:
And then Vishnu came right out and goes, “Okay, I’m going to stop hedging that since these polls are obviously typically wrong.”
Jason Buck:
Exactly. So Chase jumped right in, because I think second on that was debt ceiling and default. And he said markets are looking through the risks and they don’t seem to be concerned about default as they’re looking at even cross-asset volatility, as everybody’s like, “Let’s just get this over with and keep it moving.” But Vishnu came back with, you have to look at cross-asset vol for some asymmetric hedges. And so you’re taking basis risk when you’re looking cross-asset vol. But we work with some managers that do that and everything, because sometimes maybe you can’t find the cheapest asymmetry in equity vol, so you have to use a little bit of cross-asset vol to find those. But there’s risk there. But if you spread your bets, it might be a decent idea.
Will came right out with saying that 2022 was an aberration in low vol for equities. I thought that was interesting to call it an aberration for 2022. And so he was saying it’s equity’s turn. So it was almost flipped, I like how Will tends to flip things around, is all we heard about in 2022 is equity vol is suppressed and rates vol is taking off. And then almost like we were saying earlier, so everybody’s jumping on rates vol or looking for that cross-asset vol. And Will was like, “Maybe it’s mean version,” he felt like equity vol had been suppressed in ’22, maybe moving into second half of ’23 do we see equity vol picking back up? Is it equity vol’s turn?
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, that was his line, which was funny, like they’re kindergartners getting a turn. I think it might be equity equity vol’s turn.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, Robbie had some interesting stuff talking about, obviously he has a very unique view working at Optiver at the market maker and options, and why skew was poor in ’22 was, like we talked about earlier, reduced exposure by real money institutions. Everything was scheduled macro data, everybody’s just waiting for CPI prints, so those really just one day vol. And then he brought up, which was one of the other main themes, is that structured product flow and how structured product flow can reduce especially skew, with people rushing for any sort of hedges. And he said supply of vol on down ticks was just fine. What they said is, though, how you’ve had a bit of reversal coming into ’23 here where skew got crushed in ’22 and we saw the return of realized vol or just long gamma positions where he is saying in ’23 we’re seeing realized vol come down and implied skew start to go back up. But at the same time he said still short skews trades have been profitable this year. So it’s a little bit of a mixed bag there. But that was his perspectives.
Jeff Malec:
Interesting. And I think I asked you during the panel, they use skew probably in the correct professional way and my brain is not the correct professional way, but they were using skew interchangeably with puts in my opinion, right?
Jason Buck:
Yes.
Jeff Malec:
So when they were saying skew worked, selling skew this year worked, they’re basically saying, “Buying puts last year did not work, selling them this year has worked.” Was there anything more to that?
Jason Buck:
Specifically you say out of the money puts, that’s where you’re going to see the skew the most, is more in you out of the money, deep out of the money puts. As we know, those people that were just buying deep out of the money puts as protection got crushed in ’22 but then we’re seeing a little bit of skew come back. So it’s a bit of a trade-off. If you’re buying those deep out of the money puts, you’re getting crushed on skew coming in, but then as skew picks up, you’re making a little bit of money on those but it might just get crushed back again. You don’t know if this is actually when you’re going to get your payout or if you’re just getting lulled into a teeter-totter or whipsaw when you’re buying that out of the money skew.
Jeff Malec:
And then these guys got into the zero DTE a little bit as well, but mainly saying they’re on the fence. They didn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, I have notes on that. Before I get there, let me just touch on some skew ideas.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Jason Buck:
Vishnu pointed out also that paradox that skew is higher in bull markets. So as we’re rushing off of bull markets, you tend to get a little more where people buy a little bit more protection. Or you’re saying, we were talking about that telegraphed 2022 drawdown or recession or whatever you want to call it, is you actually have skew coming in. And it seems counterintuitive, but he’s saying the institutions implement a lot more call spreads these days. He said you can make money long skew and a grind up. It’s just a little bit more difficult. Was interesting, Chase brought up that he feels that VIX looks relatively cheap compared to rates fall. So that one’s quite the basis trade that you’d be looking at and I’ve seen a lot of people starting to buy calls on VIX. But as we saw, implied didn’t do as well in ’22 that people expected it to do. So who knows, Will said maybe it’s VIX’s turn as well. I don’t know.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah. Didn’t that seem weird to you, that he’s the pro quoting VIX? It seemed like a retail-y thing to say.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, and you still have some pros in there. You’ve had Ruffer, they’ll take their shots on VIX calls in the past, that’s why they’ve been 50 cents. So it just depends on how large you are. And I’m thinking Ruffer is almost $30 billion-ish. So that gives you an idea. But also that’s not fair to say $30 billion-ish because they have some tail risk in long ball positions and they usually use upwards of three different trades. And so VIX calls might be a small position in that relative to the overall size. One other one of the ones before we get to zero DTE is that Will said that commodity vol looks attractive because the Fed can’t suppress it.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, I had that as well.
Jason Buck:
And so I think people have been talking about commodity vol for a while and I think even Will has been talking, he was talking about commodity vol last year. But I thought that was an interesting anecdote that he threw in there at the end, because the Fed can’t suppress it. So that was an interesting way to think about commodity vol. So getting to zero DTE that you brought up.
Jeff Malec:
Real quick on commodity vol, that’s like the mother of all basis risk, right? I don’t even know where to start with that. Copper, one of those, oil I guess.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, I think in this sense I don’t think Will’s worried about basis risk. So we started talking about VIX calls and everything, we talk about basis risk, but I think Will and Parallax is just, they run cross-asset vol books and they’re not really hedging against S&P, so they’re not worried about the basis risk, they’re just trying to make money in commodity vol.
Jeff Malec:
Got it, right.
