Graziadio Business Report Blog

Davide Accomazzo, MBA

In my many years as a derivative trader and hedge fund manager, I forged a solid and long-lasting relationship with risk. Like a beautiful but dangerous woman, risk permeated my professional life—a constant courtship leading me to many attempts at fully understanding its mysterious ways. A never-ending effort!

The theoretical foundations of risk analysis were laid in business school where I diligently learned of Alpha and Beta, Random Walks and Efficient Market Hypotheses (EMH).* These theories were elegant and pure, like a fresh mantle of snow they seemed to perfectly cover all market uncertainties and provided a boost of confidence to a young man ready to leave his mark in Wall Street. Continue reading ‘Beta(ful) Market Hypotheses’

The telegraphed day of reckoning has finally arrived and many commodity exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and exchange-traded notes (ETNs) are now finding themselves in the regulatory line of fire.

I have been on the record with my MBA students and with many of my colleagues in the investment business for quite some time regarding the multitude of problems associated with commodity ETFs. Finally, it seems corrective actions are being taken.

Just recently, UNG, the ETF that attempts to track natural gas futures’ performance, was subject to massive price distortions. UNG built a premium into its price versus its net asset value (NAV) of as much as 20% due to large inflows of money, which, ultimately, reflected investors’ bottom fishing. UNG was suddenly unable to expand its position due to an abrupt fear of breaching position limits in the futures pit.

The lesson learned? When an ETF cannot deliver on its strategy because of regulatory fear, the model is pretty much broken. Continue reading ‘Welcome to a New “Normal” in Commodities?’

Can’t see the video above? Click here to watch or read the transcript.

In this video interview, Davide Accomazzo, MBA, Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Graziadio School of Business and Management, discusses the dangers of high frequency trading. This interview is a follow-up to Professor Accomazzo’s essay for the GBR blog on the same topic. Continue reading ‘The Danger with High Frequency Trading’

As a professional trader, you are confronted daily with all kinds of dynamics and situations that require a flexible and adaptive mind. You are faced with multiple variables constantly interacting with each other and your task is to process ever-changing information quickly and profitably. Valuations arbitrage, reflexive supply-and-demand dynamics, and structural changes are recurrent landmines in the typical day of traders and money managers.

We accept this “dangerous” line of work for only two reasons: monetary compensation and pride in being part of capital markets, that transmission mechanism without which innovation and creativity would be prisoners of their own ethereal state.

As a society, we are ready to strike compromises in return for a system that will allow the ethereal state of our creativity to turn into reality. We allow market insiders like market makers, broker-dealers, and others to have small advantages over us mortal investors in order to have them create the positive externalities that help us build a more sophisticated economic system. We give market makers and specialists a privileged look at the order flow (the supply and demand of stocks) in exchange for their commitment to maintaining orderly markets whenever an imbalance occurs. We give systemic firms like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs privileged access to liquidity via the Federal Reserve so that the banking system and capital markets can continue to serve us in our quest to invent, produce, and distribute new products.

But sometimes things turn out more like a bad inland casino rather than a better market…

We may still be reeling from the systemic economic collapse of last year, but new structural changes with potential negative externalities are already at our door.

For months I have witnessed strange dynamics in the way markets behaved: liquidity issues, intra-day volatility, and a constant disconnection between technical, sentiment and fundamental inputs. Markets often go through periods of irrationality, but this time it felt different.

As a professional trader and an educator on markets, my sensitivity level is higher than normal and I immediately began conducting research to make sense of my discomfort. This process pointed consistently to one element: high frequency trading or as I like to call it “the rise of the machines.” Continue reading ‘High Frequency Trading: The Rise of the Machines’

In the ongoing social debate on what kind of an economic system we should build on top of the rubble of the present financial mess, we as investors should focus less on the philosophical nuances and more on how to adjust our investment framework, expectations, and tactics.

As the work of free-market proponents Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher falls to pieces under the weight of human greed and hubris, it is important to acknowledge that greed and hubris were also the culprits in past socio-economic collapses: communism, failed monarchies, etc. It seems safe to say that whatever policy will be implemented next will carry within its DNA the same self-destructing gene.

