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Riskpuppy's avatar

Back in my dim and distant past I worked at a bank where the equity strategist collaborated with a professor to write a long paper showing comprehensively that systematic hedging with put spreads doesn’t work. Much like the paper you quote here. My boss (head of derivatives sales) was furious. I was tasked to write a rebuttal, which I did. Almost 20 years later I still stand by my conclusion: systematic hedging strategies don’t lose money because they are wrong, but because they are lazy. It boggles my mind that people who think deeply before they choose to invest then abdicate all thought before hedging. The Price — and hence the Value — of hedges change all the time. If you don’t heed this simple rule of markets you’ll lose money. Whether you “invest” or “hedge”.

I’m also amazed analysis of systemic strategies in academia is still a thing. Shame on professors.

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Joshua Myers, CFA's avatar

I have really enjoyed your “Against Cassandras” series and have taken it as motivation to go after the commercial real estate Cassandras that are prevalent today. It seems only fitting since I spent over ten years trading distressed CMBS through the aftermath of the GFC and have become somewhat knowledgeable of the broader CRE industry. In general Cassandras are linear thinkers, whereas most problems are non-linear by nature.

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