Jason Buck:
So on the zero DTE front, Robbie was talking about that the liquidity allows for cheaper transaction costs. And he finds that HFT firms are starting to enter the space of zero DTE and they’re selling spreads based on back tests, which is always pause for concern. And it’s that idea too, is, if you look at any longer-term systematic back test, everybody’s going to tell you 85%+ of options expire worthless so you should sell options. But they don’t get into, well, what’s the price you’re paying, what’s your tender, et cetera? But if you take that to the extreme, well, if I can sell options on a daily basis, I’m just compounding more effectively or quicker over the long term. So I think that’s what we see a lot of.
Jeff Malec:
And who would you say is doing the spreads, ETFs?
Jason Buck:
Robbie said that … I think maybe the HFT firms that were coming in were the ones.
Jeff Malec:
HFT.
Jason Buck:
High frequency trading firms, but he sees very balanced risk, which was a theme we heard throughout the few days. He said that you see more trading balanced risk, but then they’re raising the risk limit. So he felt that it was fairly benign and fairly contained in an balanced market.
Jeff Malec:
And he had an interesting way to look at balance. He said it’s balanced with volume, with liquidity, and I’m going to forget the third thing, like what’s his name. Don’t ever hold your fingers up. But they don’t just look at it like, “Okay, the order book’s balanced.” They’re looking at it, he said they did a deep dive, did this research, went across volume, liquidity, and whatever the third one is and saw no disruptions there. And then I think you might have misnoted that, because I had the note of him saying ever since the zero DTEs have come out, they haven’t had to adjust their risk limits once. So basically saying as a market maker, if you’re scared about all this stuff, we haven’t had to have a special meeting or had, “Oh my God, the risk is all out of control” one time. Basically saying everyone calm the hell down. This is just normal operation for us as a market maker. It’s a new toy, it’s a new tool, but the balance is there.
And that was the key. Everyone’s worried of like, “Oh, if this thing gets out of control,” which is always weird to think about because every one that’s bought is sold and vice versa. But I think they mean the balance, if everyone bought them and just the market maker on the other side, and then the market pins at that thing and the market maker has to cover, that’s what could cause this liquidity cascade, TM Cory Hoff’s team. But he’s saying no, it’s balanced. We’re seeing client flow on both sides of the order book, of buyers and sellers. So they’re not nervous about it at all.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, it’s a good way to point out that the balance risk is more like the gamma effects of the market makers trying to lay off their risk. And thank you, that was a function of my notes. So I couldn’t read my own notes. So it said trading more and then I see raised risk limits. But then after you said that I realized I wrote, “Haven’t.” But I couldn’t, I was like, “Is that honest? What is that?” So yeah, like you said, they are trading more but they haven’t raised their risk limits. So yeah, that was a key point.
Jeff Malec:
As you know, I’m having a really hard time reading my notes, but yeah.
Jason Buck:
Yeah. So Robbie being co-head of S&P options training at Optiver, as a market maker, he would have the most interesting things, I would think, to say, and the most expertise in zero DTE options. But then the second order effect of that is, what is he saying on stage versus what they’re saying privately? So that’s the only caveat I’ll give to it. But if I want to hear from anybody about zero DTE, I want to hear from Optiver.
Jeff Malec:
Right, not the person creating a gamma model based off publicly available data and whatnot. Like, “Here’s what’s happening. There’s a huge gamma squeeze going to happen.” No, this guy’s living it every day, probably many multitudes of capital personally at risk as well as the firm’s at risk. So yeah, I agree with you 100% of, I would trust his opinion above all else. But then I think they all basically said, “Yeah, we trade it,” but no one was like, “It’s the best thing ever. We’re making tons of money doing zero DTE.” It was just like, “Yeah, it’s a new tool in the toolbox.” Do you get a different feeling?
Jason Buck:
Yeah, for the most part. And I’m just trying to think, I’m looking at some of the other notes from Will and Chase. Will’s not afraid to step in and push back or be contrarian, but he was saying basically everything’s gotten shorter term. All life and trading gets shorter and shorter term, whether we used to watch two-hour movies to watching 20-second TikToks. So he was just saying everything’s shorter term, he’s saying they use that as a tactical complement to other things they’re doing. Like you’re saying, they’re barely using them. He said the implied volatility looks cheap to the realized volatility on event spreads. But he was also saying, this is what I thought was interesting, he said he felt the transaction costs were high relative to the vol exposure that you get. So where Robbie thought that the liquidity allowed for cheaper transaction costs, I think Optiver’s going to have a very different perspective than Will’s going to have from market maker to buy-side.
And so it was interesting that he felt their transaction costs were too high, that’s why they weren’t using them, but more as a complement. And he actually said it actually surprised him how successful it was. So he had an honest admonition there that he didn’t think that zero DTE was going to get the volume that it has or grown over the last year. And so he said he’s been generally surprised by that. Chase was saying that, and I shouldn’t write this down because it’s confirmation bias for me, but he says it’s not cannibalizing the one to three-month trades. So volume has been coming down in the one to three-month trades and volume has been rising in the zero DTE, but he’s saying they’re not related. The volume in the zero DTE has nothing to do do with the volume in the one to three months, which is great.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, everyone else is saying, “So it’s just purely coincidental that it’s in inverse lines?” Which seems weird, but you wouldn’t know.
Jason Buck:
Well, it also starts with though too, do you think, who creates the volume, buyers or sellers? And so for me these zero DTEs are just people wanting sell zero DTEs. So everybody’s been saying it’s retail buyers, et cetera, but is that really true? I’m not so certain who creates this supply and demand. Sometimes it can be inverse. And shout out to [inaudible 00:16:38] Ambrose, they wrote a paper about the zero DTE if you want to go look it up. And that’s what their research found as well, is it’s more institutions or hedge funds selling and not necessarily retail trying to punt on basically a directional play on a daily basis.
