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What Kris Sidial is saying

Co-CIO, Ambrus Group

6 dated public stances tracked since 2021-07-01, most recently 2024-11-07. Each line carries the date and the venue it came from; quotation marks mean verbatim. Methodology.

The stances below are c8alpha's editorial distillation of Kris Sidial's public commentary — television, podcasts, and interviews — compiled by automated transcript analysis and dated to the episode they came from. They may lag the speaker's current view and may contain extraction errors. Text in quotation marks is verbatim from the episode; everything else is our paraphrase. Kris Sidial is not affiliated with c8alpha and has not endorsed this page. Nothing here is investment advice.

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6
tracked stances
4
themes
0
side flips
2024-11-07
last heard
Points  Score -2.1 · 1/3 names green at 90 days · how it’s scored

Raw direction-aware returns on public statements — long calls credited when the price rose, shorts when it fell, shorts capped at −100% — in a rising market this mostly measures who was long, not who has skill. Returns run from the stance date; calls are rarely closed publicly, so fixed 90-day / 180-day / 1-year horizons are used. A horizon shows only once it has fully matured, and only at 5+ scored stances. “% correct” is the share of those scored calls whose direction-aware return was positive at the horizon — in a rising market a bullish call is correct by default, so read it beside the market, not alone.

Scored calls

Every tracked call with at least one matured horizon: the rows behind the Returns line above. A dash is a horizon that has not matured yet.

DateNameCall90d180d1y
2024-11-07VOLbullish-5.3%+42.4%-24.1%
2024-06-14VOLbullish+8.5%-7.2%+11.6%
2022-09-13SPXbearish-1.9%+1.1%-15.4%
2021-07-01PFEbearish-11.0%-49.3%-36.7%

Most-argued themes

ThemeStancesLeanMixLast
VOL22 bullish2024-11-07
EQUITY OPTIONS TAILS — CHEAP SKEW AND WINGS IN 2-WEEK TO 2-MONTH LISTED OPTIONS11 bullish2021-07-01
PFE11 bearish2021-07-01
SPX11 bearish2022-09-13

Tracked stances

bullish / bearish is a view they argued; owns / short is a position they said they hold.

2024-11-07 VOL bullish Kris Sidial · video
A ~5% portfolio allocation to long vol/tail risk provides explosive returns during market crashes and — critically — the capital to rebalance into deeply discounted assets when others are forced to sell, generating long-term outperformance over a full market…
“the Big Value ad in a tail hedge is really being able to remove that tail hedge and buy discounted assets because that's where you get the outperformance over time”
90d -5.3% · 180d +42.4% · 1y -24.1%
Making Money from Market Chaos | Inside the Volatility World with Kris Sidial
2024-06-14 VOL bullish Kris Sidial · video
The short volatility trade is structurally overcrowded via RIA yield-seeking programs, structured product dealer flows, and short-vol hedge fund AUM growth (e.g., $25M → $400M+ in single private-wealth programs), creating conditions where any small catalyst…
“we give it a 12 to 18 month horizon where we think that trade will unwind eventually within the next 12 months”
90d +8.5% · 180d -7.2% · 1y +11.6%
42 MACRO PRO TO PRO with Kris Sidial | REPLAY | June 12, 2024
2022-09-13 SPX bearish Kris Sidial · video
Variance is volatility squared, so a long variance swap produces exponentially larger payouts than equivalent vega-notional SPX puts during volatility spikes—$10K vega in a variance swap returned ~$1.7M in COVID vs a fraction of that in SPX puts
“if you were long ten thousand bucks of vega notion of this variant swap going into covid you'd have made like 1.7 million dollars”
90d -1.9% · 180d +1.1% · 1y -15.4%
Volatility Shocks: Positioning for Convex Payouts · Kris Sidial
2021-07-01 long EQUITY OPTIONS TAILS — CHEAP SKEW/WINGS 2-WEEK TO 2-MONTH / short VOL hedge Kris Sidial · video
Selling capped/risk-defined short volatility (to generate carry) while simultaneously holding uncapped long gamma in cheap tails exploits the statistical edge of short vol while eliminating the tail-blow-up risk that destroys most short-vol traders —…
“we leave our long gamma stuff uncapped so if vix were to go to 100 or a million it doesn't matter”
The Kid who Kaptures Kurtosis with Kris Sidial of Ambrus Group
2021-07-01 EQUITY OPTIONS TAILS — CHEAP SKEW AND WINGS IN 2-WEEK TO 2-MONTH LISTED OPTIONS bullish Kris Sidial · video
Increased dealer gamma hedging and the shift to systematic investing by pension funds creates excess variance (leptokurtic distribution) in the front of the term structure, causing listed options markets to systematically underprice fat-tail events — making…
“there is a natural mispricing when you think about kurtosis and you think about the tails in the listed option space”
The Kid who Kaptures Kurtosis with Kris Sidial of Ambrus Group
2021-07-01 PFE bearish Kris Sidial · video
Pfizer's downside put skew is cheap relative to the broader equity market, offering favorable convexity and delta-notional value for tail positioning in healthcare
“some of the health care ball that you see right now is pretty cheap like pfizer's skew compared to the rest of the actual equity market”
90d -11.0% · 180d -49.3% · 1y -36.7%
The Kid who Kaptures Kurtosis with Kris Sidial of Ambrus Group

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