Published October 1st, 2020

• Equity markets have bounced back with tremendous force since the March lows, catching many managers off guard
• The USD continues to fall against other currencies — international equities and real assets have historically outperformed during times of USD depreciation
• As we prepare for a climactic and volatile close to a wild year, can the fed come to the rescue again?
• We have a new frontier market international equity pick we have deemed “election proof”
• Gold appears to have begun its latest mega cycle, we are assigning a long term price target of $4000/oz
• Crypto is back in the news, due to a wave of “Defi” products and applications, along with record usage of the Ethereum protocol

Published in July, 2020

Published to newsletter subscribers on March 20th, 2020

STRATEGY HIGHLIGHTS and a TRADE ALERT

Markets have sold off at a large scale on the back of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Many of us were able to see this coming months in advance, noticing how the events in Wuhan would inevitably spread across the globe. Fortunately, we fell into this camp and were able to hedge market risk effectively. As markets reached the 95th percentile in terms of their earnings multiple over the past 100yrs, it would have taken a lot less to bring the markets down. …

Originally published and sent out to newsletter subscribers on October 24th, 2019. Sign up for more info at otium.tech

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

We are excited to report “top of class” Multi-Strategy Hedge Fund results for 1H 2019.

Our view of global multi-asset markets proved to be prescient through the first half of the year and we successfully capitalized on the theses discussed in Q1 2019 (Blog, Newsletter). The return attribution was diversified through a variety of low correlation allocations in an effort to decrease volatility and increase risk adjusted return.

Our most notable wins included:

• Regulated Crypto Products (including an over 10x return in a particular Bitcoin Derivative position)
• Financial sector bounce back (lead by BX, which returned over 50% in 1H…

While this title may offend some, it is not meant to do so and I will clear the air by declaring myself as politically neutral. Populism has swept over the globe in the past few years, and one effect of this may be heightened levels of “cronyism”. Once again this is not a political take, my personal view on this is neither positive nor negative, simply an objective observation.

Cronyism

Cronyism is the practice of partiality in awarding jobs and other advantages to friends, family relatives or trusted colleagues, especially in politics and between politicians and supportive organizations. …

As the dominant cryptocurrency in this new regime, Bitcoin surfaced in 2009 and thus began a revolution in the form of a grass roots type of effort which has grown into an over $200 Billion industry of publicly traded blockchain tokens / crypto assets. The industry is substantially larger when taking into consideration the mega-companies including the likes of Bitmain, Coinbase, Binance, and so on (Bitmain is working on an IPO and Coinbase just raised at an $8B valuation).

Many renowned academics, researchers, and professionals claimed bitcoin was dead over and over — but those of us who have been involved in the industry for at least a few years understand that the recent downturn is simply part of a consolidation process which has historically represented a preparation for greater growth. Simply put: programmable, global, decentralized (or not), digital currencies will be a multi trillion dollar market. Further, while it is quite difficult to change the core code which bitcoin was built upon, the protocol continues to evolve and develop over time through the development of 2nd layer applications along with other technical improvements. …