Jeff Malec:
And then I had the note, but I can’t read my numbers there, of his example of … Or maybe I just wrote an example to help me think about it, that the vol’s expense was basically, if you’re paying … Chase was thinking of it like, you pay only 2% spread or whatever the number is, maybe it was 50 BPs or something. But Will’s thinking and we’re like, “Okay, I paid 50 BPs but I’m really only realizing 1%. I’m getting two to one.” If I have a three-month option, I pay 50 BPs, basically the same spread, and I can get 15% realized, then I’m like 30 to one. So that’s where his mind was, like, “Okay, but you’re kind of expensive for the realize you’re going to get in that day.” How far is one day going to go? is the ultimate question.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, remind me of the arguments I used to have with you about the tick size for VIX contracts.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah.
Jason Buck:
Even S&P.
Jeff Malec:
Doesn’t matter.
Jason Buck:
Did somebody else do tick sizes for S&P too at one point? I think maybe it’s in my notes for later.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah.
Jason Buck:
Will also said that a black swan event can and will spike-fall, but nothing on the radar. I think somebody had a question about black swans, and we’re both tautologically like, they’re like, “Tell us what black swan’s coming.” You can’t, that’s why it’s a black swan. So what Robbie said, though, is the black swan, especially for zero DTE, that was a lot of rumors going around the event, was the proposal for intraday margin could exacerbate vols with rolling margin calls. So that’s the other reason why we’ve seen the rise in zero DTE, is it’s a function of regulations. You don’t have to post that much margin for these intraday options trades. And that’s why people have been really pulling them off in size and why you see that volume increase. But if they were to move to intraday marginal requirements or raising those, that’s when you could just see, like you’re saying, is just a cascade of margin calls that would be a systemic risk to the zero DTE space. But is that a cascading risk to the systemic financial system, is a whole different ball of wax or topic of discussion.
Jeff Malec:
And then that didn’t even make much sense to me, because if you’re out each day there shouldn’t be margin calls. You’d just put on the margin every day. So you just wouldn’t put it on the next day.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, but if you were intraday, if we had a movement and they got margin called and the buffer, at least on the market makers, you could have a cascade of bankruptcies basically.
Jeff Malec:
Oh, I was taking it to mean there’s this like $30 billion in zero DTE volume that has a margin associated with it, which is true intraday but not true day over day.
Jason Buck:
Right, correct.
Jeff Malec:
And then if the regulations come in and take that away, that margin goes away. We’re saying, as it would be applied intraday …
Jason Buck:
Yes.
Jeff Malec:
It would exacerbate and, which would be, we wouldn’t put it beyond our government, which would be dumb, like, “Hey, we’re going to try and make this safer and we’re going to add basically circuit breakers that make it worse.”
Jason Buck:
Yeah. And so you’re right, there’s countervailing forces going in the next day, you just don’t put it on the trades but everybody gets wiped out in that day. So that’s the issue there. And then Chase just pointed out this has mainly been massive isolated vol events throughout the last year and a half. It’s more one-day events. So we’ve seen those spikes and balls, but then it just mean reverting just as quickly.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, and I wrote down contagion, were they going into contagion? Until we see those isolated events haven’t bled into, they were in bond vol, they didn’t bleed in equity vol. They were in the ruble in the beginning of the year, it didn’t bleed into equity. So I think it was Vishnu bringing up, yeah … Am I on the wrong panel there?
Jason Buck:
Yeah, that’s fine.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah. Right, he was bringing up, you’re not going to see a big blowout and vol really spike until there’s multi-asset contagion.
Jason Buck:
Correct. And then …
Jeff Malec:
What makes that happen is the billion-dollar question.
Jason Buck:
So once again though too, we’re always trying to decipher on zero DTE how much is retail non-toxic flow versus toxic professional flow. As Robbie pointed out, this is what I love too, is he said so much of it trades electronically, it’s hard to decipher these days between retail and institutional. And I thought that was a great point. ‘Cause like you said, everybody’s selling their products for how to decipher between retail and institutional and gamma positions and market makers, but then you don’t know what’s in dark pool. There’s just so much unknowns there that I thought that was great pointing out that with the electronic trades and then, not only you and I have talked about this many times, is not only the electronic trades but then electronic algo execution trades for hiding with icebergs, et cetera. It’s hard to know if that 50-lot trade or five-lot trade is retail or if that’s institution just tranching into the trade.
Jeff Malec:
And then we talked after the event or somewhere in there of, it’s funny to think of, retail flow is usually non-toxic in the market maker world. They don’t want to get in front, they don’t want to see an order get in front of it and then it’s some institutional player that can come 10X the size over it and cause them a big loss. So it’s in their benefit to know who’s retail, who’s institutional so they don’t get in front of the wrong person. You had an interesting point with these zero DTE that, when does retail’s non-toxic flow become toxic? This was all even in meme stocks and they were tying in meme stock a little bit stuff in there as well, of it builds this momentum and then the non-toxic flow becomes toxic flow because they’re moving all in the same direction at the same time.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, as soon as they in aggregate and in correlated nature move the same direction at the same time, that’s nuclear toxic or something. It’s just a whole other level. It goes from non-toxic to, “Just get the hell out of the way and shut down your book.”
Jeff Malec:
Right, just flip sign immediately. And then I asked the question at the end.
Jason Buck:
Oh, I was going to tee you up. I was going to tee you up.
Jeff Malec:
Oh, sorry, go for it.
Jason Buck:
No, I was just saying, like Vishnu was saying, going back to what you’re saying about Vishnu, he sees that cross-asset correlation is where we could see a potential black swan is, once again, if we see yields down, stock down, potential world like back in March, that can be an issue.
Jeff Malec:
Real quick on that, what, sorry, but isn’t that interesting? Your two panels are like, “If we see yields down,” what did they say, yields down, stocks down. Yields up, stocks down.
Jason Buck:
No, I think Vishnu’s saying rates down, yields down, stocks down.
Jeff Malec:
Okay. I was coming from the standpoint we, just had bonds down, stocks down. So if everyone’s like, “Oh, that would be a big black swan thing,’ We just had it. how could it be unexpected?
