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The Meb Faber Show - Better Investing

Kathryn Kaminski - Don’t Fire Your Diversifier | #604

Oct 31, 2025 · 41 min · Episode 604
0:00-41:15

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Today’s guest is Kathryn Kaminski, Chief Research Strategist at AlphaSimplex, where she’s also the co-portfolio manager for the firm’s Managed Futures Strategy and Global Alternatives Strategy. She also co-authored the book Trend Following with Managed Futures: The Search for Crisis Alpha.

In today’s episode, Meb and Katy discuss the tough year for managed futures strategies, which have experienced the 2nd largest drawdown in the last quarter century. Katy walks through the history of drawdowns and recoveries since 2000, explaining investors who have been patient in the past have been rewarded when the strategy recovers. She emphasizes managed futures’ ability to serve as a diversifier to stocks, revisits her research on crisis alpha, and touches on the rise of managed futures ETFs as a way for investors to get exposure to this asset class.

Listen to Katy’s first appearance in May 2021.

(0:00) Starts

(1:05) Katy's thoughts on managed futures in 2025

(3:31) Lessons from past drawdowns

(10:04) The patience premium

(17:10) Follow the trends

(22:12) Crisis Alpha revisited

(26:01) Managed futures accessibility and ETFs

(29:35) Replication methods

(35:02) Implementing AI


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Past guests include ⁠Ed Thorp⁠, ⁠Richard Thaler⁠, ⁠Jeremy Grantham⁠, ⁠Joel Greenblatt⁠, ⁠Campbell Harvey⁠, ⁠Ivy Zelman⁠, ⁠Kathryn Kaminski⁠, ⁠Jason Calacanis⁠, ⁠Whitney Baker,⁠ ⁠Aswath Damodaran⁠, ⁠Howard Marks⁠, ⁠Tom Barton⁠, and many more. 

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠).

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