Element Capital:
Pioneers of Modern Macro
Jeffrey Talpins, Founder and CIO, launched Element’s flagship hedge fund in April 2005. Since those early days, the investing landscape has changed radically as new approaches and technologies have impacted financial markets around the world. We believe that our ability to synthesize qualitative and quantitative disciplines – bringing deeply informed human judgment to bear on global macroeconomic issues – has allowed Element to endure and thrive.
As our strategy and culture have always prized flexible thinking, rigorous analysis and adaptation, we have endeavored to continuously evolve our approach. The strategy we have termed Modern Macro is the result of this pursuit, and includes three main drivers of alpha: macro fundamental, systematic, and relative value. Each of these inputs are critical to our success, but often work in concert within a portfolio theme or investment idea.
Modern Macro in Philosophy and Practice
Classic macro discretionary strategies have typically relied upon two primary sources of alpha: shorter-term trading around the inability of financial markets to efficiently process new information and longer-term trend following on the back of major paradigm shifts. It is our belief that the proliferation of systematic investment strategies, driven by the accessibility of massive amounts of data and raw computing power, has largely arbitraged away these sources of alpha that were historically mined by discretionary macro traders. Rather than compete for those diminishing returns, we use the signals and positioning from these strategies as an input to our investment process and focus our efforts on forecasting the reaction of financial markets to macro developments which aren’t well understood by machines. The result of this approach is a portfolio of proprietary strategies and views that are informed by a deep understanding of the broader macro mosaic.
Awards and Recognition
Element Capital has been recognized as a top firm in the alternative asset management industry and as a leader within the global macroeconomic space through various awards and accolades.
Please note, the above awards are presented as of the year in which they were awarded.