The Meb Faber Show

In Episode 82, we welcome trader, fund manager, and author, Vineer Bhansali. Per usual, we start with Vineer’s backstory. It involves his physicist-origins, an unexpected move to an assortment of trading desks, and a run-in with the great, Fischer Black. Meb soon dives in, asking about main strategies Vineer uses with his group, Longtail Alpha. Meb reads a quote from LongTail’s website… “LongTail Alpha’s sole focus is to find value in the tails of financial asset return distributions. Either in the left tail as a risk mitigation hedge on multi-asset portfolios, in the right tail to add convexity to an investor’s risk exposures, or in both the right and left tails to produce alpha from convexity and volatility opportunities in a hedge fund structure.” Meb asks Vineer to use this as a jumping off point, explaining his framework, and how he thinks about tail strategies. Vineer tells us that, at LongTail, they believe the probability distribution of returns for asset classes and multi-asset portfolios is actually