Vittorio Manente

🚨🇫🇷🇧🇪 THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!! Mohamed Bakkali, the logistical brain behind the horrific Paris and Bataclan attacks in 2015, is being allowed penitentiary leave by a Brussels court, and may soon be set free… The Bataclan Attacks were some of the most horrific I’ve ever heard, and now their mastermind could actually be walking the streets with you and me. Are you f-ing kidding me??! Not only did 130 people die that day, the details are nightmare-inducing… They cut off testicles and shoved them into the victims’ mouths. They carved up pregnant women and raped them. They beheaded people. They gouged peoples’ eyes out. This didn’t take place in some war-torn region of the world, or 500 years ago, it happened 11 years ago in Paris, France. I don’t care if he is the best-behaving prisoner you’ve ever seen, under no circumstances should this animal ever be set free. Ridiculous!!!! Source: vrt

Reuters stories on Henry Nowak: 0 Reuters stories on George Floyd: 1,087 Do you see what’s happening?

🇬🇧 ENRAGING - BRIT STABBED BY THE SIKH COURT VIDEO BITS: Mr Nowak can be heard saying “can’t breathe.” Police put handcuffs on Mr Nowak, who was lying on his side, telling officers he had been stabbed and that he could not breathe. The officer told Mr Nowak that he was under arrest for suspicion of assault. Mr Nowak repeated that he had been stabbed. A male voice said: “I don’t think you have, mate.” -> He drowned in own blood, as his lungs filled with blood … and died while the cops handcuffed him for racism.

I teamed up with The Journal of Wealth Management on a special collection of articles for Basis Northwest 2026 attendees, including... "Is Your Alpha Big Enough To Cover Its Taxes?" by Robert H. Jeffrey and Rob D. Arnott (originally Spring 1993, Journal of Portfolio Management) "Core Versus Satellite: How Much Should a Taxable Investor Allocate to the Core Equity Portfolio?" by Paul Bouchey and Mahesh Pritamani, CFA (Spring 2017) "A 'New' Asset Location: The Family Corporation" by Robert N. Gordon (Summer 2018) "Tax-Loss Harvesting Municipal Bonds: A Primer" by Andy Kalotay (Fall 2023) "Combining Variable Prepaid Forwards and Tax-Aware Strategies to Diversify Low-Basis Stock" by Joseph Liberman and Nathan Sosner (Spring 2025) "Tax-Efficient Investing in Private Markets: A New Framework for Standardized Tax-Adjusted Performance and Tax Alpha" by William Lesik and Tom Bratkovich (Summer 2026) Thanks to Paul Bouchey for moving this forward. Thanks to Portfolio Management Research for all of their behind-the-scenes support. And thanks to Paul Roberts for the cover photo! See you in Seattle... in one week.

He wasn't a career criminal. He was a Russel group university student. State authorities assisted a foreigner in stabbing him to death. This is 100x worse than George Floyd.

There’s always a valuable lesson and a positive takeaway in every fund collapse. I’m no volatility expert, and I hope someone does a thorough autopsy of what happened, but here are my immediate takeaways: 1) Tail risk hedging is really, really hard. There’s a reason the classic 60/40 stock/bond portfolio remains the most popular allocation in the world: the 40% in bonds is still the simplest, most reliable positively asymmetric long-term hedge most investors can implement. It’s not perfect, but it’s “good enough” for the vast majority of people who just want durable diversification without needing to be geniuses. 2) Shorting (and short vol strategies) is also really, really hard. You’re fighting the long-term upward drift of markets, dealing with asymmetric payoffs that require big moves to pay off, and battling time decay plus carrying costs. What looks elegant on a backtest becomes brutally difficult in live markets. At the end of the day, the clearest lesson is this: investing is hard. You don't need to make it harder. If you decide to actively trade, time the market, or run sophisticated strategies, understand that you’re voluntarily making an already difficult game even tougher. You might capture more upside along the way, but the margin for error shrinks. I hope everyone finds some positivity in all of this.