Insight is Capital™ Podcast

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Insight is Capital™ Podcast episodes

May 01 Paisley Nardini Most Investors Have No Idea Their Portfolio is Missing This
Most advisors have zero alternatives in their portfolios — and their clients are already paying the price.
In this episode of Insight Is Capital, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Paisley Nardini, Managing Director and Head of Multi-Asset Solutions at Simplify Asset Management, for a frank and data-driven conversation about why the traditional 60/40 portfolio is showing dangerous cracks — and what advisors can do about it right now.
Paisley brings rare clarity to one of the most misunderstood corners of modern portfolio construction: liquid alternatives. Drawing on her career spanning PIMCO, Invesco, and Simplify, she walks through the persistent behavioral and educational barriers keeping advisors away from managed futures, the case for dynamic commodity exposure in an era of geopolitical volatility, and why the stock-bond correlation regime has fundamentally shifted. She shares a stat she rechecked ten times — managed futures at the benchmark index level has outperformed bonds across every trailing period from 5 to 25 years — and makes the case that this isn't a niche strategy for institutions anymore. It's a daily-liquid, low-fee, Morningstar five-star tool sitting right on the advisor's shelf. If your portfolio isn't built for this environment, Paisley has a pointed question: what is it actually built for?
Chapters
00:00 — The stat Paisley rechecked 10 times: managed futures vs. bonds across every trailing period
02:11 — Major asset managers launching managed futures ETFs and adding them to model portfolios
02:51 — Introduction: Pierre Daillie welcomes Paisley Nardini, Simplify Asset Management
04:23 — Why diversification is more urgent now than it was a year ago
05:01 — Deja vu: the eerie parallels between early 2025 and early 2026
06:39 — Markets are spring-loaded: the bull case for staying invested through volatility
09:00 — Why you can't build portfolios around week-to-week geopolitical headlines
10:31 — The range-bound 10-year yield and what could finally break it
13:56 — The inflation threshold that breaks stock-bond correlation
17:38 — The biggest risk advisors are still ignoring: under-allocation to diversifiers
19:32 — Why commodity allocations have underdelivered — and how to fix that
20:28 — Gold's strange behavior in 2025: momentum trade, not safe haven
22:33 — The cocoa example: truly uncorrelated risk and return
25:08 — Why managed futures adoption is a behavioral problem, not an investment problem
37:48 — The illusion of diversification: how a basic 60/40 leaves investors exposed
38:29 — Liquid alts demystified: daily liquidity, no K-1s, fees as low as 30 basis points
41:06 — Five years ago this wasn't possible: the democratization of institutional strategies
42:18 — The two-legged stool: why portfolios need a third leg
43:25 — How much to allocate: why less than 10% probably won't move the needle
44:27 — Why Simplify's CTA ETF deliberately excludes equities and FX
47:55 — The mirror-image chart: CTA's zig-zag pattern against the 60/40
49:13 — The hedge that pays you: outperforming 60/40 while providing ballast
49:39 — Positioning multi-asset portfolios for the commodity super cycle
51:57 — How advisors can explore Simplify's model portfolios as a starting point
55:57 — Paisley's 12-month prediction: rates will surprise everyone
#ManagedFutures #LiquidAlternatives #PortfolioDiversification #CTAStrategy #SimplifyAssetManagement #TrendFollowing #CrisisAlpha #6040Portfolio #AlternativeInvestments #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisor #ETFinvesting #CommoditySuperCycle #InsightIsCapital #AdvisorAnalyst #PortfolioConstruction #BondReplacement #MacroInvesting #RiskManagement #InvestmentStrategy
57 min
April 30 Due Diligence Isn't Optional in Alternatives Investing—The Performance Gap Makes That Clear
Sponsored by BMO Global Asset Management
Half of Canadian financial advisors now offer alternative investments to clients. But access and genuine diversification are not the same thing — and that distinction is the heart of this conversation.
We sit down with Alexander Singh, Managing Director and Head of Alternatives Partnerships at BMO Global Asset Management, to unpack what it actually takes to build an institutional-quality alternatives platform for private wealth investors. Singh brings a rare vantage point: former lawyer, hedge fund general counsel, merchant banker, and now the architect of one of Canada's most deliberately designed alternatives platforms in wealth management.
