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We are launching Friday Only Club!

Oscar de la Renta chose not to show at New York Fashion Week and instead streamed on Amazon. Is Amazon a suitable forum for a luxury brand? CEO Alex Bolen said, "I'm not sure. But we have to experiment with new ways to get our story out." https://lnkd.in/g4rZMxyb We launched our funds when Covid started and with the halt in travel and tough fund raising environment for emerging managers, we focused on performance and experimented with new ways to reach out to allocators, namely Linkedin posts and YouTube videos which can now be binge-watched on  www.quantflix.com . True, some people say that with the positive fund returns last year for both our long-only equity and multi-strategy funds, and the China fund outperforming its benchmark by its annualized double-digit aim, it was expected that we would pass the $100m mark. But when times are bad, most new investment monies went to well-known funds that are much bigger with a marketing budget that we cannot afford. So every lit...

Grave of the (dragon)flies.

[Potentially distressing images have been blurred out]

More recently-built apartments have some windows that cannot be opened. Even the ones that can be opened can't be fully opened, which I guess fulfills the safety feature aspect while allowing for ventilation.

But insects didn't receive the memo and continue to die by the windows that cannot be opened, and this week I even got a dragonfly. It's bad enough that the little bugs cannot figure their way out, but surely the dragonfly has a bigger brain to find the way it came in from?

Turns out this has nothing to do with intelligence. Insects literally beating themselves to death by the window (and they can do this repeatedly) is caused by Phototaxis - where insects move towards light. So why can't insects just 'figure out' this physical barrier called glass once they hit it? The clear glass window was only invented a few hundred years ago, which is a short blip in the millions of years that insects have been around.

Just as insects haven't evolved to understand they will die if they ram into glass windows, some market participants have yet to adapt to the new environment of rising rates and quantitative tightening. There is a whole generation of fund managers who have only experienced almost-free leverage and on-demand anything.

When will China's glass windows of zero covid and common prosperity be lifted? Will the insects, big and small, be able to make it to the other side of sunshine and fresh air? Perhaps looking for other half-open windows, even if they are much smaller, is a higher probability option. Unless you are a bird or a plane, even as a dragonfly you don't need that much space to fly to safety.

In the meantime, I just have to hoover (don't think Dyson has become a verb yet) up every other day the reminders of what happens if one ignores the obstacles in front and doesn't adapt in time.

ESG tip: recycle aluminum can to be a pen holder (for the free pens from in-person conferences)

#marketanalysis #hedgefund #diversification #evolution




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We are launching Friday Only Club!

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