2020 Event Rescheduled

In 2020, we'll once again bring together leading experts from the commodity markets to discuss oportunities and market dynamics. Details/speakers to follow...

Doug Greenig is CEO and CIO of Florin Court, a systematic asset manager focused on non-traditional, exotic and frontier markets. In applying known, trusted techniques to new arenas, Florin Court's success reveals that one can find an advantage not only by outpacing competitors, but also through the pursuit of different and easier games.

At the 2020 Summit, Doug will discuss his history in the business and how his firm came to be. He'll make arguments for the inclusion of non-traditional assets within portfolios, reminding us why new and different products (like digital assets) represent valuable opportunities for those willing to do the hard operational work.

Part 1 - Beyond Digital Gold: Non-Obvious Markets Within the Crypto Economy

The applications of a global, state-free money—or a digital gold—are relatively well understood, however many investors have yet to discover some of the more non-obvious markets and opportunities within the crypto economy. To expand on this topic, we invite Kyle Samani, a Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital, to present two disparate token-economic incentive structures that are driving new behaviors and unlocking new design spaces. Through this presentation, he will apply these models to real-world use cases and debate which applications have the most capacity to gain mass adoption.

Part 2 - Passing Due Diligence: Institutional Investors on Cryptoassets

While institutional interest is arguably the highest it's ever been, many investors are still taking a wait-and-see approach. To address this topic, we've invited a committee of institutional investors who have developed strategies and put money to work to expand on their insights and approaches. Throughout this conversation they will discuss the research process, due diligence, compelling catalysts, educating internal teams, and ultimately how they got comfortable with the risks associated with this new asset class.

Peter Zeihan is a geopolitical strategist, combinging an expert understanding of demography, macroeconomics, energy, politics, technology, and security to help clients best prepare for an uncertain future. Over the course of his career, Peter has worked for the US State Department in Australia, the DC think tank community, and helped develop the analytical models for Stratfor, one of the world’s premier private intelligence companies. Peter founded his own firm — Zeihan on Geopolitics — in 2012 in order to provide a select group of clients with direct, custom analytical products. Today those clients represent a vast array of sectors including energy majors, financial institutions, business associations, agricultural interests, universities and the U.S. military.

In his upcoming book, Disunited Nations, Peter Zeihan makes the argument that most countries and companies are not prepared for the world we are already living in. “For years, America’s allies have depended on its might for their economic and physical security. But as a new age of American isolationism dawns, the results will surprise everyone.” In a world where many think tomorrow will closely resemble today, Peter provides a series of counterintuitive arguments about the future of a world where those “shackled to the status quo will find themselves lost in a new world disorder.”

We are extremely excited to hear Peter's thoughts and believe his views have important and direct implications for global markets.

At last year’s Summit, Michael Brandt of QMS gave a wonderful presentation on how finance is a "small data" problem, clearly revealing the relative limitations and inherent challenges to financial data and modeling. In finance throwing technology at the problem won’t deliver commensurate improvement. You can’t engineer the solution and find success in scale. There’s just not enough data.

So without much evidence, how do we build confidence in our predictions? At 2020’s Time Summit, we’ll seek expert insight on this very question. Broadly, our speakers will discuss three good options:

1. Build a “small data” research operation that embraces and properly accounts for the constraints, leading to more reliable findings


2. Make more data by modeling and then simulating


3. Find new data, from different and “alternative” sources

In 2020, we'll once again bring together leading experts from the macro space to discuss oportunities and market dynamics. Details are forthcoming.