“There are five structural forces reshaping how we need to think about markets: deglobalisation, defence, decarbonisation, dollar displacement and demographics.” This is the core thesis of Razvan Remsing, director of investment solutions at Aspect Capital, on the case for liquid alternatives amid rising macro complexity.
Remsing outlined a world shaped not by cyclical fluctuations, but by structural transformations. “We’ve got some macro drivers that are enduring,” he said, “and they are pointing to lasting change across the global landscape.”
The first of those drivers is deglobalisation. “We’re thinking about tariffs and reshoring,” he said. “The pandemic and recent years have exposed the fragility of supply chains. People would rather pay more for a more secure supply that’s closer to home or at least in a friendly economy.”
Alongside that sits a second force: defence. “We’ve got an administration in the US that’s been elected to break up the system,” Remsing observed. “It’s raised questions around NATO and international commitments. Russia’s aggression continues in Europe. And all of this requires more spending.” The implication, he said, is clear. “It feels inflationary, uncosted, and a sea change from the last few friendly decades in geopolitics.”
The third structural force is decarbonisation. “It’s the challenge of our generation,” he said. “We need to electrify and introduce reliable energy sources. But at the same time, we’ve got this AI wave, which needs a lot of electricity to power up. That dual demand is pretty constructive for commodity markets.”
Another theme is the potential displacement of the dollar. “The US has been attacking its allies and throwing the rule book out the window,” Remsing said. “During the tariff tantrums, the flight to safety wasn’t the US dollar. It was the euro, the Swiss franc and the yen. And gold continues to be well supported in this environment.”
The final structural force is demographics. “It should be fairly obvious to us in the financial planning and wealth industry that the world is changing rapidly,” he said. “The average client in ten years will be older. Fertility rates are shifting. And that changes what portfolios will need to deliver.”
Together, these five forces form what Remsing sees as a new macro regime. “These structural changes are not things that can easily turn around,” he said. “They are expensive, they are uncosted, and they are inflationary. It’s going to be an unstable environment for some time.”
In this context, he argued for an approach that prioritises liquidity, adaptability and breadth. “We’ve been doing this for a long time at the firm. We trade 200 assets globally,” he said. “It’s not about fitting a model to every quarter. It’s about building a strategy that’s able to navigate a wide range of macro regimes.”
He was explicit about the need for strategies that respond to stress. “This is not just about crisis alpha when equity markets fall,” he said. “We’ve navigated stagflation in the 1970s, the Asian crises of the 1990s, the tech wreck, the GFC. What matters is the ability to adapt, to remain resilient and to deliver in liquid terms.”
Remsing also addressed correlations. “Any alternative manager should be lowly correlated. That’s the starting point,” he said. “We have nearly three decades of live data showing negligible correlation to equities, bonds and other investment strategies. And we do this while operating inside those same asset classes.”
Importantly, the strategy is not built on prediction. “Every time we have a period of crisis or dislocation, it’s different,” he said. “The only consistent thing is that if you don’t have a diversifier that can navigate that, and you get a call on liquidity at the wrong time, your portfolio suffers.”
When new analysts join the firm, he gives them a task. “I ask them to find a pattern in the annual return streams across asset classes,” he said. “And then I let them out of their misery. There is no pattern. There’s no one asset that always wins. The macro backdrop is different every time.”
This, he said, is why liquid alternatives are a necessary part of long-term portfolio design. “We all have equity beta in our portfolios. That’s where we get the growth from. But in moments of stress, it behaves in very specific ways. You need something else in there that can act when it matters.”
“The embers of inflation have not been extinguished,” he argued. “And when stocks and bonds no longer give you the diversification you thought you had, having something that is adaptive, agile, resilient, diversifying and liquid is no longer optional. It’s essential.”