Jason Buck:
This is everybody’s position for, that’s what I’m saying, everybody was positioned for the previous. Like he’s saying, going back to the previous few years ago or last few decades where everybody’s positioned the opposite now. I think it was what Vishnu was trying to say, is because of that cross-asset correlation flipping again. So then it was question time. So you got in a great question, so I’ll tee you up for that one. That was, you’re showing your big brain memory from last year with will.
Jeff Malec:
Oh, are you going to tell him what my handle was in the question app?
Jason Buck:
Oh, what’s up with the moss? Wasn’t that your question?
Jeff Malec:
There were some butterflies/moths that were plaguing Vegas.
Jason Buck:
In full bloom.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, I guess two or three of them in the Wynn place. But yeah, my question was, last year, and they misconstrued it so we’ll get to clear it up here, that’s why you have a podcast. So last year there was a lot of talk about dispersion doing great, dispersion doing great. This year zero talk of dispersion and a lot of talk about how gamma had done great last year. That was the part they missed. And so my question was like, hey, last year we were talking about dispersion doing great, nobody was talking about the gamma trend, which is at the money, don’t rely on a Vega pop, rely on it approaching your strikes. So question was simply, “Last year we’re talking dispersion, no one talking gamma. This year we’re talking talking gamma, no one’s talking dispersion. What’s next year going to be? What are we going to be talking about next year that we didn’t talk about this year?”
So they misconstrued the question and thought I said gamma is working this year, and they said, “No, it’s not working so far this year, the past few months hasn’t seen gamma working at all.” But Will jumped back in and jumped on his sword and said, “Yeah, I called last year that dispersion was going to blow up, way too much money in it, way too much excitement about it, and that correlations are going to unwind and it’s going to be a pain trade across a lot of firms. Like didn’t happen. I’m going to double down.” And he’s like, “It’s still a big risk. I still see it having problems.” He said they’re still involved in it, they still trade it, but he sees a big risk in that dispersion trade as well.
Jason Buck:
That’s end of day one.
Jeff Malec:
End of day one. What are you thinking, we’ll do two? You’ll put the day two on yours or something like that, or just do these both on both?
Jason Buck:
Yeah, we can split it up, we can do either/or. I have another 25, 30 minutes if you do. And so I think this day’s going to go a lot faster if you want.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah. All right, let’s go. So day two started off with Tom Lee of … Let me pull up my [inaudible 00:26:12], sorry, Tom Lee of Parametric, how come I don’t have the thing? Keynote, Forecast or Forge: Building Resiliency in a Risky World. So it’s Tom Lee, CIO of Parametric, talented public speaker, I liked his style. Kept us all engaged and a lot of … We could go way deep on this but we’re going to keep it high level, but everything you’re always talking about, right? Complexity, emergent behaviors, had some interesting stuff on probability versus confidence. And an option needs to know not just the probability but also the confidence and how the confidence brings in the second order. The first order of uncertainty is just the probability, the certainty brings in the second order of probability, which is the range of probabilities. Like, “Okay, here’s the probability, but what’s the probability that this thing actually happens way over here?”
So the range of probabilities, and he was bringing that back to, to build a resilient portfolio you need to think about the range of possibilities, which you would call paths, and think about those range of possibilities, the path dependency, and build a resilient portfolio that can exist and not get blown out in each of those range of possibilities. So how do you build a resilient portfolio? Diverse, liquid, attentive to cost, cautious of complexity, which was sort of interesting, but then he went with, “Like a core satellite approach.” I’m like, “Well, everyone knows that thing.” So he lost me a little bit there. You had all this great stuff and then you went with a simplistic example.
And then the other interesting thing, and then I’ll let you go in here, is he had this pyramid of basically investment products. At the top was pure alpha that gets charged two and 20, next was hedge funds that are basically still one to two, a little bit less management fee but still one to two to 20. Then alternative beta, which gets down into your 50 BPs to 100 BPs. Then indexable alts, which get down to like 10 BPs, and then market beta, which we know, like SBY, which is down less than five BPs. So it’s interesting that products and strategies move down this pyramid. So 20 years ago we might have thought a simplistic carry strategy was alpha, and now you can get that as an alternative beta. So it’s moved down that thing. And then even 50 years ago we would have thought owning all 500 stocks in the S&P was maybe some alpha, maybe indexable also, that’s moved way down the chain.
Yeah, and he basically was saying, to protect against moving down that chain, managers add complexity and they add all this stuff and you have to be careful of, is that complexity just to protect their turf and not move down the pyramid? Or is it actually to provide resiliency?
Jason Buck:
Unfortunately I was in a coffee meeting that morning, I would have enjoyed that talk, it sounds like. But what has been interesting to me is, it was also a side theme throughout this, it’s always these conversations about alpha and beta. And these conversations fascinate me, and part of the rub I think I always see between people, and I think Cory talks about this often as well, is the idea is, alpha is unexplained beta, but most traders or managers have to have an explanation for their alpha. So they preclude each other in a way. Or most people don’t want to take the Ren Tech style alpha if it’s unexplainable because they want to have an explainable strategy and thesis to their investors. Yet we’re saying alpha is just beta that hasn’t been explained yet. So it’s just an interesting fiction.
Jeff Malec:
Right, what’s the … You’ll know the term, but once you notice it, it’s gone basically. So once you explain your alpha, it becomes beta.
Jason Buck:
Yeah.
Jeff Malec:
And then he had an interesting … With managed futures he had an interesting thing of adding complexities. To protect their turf a lot of trend followers, managed futures added complexity, maybe they added some long only, they added equity tilt, they added different things. That resulted in a lot of tracking error, versus the fictitious managed futures beta. And he brought up, which you’ve talked about ad nauseum, of like, okay, this dispersion between every year the CTA index, the top guy to the bottom guy is, he quoted I think 7% dispersion. We’ve seen even larger than that. My pushback on that would be, “Hey, if you know what’s going on underneath the hood, ‘This one’s an energy trader, this one’s a short-term quant trader, this one’s a long-term trend follower,’ that it’s not as easy to just say they added complexity, that’s why there’s dispersion.”
