The Derivative

You may know this week's guest as a Kansas City Chief and sometime Royals fan on Twitter, but he has more than one connection to Kansas City. Jay Soloff ( @jsoloff ), an options volatility analyst, former CBOE market maker, pirate, and seller of uncapped forward variance swaps, joins us this week to discuss covering calls and charting curves. Jay brings an exciting twist to this episode and talks...

Are the Fed’s hikes starting to dampen inflation? Oil, grains, and metals have all fallen from their highs. But the rarely spoken of Cotton market was one of the first to crack…falling from 1.58/lb to 0.95/lb in just a few short days. We're digging into this sharp drop and just why and how Cotton is involved in seemingly everything with RCM's very own cotton king, LOGIC Advisors Ron Lawson. In thi...

What should we make of the recent crypto crash?  A sign this is all a scam? Or just another dip in the cycle? Gather round; you're in for an interesting chat with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Disciple on Twitter @LDrogen . A Long Island surfer turned quant turned crypto fund manager who shows us how you have to be able to hold two separate thoughts in your head to succeed in the...

This week's guest may be new to Twitter ( @nancy__davis ), but she's certainly not new to the wide world of volatility in all its wonderous “fruit” forms, including of course rates and fixed income volatility. In this Derivative episode, Jeff sits down with one of the "100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance," Nancy Davis. Nancy, who started her career at Goldman Sachs, is the founder of Quadra...

In this week's episode, Jeff talks with StoneX's Global Macro Strategist, Vincent Deluard @VincentDeluard , who authors weekly research reports on global macro trends, asset flows, European capital markets, and quantitative topics. We catch him literally right after the Fed hikes 75bps, and learn quickly that Lagarde was an accomplished synchronized swimmer and that having a French accent sure hel...

We're taking flight and zooming over to the big bend for a cheerio chat with Charlie McGarraugh, an ex-midwesterner turned londonite. Charlie is the Chief Strategy Officer at Blockchain.com and has an impressive resume as a former mortgage-backed securities trader, head of metals at Goldman, founder of an algo sports betting company, and more. In this episode, Charlie dives into living across the...

Viva Las EQ Derivatives... This week Jeff journeys back to the Windy City from Sin City, where he is joined by a special guest, Mutiny's very own Jason Buck @JasonMutiny . In this episode, they give essential insight into this unique conference for options traders, hedge funds, and insurers. They break down everything you need to know about the event and key takeaways like what was being said, wha...

You're driving down the winding roads of Napa Valley, visiting the countless wineries, taking in the beautiful scenery, and enjoying the various pairings of meats, cheeses, and palate cleansers... But that’s not all that pairs well with wine. This week Anthony Zhang, an ambitious entrepreneur who created Vinovest, gives us the inside scoop on how wine is so much more than just those ‘soft’ descrip...

We're back for part two with Noel Smith – where we dig into the types of options and volatility strategies, he employs for his Convex AM hedge fund.  For the background on why he’s worth listening to on that front, listen to Part 1 about marketing making on the CBOE floor, Getco, and more here:  https://youtu.be/XCeN56HgT68 Noel’s deep options expertise has led Convex AM to a four pillar...

We’re talking with the purveyors of one of the best performing mutual funds thus far in 2022, the dynamically shifting asset allocator, RDMIX (past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results). It hasn’t all been rainbows and lollipops, however, for the ReSolve Asset Management Global team of Rodrigo Gordillo and Mike Philbrick, and they explain why and when a core of Risk Parity s...

This week, we're painting the picture of what life on Chicago's option trading floors was like at the CBOE...but there's a catch — we put it all on the table and needed two episodes! Today's guest came into asset management in a round-about way – trading his own money for decades before venturing into the world of other people's money…We're talking to the one and only Noel Smith @NoelConvex , Mana...

This week, we're adding another stamp to our Derivative passport and traveling to Zurich, Switzerland, as we talk to the Head of Systematic Solutions and Portfolio Construction at Sygnum Bank's Asset Management, Artur Sepp @ArturSepp — who specializes in crypto-assets and decentralized finance. Artur has led quantitative research at systematic trend-following hedge fund Quantica Capital, focusing...

