What moved in
markets this week,
and what we did about it.
A 20-minute video every Saturday from Andy Constan and Nick Givanovic. They cover the week, show every change to the portfolio and the reasoning, and publish the broker statements. Use it to check what your broker is doing with your money.
What You Get Every Saturday
Members get it Saturday. Everyone else gets it after 90 days.
Weekly Recap & Outlook
A video of 20 minutes or less. What happened, what it means, where we go next.
Portfolio Update
A video on every change to the allocations, with the reasoning.
Portfolio Allocations
Spreadsheet and chart for both portfolios, current as of Saturday.
Broker Statements
The actual Interactive Brokers statements for both live accounts.
Written Summaries
A one-page version and a full version, for when you’d rather read.
Audio & Transcript
Listen on the move, or search the full text.
Choose Your
Membership
Created Jan 2023
- Weekly video including macro background & reasoning
- Long only, equities 20-80% allocation range
- No leverage
- Minimal use of options strategies
- Market timing
- Bulletin board for midweek orders, commentary & email updates
- Curated research from top investment houses
- Weekly broker statement and Excel file with % allocations and performance
Created Sep 2024
- Weekly video including macro background & reasoning
- Long only, no min/max allocation constraints
- Up to 2.5× leverage on total portfolio when appropriate
- Advanced options strategies
- Market timing
- Bulletin board for midweek orders, commentary & email updates
- Curated research from top investment houses
- Your questions answered directly
- Weekly broker statement and Excel file with % allocations and performance
full access
- Everything in Original
- Everything in Squared
- Complete access to both active portfolios
Who Are The Two Gray Beards?
Between them, Andy and Nick have more than 75 years of investing and trading behind them, through every regime the market has thrown at them. The gray beards are earned. If you manage an equity and bond portfolio, they will show you how they think about markets, and exactly why and when they act.
Co-Host & Founder of Damped Spring Advisors
Andy Constan
Andy graduated from Penn in 1986 with a degree in bioengineering, then spent 35 years investing and trading global equities, 17 of them at Salomon Brothers. In 2010 he went to Bridgewater and then Brevan Howard to sharpen his macro thinking, because that is where the best framework was. He founded Damped Spring Advisors to bring it directly to serious investors.
Co-Host & Founder of Charity Hedge Fund
Nick Givanovic
Nick graduated from Cambridge in 1983 with a degree in Economics, then traded bonds at J.P. Morgan and Salomon Brothers before starting his own hedge fund in 1993. He stopped managing institutional money in 2000. Since then he has invested, traded and looked after his own capital, from the Bahamas, where the weather is rather better than the markets.
Who This Is For
You Have a Broker. You Have Questions. We Help You Ask Better Ones.
Your account sits in the high six to low seven figures. To your broker, that is too small to get real attention. To you, it is too large to ignore what mediocre advice costs. That is an awkward place to be.
Let us be honest about what is probably happening. You are paying for a service and not seeing the results. You lag in the good markets and get no protection in the bad ones. The phone rings when there is something to sell, not when there is something you would rather not hear. That is not a second opinion. That is a sales relationship.
You do not need to trade every day, and you do not need to be in every move. But you should understand what is happening in markets, why your money is positioned the way it is, and whether your advisor's decisions make sense given the environment. You should be taken seriously. You deserve to be.
What We Do Each Week
Twenty Minutes. No Drivel. Specific Enough to Act On.
Every week, Andy and Nick work through the same five questions, because they are the ones that actually matter. It all ends with specific portfolio levels published to IBRK, so you can track real performance in real time, not what we wish we had said.
What happened in markets last week, and did anything change how we think about asset allocation?
Are we making changes to the portfolio? If so, exactly why?
What are the key risks and opportunities in the week ahead, and where might a lever get pulled?
Is there a directional alpha opportunity worth sizing into right now? Sometimes the honest answer is "not yet."
Should we be using options to generate return or reduce volatility? And if so, how? Sometimes buying them is the hard way to make the bet, and we will tell you when.
We are not your financial advisor. Our goal is to make you a better client of the one you have, so you can ask harder questions, understand the answers, and stop leaving money on the table.