History may not repeat itself but it certainly rhymes, as Mark Twain once said.

Continue reading ‘Of Alphas, Betas, and Predetermined Rates of Returns’

The results of the second GBR poll on debt vs. savings are in!

• All participants said they have changed their personal financial approach due to the current economic instability
• 60% say they are working harder to pay down all their debt.

The GBR Blog asked Davide Accomazzo, Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Graziadio School of Business and Management, to comment on the results and offer some practical advice on riding out the economic turbulence. He wrote: Continue reading ‘The Basics of a Balanced Personal Financial Strategy’

The financial turmoil of the last eighteen months has brought to everyone’s attention the problems and dichotomy of our present monetary and financial systems. While we are now dealing with the consequences of too much credit, it is also important to note that a system without credit (and—much to the delight of the populists—without bankers) would be a much poorer and less innovative social system.

So far, the attempted solutions suggested have varied from more leveraged credit to the substitution of the fiat currency system and the central bank with a gold-linked scheme.

The problem with most of these suggestions is a massive confusion about how the U.S. system really works, how it should work, and how we would like it to work (and here it gets really problematic as every individual interest invariably jockeys for a better position).

The issue with a fiat currency system is that it is backed by the credibility of the government and the central bank, which should be acting independently as a guardian of the currency. Governments have inherent conflicts of interest and may feel pressured to regularly weaken the currency as a means of veiled taxation; other sectors of the population will also look favorably on consistent inflation to reduce the burden of borrowing. The central bank is supposed to act independently to counterbalance these inherent social and political dynamics. Unfortunately, in the case of the U.S. and many other countries, the central bank, is hardly independent or focused on one true objective of financial stability. In reality, a central bank’s independence is very limited; true independence would require practically no accountability and a large degree of secrecy, which comes, of course, with its own problems.

The fine balance between a government’s and a society’s pull toward credit excesses and the countervailing force of the central bank is the key to successful economies. Continue reading ‘The Future of US Capitalism’

This is the second of two posts on changes I think need to be made for a new, more sustainable economic and social system. Click here to read Part I. The full article exploring these interventions was first published in August 2008 on Goldmau.com.

Since the early part of the last decade, I have uncomfortably witnessed the unstoppable force of mass consumerism and economic leverage take over every aspect of our system in complete disregard for the social aspects. However, it was not until this recent “quantity over quality” takeover engulfed the cultural fabric of our society that I started to really question the future viability of Mass Capitalism. It seems to me what we need in its place is a new, more qualitative capitalism.

In the first post, I explored two of four areas of intervention for restructuring the imbalances of today’s capitalism:  monetary policy and globalization management. In this post, I discuss the latter two: education and regulatory transparency.
Continue reading ‘A New Qualitative Capitalism Part II’

Continue reading ‘A New Qualitative Capitalism Part I’

Economic forecasting is never an easy task but admittedly this year is harder than usual. The deep financial and social dislocations we suffered in the last 12 months have set in motion dynamics we hardly understand in their full ramifications. Most forecasts seem to point to a difficult first half followed by a solid recovery in the second half of 2009.

Perhaps…

On January 3rd, Prof. Rogoff of Harvard University and Prof. Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland presented a new study at the American Economic Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco that illustrates the aftermath of the most significant financial crises in history in developed and emerging economies. The results of such study can help us shape our mind on what to expect in the next 12 months.

Examining the fallout from major financial crises in developed and emerging markets, Rogoff and Reinhart found strikingly similar post-crisis developments. For example, after a financial crisis, the cumulative decline in real estate prices from peak to trough averaged 35.5% and the duration of the decline averaged six years, the study showed.

But what does that tell us about the current situation in the U.S.?

As of December 2008, the real estate price decline in the U.S., as measured by the Case-Shiller index, is 28%–but only two years in duration.

Continue reading ‘U.S. Economic Recovery May Not Be So Soon in Coming’