Despite the backdrop of low visibility in the markets ahead of the quarterly reports, private banks have been reaching out to their clients, releasing various investment themes they foresee would generate outsized returns in the near future.

A disclaimer that Quantflix does not endorse any of these investment themes nor their analysis. We just wanted to share some of these “high conviction” investment ideas (note that the estim...

Introduction

Due to the Covid-19 situation, we have gotten many requests to examine and outline our thoughts on the effects of the corona-virus on Life Settlements as an asset class. Of course, while we will not be able to give a definitive answer on the magnitude and scale of damage Covid-19 will deal to the world, it is nevertheless certain that the life settlement population will be affected severely.

We are not experts on th...

Funds that have relative value fixed-income strategies suffered losses mid-March that investors are not used to seeing. Capula, for example, has had no down months since February 2018, and January 2018 was down a mere 0.04%. WSJ reported that “Capula… lost 5.2% for the month through Friday (March 20) in its $11bn relative value fund”.

However, Capula announced to investors yesterday that its USD share class was up 1.32% in Marc...

The speed and magnitude of the market correction, especially in credit, suggest that it’s not just regular Joes reacting to the oil price plunge or even the virus ...

Overview

It is estimated that about half of the air cargo carried worldwide is transported in the bellies of passenger jets rather than in dedicated freighters. As COVID-19 shuts down travel in regions outside of China, commercial airlines have had to ground their planes, shifting market dependence towards freight haulers. China alone has seen its air cargo capacity decrease by 39% in February 2020 relative to last year because...

Equity markets have been at the mercy of investor sentiment in the recent months, with the Covid-19 outbreak driving volatility to new highs. While many investors believe that markets are merely facing a near-term sell off across asset classes and are likely to rebound in the near future, others aren’t as optimistic, fearing that the massive sell-off is indicative of greater structural issues in the market.

Historically, we hav...

Overview

The market maintained its pessimistic outlook in February as Covid-19 became the central focus amongst global investors. This month, global equities have tumbled over growing fears of the Covid-19 spreading outside of China. These fears have been validated by the confirmation of over 89000 cases and 3000 deaths, 4 times as many as the SARS outbreak in 2003. Recent developments have shown that the Covid-19 is no longer...

Death tolls from the ongoing 2019 Novel Corona-virus surpassed 1000 this morning, with over 42,638 reported cases at the time of writing. The equities market has not been spared either, with most stocks in Greater China plummeting as a result of investor fears and extended closure of businesses.

Quantflix presents to you a few selected stocks and their recent performances in the midst of the epidemic.

Related News:

Hot Pot S...

Overview

2020 started off on a ghastly note in stark contrast to the records-breaking year of 2019 for the markets – the killing of Iran’s Soleimani which sent oil prices close to $70 a barrel, continued bush fires in Australia, the impeachment inquiry of Trump, Saudi Arabia’s alleged hacking of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ phone. Yet, these shocks paled in comparison to the wide-reaching impacts of the recent 2019-nCoV outbreak.

Deat...

Actually this is only breaking news in the English media. There has been a buzz of activity over the weekend about the poor performance of the Greenwoods funds, and the background of founder George Jiang. It got so bad that the firm had to issue an official statement saying the rumors (eg. Jiang has disappeared, had connections with government officials) were false and legal actions will be taken against those who spread fake...

Usually funds try to raise money more aggressively after they have had a good streak. So I’m intrigued when our system detects this:

Maybe Quantflix has become so famous that I’m being offered early access! Just 3 months of results was a little strange but perhaps the fund has only been around for a quarter.

I did some googling to see how this fund started. This fund was launched during Hedgeweek in June 2018, with the co-CEOs “...

The Wealthfront Risk Parity Fund, launched in early 2018, has come under fire from numerous critics, with some citing it as a “volatile product that has underperformed benchmarks and contains difficult-to-understand costs, and a launch that automatically opted users into the fund, rather than allowing them to join of their own volition.”

Having built its reputation investing their client’s money in mutual funds and ETFs, The We...

Disastrous bets on Valeant Pharmaceuticals and Herbalife crippled Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management (“Pershing”). However, 2019 has seen Ackman’s hedge fund roaring back – it is up 37.7% in 2019.

Pershing’s recent rise has been fuelled by its current holdings, in which all but The Howard Hughes Corp (up 9.24%) are up by at least double digits. Meanwhile, Ackman stresses that his investments in Chipotle and Starbu...

Looks like the Captain Magic saga is not over yet. Bloomberg tells us that it "all started over lunch at a Dubai restaurant" so the moral of the story is not to talk about high tech stuff in a restaurant. First of all it's hard to demonstrate your computing prowess in a food establishment. More importantly, aren't such things supposed to be super secretive? My quant managers wouldn't even let me keep that piece of paper/napkin...

And not anyone can tell who's a quant.

A rich Hong Kong guy Li opened a $5 billion account with Raffaele Costa's Tyndaris Investments, and Li is now suing Costa because Costa "exaggerated his supercomputer's trading abilities" and the algorithm-driven trades lost money, supposedly some $23 million within three months.

Losing $23 million when $2.5 billion was committed means a loss of less than 1%. What seems to be the problem?

1....