Our conversation covers the three defining risks in private markets — manager dispersion, vintage concentration, and illiquidity — and why the performance gap between top and bottom quartile managers can exceed 30 percentage points. Singh explains how BMO GAM's platform was built around four non-negotiables: scalability, fair fees, diversification, and reduced risk — and why perpetual, evergreen structures change the calculus for private wealth investors entirely.
From the case for modern infrastructure (data centers, logistics, renewables) as the new portfolio ballast, to why multi-strategy funds are the most in-demand institutional asset class today—this episode is a masterclass in how to think about alternatives investing.
CHAPTERS
00:00 — The uncomfortable question behind the alternatives boom
01:48 — Alex Singh: from lawyer to hedge fund to BMO GAM
03:46 — How the BMO alternatives platform is structured
09:39 — Why advisor education in alternatives is far from over
12:31 — The 80% of the investable economy that lives in private markets
15:23 — Why the IPO market is no longer the opportunity it once was
18:20 — Manager dispersion: the defining risk of private equity
21:14 — Diversification across managers, sectors, geographies, and vintages
23:40 — The three big risks in private markets and how BMO mitigates them
26:40 — Vintage risk explained: why timing your entry matters more than you think
29:44 — Evergreen structures: investing from $25,000 to $25 million
32:43 — The simplest "why alternatives, why now" message for advisors
35:09 — What replaces bonds in a modern alternatives-inclusive portfolio
37:05 — The smooth ride strategy: absolute return multi-strat hedge funds
42:06 — The origin story and non-negotiables behind the platform design
46:21 — Each fund's job: return enhancement, income, ballast, smooth ride
49:57 — Myth busting: illiquidity, opacity, and the private markets misconceptions
54:39 — Grandparents' infrastructure vs. grandchildren's infrastructure
Key Takeaways
1. Access is not diversification. Adding alternatives to a portfolio doesn't automatically reduce risk — manager selection, vintage diversification, and structural design determine whether alternatives actually do the job they're supposed to do.
2. The performance gap is not a footnote. The spread between top and bottom quartile private markets managers can exceed 30 percentage points — making manager selection the single greatest risk in any alternatives allocation.
3. 80% of the investable economy is private. Advisors and clients who limit themselves to public markets are working with a fraction of the available opportunity set — and missing the fastest-growing parts of the economy entirely.
4. Evergreen structures change the calculus. Perpetual, open-ended alternatives vehicles allow private wealth investors to scale in regularly, rebalance, and maintain liquidity management — removing the all-or-nothing vintage timing problem that has historically kept private markets out of reach.
5. Every fund has a job. The most effective alternatives allocations are built with purpose — return enhancement, income generation, inflation protection, or volatility reduction — and confusing those roles is how portfolios end up with alternatives exposure that doesn't perform the function it was added to serve.
#Sponsored #AlternativeInvestments #PrivateMarkets #PrivateEquity #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisors #PortfolioConstruction #HedgeFunds #PrivateCredit #Infrastructure #InvestmentStrategy #BMOGlobalAssetManagement #InsightIsCapital #ManagerSelection #AlternativesEducation #6040Portfolio #EverythingAlts #PrivateWealth #InvestmentDiversification #CanadianInvestors #AssetManagement
1 hr 1 min
April 28 You can't eat total return—the income investing playbook is being rewritten | Jillian Delsignore
Income investing has never offered more tools — covered call ETFs, buffer strategies, active fixed income, multi-asset funds — and yet most advisors are still building portfolios the way they did five years ago. So what's actually happening on the ground? In this episode of Insight Is Capital, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Jillian DelSignore, VP and Head of Investor Distribution & Insights at Nasdaq Indexes, who brings something rare to the table: real behavioral data.
Her team surveys hundreds of financial advisors every year, runs Nasdaq's global Advisor Council, and sits at the intersection of index innovation, ETF distribution, and the voice of the investor. What the data is showing right now is striking — a fundamental shift from total return thinking toward paycheque replacement investing, accelerating ETF adoption, and a quiet revolution in how options-based income strategies are reshaping portfolio construction. Whether you're an advisor benchmarking your own approach or an investor curious about how your portfolio is being built, this conversation delivers a clear, data-driven picture of where income investing is heading.