A little over four years since 2018’s Volmageddon, and 2 years after TVIX got terminated – two new VIX ETF’s were recently launched – the 1x short VIX exposure SVIX and 2x long VIX exposure UVIX by VelocityShares. What’s different about them, how do they protect against another Feb of 2018 event. We’re going straight to the source(s) to answer those questions and more; chatting up three musketeers...

Forget about not being emotional in your investment process. Tap into those emotions! According to today's guest Denise Shull, that is the recipe for success. Denise is the Founder of the ReThink Group and leverages her neuroscience and modern psychoanalysis background to solve the mental mysteries of successful investing, trading, competing, and leading teams. In this episode, we talk through Den...

What exactly does a chief strategist do? Besides picking fights with Bitcoin HODLers on Twitter… And how exactly does one of the most prominent voices on the dangers of too much passive money trying to fit into a single asset classes on/off ramps, end up at….wait for it….an ETF shop? We aim to find out in this episode with Simplify's Chief Strategist and Por...

Who in the right mind would choose to make a living day trading stock index futures? It must be one of the most competitive, most challenging arenas out there with HFT and 10s of billions of dollars in quant strategies chasing alpha. In this week's episode, we're chatting up the founder and CEO of short-term systematic shop Deepfield Capital from Switzerland, who ply their wares on stock index mar...

Interesting times in the world bring interesting guests to the show. And, there's no better time than now to sit down with a global finance correspondent, especially with the U.S. unleashing their USD financial war against Russia. Robin Wigglesworth, a Financial Times journalist, joins us all the way from Oslo, Norway, for a captivating chat about his home country, the current turmoil between Ukra...

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! The luck of the Irish is on our side as we celebrate today's episode with Dubliner Alan Dunne, CEO and Founder of Archive Capital, a boutique multi-asset and investment research firm focused on global macro and managed futures strategies. Alan has worked in the financial markets and investment management industry for over 25 years at hedge funds and large investment banks...

Picture this...Downtown Chicago...December 2019 B.C. (Before COVID)...The RCM crew is venturing out to a small studio ready to record the first episode of The Derivative, with no video or clue what we were doing! Who would have thought we would be crossing the 100th episode mark just two short years later!? And, we couldn't celebrate this special milestone without a one-of-kind guest. Chris Cole,...

Oil prices spiking. Wheat at new highs. A bid in Bitcoin. Russia’s invasion on its neighbor, Ukraine, got the world's attention and moved all sorts of markets. While our human side rallies around the Ukrainian people, our financial minds turn to wondering what is going on and what impact this chaos will bring on? To get a clearer global picture, Luke Gormen, a research pro focused on the macro pic...

With news of Russia invading Ukraine, it was as scary, market-wise, as it’s been since March of 2020 with global stock indices selling off rapidly overnight to send the Nasdaq into bear market territory, SP into correction, and the Nikkei to 15-month low. As the craziness ensued, VIX spiked up to 34 – so we got VIX expert Brian Stutland to come out of his foxhole to provide a unique overview of wh...

From his days as a clerk in the S&P pits to becoming Chairman and CEO of EMC Capital, John Krautsack is here to tell us about his journey in the futures industry — and nothing is off limits! From his wild west pit days to working for one of the original turtle traders, the late Liz Cheval, to what it's like implementing a new vision and everything in between. With their Classic program having...

There are not a lot of Florida Gator fans in Utah, just like there are few firms that move from high-frequency trading (HFT) into the mutual fund space. That's why Matthew Hanna from Teza Capital Management is here to talk us through what it is like running a systematic macro mutual fund. He reviews Teza's HFT and prop trading roots, how Teza’s algorithms approach the market, all while mixing his...

Timmberrrrr...welcome to the world of lumber! We’re laying the lumber in this episode talking through an exciting world some know as timber; others as fiber or wood, and the futures world as Lumber. Whatever you call it, it is impacting today's market with its wild swings, and in this episode, we're getting down to the nitty-gritty with two wood wizards, Stinson Dean of Deacon Lumber and Kyle Litt...

When in Rome do as the Romans do?...Did they have convexity? They had the word, convexitas, and in this episode, we are joined by not one, but TWO brainiacs in the option and vol space, Devin Anderson and Zed Francis from Convexitas. Devin and Zed making noise in the derivative world by launching the first true discretionary, all separate account implemented, derivati...