SI396: Markets Look Calm… But Are They? ft. Rob Carver
Top Traders Unplugged
Niels Kaastrup-Larsen
4.8 • 712 Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2026
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, Rob Carver joins us to reflect on a market environment that appears calm on the surface but feels increasingly fragile underneath. From oil market distortions and muted reactions to geopolitical risk to the steady resilience of equities, the conversation questions whether price action is telling the full story. Rob shares insights from his own performance, including why slower trend signals have recently dominated and why he is running lower risk despite positive returns. The discussion moves into portfolio construction, return stacking, and the growing role of ETFs, alongside a candid look at where complexity adds value in systematic investing and where it does not.
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Episode TimeStamps:
00:00 - Intro & current market backdrop
04:30 - Oil market dislocations and futures vs physical pricing
10:00 - Equities hitting highs despite geopolitical tension
13:30 - ETFs, fees, and structural shifts in investment vehicles
17:00 - Trend following performance update and April results
20:30 - Rob’s year-to-date and 12-month performance breakdown
25:00 - Why slow trend signals outperformed
27:30 - How to evaluate large CTA managers
31:00 - Where PhDs add value in systematic investing
43:00 - Signal weighting, crisis alpha, and portfolio construction
52:00 - Return stacking and diversifying equities
01:06:30 - Managed futures ETFs vs replication strategies
01:18:00 - Final thoughts and wrap-up
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged. |
| 0:03.0 | In markets, success doesn't come from predicting what happens next. |
| 0:08.0 | It comes from being prepared for what you can't predict. |
| 0:11.0 | In each episode, we go deep with some of the world's most thoughtful minds in investing, economics, and beyond |
| 0:18.0 | to understand how they think, how they prepare, and how they decide, and the |
| 0:22.3 | experiences that shaped how they see the world. No noise, no shortcuts, just real conversations |
| 0:28.5 | to help you think better and invest with confidence. Welcome, well, welcome back to this |
| 0:36.8 | week's edition of the Systematic Investor Series with Rob Carver and I, Neil's Castblaston, where each week we take the pulse of the global market through the lens of a rules-based investor. |
| 0:46.0 | Rob, it is great to be back with you today. I hope you're doing well. How things in the UK? Is it summer yet where you are? |
| 0:53.0 | I mean, summer in the UK is a sort of a moving target, |
| 0:56.5 | so we've had like a number of potential summers appear and then disappear. So last week, |
| 1:02.9 | I think the weather was very good. I was actually in France, but I think the weather was good here as well. |
| 1:07.5 | So yeah, it's, it's pretty nice outside at the moment, I have to say. |
| 1:11.6 | And I think the last time we chatted was early February. |
| 1:15.6 | And of course nothing's actually happened in the world since then. |
| 1:17.6 | It's been pretty boring, to be honest, in markets and with geopolitics. |
| 1:22.6 | So yeah, quite chilled out and relaxed, to be honest. |
| 1:25.6 | Yes, sounds like it. |
| 1:26.6 | But let me start on a slightly different note today |
| 1:29.3 | because I have a little bit of a service announcement |
| 1:31.9 | to all the people listening. |
| 1:34.7 | And that is because we had done, |
... |
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