Chapters
00:00 — Introduction: Why income investing is being rebuilt from the ground up
02:02 — Jillian's 26-year career arc: Federated, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan ETF, and Nasdaq
03:11 — How Nasdaq's global distribution team works with advisors and ETF issuers
06:44 — Nasdaq Dorsey Wright: Momentum investing, point & figure charting, and the advisor research portal
09:55 — The Advisor Survey: What the data from 2023 to 2025 actually shows
10:49 — The big shift: 60% of advisors now allocating 20–40% of portfolios to income — up 52% since 2023
12:05 — Active and passive fixed income ETF adoption is accelerating — and why active is winning in bonds
13:27 — 600 new derivative ETF launches: Covered calls, buffers, and the rise of auto callables
14:43 — Defined outcome strategies: The tip of the spear in income innovation
15:25 — What drove the shift from total return to paycheck replacement investing
18:39 — "I can't eat total return": The behavioral finance case for monthly income
20:09 — The hidden benefit of paycheck investing: keeping clients invested through volatility
21:59 — Sequence of returns risk and how income strategies reduce the pressure to sell
22:48 — Why advisors still under-use these tools — and the education gap holding them back
25:34 — The hockey stick: How covered call ETFs are finally going mainstream
27:15 — The covered call ETF on-ramp in Canada and the long road to advisor adoption
28:55 — Auto callables: The next frontier and why compliance is the last hurdle
29:41 — From income-only buckets to core portfolio allocations — the model is changing
31:53 — Why compliance departments and advisors both have to get on board — and how it's happening
32:35 — What advisors actually want: fewer products, more partners, and turnkey support
35:05 — The model portfolio revolution: Advisors want to be relationship managers, not portfolio managers
37:50 — How the specialist wholesaling model has fundamentally changed ETF distribution
38:37 — The rise of CFAs and CFPs in the field: Fiduciary support is now table stakes
40:25 — Closing reflections: Why there has never been a better time to be a financial advisor
#IncomeInvesting #CoveredCallETF #BufferETF #ETFInvesting #FinancialAdvisor #PortfolioConstruction #ActiveETF #NasdaqIndex #DefinedOutcome #PaycheckReplacement #RetirementIncome #BehavioralFinance #ETFStrategy #WealthManagement #FixedIncome #DorseyWright #MomentumInvesting #SequenceOfReturns #AdvisorETF #InsightIsCapital #InvestmentPodcast #FinancialPlanning #ETFEducation #RetirementPlanning #IncomePodcast
43 min
April 24 Paul Kornfeld: Don't Fight the Market—Align With It
When cash is outranking U.S. equities and gold sells off when it's supposed to rally, the advisors holding up aren't reacting faster — they're working from a better framework.
In this episode of Raise Your Average, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Paul Kornfeld, Portfolio Manager and Director of Technology Services at SIA Wealth Management, for a wide-ranging conversation on what the firm's rules-based relative strength system is signalling right now — and why those signals have been readable for over a year. Paul walks through SIA's point-and-figure methodology, explaining how millions of pairwise asset comparisons cut through geopolitical noise and behavioural bias to reveal where money is actually flowing.
From the Canada-vs.-U.S. rotation that started in April 2024, to the semiconductor-vs.-software divergence that flagged the SaaS repricing before most advisors saw it coming, to a candid story about a Calgary advisor group with zero energy exposure in an oil boom — this episode is a masterclass in process-driven investing. Paul and Pierre also look ahead to the durable themes likely to define the next 12–18 months: real assets over financial assets, international over U.S. broad indices, AI infrastructure over AI software, and the looming wildcard of North American trade renegotiation in Q3.
⏱ Chapters
00:00 — Introduction: Markets whipsawing, cash beating U.S. equities
01:00 — Welcome Paul Kornfeld: Real rotation or relief rally?
01:40 — What advisors are asking right now
04:36 — SIA's methodology: Relative strength, point-and-figure, opportunity cost
07:12 — The goal is alignment, not prediction
12:32 — Risk management: The equity action call and the traffic-light model
14:01 — Asset class rankings: Cash above U.S. equity, commodities pulling back
15:39 — The rotation that started April 2024: International overtakes U.S.
