Ghost in the Machine, Part 1
January 20, 2015·0 comments·adaptive investing
Investors treat trading symbols as if they were real economic claims. A stock represents ownership and cash flows. A currency represents something far different, yet both are traded with equal conviction. When markets behaved according to patterns that didn't actually change what those symbols fundamentally mean, losses cascaded across every level of the investment world.
• Something shifted in how we talk about diversification. We've been trained to believe that adding more trading vehicles, particularly large markets like forex, automatically strengthens portfolios. Liquidity and non-correlation became sufficient reasons to include assets that lack any positive long-term expected return.
• The mathematics can feel like reality. Pattern recognition applied to currency pairs produces convincing statistical distributions and predictive frameworks. But applying normal distribution curves to currency data doesn't make those distributions real or change what a currency actually is.
• The SNB decision exposed a widespread confusion. When Switzerland abandoned its currency peg in 2015, traders from retail accounts to mega-fund CTAs lost money simultaneously. They weren't wrong about their pattern recognition. They were wrong about what the patterns meant.
• There's a difference between symbols and what they symbolize. A stock is a symbol of ownership and cash flows. A bond is a symbol of a repayment commitment. A currency is a symbol of government permission to transact. These aren't equivalent economic claims, yet they're often treated as interchangeable building blocks in portfolio construction.
• The umbrella question matters more than umbrella size. A portfolio can be larger without being more effective at managing risk. If you're adding assets that drain value over time, you're not diversifying. You're just getting wet more often.
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