Resolve Riffs Investment Podcast ReSolve Riffs with Stuart Barton on Structuring Volatility ETPs
Our guest this week was Stuart Barton, co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at Volatility Shares. Our conversation ranged across topics that included:
- Early career as a vol trader and how the space has changed over time
- Volatility Shares’ investment approach – probability-weighting and active trading
- ETNs, ETFs and other ‘packaging’ models – benefits and drawbacks
- Settlement as a crucial variable – matching vehicles and their underlying assets
- A post-mortem on the ‘Volmageddon’ episode in February 2018
- Volatility strategies – wide variety of flavors for investors of all stripes and sizes
- ‘Picking up pennies in front of a steamroller’ and other vol strategies to avoid
- Asymmetric risks and rewards
- Term-structures, curves, expirations and roll-yields
- The ‘boring’ 3-month VIX futures contracts
- Multiple sources of signal in the VIX curve, including its shape and how it moves vs the S&P 500 (aka skew delta)
- The relationship between spot and future volatility at different points along the curve
- The various ‘800-pound gorillas in the room’ and their techniques for minimizing market impact
- Why attempts at front-running these larger players sometimes go awry
- The reflexive and ever-evolving race towards alpha
- And much more
This is “ReSolve’s Riffs” – live on YouTube every Friday afternoon to debate the most relevant investment topics of the day, hosted by Adam Butler, Mike Philbrick and Rodrigo Gordillo of ReSolve Global* and Richard Laterman of ReSolve Asset Management.
*ReSolve Global refers to ReSolve Asset Management SEZC (Cayman) which is registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as a commodity trading advisor and commodity pool operator. This registration is administered through the National Futures Association (“NFA”). Further, ReSolve Global is a registered person with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority.