What Goes Up

The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency empire was accelerated when the head of a rival exchange announced he was planning to dump holdings of something called FTT—a token created by FTX that afforded some perks to investors who owned it. At one point, the token was one of the 10 biggest coins in the market, which would have made it eligible for the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund. How...

FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange rattled the financial world this week when a crisis of investor confidence triggered a run, forcing the company to scramble for a buyer or bailout to avoid collapse. Joining the What Goes Up  podcast to discuss the chaos that ensued are Sadie Raney, chief executive of the crypto hedge fund Strix Leviathan, and Nico Cordeiro, its chief investment officer. The firm said i...

Cryptocurrency news this year has been filled with stories about how institutional investors are embracing digital assets. So if more big players are entering the space, why are prices for Bitcoin, Ether and other tokens so depressed compared with last year’s peaks?  Leah Wald , chief executive of digital-asset investment firm Valkyrie Investments Inc., joined the  What Goes Up  podcast to share h...

There are better ways to combat inflation than destroying demand with interest-rate increases, according to Nela Richardson , chief economist for payroll giant Automatic Data Processing Inc. She joined the latest What Goes Up  podcast to give her take on half-century record American employment, decades-high inflation and signs of softness in the US housing market.  “It’s about productivity,” Richa...

The stock market has been getting very volatile as the US Federal Reserve continues its historic effort to squash rising prices. Proclamations from policymakers suggest the central bank won’t let up until inflation is under control—even if it means trouble for the economy. Officials may raise rates by another 75 basis points at their upcoming November meeting, and the same again in December, accor...

Another hot inflation reading this week underscores the importance of the US Federal Reserve’s campaign to tame decades-high increases in consumer prices, with many market observers evoking the memory of a similar effort by the central bank’s larger-than-life former chairman, Paul Volcker.  One key to Volcker’s success in the 1980s, achieved through interest-rate hikes and control of the money sup...

Institutional investors are playing a more-influential role in crypto markets as retail traders retreat, and that explains much of the recent range-bound price action, according to Michael Safai of proprietary trading firm Dexterity Capital.  “We might have been playing checkers two years ago,” said Safai, whose firm traded more than $1.2 trillion in crypto last year. “We’re playing chess now.”  S...

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss triggered the latest wave of turbulence in global markets after announcing economic plans that include unfunded tax cuts. The move crushed the value of the pound while sending the already struggling country’s borrowing costs soaring. To Julian Emanuel, chief equity and quantitative strategist at Evercore ISI, the move was reminiscent of US tax cuts imposed under Ronald...

Sometimes it feels like you need to be a rocket scientist to trade successfully in modern markets. Well, George Patterson  used to be one, having began his career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before turning his attention to investing with quantitative strategies. Now he’s the chief investment officer of PGIM Quantitative Solutions, which oversees about $91.5 billion of PGIM’s $1.5 trillion...

George Cipolloni’s  son is a video-game aficionado, and the teenager’s language has clearly worn off on his father. Indeed, the portfolio manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management jokes he’s found a “cheat code” in the bond market that’s helped his balanced strategy beat its benchmark with a heavy allocation to high-yield corporate debt. But don’t be alarmed: His “code” is really just fundamental an...

Selling bonds short—a trade that for decades hadn’t worked consistently—has helped fuel a 37% return so far this year for the managed-futures strategy fund at AlphaSimplex Group. And the trade looks like it has further to go, according to Kathryn Kaminski, chief research strategist at the quantitative-investing firm. She joined the “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss this and other market moves that...

Rising food prices have been one of the big drivers of inflation this year as farmers across America were hit with price spikes for fertilizer and fuel. They’ve also been forced to grapple with lingering supply-chain issues and labor shortages. Brian Duncan, operator of a family farm and vice president of the Illinois Farm Bureau, joins this week’s episode of “What Goes Up” to talk about the agric...