To me it’s like they’re doing massively different strategy types and they’re just poorly categorized and lumped into the same category. But you even see that in the SocGen trend index, similar dispersion. So it is there, but I just argue back with that of, is that adding complexity for the sake of protecting their turf or are they adding complexity to be the best they can be?
Jason Buck:
Who knows?
Jeff Malec:
Yeah.
Jason Buck:
Even if they’re doing, as you’ve seen over those decades too, even if they’re doing relatively similar things, that the dispersion can still be wide, just different look-backs, different trading time horizons, breakouts versus crossovers. How do you define a breakout? All those things matter over the longer term.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah. And then one of the questions by someone I think whose handle was @Mothman, and the question was, “How do you think about whether added complexity is worth it or not?” So he didn’t quite have the time or thing to get into that, but he was saying comes back to understanding what it’s doing, understanding is it complex for complexity’s sake, or is it complex to the average person or is it complex to you? Which was interesting. He’s like, “Okay, one man’s complex is like, ‘Oh, options, scary,'” which we actually heard on some of these other panels. But if options scary is complex, well, hey, I understand these options inside out. This isn’t complex to me. Therefore I don’t think adding options overlay or something to a portfolio is adding complexity for the sake of complexity.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, if I go pop the hood on my car, it’s going to be incredibly complex to me, even if it was an old car that somebody could figure out pretty easily how to work that mechanical system. I’m going to be a complete moron and that’s going to be overly complex to me.
Jeff Malec:
That’s a great example and apropos to me, because I would be in the same boat of, “What? This looks like the engine block?”
Jason Buck:
To me a microwave is nothing but magic to me. So again.
Jeff Malec:
It works. What a great invention. What do you think is more important for society, the microwave or the refrigeration?
Jason Buck:
Oh, definitely refrigeration. I thought you might go AC because that’s what changed any equatorial country of the South.
Jeff Malec:
But same technology, so the ability to cool the air instead of the food. Next panel was … You done with that? You got any other thoughts on forecast or forge?
Jason Buck:
No. But yeah, I thought you’d like that because that different way of thinking what you call path dependency, and covering all paths is resilience, creating a resilient portfolio.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, unfortunately I was in a coffee meeting, then I was making plans to meet up with Jim in Istanbul, so unfortunately I missed that one.
Jason Buck:
Next panel, options block liquidity, how institutions will benefit from the technology of tomorrow. This was super in the weeds, super inside baseball. You had head of Citadel Securities, was it?
Jeff Malec:
Yeah. So is this a panel, when the moderator’s Jason Roelke at Citadel Securities and when the panelist is Dave Silver at Citadel Securities, and then you have Rob Wilkis from Waratah Advisors. So yeah, it was very in the weeds about trading options block and liquidity and everything. So I just had some anecdotes and then you can add to it. But it was interesting actually, Jason, the moderator actually was even jumping in more than any other moderator because obviously it was a smaller panel, but he was saying he thinks that institutions follow retail traders and options. And I was like, “That was a hot tip that he didn’t necessarily expand on.” But he also thought that, like I said, these were more anecdotal, but that dispersion is down to like two weeks. So they’re seeing the dispersion really take effect over a shorter time horizon than … Well, I guess depending on who you are your time horizon might be shorter or longer, but he really pointed out that two-week mark.
Jason Buck:
But what do you mean there? Not the dispersion we were talking about with a dispersion trade of the … What do you mean on the two weeks?
Jeff Malec:
I thought he was talking about dispersion trade on that, more like the two weeks is where you’re seeing the most dispersion between index and single name.
Jason Buck:
Oh, he could, yeah.
Jeff Malec:
One of the other things he pointed out too is that he feels like there’s extra liquidity in single name options compared to their underlying asset. So that would be almost a Jim Carson, like tail wagging the dog. So he had those counterintuitive things where institutions are following retail and that the options are more liquid than the underlying reference asset that they’re overlaying. And then this one was just pure anecdote, but he was like, “Daily volume at the OCC is ‘astronomical.'”
Jason Buck:
Astronomical.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, that’s more …
Jason Buck:
So I had jotted down that the options execution is basically just catching up with the rest of the market of what we’ve had for years and years in single name securities and even in futures. So block orders on the screen, algo execution. And the Citadel, like I was saying, institutions sometimes still have to call, they have to wait for an auction to get made, they have to wait to see what both sides of that are and the advances are going to be. That all happens immediately. I think he was even saying a Bloomberg plug-in that could be possible where you’re seeing your auction inside of Bloomberg, there was a little Bloomberg hating there of like, “Hey, we know we all use it. We know we all hate having to pay the price.”
And then they dropped this little nugget, unintentionally I think, but that Citadel Securities has compounded volume at a growth rate of 80% a year since 2020 and that 70% of the volume is done electronically through them, 70%. So yeah, moving towards option auction automation, and that was it. Less clicks, less friction. And interesting bringing it back to retail and Amazon and they’re just trying to get to less clicks. Yeah, and then I had the same thing, retail’s the tail wagging the dog, institutions following retail in if retail causes the liquidity to increase. So I had that if. They’re following it in if when retail comes in, the liquidity increases. So it’s coming back to that non-toxic turning toxic. So if they’re seeing concentrated movement, they’re now switching sides and they’ll follow it in. And then he also said the large increase in leaps volume, especially in rates.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, I think you’d see longer out rates in general than you would see in any sort of equity options volume.
Jason Buck:
Your liabilities are going to be longer.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah.
Jason Buck:
Moving on, we had equity and systematic strategies in the new regime. I think we’ll both politely say this was one of the least interesting ones to us. Is that polite enough?
