Superinvestors and the Art of Worldly Wisdom

Christopher Cole is one of the foremost thinkers and practitioners in the world of volatility trading. After beginning his career in Hollywood as a cinematographer, Chris took an interest in options trading. Eventually, this led to a job at Merrill Lynch where he was able to explore the subject of risk further and in a professional capacity. After personally profiting through employing his volatility strategies during the Great Financial Crisis, Chris founded Artemis Capital Management in order to offer his services to institutional and hedge fund investors. In this episode, Chris discusses his personal evolution as a trader and hedge fund manager and also shares his unique insights into portfolio construction gleaned from an extensive study of market history his firm recently conducted. For notes and links related to this episode visit TheFelderReport.com.

Rob Arnott is one of the most accomplished and respected quantitative analysts in the world. He has written over 100 academic papers on everything from tactical asset allocation to value investing. In this episode, Rob discusses his evolution as an investor, from tailoring his college major in the late-1970's to best position him for a career in quantitative investing to the founding of his firm, Research Affiliates, in 2002. He also shares the details of the uniquely successful indexing strategy he developed over a decade ago to fix the major problems with the most popular form of passive investing and to improve on its long run performance. For notes and links related to this episode visit TheFelderReport.com.

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who has done more to educate and inform individual investors about the fundamentals of effective investing than Meb Faber. Over the past decade and longer, through books like Global Asset Allocation, Meb has taken key concepts, which Wall Street has suggested for years are too complex for individuals to understand let alone implement, and made them easily accessible for almost anyone to quickly absorb. In this conversation, Meb discusses why passive investing as we know it today is not nearly as efficient as most believe, how owning just one fund allows him to be far more effectively diversified than investors who own dozens, why the investment industry as we know it today is in terminal decline and how investors and finance professionals alike should position themselves to take advantage of its evolution in coming years. For notes and links related to this episode visit TheFelderReport.com.

When it comes to global macro investing, Louis-Vincent Gave is one of the most interesting thinkers in the world. His firm, GaveKal, puts out some of the most compelling research on Wall Street and beyond and, as CEO, Louis' unique investment process is at the heart of it. In this episode, he discusses his family tradition in both the French military and in the capital markets, how he developed his own signature investment framework and some of the key themes driving his current views on markets around the globe. For notes and links related to this episode visit TheFelderReport.com.

Michael Oliver has been studying markets for over four decades but it was the 1987 stock market crash that became his "aha!" moment and converted him to what he calls "momentum structural analysis." It was his early work in the area that prepared him for that massive decline in stock prices and the success of its forecasting ability that gave him the confidence to pursue it full time. Many technical analysts like to say, "price is truth," but to Michael price can be deceiving and it's only by isolating the momentum in the market that reveals the truth about the underlying trend. In this episode, Michael shares the details of his unique research and analysis process and discusses how his foundation in political philosophy ended up leading him to it. He also reveals what it says about the current market and economic environment and how it eerily rhymes with some earlier times in his career. For links and notes related to this episode visit TheFelderReport.com.

Diego Parrilla has been eerily prescient in calling major turning points in a variety of markets over the past several years. Back in 2014, he published The Energy World Is Flat in which he detailed the coming crash in the price of crude oil and the various dynamics that would ensure such an outcome. Oil prices subsequently fell more than 70% over the next couple of years. In August of 2017, he published a new book titled, The Anti-Bubbles, in which he laid out the case for a rise in volatility across a number of markets. Just a few months later, the short volatility ETF complex blew up and in spectacular fashion amidst a record run higher in the VIX Index. In this interview, we delve into Diego's unique background and how it helps him to see things differently than most on Wall Street. Diego also shares the details of his research process and the original inspiration behind these investment theses. Finally, we discuss the current state of the global markets and why he believes gold is set to shine in the near future. For notes and links related to this episode visit TheFelderReport.com.

Erik Townsend is unique in the investing world for his deep expertise in two seemingly disparate fields: security technology and macro investing. This rare perspective gives him extraordinary insight into the intersection of the two and how they are likely to affect global markets in the future. In his new book, Beyond Blockchain, Erik discusses these trends in great detail, covering the history of money, the rise of the dollar as the world's reserve currency and the origin and evolution of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Moreover, he imagines a future world order, not dominated by cryptocurrency, but enabled by the technology underpinning it and advanced by powerful macro trends already at work in the markets and global politics today. In this episode, Erik discusses why cryptocurrency, backed by cypherpunks and their acolytes, is doomed to fail at its primary purpose yet digital currency, backed by sovereign nations and inspired by the innovations developed by the crypto community, is destined to succeed in its place while displacing the dollar's global hegemony along with the massive implications of these developments for investors around the world. For notes and links related to this episode visit TheFelderReport.com.

Have we entered a new era of sustainably high corporate profit margins or will they revert over time to more normal historical levels? This is the single most important question equity investors should be asking today and nobody has done more work on this topic than Jonathan Tepper. Formerly, an equity analyst at one of the most successful hedge funds on the planet, then a prop trader at one of the largest firms on Wall Street, Jonathan today runs Variant Perception, an institutional research service. He also recently published a new book, The Myth of Capitalism, his survey of the profit margin phenomenon and its consequences for investors and citizens alike. In this episode, we discuss the social and economic consequences of increased consolidation and regulatory capture in corporate America and what it means for markets going forward. Jonathan also shares the unique and tragic experiences of his formative years and how they inspired both a strong work ethic and a deep desire to make a difference. For links and notes related to this episode visit TheFelderReport.com.

Fred Hickey has been writing The High Tech Strategist, a monthly investment newsletter, for over 30 years. Over that time, he has developed an intensive research process focused on the tech sector that gives him extensive familiarity with dozens of individual companies within it along with unique insight into the broader economy. In this episode, Fred discusses what his research routines look like on daily and monthly basis and how his writing discipline has helped him become a better investor. He also tells the story meeting legendary investor Sir John Templeton near the peak of the dotcom mania and what he learned from that poignant experience. In addition, we discuss how he has incorporated a macro approach into his micro-focused investment discipline and why he chooses to spend so much time in Costa Rica these days. For notes and links related to this episode visit TheFelderReport.com.

Jerry Parker began his career as an unfulfilled accountant looking for something more inspiring to do with his life. After getting rejected for several traditional jobs on Wall Street he responded to an ad looking for a handful of people eager to learn how to trade. It would soon turn out those early rejections were an incredible blessing in disguise because if he had been accepted to any one of them he would have likely missed out on the opportunity to learn from one of the true legends of finance. In the early 1980's, Richard Dennis hired Jerry and a handful of other prospective "turtle" traders and taught them the strategies that made him one of the most successful traders in the history of the Chicago markets. After managing money with Dennis for several years, Jerry went on to start his own firm and has been trend-following professionally for over 30 years now. In this conversation, he reveals what he believes helped him stand out among more than 1,000 candidates in the turtle program, what it was about trend-following that spoke to him and what about it should appeal to the average investor. He also explains how the average investor should go about implementing trend-following in her own portfolio. For links and notes related to this episode visit TheFelderReport.com.