17:51 — One takeaway: Reevaluate your U.S. equity weight vs. international
21:48 — Gold's anatomy: The longest gold rally Paul has seen
29:14 — Tactical sleeves: How advisors can outsource the hard calls
31:51 — Canada vs. U.S. sector breakdown: Energy, financials, IT divergence
33:44 — Software vs. semiconductors: The SaaS reckoning since ChatGPT
40:02 — Data infrastructure: The durable AI theme the market keeps pricing in
40:38 — Point-and-figure in action: Salesforce sell signal, CSCO buy signal
44:47 — S&P 100 positioning: Semis dominate the top five right now
50:06 — Keep politics out of your investing
50:56 — TSX60: Energy, mining, chemicals — and the Kinross success story
54:13 — The Calgary story: Zero energy exposure in an oil boom
56:57 — Buying insurance vs. making a call: Aligning without predicting
59:49 — U.S. equities at 65% of global market cap: Is the world overweight?
01:03:39 — Durable signals for the next 12–18 months
01:05:59 — Real assets, domestic production, AI infrastructure as core theme
01:07:16 — Q3 trade negotiations: The biggest wildcard for positioning
01:08:47 — Biggest surprise in 12 months: AI disruption, faster than anyone expects
01:14:28 — Where to find SIA Wealth and SICharts
#RelativeStrength #SIAWealth #SectorRotation #PortfolioManagement #InvestingStrategy #CanadianInvesting #WealthManagement #TacticalAllocation #MomentumInvesting #AIInvesting #GoldBullMarket #EnergyStocks #Semiconductors #SaaSStocks #FinancialAdvisor #InvestmentAdvisor #RaiseYourAverage #MarketRotation #PointAndFigure #BehavioralFinance #EtfInvesting #TSX #SP500 #MacroInvesting #ActiveManagement
Find SIA Wealth Management:siawealth.com | siacharts.com
1 hr 17 min
April 17 The Four Piston Portfolio: Why diversification needs an engine, not just a label
What if the reason your portfolio sometimes fails you isn't the assets you picked — but the engine you never built?
In this episode of Insight Is Capital, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Rodrigo Gordillo, President and Portfolio Manager at ReSolve Asset Management, for a masterclass in what truly diversified, all-weather portfolio construction actually looks like — and why it's fundamentally different from anything most advisors and investors have ever been offered.
Rodrigo's story begins in Lima, Peru — where a government printing money into hyperinflation wiped out his family's savings overnight — and runs through the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and the brutal 2022 simultaneous collapse of stocks and bonds. Those lived experiences didn't just shape his worldview; they became the architecture of a completely different way to build portfolios.
What emerges from this conversation is a framework that challenges nearly every assumption embedded in the standard 60/40 model — and explains why most "diversified" portfolios are actually running 85–90% equity risk under the hood. Rodrigo and Pierre explore how thoughtful, purposeful leverage can transform a low-octane diversified portfolio into something that competes with equities — without simply concentrating more risk in equities.
From regime-aware asset allocation across equities, bonds, gold, and systematic macro strategies, to the mechanics of return stacking and portable alpha, to the emerging institutional concept of "total portfolio" risk budgeting — this episode covers the intellectual terrain that separates sophisticated portfolio construction from the conventional wisdom most advisors were trained on.
Whether you're a seasoned allocator or just beginning to question the limits of traditional asset allocation, this is a conversation about what it truly means to prepare for an unknowable future — not predict it.
