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Hacking the Matrix: A New Era in Risk Perception

"Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance." - Daniel Kahneman Chances are, "global pandemic" wasn't in your bag of quantamental factors; at least not by any name other than slippage.  But now that that cat is out of that bag - and, rightly or wrongly, the wheels of a response strategy have largely been set in motion - the least we should do against a backdrop of historically significant uncertainty (aka - risk) is widen our lens as to the new spectrum of future market contagions that have suddenly become more probable... Of particular note, keep your eye on a little thing that isn't widely discussed in polite society: the Fed's balance sheet. As of April 1, the chart below illustrates over a century of total assets for the US Federal Reserve system - ironically, since around the time of the last global pandemic (in 1918). What you are seeing there at the recent end of [...]

By |2020-10-14T22:20:45-04:00April 8th, 2020|Open|
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Marketquake 2020 – Volatility Update

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” - Theodore Roosevelt   In last week's Feed post, "Marketquake: The Volatility of Volatility," we set up a comparison of volatility levels - and duration - from the GFC with that of the current pandemic period. In that, I implied that elevated volatility persisted for 218 trading days after the initial GFC shock. In other words, it took about 218 trading days for the VIX to traverse the round trip from normal vol levels (~mid-20's) through the associated shocks and back to normal. The chart below is a picture of that path along with where we are as of today, 23 trading days into the latest market shock... Now, 218 trading days into the pandemic shock puts us into early January 2021. The problem, however, is that with the latest vol shock being faster and higher than that of the GFC - and the likelihood that there will be subsequent shocks from the combined ongoing health and economic impacts [...]

By |2020-10-14T22:22:00-04:00March 25th, 2020|Open|
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Marketquake: The Volatility of Volatility

“To develop a complete mind: Study the art of science; study the science of art. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else” – Leonardo da Vinci If there was ever a moment in time when we realized just how much everything connects to everything else - a quote (and concept) I have been using to repeatedly bludgeon you lo these many past months - now would be that moment. However, so as not to jump on the singularly overcrowded bandwagon of doom that is the current events flow of content (for now), I'd like to walk through a storyboard of related significance. That sadly familiar aroma in the air is fear; a specific vintage of which has not washed over the market ecosystem since 2008. Many are coming to the conclusion that if the virus doesn't take us down, the arsenal of preventative measures just might - and therefore, one way or another, we are likely entering a period of financial stress (to put it as [...]

By |2020-10-14T22:24:36-04:00March 19th, 2020|Open|
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AQR: The Shape of Strategy (Teaser)

For 12 straight years beginning Q4 2001, AQR Capital Management, LLC (AQR) - one of the great and legendary hedge funds of the current era - grew equity positions until peaking at 2,346 (long equity) positions by Q4 2013. Since that time, AQR's long US equity book has found an ominously consistent plateau of about 2,050 positions. And, in what would normally seem to be a benign factoid, lie the seeds of the story for why AQR has been suffering performance challenges of late - and apparently, for the foreseeable future (according to co-founder, Cliff Asness). Hold that thought. More (very) soon...

By |2020-10-05T21:33:25-04:00February 6th, 2020|Open|
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2020 Musings: In For A Penny, In For A Pound

Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it." - Steve Prefontaine "Study the art of science. Develop your senses - especially learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” - Leonardo da Vinci   Renowned columnist and author, Thomas Friedman often talks about unintended and unpredictable outcomes when tinkering with big systems. I am reminded of this thought as I drag myself, kicking and screaming, to write this next post. The source of my reluctance is this: I don't want to be in the prediction business mainly because the timing of the catalyst that dramatically alters the trajectory of prevailing themes is a fools errand. And, because we may be standing at such a consequential point in history that the events that await us along the journey in the months and years ahead are unimaginable. However, I do think it's important to start the year by reflecting out loud about the year ahead while leveraging what we have learned about those themes from [...]

By |2020-10-05T21:32:18-04:00January 8th, 2020|Open|
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A Blockbuster Year: Alphacution’s Top Stories For 2019

"Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers." - Voltaire To be exceedingly more terse than usual, it was a pivotal year. Thanks to so many of you who spent some of your precious attention with this work during 2019... The following Alphacution Feed posts are what you - our "congregation" - valued most during 2019 (as ranked by pageviews): Top 100 Players in US Listed Market Structure - By a factor 2x, this post from February captured the most attention initially and throughout the year. The eye candy likely didn't hurt... What Bloomberg Misses About Citadel Securities - If Alphacution's year produced anything that could be called "viral" this one might be it; coming in 2nd place for the year after being published only 2 weeks ago on December 18th... Optiver, IMC and a Shout Out to AmsterdamTrader -  Who would have thought Alphacution's readership was craving such news from the Netherlands? Rest assured that 2020 will be featuring much more of the overall European [...]

By |2020-10-14T22:27:28-04:00January 1st, 2020|Open|
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Want Better Markets? Try a Herfindahl Kiss

"Enough is a feast." - Buddhist Proverb While many of us are ramping up to gorge ourselves on the annual tryptophan bacchanal, perhaps lubricated by an appetizer of American football where - in the likely case of far fewer of us - we will watch my hometown Detroit Lions perform their annual holiday impersonation of a major league sports franchise, and I will watch my 91-year old father behave as if they haven't been disappointing him for lo these past 53 years since the birth of Super Bowl I. Yes, it is the holiday season again and it probably borders on being little crass to talk shop on a coveted day away from whatever salt mine in which you have chosen to toil. But then again, I thought it might prove useful to offer a short bromide to accompany whatever you are feasting on today... Concentration risk, not of positions but of the increasing dominance of tech-wielding leaders on listed market inventory, is like a locomotive with no apparent mechanism [...]

By |2020-10-05T21:31:42-04:00November 28th, 2019|Open|
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A Message From Citadel…

Success in any endeavor requires single-minded attention to detail and total concentration." - Willie Sutton, bank robber Alphacution has been writing untold stories about the most secretive, mythological and successful trading firms, hedge funds and asset managers in the history of the global markets ecosystem for the past couple years. What originated as our "Hiding in Plain Sight" series has come to life based on an accidental cocktail of messy data and an experiential overlay made up of a maniacal curiosity for puzzle solving, the joy of storytelling, and a potent dash of personal circumstance. Dozens of these companies have found themselves in our sights, many of them the subject of these Feed posts - some more than once - and, many of them modeled but yet to be written about. And, since there is so much secrecy around proprietary trading strategies - and rightly so - most folks have responded without responding, except for their ongoing readership, and the network effect. Yes, a small minority of our subjects have [...]

By |2020-10-05T21:31:35-04:00November 21st, 2019|Open|
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Puzzle: Two Sigma and the Sons of D. E. Shaw

"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." - Marcel Proust I had hoped to be able to publish the executive summary to our latest case study on Two Sigma this week, however instead, here is one of the more fascinating findings from that research (that we explore in detail in that case study) in the form of a puzzle: In the chart below, Alphacution presents the average stock position by value for the 67-quarter period beginning Q4 2002 and ending Q2 2019 for the four legendary quant managers, Renaissance Technologies, Millennium Management, D. E. Shaw & Co., and Two Sigma Investments. What's fascinating here is how these four leaders, with their core strategies in equities, assembled their portfolios. Four managers with two methods for implementing position sizing; one method based on market capitalization weighting, the other based on liquidity weighting... Which manager is associated with which method? One more thing: If you think this is too deep in the weeds for where [...]

By |2021-02-24T11:19:42-05:00October 31st, 2019|Open|
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