Debt, Inflation, and the Risky Macro Regime of Fiscal Dominance — with Jim Masturzo | Treussard Talks (E23)

Systematic Investing, Mission, and the Discipline of Expectations — with Eduardo Repetto | Treussard Talks (E25)

Eduardo Repetto is the Chief Investment Officer of Avantis Investors, the systematic investment firm he founded in 2019 that now manages more than $125 billion. Before Avantis, Eduardo was Co-CEO and Co-CIO at Dimensional Fund Advisors, where he worked alongside Eugene Fama and Ken French. He holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautics from Caltech. The history of investing has been a slow march from artisanal to systematic. Markowitz gave us the framework. Fama and French gave us the factors. The toolkit Eduardo has spent his career building is what happens when those ideas get implemented at scale — broadly diversified, daily-managed, transparent, and priced to respect the investor. In the industry, we sometimes call it "core and bore." The "bore" is the point. We also talk about ownership. Avantis sits inside American Century, whose controlling shareholder is the Stowers Institute for Medical Research — an endowment built from the donated shares of a cancer-survivor founder, funding fundamental research that grant cycles rarely sustain. Eduardo describes it as "taking one for society." And we get into discipline. Liquid wrappers around illiquid assets. Thematic ETFs that turn out to hold the Magnificent Seven in disguise. The behavioral pull to bail in a drawdown. Eduardo's framing — build the expectation of volatility into the journey the way a traveler builds in traffic on the way to the airport — is the kind of anchor a client can actually hold on to in a hard moment. Eduardo is unhurried, undramatic, and uninterested in selling you on a person. He believes in the process, not in himself. You'll hear us cover: * Why STEM training is really about building mental models — for markets, for marketing, for any problem worth solving * The arc from Markowitz to CAPM to the Fama-French factor model, and why "anomalies" are only anomalies if you treat the original framework as gospel * Why factor investing belongs in the middle ground between passive and active — and why "core and bore" is the ambition, not a consolation prize * The Stowers Institute and American Century: how mission-aligned ownership funds long-horizon medical research in a way the grant system structurally cannot * Why thematic ETFs with "the future of" in the title are often back-test engineering dressed as investing * What happens when shareholders ask for their money back from a fund holding mostly illiquid assets — and why this is mechanics, not bad luck * The plane versus the bicycle: knowing yourself, knowing what you're trying to accomplish, and matching the vehicle to the destination If this conversation is useful to you, the next step is the Wealth, Empowered newsletter — free, published every two weeks, written for people who want to think seriously about markets and wealth without the noise. Subscribe at wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com. Disclaimer: The content of Treussard Talks is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed are those of the host and guest and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Treussard Capital Management or its affiliates. Listeners should consult with their own financial advisor before making any investment decisions. For full disclosures, visit treussard.com. Newsletter — Wealth, Empowered: https://wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com/ [https://wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com/] Website: https://www.treussard.com/ [https://www.treussard.com/]

Capital, AI, and the Limits of Liquidity — with Andrea Eisfeldt | Treussard Talks (E24)