⏱ CHAPTERS
00:00 — Introduction: All-Terrain Investing & What It Takes to Build for Any Market Weather
01:25 — Rodrigo's Origin Story: Hyperinflation in Peru, Immigration to Canada & Early Financial Scars
05:14 — From Commerce & Statistics to Quant Finance: Why "Don't Lose Money" Became His North Star
07:01 — What Is the All Terrain Fund? The Problem It's Designed to Solve
10:22 — Equity-Like Returns With a Different Risk Profile: The Core Promise
13:04 — Prepare, Don't Predict: The Philosophy Behind Regime-Aware Portfolio Design
17:18 — The Four Pistons: Global Equities, Bonds, Gold & Systematic Macro — and Why Each Matters
20:16 — Inflation Regimes, Growth Regimes, and What Actually Works When
22:17 — The 60/40 Illusion: Why "Balanced" Portfolios Are Actually 85–90% Equity Risk
36:40 — The Nobel Prize–Winning Case for Defensive Leverage: What It Is and Isn't
38:30 — Risk Management Filters: Momentum, Trend, and Knowing When to Step Aside
41:32 — Adding the Fifth Piston: Systematic Macro, Managed Futures & Crisis Alpha
42:55 — Return Stacking & Portable Alpha: How to Add Diversifiers Without Selling Your Core
51:03 — Tail Protection and Long Volatility: The Final Layer of the Framework
01:03:09 — Backtests, Forward Expectations & The Simple Math Behind Stacking Risk Premia
01:08:52 — Rethinking the 100% Portfolio: How Institutions Actually Think About Risk Budgets
01:11:04 — The Total Portfolio Approach: A Brand New Institutional Concept That's 20 Years Old
01:14:02 — Wrap-Up, Where to Learn More & Resources
🔗 RESOURCES & LINKS
ReSolve Asset Management — All Terrain Strategy: investresolve.com/strategies
Return Stacked ETFs & Portfolio Explorer: returnstacked.com
#AllTerrainInvesting #ReturnStacking #RiskParity #PortfolioConstruction #ManagedFutures #SystematicMacro #AdaptiveAssetAllocation #LiquidAlternatives #PortableAlpha #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisors #AdvisorEducation #AllWeatherPortfolio #ReSolveAssetManagement #InsightIsCapital #InvestmentStrategy #CapitalEfficiency #TrendFollowing #CrisisAlpha #MacroInvesting #Diversification #RiskBudgeting #GlobalMacro #ETFInvesting #AlternativeInvestments
1 hr 15 min
April 10 The Party Always Ends: How to Build a Portfolio for the Morning After | Meb Faber
The party always ends — and Meb Faber, one of the most data-driven voices in global investing, says the evidence is now undeniable that the decade-long US equity dominance is giving way to something very different.
SUMMARY
On this episode of Raise Your Average, hosts Pierre Daillie and Mike Philbrick sit down with Meb Faber — co-founder and CIO of Cambria Investment Management, prolific researcher, and host of The Meb Faber Show — for a wide-ranging conversation about what investors and financial advisors must rethink as the rules of the game quietly change beneath their feet.
With US equity concentration at historic extremes, inflation proving stickier than expected, and geopolitical disorder accelerating structural shifts already underway, Meb makes the case that the era of a US-heavy 60/40 portfolio solving everything is in the rearview mirror. He challenges the deeply ingrained recency bias that has left most North American investors dangerously underweight in international equities and real assets — and explains what the data actually says about where opportunity is emerging.
The conversation moves from big-picture regime change into highly practical territory: how to build a portfolio that survives behaviorally, not just mathematically; how to think about concentrated, low-basis positions and the tax traps hiding inside the gains of the last 15 years; and why "tax alpha" may be the most overlooked and underutilized edge in wealth management today. Meb also shares how he's deploying AI in his own practice — including a custom-trained GPT built on his entire body of work — and what advisors should be borrowing from that playbook right now.
⏱️ CHAPTERS
00:00 — Welcome & banter: tacos, spicy food, and market chaos
08:00 — Meb joins; framing the moment: Venezuela to tariffs to Iran
13:00 — A regime change? Dissecting the end of the 40-year bull run
15:00 — The bull market in diversification: foreign markets doing 30%+ while the S&P stalls
17:00 — What advisors are underweight: ex-US equities and real assets
20:00 — How to explain a generational shift to clients without jargon
24:00 — Global diversification: the evidence from 15 famous portfolios
27:00 — The 20% annual spread problem and why tracking error breaks investors
30:00 — Portfolio vulnerabilities in the cap-weighted US-dominant model
31:00 — Opportunities: global value, small cap, fixed income niches, real assets
35:00 — The "fat" portfolio: three ingredients every investor needs
40:00 — Utilities, dividends, and the tortoise-vs-hare reversal
44:00 — Behavioral investing: why systematic strategies exist
48:00 — The concentrated position trap: identity, emotion, and the sell decision
51:00 — Systematic rebalancing: lessons from Cambria's early days
53:00 — "The easy money's been made" — market phrases Meb despises
55:00 — Deep value and what it takes to be a missionary, not a mercenary
58:00 — The best active managers and why they always close the door at the top
1:00:00 — When the penthouse becomes the outhouse
1:04:00 — The Groucho Marx rule: would you buy what you already own?
