SI367: Portfolio Design in a Distorted World ft. Andrew Beer

Top Traders Unplugged

Niels Kaastrup-Larsen

Investing, Business, News, Business News

4.8 • 712 Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Equities are up more than 50% since the April lows, yet the world feels anything but stable. In this episode, Niels Kaastrup-Larsen and Andrew Beer examine the widening disconnect between market behavior and the backdrop it’s unfolding against. From drone incursions over Denmark to political fragmentation and a rising tolerance for systemic risk, they explore why nothing seems to break - and what that complacency might be masking. Along the way, they unpack Bouchard’s inelastic market hypothesis, CalPERS’ pivot toward Total Portfolio thinking, and the structural trade-offs inside multi-strat hedge funds. It's a conversation about signals in the noise - and the quiet shifts that could reshape the landscape.

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Episode TimeStamps:

01:04 - What has caught our attention recently?

05:38 - The tension between talents

11:08 - Is the popularity of certain alternative strategies just a sign of the times?

22:07 - Industry performance update

27:46 - Q1, Michael: Why shouldn't I sell Andrew's product when it's outperforming single managers and vise versa?

30:15 - The evolution of replication strategy performance

37:44 - The storytelling behind hedge fund losses

41:04 - Do all markets have the ability to trend?

48:57 - The rise of multi strategy hedge funds

57:47 - It shouldn't work but it does, so why?

01:04:27 - A reminder for Andrew's generous book offer

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2. Daily Trend Barometer and Market Score

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Disclaimer

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You're about to join Neil's Kostrup Larson on a raw and honest journey into the world of systematic investing and learn about the most dependable and consistent yet often overlooked investment strategy.
0:13.2	Welcome to the Systematic Investor Series.
0:35.6	Welcome to Welcome to the Systematic Investor Series. Welcome and welcome back to this week's edition of the systematic investor series with Andrew Beer and I, Niels Castro Larson, where each week we take the pulse of the global market through the lens of a rules-based investor.
0:39.6	Andrew, it is wonderful to be back with you this week. How are you doing? I'm great. Look, I'm all dressed up. You're all dressed up today,
0:44.1	actually, you are. Exactly. For those who will catch some of the short clips we're going to do,
0:49.7	you're all dressed up. Last time I saw you, you were in a warm hotel in Greece,
0:58.7	and this time you're looking very, yeah, very polished, I have to say.
0:59.7	Thank you.
1:01.9	Not a funeral, I'm glad to say that.
1:03.2	True.
1:08.3	Before we get into all the topics that we're going to be speaking about,
1:10.9	which are, of course, great, as I always say.
1:16.3	Just wondering, it's kind of late, late summer, early autumn now.
1:24.0	August passed without too many disasters. We're into September. What's been on your radar lately?
2:01.2	I think, and I actually think this is like we're going to talk about a bit more today, but I think, you know, the astonishing thing to me is if you just take a step back and where we are today, and it's something we've talked about on, you know, in the CTA space. If you've gone back a year or two ago and said, this is what's going to happen, these are the ten big things that are going to happen. We're going to have this, you know, political upheaval. We're going to have assassination attempts of presidential candidates. We're going to have, you know, like radical changes and policies and threats to withdraw from NATO and wars flaring up and, and, you know, a terror for the first time in 100 years. Like, you've got to listen to all this stuff. You'd say, like, oh, my God, you know, a tariff war was the first time in a hundred years. Like,
2:04.6	you kind of list all this stuff. You'd say, like, oh, my God, you know, what would the world look like? And I just looked in, and the equities are up 55 percent over that period of time.
2:11.0	And, and, and nothing's broken. And so I think there is this, there's been this, uh, now, it may break.
2:19.9	I mean, I'm personally of the view that, that you can't keep lighting matches, dropping them
2:24.2	on a carpet and hoping that nothing, the drapes don't catch fire at some point. But it is pretty
2:29.5	astonishing, um, just the resilience of, of, of this, you know, global system that we have.
2:36.5	And of course, usually when I say something like this publicly,
2:39.8	it means it's about to cause some massive market calamity.
	...

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