Andrea Eisfeldt holds the Laurence D. and Lori W. Fink Endowed Chair in Finance at UCLA Anderson and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She received her PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, trained under John Cochrane, Lars Hansen, and Doug Diamond — three names that account for multiple Nobel Prizes between them. Her research covers intangible capital, liquidity, human capital compensation, and what AI is doing to firm values and labor markets. The accounting data that underlies most factor investing was built for an economy that no longer exists. The companies that dominate markets today run on software, customer relationships, and engineering talent. None of it shows up on the balance sheet the way it should. Andrea has spent the better part of two decades building the tools to correct for that — and the implications are significant. We also get into liquidity. Why it dries up in bad times. Why that is structural, not accidental. And how the current stress in private credit fits a pattern that goes all the way back to her dissertation. Andrea is an eternal optimist. Her optimism is grounded in mechanisms, not sentiment. You'll hear us cover: * Why accounting statements were designed to record transactions, not to serve as portfolio management inputs — and what that means for factor investing today * The three categories of intangible capital: knowledge, customer, and organization — and how partial non-rivalry creates natural economies of scale * Why market concentration and pricing power are not the same thing, and why conflating them leads to bad investment thinking * The task-level research on AI and firm value: how workforce composition predicted abnormal stock returns in the weeks following ChatGPT's release in November 2022 * The bottleneck model: why the human oversight still required by AI becomes both a constraint on growth and the most highly compensated skill in the economy * Equity compensation beyond the C-suite: why ignoring it distorts what we think we know about labor's share of income and firm ownership * Endogenous liquidity: why the greed-fear cycle has a structural explanation — and why liquidity disappears in bad times in ways that are entirely predictable in advance * The frontier problem: why engineering liquidity from illiquid assets always runs into limits, and why private credit stress is a feature of that pattern, not an accident If this conversation is useful to you, the next step is the Wealth, Empowered newsletter — free, published every two weeks, written for people who want to think seriously about markets and wealth without the noise. Subscribe at wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com. Disclaimer: The content of Treussard Talks is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed are those of the host and guest and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Treussard Capital Management or its affiliates. Listeners should consult with their own financial advisor before making any investment decisions. For full disclosures, visit treussard.com. Newsletter — Wealth, Empowered: https://wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com/ [https://wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com/] Website: https://www.treussard.com/ [https://www.treussard.com/]

Debt, Inflation, and the Risky Macro Regime of Fiscal Dominance — with Jim Masturzo | Treussard Talks (E23)

The conventional tools of monetary policy assume the central bank is in charge. What happens when the debt burden gets large enough that it isn't? At some point — and no one knows exactly when — raising rates stops cooling the economy and starts feeding it, because the interest expense on the debt itself becomes a source of stimulus. That's fiscal dominance. It's not a theoretical curiosity. It's the logical destination of a decade of spending without restraint. Jim Masturzo has been thinking about this carefully. As CIO of Research Affiliates — the firm behind one of the most widely used asset allocation frameworks in the world — he spends his days asking what today's market and economic circumstances imply for the decade ahead. We recorded this conversation on February 25, 2026, days before the US–Iran war began. We weren't talking about the news. We were talking about the structure underneath it. That structure hasn't changed. If anything, it's more visible now. You'll hear us cover: * Why starting conditions (yields, valuations) matter more than long-run historical averages * How to think about expected returns without confusing "expectations" for "predictions" * The CAPE ratio near 40: what it implies for US equities relative to the rest of the world * Debt, deficits, and the logic of financial repression * Fiscal dominance: when higher rates can become inflationary via interest expense dynamics * Why non-US assets can benefit in a weaker-dollar regime * Real assets and commodities as diversification in inflation-volatile periods * Private credit, insurance balance sheets, and where the next fragilities might hide * AI, software pricing power, and second-order risks to credit and cash flows If this conversation resonates, there's more where it came from. Wealth, Empowered is my newsletter — published twice a month. Just rigorous but accessible thinking about markets and wealth, and what it actually means to manage money with purpose. Written for people who want to understand what's happening, not just be told what to do about it. Subscribe: https://wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com/ [https://wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com/] More about Treussard Capital Management LLC and how I work with clients at: https://www.treussard.com/ [https://www.treussard.com/] Disclaimer: This content is for informational and educational purposes only and is not financial advice. Views are those of the host and guest. Consult your own advisor before making investment decisions. Full disclosures: https://www.treussard.com/ [https://www.treussard.com/]

Tax-Advantaged Investing, Long-Short Strategies, and the Future of Wealth Management with Erkko Etula | Treussard Talks (E22)