1:10:00 — Drawdown, pain tolerance, and the real test of a portfolio
1:17:00 — Concentrated low-basis positions: the tax trap hiding in plain sight
1:19:00 — 100 years of stock data: what the best-performing stocks actually returned
1:22:00 — Tax strategies: 351 exchanges, direct indexing, QSBS, and box spreads
1:27:00 — AI in practice: Meb's custom ChatGPT and how advisors should use AI now
1:30:00 — Behavioral AI: what happens when the bot knows you better than you do
1:32:00 — Closing thoughts: raising your average in a noisier, more complex world
#MebFaber #CambriaInvestments #GlobalDiversification #PortfolioConstruction #ValueInvesting #TrendFollowing #6040Portfolio #TaxAlpha #ConcentratedPositions #DirectIndexing #RealAssets #InternationalStocks #RegimeChange #FinancialAdvisor #WealthManagement #InvestingStrategy #RaiseYourAverage #AIInvesting #BehavioralFinance #LongTermInvesting #ETFinvesting #SmartBeta #FactorInvesting #MarketOutlook2026 #AdvisorAnalyst
1 hr 35 min
April 07 How CRM3 Turns Transparency into Your Biggest Competitive Advantage
What if CRM3 turns out to be the most powerful growth tool you've ever been handed?
In this episode of Insight Is Capital, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Mario Cianfarani, Head of Distribution at Vanguard Canada, to explore the sweeping implications of CRM3 — Canada's incoming total cost reporting regulation — and why the advisors who embrace it now stand to gain the most.
Mario unpacks how Vanguard's landmark Advisors Alpha framework, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, aligns with this new era of transparency, and why the real value of advice has never lived in product selection.
Together, Pierre and Mario examine the critical mindset shifts advisors must make, the power of fee budgeting, and how top practices are already having the conversations that will define the next generation of client relationships — before they're required to.
Chapters
0:00 — Introduction: Canada's wealth management inflection point & CRM3 overview
1:23 — Mario's passion for Vanguard's investor-first mission and 15 years disrupting Canada
3:03 — The biggest mindset shifts advisors need to embrace with CRM3
4:31 — From product-centric to advice-centric: building a repeatable value narrative
6:44 — Advisors Alpha at 25: quantifying the real value of advice beyond the portfolio
8:00 — Behavioral coaching, market volatility, and keeping clients fully invested
9:52 — Transparency, trust, and ending the "black box" era of investing
11:34 — How transparency correlates with higher client satisfaction and deeper relationships
13:00 — Fee budgeting: the strategic framework for cost-conscious portfolio construction
14:40 — Vanguard's portfolio construction philosophy: core, satellite, active & passive
19:10 — CRM3 as a competitive differentiator — and why staying flat-footed isn't an option
21:11 — The bottom line: the win-win case for advisors and clients
23:53 — What top advisors are doing right now to get ahead of the change
27:05 — Tax alpha, rebalancing alpha, behavioral alpha — quantifying every dimension of value
27:55 — Mario's top three action items for advisors navigating this transition
30:17 — Parting thoughts: reframing CRM3 as a practice growth opportunity
31:07 — Resources available through Vanguard Canada for advisors and dealerships
#CRM3 #TotalCostReporting #AdvisorsAlpha #VanguardCanada #WealthManagement #FinancialAdvisor #FeeTransparency #CanadianInvesting #BehavioralFinance #FinancialPlanning #InvestmentAdvice #ETFCanada #ClientExperience #FeeBudgeting #InsightIsCapital #FinTechCanada #AdvisorGrowth #PassiveInvesting #FinancialRegulation #WealthManagementCanada
33 min
April 02 Daily Premiums, Smarter Income: The Case for ODTE Covered Calls in a Modern Portfolio with Nicolas Piquard
What if you could collect covered call option premium hundreds of times a year instead of once a month — without giving up the upside on your core equity holdings?
📋 EPISODE SUMMARY
In this enlightening episode of Insight Is Capital, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Nicolas Piquard, Chief Options Strategist at Hamilton ETFs — a 30-year derivatives veteran who has traded from both sides of the options desk, sell-side and buy-side. Together they unpack the seismic shift in options markets driven by zero days-to-expiry (0DTE) options, which now dominate daily S&P 500 options volume. Piquard demystifies why these instruments are not the speculative instruments many preconceive them to be, and explains how Hamilton's DayMAX™ suite of ETFs harnesses daily covered calls — written only against a modest, leveraged 25% VOO sleeve — to generate frequent, tax-efficient income while leaving the core equity holdings fully intact and participating in the upside. With nearly $750 million in DayMAX™ AUM and growing, the conversation explores how advisors can deploy these strategies as precision income tools in a traditional 60/40 portfolio without sacrificing long-term growth.