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, I was trying to think of a way to politely say this stuff, and then not any individual, but I was also wondering how much the host actually does matter. We think sometimes the host is inconsequential, but maybe driving the direction and arc of a conversation and tying things together might be. And I’m not saying this was the case in this scenario, but it was just making me think about some of the panels that were just more people just whipping back and forth anecdotes and no real follow-through or conversation.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, and I think it was missed setup too. Some of them are just doing long only, some are doing income strategies and equities. So it’s like big, simplistic, I don’t want to use that in the wrong word, but quantitative models that are doing not advanced option whatnot or whatnot, but how many securities to own and which securities to own. They did get into a little bit of back testing.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, that was the only interesting part that I had some notes on.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, and one of them said back testing, they don’t mind the shorter back test and that a human is needed to judge the length and the approach to back testing.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, that was Linus at BlackRock, was talking about how human sensibility has to see the parts that the back test doesn’t make sense or that was outside the parameters of the back test. And then related to that is, we’ve talked about this many times before, systematic is about, and I think this was from Sharon, she was saying systematic is about creating a low cost automation of emotional fundamentals. So when everybody goes, “Are you systematic or discretionary?” It’s like, well, every systematic rule had discretionary emotions embedded in it. And so you and I have talked about that many times.
Jason Buck:
Yeah, automating what a good fundamental manager would do at scale and at cost.
Jeff Malec:
Right. And then Beryl followed that up basically too as, “Yeah, we’re rules based at Newberger Berman, but the inputs can be emotional.” And I thought that was another interesting way of putting it, is you can have emotional battles about the inputs, but then it’s all rules based once you get those in there.
Jason Buck:
And then Beryl also an interesting point, that their models look at the current market signals and not historical. So I took that to mean they’re not saying, “Hey, every time the market’s down 6.5% it rallies X percent and that’s what our model’s working off.” It’s just, “When X indicator’s above Y indicators we’re getting into those.” I think it was more fundamental than that, of, “If the priced earning is X, we’re getting in.” And then I won’t name names here, but I had this, someone up there said they’d take some liberties in adjusting the models based on the macro environment. And I just wrote down WTF. It’s like, what? That’s to me quant 101. I’m like, “No, you don’t adjust the models based on what’s going on, because how do you know?” You just pick up the paper or you listen to a podcast and you’re like, “Oh my God, this SVD stuff is terrible. Sell everything, take some liberties.”
Jeff Malec:
I wonder how much that is part of the zeitgeist though, because I think about how many of our potential clients ask us that similar question. And so maybe that’s what they’re using as a narrative for their clients, is that they’re attenuating their rules based to the macro overlay.
Jason Buck:
So they’re smarter by half. They’re just throwing that in there even though they don’t do it?
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, I don’t know. That’s my dubious questioning of that, because I just hear that more and more often these days. So I don’t know if that’s in the ether. And then Linus also said they use options as a smart money indicator. So I thought that was interesting. But most of this stuff was very, whether it was BlackRock, systematic, or vanguard, it wasn’t as interesting.
Jason Buck:
Yeah. So moving on, the next one was …
Jeff Malec:
This one should be good.
Jason Buck:
A combination approach to building a diversifying strategy portfolio with Roberto Brocci, Jim’s brother? Just joking. Newton, Joe Elinger, Paulus [inaudible 00:41:58], Grant Jaffarian, and Ryan Lobdell. So I had stepped out here, so I’m going to let you, and flew home.
Jeff Malec:
And why I say it was interesting too is because obviously Grant Jaffarian, famous Chicago trading family that you know well. Ryan Lobdell works at Makita with my buddy Jason Josephiak, especially on their RMS strategies, their risk mitigation strategies. And then Paulus works at UPS Group, but I think he’s in a separate division from Roxton.
Jason Buck:
Roxton, yeah.
Jeff Malec:
But when Paulus is on there, it’s always interesting. So I have a lot of anecdotes. Basically Grant was talking about how trend following has evolved a lot over the last decade, mostly how managers have moved much more towards long-term, like six months plus, with the addition of carrying beta. So as you’re saying, as managed features evolves and people want to add carrying beta to provide better return streams, but the actual trend piece has moved much more longer-term signals like six months plus. Do you think you’ve seen the same thing in the last decade, especially during that lull of the 2010s?
Jason Buck:
Yeah, definitely. If you wanted to survive, it was go longer term, add beta and/or carry, much to a detriment in some cases of, “Okay, are you going to perform in a ’22 when that happens?” Which most of them did. So I think that’s what’s lost in that conversation. Like, “Oh, you’re adding these dangerous pieces, you’re adding this dispersion from the true trend following.” But there’s nothing to say they can’t turn those pieces off, or when trend comes fully back, they can be dynamic and switch around.
Jeff Malec:
They can use the macro environment as an opening.
Jason Buck:
Yes, they can take some liberties.
Jeff Malec:
Joe had an interesting point about the Wimbledon trade. I don’t know how much you know about that one.
Jason Buck:
The insurance, yeah.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, the tennis tournament, how they were basically paying $2 million a year for pandemic insurance. And a lot of people were like, “That’s stupid, that’s a negative line item,” all that stuff. But it was based on their capex growth. So that was an interesting, almost like we were saying with whether knowing if flow is toxic or non-toxic, is you don’t know if somebody’s hedging their book, if it’s a directional play, what they have in dark pools. Well, now if you’re talking about actual businesses and having to have capex growth, you don’t know that the hedging creates a lower cost capital. So Wimbledon had decided to be a preeminent tournament moving forward. They had to put tens of millions of dollars, and quite frankly hundreds of millions dollars over a decade, into building out their facilities, restaffing, all of those sorts of things.