Wall Street is building a trillion-dollar business around slashing the tax bills of wealthy investors. The innovations are real. So are the risks. This conversation is about how to think clearly about both. Erkko Etula built his career at the intersection of academic finance and institutional practice — MIT, Harvard, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a decade at Goldman Sachs rebuilding the wealth management investment process from the ground up, and ultimately founding Brooklyn Investment Group. We start where his research started: what broker-dealer balance sheets reveal about risk appetite in the system, and why the overnight repo market remains one of the most important and least-watched corners of finance. We then move to what Erkko spent his Goldman years solving — how to manage a taxable portfolio holistically, treating tax efficiency not as an afterthought but as a structural input from the start. That work led him to what he considers one of the most consequential innovations in wealth management since the invention of the ETF: tax-advantaged long-short strategies. We get into the mechanics carefully, because the mechanics matter — especially when markets are volatile and the institution renting you balance sheet capacity changes its mind. What We Cover: Risk appetite and balance sheets: Why broker-dealer leverage is a better real-time signal of systemic stress than many other economic indicators — and what that research revealed when Lehman collapsed. The ETF timeline: Mutual funds, ETFs, direct indexing — each step brings taxable investors closer to keeping more of what they make. Where long-short fits in that arc. Direct indexing 2.0: What happens when you combine tax-loss harvesting with long-short portfolio construction — and why the potential power of that combination is measured in months, not years. Risk management first: The three-layer framework — benchmark beta, tracking error, concentration risk — and why communicating tail risk matters in this context. Balance sheet as rented space: Why leverage works until it doesn't, and what that means for investors in these strategies right now. Building Brooklyn: What Erkko learned leaving Goldman — about humility, team, and the relationship between certainty and disappointment. Erkko Etula is CEO of Brooklyn Investment Group and winner of the Smith Breeden Prize for Outstanding Capital Markets Research. Want to go deeper? Jonathan's newsletter Wealth, Empowered. covers markets, wealth, and what it all means for sophisticated families. Free to subscribe at wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com [http://wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com] Treussard Talks is for entertainment and education only. Nothing here is financial advice. Treussard Capital Management is a registered investment advisor. Visit treussard.com [https://www.treussard.com/] for additional information and disclaimers.

The Strait of Hormuz, Oil Markets, and the Futures Curve with Nic Johnson | Treussard Talks (E21)

The Strait of Hormuz was always the thought experiment. The scenario commodities traders ran when they needed a stand-in for the unimaginable. Fifteen to twenty miles of waterway. One fifth of the world's oil. Now it isn't a thought experiment anymore. Nic Johnson spent years at PIMCO as head of commodities, managing large commodities portfolios. Before that, he was a research fellow at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is one of the more technically grounded people I know on this topic — and a friend. We recorded this conversation two and a half weeks into the disruption. Not to predict what comes next. Neither of us knows. But to understand what is actually happening, and where to look if you want a clearer picture than the headlines are giving you. What we cover: * The physical reality — how oil moves through the Strait, what limited storage capacity means for exporters, and why strategic petroleum reserves buy weeks, not months * Why $100 oil is high but not crazy high — and what the shale revolution did to the long-run marginal cost of production * How the US, Europe, and more financially fragile economies experience this shock very differently — and what a populist export restriction would and wouldn't actually accomplish * The futures market versus the physical market — why systemic contagion is unlikely, and where localized blowups could still happen * The one indicator worth watching: not the headline spot price, but the oil futures curve — and why the front month and the five-year forward are telling very different stories right now * Why anyone thinking about reinventing themselves as a commodity trader should understand what variant perception means before placing a single bet Understanding your wealth requires understanding the world your wealth lives in. This is that conversation. The content of Treussard Talks is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed are those of the host and guests and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Treussard Capital Management or its affiliates. Listeners should consult with their own financial advisor before making any investment decisions. For full disclosures, visit treussard.com [https://www.treussard.com/]. Stay Connected * Newsletter — Wealth, Empowered: wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com [https://wealth-empowered.beehiiv.com/] * Learn more: treussard.com [https://www.treussard.com/] This podcast is for entertainment and education only. Nothing here is financial advice. Treussard Capital Management is a registered investment advisor. Please visit our website treussard.com for additional information and disclaimers.