In this episode, Future Standard’s Investment Research team members Alan Flannigan and Andrew Korz sit down with Scott Burr, Senior Portfolio Manager at Future Standard, to discuss how multi-strategy investing may help investors navigate a changing macro regime.

Scott also shares how his liquid alternatives approach blends diversification with conviction, the role of liquid alternatives play alongside private markets, and how strategies go from idea to execution.

Alan Flannigan: In our last episode, we discussed the most clichéd word in macro—uncertainty—in the realm of policy, geopolitics and economics.

Today, we’re going to talk about how that’s showing up in markets. For most investors’ working lives, they’ve operated within a relatively stable framework. Economic cycles followed a familiar rhythm, asset classes usually behaved in predictable ways, and shocks, when they happened, were treated as external disruptions. It’s sort of over here somewhere.

Today, what used to feel exogenous increasingly seems embedded within the system itself. The call is coming from inside the house, if you will. A pandemic, inflation, bank failures, two major wars, and an upending of the global trade system all in six years. If once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy of action...what’s the saying for six times? Regime change? That raises a fundamental question for investors. How do you build a portfolio for the less predictable world now at our doorstep, and critically, to avoid falling back on the assumptions of the past?

One answer is diversification, and the idea that relying on the simplistic portfolio construction adages traditionally used will no longer cut it. Another is concentration. Focus your energies on only those few opportunities where you have a true edge. These are opposing, but not necessarily mutually exclusive approaches.

Today, we’re going to dig into how those philosophies show up in real portfolios. Scott Burr is a Senior Portfolio Manager here at Future Standard. He runs a liquid alternative strategy that invests across asset classes and merges these two philosophies together, spending each day navigating this environment on behalf of investors. Scott, welcome to the podcast.