✅ 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS
1. 0DTE options are a structural shift, not a fad.
Exchanges gradually introduced weekly, then daily expirations over 20 years — today the market demands them for granular hedging and income generation, and volume keeps growing across asset classes.
2. The DMAX structure is engineered to preserve upside.
By writing daily covered calls only against a 25% leveraged VOO sleeve — and leaving the 100% core champion dividend ETF completely uncovered — DMAX maximizes time-decay premium collection while keeping the bulk of equity appreciation intact.
3. Tax efficiency amplifies the yield advantage.
Option premiums are taxed as capital gains, and intraday losses can offset gains — resulting in a distribution blend of dividends, capital gains, and return of capital that is materially more tax-efficient than ordinary income for most investors.
🕐 TIMESTAMPED CHAPTERS
00:00 — Introduction: How options markets have evolved
01:45 — Nicolas Piquard's 30-year career arc: sell-side to buy-side
05:22 — Hamilton ETFs growth: $7B in yield maximizers, $750M in DayMAX™
07:18 — The origin story of 0DTE options — from monthly to daily expirations
12:51 — How daily options differ from monthly covered calls
17:51 — The DayMAX™ structure explained: 100% champions ETF + 25% VOO + 0DTE overlay
46:05 — Partial vs. full call coverage: how DMAX preserves equity upside
52:07 — Portfolio construction: how advisors can use DMAX to close a yield gap
57:19 — Tax efficiency of covered call premiums: capital gains, ROC, and dividends
59:01 — Closing thoughts
#CoveredCalls #0DTE #OptionsIncome #HamiltonETFs #DMAX #ETFInvesting #OptionsStrategy #InvestmentIncome #PortfolioConstruction #DividendInvesting #FinancialAdvisors #WealthManagement #OptionsTrading #YieldMaximizer #PassiveIncome #CanadianInvesting #IncomeInvesting #VolatilityHarvesting #FinanceCanada #InsideIsCapital
Copyright © AdvisorAnalyst
1 hr
March 31 DoubleLine's Jeffrey Sherman: This Isn't a TACO Trade
As Iran targets oil infrastructure with missiles, Wall Street is still buying the dip — but DoubleLine's Jeffrey Sherman says this time, the trade that's worked every time may finally be broken.
EPISODE SUMMARY
With oil prices surging, rate-cut expectations evaporating, and a conflict now entering its fourth week, host Pierre Daillie sits down with Jeffrey Sherman, Deputy CIO of DoubleLine Capital, to interrogate the assumptions underlying today's risk portfolios. Sherman maps the transmission channels from Middle East conflict to Main Street purchasing power, dissects what the bond market is — and isn't — signalling about fiscal sustainability, and raises uncomfortable questions about the liquidity architecture of private credit vehicles that investors may not have asked themselves yet. The conversation spans the K-shaped labour market, the rotation into international and emerging market assets, and where Sherman sees the most defensible risk-adjusted opportunities in fixed income right now — without pretending the answers are simple.
3 KEY TAKEAWAYS
• The Iran conflict is structurally different from a tariff shock — war policy does not reverse on equity market pressure, making the "buy-every-dip" playbook potentially dangerous for the first time in years.
• Semi-liquid private credit vehicles carry a hidden contagion risk: when investors can't redeem, they sell public assets instead — a dynamic Sherman calls "the margin vortex" — and that forced selling can spiral back to reprice the illiquid positions that started the problem.
• In this environment, Sherman favours short-duration high-quality credit, agency and non-agency mortgages, and emerging market local currency bonds as the preferred expression of the de-dollarisation and commodity tailwind trade.
