Blog Posts

What are Platinum Group Metals (PGMs)? How do you get ahold of them? Can you trade them? We cover all of this in this article.   Key Takeaways – Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) PGMs are six ultra-rare, chemically related metals, which are primarily used as industrial catalysts, not monetary metals or stores of value. Demand […]

Below we have a list of “contra-currencies.” We pay a lot of attention to looking at whether our assets went up and down but much less attention to our currency risks.  Contra-currencies are assets or currencies that historically benefit relative to debasing fiat regimes. They’re fundamentally contra-currencies because they’re scarce, externally anchored, or institutionally constrained. […]

Currency debasement is an increasingly popular concern in markets and many traders are curious about the best ways to trade it. Is it gold? Other currencies? Commodities? Simply hanging out in equities? More complex rates trades? We’ll take a look at the various options.   Key Takeaways – Debasement Trade  Gold The classic hedge against […]

What should portfolios look like today from a more macro-oriented perspective? Not based on what’s worked in the past, but what’s most likely to work going forward. Here we’ll first look at what’s happened to this point and what that means going forward. (Note that this is my own personal perspective and is not financial […]

The neutral rate is the level of interest rates – often referring to a short-term overnight rate – that neither stimulates nor restrains economic activity.  When policy rates are considered near neutral, the economy is expected to grow close to its long run potential with inflation remaining stable.  The neutral rate is fundamentally a reference […]

The concept of a risk premium is one of the basic foundations of finance and applies to nearly all market participants and private business owners in some form. A risk premium is the minimum return that a riskier asset must exceed a safer asset in order to incentivize investment into it. For example, a 10-year […]

Commodities are often overlooked in portfolios and tend to get more attention when other asset classes perform less well. But commodities have value in a portfolio as alternative returns streams, a source of hedging (e.g., some price pressures in an economy are due to commodity inputs), currency alternatives, and entities that are subject to their […]

In a previous article, we covered how a US dollar devaluation would impact various asset classes. Here, we’re going to discuss how a devaluation in the yuan (also known as the renminbi, CNY, or RMB) would influence asset prices. Since currency movements are always in relation to each other, we’ll discuss a yuan devaluation as […]

Where is each index starting the year? We’ll take a look below across stocks, bond yields, currencies, commodities, and crypto.   US Equity Indexes S&P 500 – 6,850NASDAQ Composite – 23,235Dow Jones Industrial Average – 48,382Russell 2000 – 2,208 International Equity Indexes FTSE 100 – 9,923DAX – 24,527CAC 40 – 8,145Euro Stoxx 50 – 5,850Nikkei […]

Correlation measures how two assets move in relation to each other. A negative correlation means that as one asset’s value increases, the other tends to decrease. This relationship is key for portfolio diversification. Investors seek negatively correlated assets or returns stream to balance their portfolios and manage risk. Not all negative correlations are equal; the […]