Jason Buck:
Strawberries.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, more champagne and strawberries. So no one likes bleed, but still, it saved their bacon. They were able to survive, and surviving is the only success. But it was interesting how much that hedge was not necessarily predicting the pandemic, it was more like hedging their capex spending. So I think that’s always an interesting way to think about things, where in options world, everybody can get what they want because you don’t realize that real economic hedgers, especially whether it’s managed futures and options, might be hedging their exposure to commodity versus refined product versus cost of capital. So you really don’t know what’s at play there. And Grant was talking about too that strategies that offer genuine diversification need dispersion. There is no benchmark and it needs to be timing orientated. No passive. No passive, no benchmark. And you need dispersion for the genuine diversification that managed features can provide.
Jason Buck:
So he must be jotting down when Tom Lee was using that as a bad example of like, “Oh, I’ll show you dispersion.”
Jeff Malec:
And then Roberto asked, I think, “Why do you need active? Why not QIS?” QIS, quantitative investment strategies, are basically systematic passive factor investing. So Joe’s response with that is, everyone has thousands of bespoke indices. The rules based doesn’t adapt to a changing market. So going back to the idea of a macro overlay, or like you’re saying, even if managed futures had on carry and other beta trades that they can switch to more trend trades or just adjust like a dimmer switch how much exposure they have. Well, it was interesting too, we were talking about that dispersion with managed futures and trend players, is like Ryan pointed out, that trend directionally correlates, but P&L dispersion can be large. And so it’s best to use ensembles for clients. Just mic drop that one.
Jason Buck:
Couldn’t agree more.
Jeff Malec:
Oh, this is where the tick came in. So even Grant brought up that the tick size for E-minis, that $12.50, makes it difficult for the execution cost. You have to innovate on the execution cost side. And so he was pointing out that the HFT and other frontrunning traders make their execution costs so much higher for trend followers than they have been historically, so part of a CT or trend following firm these days has to have a division that’s really working on their execution costs and making sure that they can have better execution costs. So that’s that bit of that red queen principle that we find, where everybody’s like, “Well, I can use a trend index, I can do trend at home,” all that stuff. But as we know, the firms that are working hardest is actually on the reduction of the transaction cost side and worrying about disguising their orders for the HFT firms.
Jason Buck:
And that’s a big firm, big fund problem, if you have $3 billion of your huge trend follower, but point taken. And then I think QIS used to be called risk premia, right? Have we gotten rid of the risk premia name and now it’s QIS?
Jeff Malec:
You saw that popping up too and the factors, and yeah, it’s just, everything has just a new acronym and everything. Which I always joke with the guys at Makita about their RMS, their risk mitigation strategies. It’s the new version of tail risk or long vol, or managed futures or commodity. Once again, managed futures, commodity trend followers, CTAs, pick your poison. And then obviously Ryan’s with their RMS strategies, a person after my own heart, he said you need to size the allocation to manage futures or trend to the payoff you need. A 1% allocation doesn’t do anything. And so yeah, Makita’s advising trillions of dollars. And so when they’re talking to large institutions about their allocation size to trend following, you can imagine when they’re having those conversations they’re like, “1% to 4%?” They’re like, “What’s the point? You’re actually not doing anything.” But that’s usually a lot of the conversations they are having.
Jason Buck:
I’ll throw out a shameless plug for our guide to trend following white paper that has a whole couple pages in there on that, which was based on a great work by Welton a bit ago, by a bit I mean maybe 15 years ago. But it was basically showing, okay, if you expect 6% annual return, whatever, and you want to get to 10%, it was just simple math. You’re expecting 6% out of your 60/40 portfolio, you want to get to 10% a year to meet your pension liability. What does this allocation of these alts have to return? And it was showing at 5% allocation it has to do 78%. So I feel like that’s a better way to frame it of, “Okay, you’re into it, you like the diversification, what do you think this needs to return in order to do what you want it to do?”
And they’ll be like, “Right where it’s at, the 15%.” No, no, no, then you need 25% exposure. So yeah, kudos to him for recognizing that, but I would love to ask him follow-up of, “How many of your clients actually listen and do more than 5%?”
Jeff Malec:
The next panel, so unfortunately we’re getting hard up on time here. So the next panel was on fixed income factors, and my buddy Ronny Israela from Endeavor, formerly of AQR, was on that panel. And so maybe I’ll shorthand this as, recently Ronny’s been making the podcast rounds and I highly recommend his episodes on Resolved Riffs and then Cory Hofsene’s Flirting With Models. And Ronny really breaks down corporate bonds and short dispersion trades. He views, why be in corporate bonds when you’re basically long treasury plus risk premium and short to put? And so Ronny can go into all those details and I highly recommend listening to any of the podcasts he’s been on recently, because the stuff they’re doing at Endeavor is very interesting. And to your question earlier, they’re building LDI ladders for retirees. And I think that’s a really interesting differentiating factor for an RIA that nobody else is really doing. And he’s just bringing all of that firepower that he’s built with AQR over the years and applying it at Endeavor now. And it’s really impressive using the technology and what they’re building out there.
Jason Buck:
And really quick, what do you mean by LDI ladder? So I have $200,000 spend in the next five years, then it’s down to $125,000.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah.
Jason Buck:
So cool, we’re going to get you this income at those milestones.
Jeff Malec:
Right, tagging you when you have those income needs, or for other people it would be liability needs historically when you’re an insurance company, but for individuals, yeah, it’s when you need those income, and then tying your treasury ladder to the exact income you need, so that way you’re always just hitting it dead on for all those tranching out the years of your future life.
Jason Buck:
Especially at today’s rates. That’s what makes that even possible, right? Yeah.
Jeff Malec:
And then a little bit of fireworks or trying to … Before I had to catch my flight, the last discussion because it wasn’t a panel, the discussion I caught was, “Does the rear view mirror see the wall ahead?” With Mike Green from Simplify and Jim Carson from Kai Volatility.
Jason Buck:
Great title.