Jeremy Siegel, a longtime professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and author of “Stocks for the Long Run,” joined the latest episode of the “What Goes Up” podcast alongside Jeremy Schwartz, global chief investment officer at WisdomTree, to discuss the state of the economy, inflation and markets. Siegel also threw in some advice for retail traders caught up in the me...

By mimicking strategies common among some quantitative hedge-fund firms, the iM DBi Managed Futures Strategy ETF has surged 21% so far this year—beating the S&P 500 Index by about 30 percentage points. Andrew Beer, one of the managers of the active exchange traded fund, joined the latest episode of the “What Goes Up” podcast to explain the secrets of its success amid a brutal year for both sto...

The chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management has a warning for investors who are chasing the latest rally in stocks: Don’t get too excited about a potential peak in inflation after the consumer price index cooled off a bit in July. Lisa Shalett joined this week’s episode of the “What Goes Up” podcast to explain the firm’s cautious stance toward the market, and how CPI is still...

Investors are turning to some thematic exchange-traded funds to hedge against inflation and take advantage of the renewed performance of value stocks this year, according to Jay Jacobs , US head of thematics and active equity ETFs at BlackRock. Jacobs joined the “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss how the firm is sizing up investing opportunities amid the uncertain economic outlook.  See omnystudio....

Mimi Duff, senior client adviser at the $3 billion registered investment adviser GenTrust, joined this week’s “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss the outlook for markets, the economy and borrowing costs following the latest Federal Reserve interest-rate increase and a second-straight quarter of negative economic growth. Duff also explains the rationale behind some of the more interesting investments...

While China’s stock market has been seen as a pariah by some global investors this year, Citigroup is taking a contrarian view, positing a bullish outlook for the nation’s equities even while favoring defensive stocks in the US.  Shawn Snyder , head of investment strategy at Citi US Wealth Management, joined the “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss how the firm is sizing up investing opportunities am...

Mark Zandi, who has been an economist for more than three decades, says he’s never seen so many people convinced that a recession is imminent. And while he believes the US economy can still avoid an economic downturn, sentiment is so poor that it poses its own risks.  Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, joined the “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss his outlook after government data thi...

During the day-trading craze that erupted amid the Covid-19 pandemic’s lockdowns, market professionals repeatedly warned a new flock of Reddit-reading, Robinhood-using retail investors that equity options were risky, and that bold bets in that market could end badly. It turns out their caution was spot on. Day-traders managed to lose more than $1 billion during the bull market, with the bill climb...

It’s a common motto among investors: Cash is trash. But Oksana Aronov, head of market strategy, alternative fixed income at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, says not so fast. “I’ve been hearing about investors losing money sitting in cash, and that cash is trash for as long as I’ve been in this industry,” she said on this week’s episode of “What Goes Up.” “But the reality is that if you have been in...

Fiona Cincotta, senior financial markets analyst at City Index in London, joined this week’s “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss what she expects in markets, especially as US investors brace for what some say is the increasing potential for recession. “I think a ‘soft landing’ is optimistic—we’ll put it that way,” Cincotta says, adding that she puts the probability of a downturn in the near future a...

Anastasia Amoroso, the chief investment strategist at iCapital, joined the latest episode of “What Goes Up” to discuss the market volatility that followed the US Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hike and how hedge funds are attracting client interest again after years of languishing in the bull market.  “In this environment, where nothing seems to be working,...

It’s a market environment that Alanis Morissette could write a verse about . Any positive upcoming US economic data may very well receive a poor reaction in the stock market, since it could embolden the Federal Reserve to continue its aggressive campaign to tame inflation. Anthony Saglimbene, global markets strategist at Ameriprise Financial, joined the latest episode of “What Goe...

Wenting Shen, an analyst and portfolio manager at Harding Loevener, is traveling through China while navigating the country’s strict Covid-zero policies, visiting executives at the companies she covers to see how they’re faring. She joins the latest episode of “What Goes Up” to discuss what she’s learned on her trip, and how Covid-19 and the t...