Blog Posts

Miami, Florida is the first US city to earn revenue from a city-branded cryptocurrency project. It obtained about $5.25 million from the launch of “MiamiCoin”. Miami plans to use MiamiCoin to fund city projects and give residents a way to engage with their government. However, buyers of the MiamiCoin haven’t had the best experience owning […]

Credit derivatives are a type of financial contract that allow investors to hedge or speculate on credit risks. They came into popularity in the early 1990s in the aftermath of a slow-moving global credit crisis that heavily hit commercial real estate (and especially Japan’s economy) and the savings and loan (S&L) industry. Credit derivatives can […]

Hedge fund strategies are generally placed into a few different buckets. The main overaching categories of hedge fund strategies include: global macro statistical arbitrage event-driven directional relative value distressed investing Each of these strategies employs a different approach to investing and comes with its own unique risks and reward profile. There are also numerous sub-strategies […]

When you buy an asset such as a stock, you’re putting up a lump sum payment in exchange for an expected income stream over time. These future payments you’ll receive are determined by four main things. The Big Four inflation growth (the sum of the growth in productivity plus the labor force) risk premiums, and […]

The popularity of cryptocurrency has created a balancing act that traders and investors may have to consider – how to balance the upside of bitcoin and cryptocurrency against its inherent environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts. Even for market participants that aren’t particularly concerned about these environmental, social, and governance matters, other players in the […]

Cloud computing became a hot new industry in the 2010s, and its growth is continuing today as companies around the world shift their digital data and services to the cloud. Namely, these data, files, and services are being shifted to remote data centers and accessed via the internet. The move to remote work only accelerated […]

Short selling is not a widely understood phenomenon in markets. Some even attach moral or ethical implications to it. Various executives have come publicly complained about short selling, from Tesla’s Elon Musk to several high-profile frauds and business failures blaming their downfall on short selling, such as Enron, Worldcom, and Wirecard. We’ve covered short selling […]

The Jade Lizard is a mildly bullish options strategy that involves the following: Buying a Call (typically ITM or around ATM) Selling a Call (ITM) Selling a Put (OTM) The resulting payoff diagram is as follows:     (This example involves a current price of $100 for the underlying, buying a 95 call, selling a […]

Taxes are an important part of the conversation for risk asset markets, as they impact their valuations. They influence capital flows between countries, as lower forward returns in one country via tax changes impacts investment decisions. It’s an important consideration today, as countries and local governments face large revenue shortfalls. Policymakers will be forced to […]

‘FREE COMMISSION’ the banner declares in big letters across the homepage. ‘OUR BIGGEST SIGN UP BONUS EVER’ another reads. Brokers definitely know how to grab our attention. But, are these deals as good as they seem? Should we be delving a little deeper? The answer is undoubtedly, yes. When it comes to trading brokers, generally, you […]