Moritz Seibert, CEO of Munich Re Investment Partners and co-founder at Twoquants.com, welcomes to Real Vision Jason Shapiro, principal of JS Trading and one of the traders profiled in Jack Schwager’s “Unknown Market Wizards.” Shapiro traces his journey from being a commercial banker at HSBC to a mover and shaker in the equity futures market. Shapiro shares with Seibert lessons he learned about risk management, position sizing, and portfolio construction. They also discuss how commodity trend-following strategies can produce a series of uncorrelated—and sometimes negatively correlated—convex returns. Shapiro explains his trepidations about speculative fervor but why nonetheless he is constructive on the equity market (at least for the time being). Filmed on February 22, 2021.

Key learnings: Since the March lows, almost every risk asset has yielded serious returns: copper, equities, SPACs—the list goes on. Seeing great evidence of speculative fervor, Shapiro discusses how the current moment reminds him of 1999. Yet, his insights on the net speculative positioning of equity futures incline him to remain bullish on U.S. equities.