TIMESTAMPED CHAPTERS
00:00 - Opening — overweight US risk and what to do about it
01:30 - Introduction: recording amid active conflict, March 20, 2026
03:15 - War as an inflationary event — oil, distillates, and the infrastructure damage timeline
06:00 - Higher oil for longer: the "transitory" shock that stays at the new price level
08:00 - Growth curtailment, the deficit, and what the bond market is actually pricing
11:25 - Why this is not a TACO trade — the limits of policy reversal in wartime
13:50 - K-shaped economy: labour market confusion, the no-fire/no-hire dynamic, and wage data
19:35 - Three regressive shocks hitting lower-income households: inflation, tariffs, oil
20:10 - Credit spreads: IG, high yield, and the triple-C divergence
23:30 - International equities, the commodity rotation, gold, and EM local currency bonds
30:15 - DoubleLine's portfolio positioning and the case for diversification right now
34:20 - Private credit: the slow motion train wreck, gating mechanisms, and the margin vortex
45:40 - The liquidity mismatch problem — why "semi-liquid" is a contradiction in terms
49:05 - Specific fixed income opportunities: mortgages, CLOs, IG, and leveraged loan avoidance
52:45 - Practical playbook for advisors: portfolio tilts, hedges, and what to explicitly avoid
#FixedIncome #BondMarket #DoubleLine #MacroInvesting #PrivateCredit #OilPrices #PortfolioStrategy #EmergingMarkets #GoldInvesting #InterestRates #CreditMarkets #InvestingIn2026 #WealthManagement #FinancePodcast #InsightIsCapital #GeopoliticalRisk #JeffreySherman #TACOTrade #HighYield #Deflation
57 min
March 27 Alfonso Peccatiello: You're not diversified. You just think you are.
The bond market — not equities — is the most fragile and most misunderstood foundation of your entire portfolio, and most investors have no idea what's coming.
Episode Summary
Pierre Daillie and Mike Philbrick sit down with Alfonso Peccatiello — former ING bond portfolio manager of $20 billion and founder of macro hedge fund Palinuro Capital — for a masterclass in navigating a world where the old rules no longer apply.
With decades of disinflation now behind us, Alfonso makes the case that the classic 60/40 portfolio is structurally ill-equipped for today's macro regime. Drawing from his own eight-quadrant savings portfolio model, he walks through how investors should think about building resilient, all-weather portfolios using risk parity principles, leverage as a diversification tool, and a mix of equities, bonds, gold, CTAs, and the U.S. dollar.
The conversation shifts to the current geopolitical shock — a potential disruption in global oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz — and why taking directional risk in a nonlinear, unpredictable event is closer to gambling than investing. Alfonso closes with a bold macro outlook: the most underappreciated story of the next year may not be the U.S. at all, but the rest of the world.
3 Key Takeaways• The 60/40 Is Structurally Broken.The 40-year disinflationary tailwind that made bonds a reliable hedge for equities is over. In today's high-debt, inflation-prone environment, stocks and bonds can fall together — as 2022 proved — making traditional portfolio construction dangerously inadequate.• Leverage Is a Defense, Not a Weapon.Alfonso's eight-quadrant framework uses leverage not to chase returns, but to free up capital for genuine diversifiers: gold, CTAs, macro hedge funds, and long USD exposure — each sized to contribute equal units of risk across inflation, deleveraging, and growth scenarios.• When You Can't Predict the Variable, Don't Take the Risk.In a geopolitical supply shock like a Strait of Hormuz closure, no amount of macro skill gives you an edge. The honest answer is to reduce risk, not gamble on a nonlinear binary outcome — a lesson most active managers ignore.⏱️ Timestamped Chapters
00:00 Intro: Why the macro regime has shifted
00:56 Decades of debt, fiscal dominance & bond market fragility
15:15 Welcome Alfonso Peccatiello / Palinuro Capital
17:00 The eight-quadrant portfolio model explained
22:21 Are Treasuries actually fragile?
33:50 Using leverage defensively to unlock diversification
36:40 Building blocks: equities, bonds, and positive drift
38:29 Protecting against inflation: gold, commodities & CTAs
40:28 Protecting against deleveraging: the U.S. dollar's hidden role
43:28 Correlation math: why uncorrelated assets reduce total risk
45:24 How to size gold, bonds, and carry in a real portfolio
50:53 Tracking error: the behavioral trap that kills diversification
56:12 The savings portfolio: risk parity in practice
58:00 The 4% rule, path dependency & why drawdown size matters
1:00:06 Current positioning: geopolitical oil shock & the Strait of Hormuz
1:08:16 The most crowded trade in the world right now
1:10:20 What will surprise markets most in the next 12 months?
1:12:24 Closing thoughts & farewell
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1 hr 14 min

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