Other People's Money with Max Wiethe Beating Bitcoin at Scale with Directional Crypto Strategies | Sam Gaer of Monarq Asset Management
Dec 9, 2025
Sam Gaer, CIO of Directional Strategies at Monarq Asset Management and a pioneer in electronic trading systems, shares his insights on outperforming Bitcoin using quantitative strategies. He discusses the implications of recent market volatility and institutional demand for crypto hedge funds. Sam recounts his transition from traditional finance to crypto, emphasizing the importance of relationships in the evolving landscape. He highlights crypto's potential for scalability and offers a comparative analysis of investment strategies between traditional finance and crypto.
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Volatility Is The Main Institutional Barrier
- Institutions dislike volatile, uncorrelated return streams even if they like the asset beta.
- That volatility has scared large pools of capital away from sizable directional crypto allocations.
October 10th Exposed Liquidity Fragility
- 1010 triggered record liquidations and exposed severe liquidity gaps across venues.
- Post-1010 order books became abysmal, creating air gaps and hard-to-trade price moves.
Use Triple-Barrier Risk Management
- Use a triple-barrier risk fence: take-profit, stop-loss, and time horizon for every position.
- Let quantitative signals set those three numbers and stick to them to manage risk systematically.
