Niels Kaastrup-Larsen and Rob Carver discuss a market that feels unusually calm despite growing pressure beneath the surface. They look at rising concerns around government debt and bond yields, recent changes to a major managed futures ETF, and why style drift matters for systematic investors. Rob explains why simplicity and robustness remain essential when building trading systems, and where discretion can and cannot fit into a systematic process. They also explore the risks of using AI in quantitative investing, whether AI-driven traders could change market behavior, and why adapting trend speed to volatility may be more complicated than it first appears.
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Episode TimeStamps:
00:00 - Introduction and Rob’s return from the summer break
02:03 - Why everyone is suddenly talking about bonds
05:07 - Treasury buybacks and the potential for new bond trends
07:40 - What happened to the Simplify managed futures ETF?
14:34 - Style drift, investor expectations and changing strategies
17:15 - Why it feels like something is about to happen in markets
20:23 - Trend following performance and the year so far
23:32 - How much should systematic investors actually optimize?
31:38 - Can discretion and systematic trading really work together?
36:37 - Where human judgment belongs in a trading strategy
40:55 - Why traders may be better at buying than selling
44:21 - AI, quant research and the risks of automated trading
52:42 - Revisiting volatility and trend following
55:47 - Why not all high-volatility markets are the same
01:00:23 - The quant winter and why manager diversification matters
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