Education. Advice. Management. In whatever combination you need.
Education, advice and management are scoped independently of one another. None of them requires the others.
Start a conversationScoped to the problem, not to a product.
An engagement can be a single training session, a one-off review, a standing retainer, a mandate, or a bespoke hedge built for one liability. Most begin with a conversation about which of those the problem actually calls for.
Education
Delivered as a single session, a board offsite, or a standing series through the year. Audiences range from an investment committee that wants to interrogate its own inflation assumptions, to family stakeholders who are not investment professionals but vote on the decisions. We also act as an expert resource for the clients of our clients.
Advice
Scoped three ways. As a discrete project, typically a review of what the existing portfolio would do under a sustained inflation overshoot. As a periodic review tied to your reporting cycle. Or as a standing retainer, which can include a seat on the investment committee as the outside inflation specialist. None of it requires giving us a mandate.
Management
A separate account when you want your own guidelines and full position visibility. A commingled vehicle when you want operational simplicity. 40 Act subadvisory when the strategy needs to sit inside a registered product. A TAMP strategy when it needs to reach advisors through an existing platform. Or a white-label license, where you run it under your own brand and we run the strategy behind it.
Custom hedges
The work runs in one direction: decompose the liability into its inflation-space components, establish which published index actually tracks it and with what lag, then build from instruments that trade. Dutch wage inflation, Québécois retiree inflation and synthetic CPI option-like payoffs have all come out of that sequence. If your exposure has no matching index, it can usually still be built.
The same strategies, six different wrappers.
Which one fits depends on your guidelines, your operational preferences, and whether the product needs to be registered or carry your own brand.
- Separate account
- Your own guidelines and full position visibility. Suits institutions and individuals who want the strategy shaped around existing constraints.
- Commingled vehicle
- Operationally simpler, with no bespoke guidelines to maintain. Suits allocators who want the strategy as it is built.
- 40 Act subadvisory
- For when the strategy needs to sit inside a registered product run by someone else.
- TAMP strategy
- For reaching advisors through a platform they already use.
- White-label license
- You offer it under your own brand; we run the strategy behind it. The usual route for a firm that wants a credible inflation product without building the capability in-house.
- Advisory retainer
- No mandate at all. Periodic review, or a standing seat on the investment committee.
Judging a specialist against a scale manager.
Allocators looking at a dedicated inflation manager usually arrive with a governance problem rather than an investment one. The firm is smaller than the managers they normally hire and the standard screens do not fit. These are the questions worth asking of any specialist, us included.
- Whose track record is it? A firm founded in 2008 and a team with two decades in the same market are different claims. Ask for both.
- What did it do when inflation was quiet? Any inflation strategy looks good in 2021 and 2022. The years that decide whether you still hold it are the ones where it earned very little.
- Results by regime, not blended. High, falling and stable CPI periods, shown separately.
- Is the exposure direct or inferred? A strategy targeting the price level behaves differently from one holding assets that correlate with it.
- Key-person and continuity risk. A fair question of any boutique, and one that deserves a specific answer rather than reassurance.
- And who actually runs it at the large manager? The same question in reverse, which is often the more revealing one.
Our own answers are a matter of record: the firm has done nothing but inflation since 2008, and Michael Ashton traded the first interbank U.S. inflation swaps and was the sole market maker for the CPI futures contract. Separate accounts carry full position transparency, and performance detail is available on request.
What people ask before they call.
You are smaller than the managers we usually hire. What should we be checking?
Separate the firm's history from the people's history, because they are rarely the same length. Ask how long the individuals running the strategy have worked in this particular market, what they did there, and whether they have been through a full cycle in it. Then test the strategy rather than the brochure: results across separate inflation regimes rather than one blended number, and specifically what it did in the years when inflation was quiet. That last one decides whether you still hold it in year three.
Does firm size matter for a mandate like this?
It tells you about distribution and operational depth, which are real considerations, and very little about whether anyone there has priced an inflation swap. Inflation is a narrow market with a small number of genuine practitioners. Weigh size for operational risk and direct market experience for the investment decision; they are different questions and assets under management answers only the first.
How do we weigh you against a large asset manager?
Read the two for different things. From the large manager you are testing whether the inflation product is a real specialism or one line in a broad platform: who runs it, how long they have run it, what else they run. From a boutique you are testing resilience: key-person risk, service providers, business continuity, what happens to your mandate if the founder is unavailable. Both are fair. Neither is settled by AUM.
Can you work with us without managing any money?
Yes, and often we do. Advisory and education engagements are scoped independently of any mandate, as one-off projects, periodic reviews, or ongoing retainers. A number of engagement of that kind carries no asset minimum.
Can we offer one of your strategies under our own brand?
Yes. A white-label license means you offer the strategy as your own and we run it behind the scenes, which is the usual route for a firm that wants a credible inflation product without building the capability internally. The same strategies are available through 40 Act subadvisory where the product needs to be registered, and in TAMP format where it needs to reach advisors through a platform they already use.
Our liability does not follow headline CPI. Can that be hedged?
Usually, yes, and most liabilities do not follow headline CPI. The work runs in one direction: decompose the exposure into its inflation-space components, establish which published index actually tracks it and with what lag, then build from instruments that trade. Dutch wage inflation, Québécois retiree inflation and synthetic CPI option-like payoffs all came out of that sequence. Where no published index fits, the exposure can generally still be assembled from instruments that collectively behave like the missing one.
Is there a minimum?
Institutional mandates typically run from $1 million to $25 million and above; individual inflation sleeves start at around $250,000. Advisory and education engagements have no asset minimum. Ask: the answer depends on the structure.
Defend Your Money.
Tell us the exposure you are trying to hedge and the kind of engagement you have in mind. We respond to every inquiry personally.
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