Jeff Malec:
Great title. You know I love a good [inaudible 00:51:39] Guardian reference that we only understand life through the rear view mirror, except for we have to drive looking forward. So that’s always the tough part about life. So there’s a little bit anecdotes in here. The problem I think actually was, with both these gentlemen, they’re quite verbose and I think they gave them 30 minutes to talk.
Jason Buck:
Oh, yeah.
Jeff Malec:
And so I think they were trying to try to jam a lot into 30 minutes. So it was a little bit of back and forth. And so basically the conversation is, can markets price in a future event? And Jim was pointing out that we had the rise in zero DTE because Vega didn’t work and the RV gamma has the realized vol and gamma has worked, but now he’s saying the realized vol is dramatically compressed. So once we’ve touched on the zero DTE, Mike was pointing out that the least sensitivity of VIX to S&P moves is nobody cares about 30-day vol. And so VIX is priced on expected 30-day forward variance. And he had a slide, I can’t remember exactly what, he had a good wording of it, but it was basically, nobody cares about 30-day vol. It’s like, who gives a shit?
Jason Buck:
Which is counter to the other panel where they’re saying no, both those 30 day out and zero DTE volume is separate and different.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah. And then what Jim and I have actually been talking about for a while now, him and I have been talking about this privately too as well, and I think he’s been talking about publicly, is like we were talking about earlier, it’s moving to other asset classes and back, but we were talking about the historical lessons. Vol gets compressed and then vol explodes and then everybody gets blown out and then they rush to buy those hedges, vol compresses again. And so we just keep going through these cycles over and over and over again. Post 2008 everybody wanted insurance, but that was a good time to be selling insurance, and then until selling insurance does well, it compresses down. Then we have pops like 2020. It just keeps expanding and contracting and usually people are on the wrong side. But it’s just that really historical references. Like you’re saying, 2017 you had all sellers, and then February 2018 you had volume again, it pops, and then we reverse course again. It just keeps going back and forth.
Jason Buck:
The problem to me is the timing there. So cool, I know it’s going to revert, but if it’s post 2020 and that echo remained around for a long time, it’s like it took too long to revert and I got carried out in a body bag. So you can know it’s going to cycle, but if the one edge of the cycle takes too long.
Jeff Malec:
Well, yeah, you can predict things but not the timing, or whatever. You can say directional but don’t give a timeframe. And so he’s talking about 2020, we’re all sitting in equities, and then currently we’re set up for a vol expansion. But once again, what is the timing? And Jim was just talking about with the debt ceiling, and that anything under two years, the market is a voting machine. He feels that liquidity is slim in the tails. So maybe that’s also why you could see that reversion of buying, and this is not investment advice, buying that skew, that deep out of the money skew, if that liquidity is thin and people just keep rushing in there on a potential low liquidity environment, then you could see that deep out of the money tail pop again.
Jason Buck:
Made me a little nervous overall that several people were like, “Oh, it’s getting to be a better environment for that tail protection.” If everyone’s noticing it, is it really going to be there?
Jeff Malec:
Well, as you and I both know, it might be a better environment, might be “cheaper,” but it could be cheaper for years and get even cheaper than that. So that’s the problem. But the asymmetry’s back at least, but you might just still be bleeding out.
Jason Buck:
But better to bleed out 2% a year than 6% a year.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah, Mike pointed out that everyone lacks conviction, so they’re just buying calls for upside instead of delta one, which also might skew other people’s metrics on put call parity, et cetera, and whether the market is bullish or bearish.
Jason Buck:
Which also comes back to Jim’s overall thesis that people are moving whole hog into options.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah. And Jim said the recession isn’t the biggest risk, stagflation is. So I thought that was interesting. Secular sticky inflation and we’d have a middling economy. I don’t know how much, I don’t think he’s been talking about that too much lately. So that was fairly new. Mike said though, he pushed back, said he’s not worried about stagflation, but he is worried that credit spreads could be explosive. And then you probably heard Jim say this before, he is talking about, once again, “Populism is local and capitalism is global.” And he feels that we’re shifting back to that local populism where we’ve been in a global capital world for decades, or as he likes to call it, Planet Palo Alto. And then he referenced once again that the zero DTE becomes a problem if it gets unbalanced. But everybody was talking about how balanced it’s been.
And then Mike asked that question again of, if the OCC changes those intraday margin, is that a catalyst for that zero DTE to blow up? And they both agreed that could be the potential catalyst, but yeah, it was a quick back and forth and it ended rather quickly. And they were trying to, I think, I didn’t write the notes down, they were trying to basically go through a lot of history of options trading back into the ’80s and ’90s. So that’s why I’m saying I think it got too compressed and a little bit jumbled and probably needed two hours for those two to have a good conversation.
Jason Buck:
They could had their whole own day, session, panel three with Jim and Mike, panel six.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah. And then after that one I had to run to catch a flight, but then there was another talking about QIS again, there was a fireside chat about equity derivatives, and I really wish I got to saw the risk management portfolio diversification in 2023, but once again, had to catch a flight.
Jason Buck:
I hear you. And you’ve got to go catch a flight now.
Jeff Malec:
Yeah.
Jason Buck:
Ish. Awesome. This has been fun. Thank you. We’ll see you again next year.
Taylor Pearson:
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, we’d appreciate if you would share this show with friends and leave us a review on iTunes, as it helps more listeners find the show and join our amazing community. To those of you who already shared or left a review, thank you very sincerely. It does mean a lot to us. If you’d like more information about Mutiny Fund, you can go to mutinyfund.com. For any thoughts on how we can improve the show or questions about anything we’ve talked about here on the podcast today, drop us a message via email. I’m taylor@mutinyfund.com and Jason is jason@mutinyfund.com, or you can reach us on Twitter. I’m @TaylorPearsonME and Jason is at @JasonMutiny. To hear about new episodes or get our monthly newsletter with reading recommendations, sign up at mutinyfund.com/newsletter.
