Hi everyone,

My name is Victor Brashears, and I am an MBA student at Boston College. I started becoming interested in alternative investment arbitrage in 2020 during the pandemic. I knew that once the Federal Reserve started printing a seemingly infinite supply of money, inflation would be the ultimate consequence. The decrease in the value of paper money has necessitated the inclusion of a variety of alternative investments in investors’ portfolios. Additionally, the resulting interest rate hikes used to curb inflation have resulted in lower wages, a weaker labor market, and an overall decrease in stock prices. As a result, I decided to create an investment fund that utilizes arbitrage in order to profitably trade cryptocurrency, rare coins, collectibles, and other types of alternative investments.

As the Federal Reserve keeps hiking the interest rate, a recession could result from the resulting decrease in aggregate demand for goods and services by individuals and firms. The results of this decreased aggregate demand have been layoffs and lower wages in certain sectors, which has had an overall negative impact on stock prices. 

I created Living Life on the Hedge in order to be able to help expand everyday people’s understanding of how financial and economic events impact their daily economic and investment decisions, as well as how to effectively prepare for periods of economic instability, including inflationary and recessionary periods. Specifically, I will discuss the macroeconomic factors that influence the business cycle and the impact that it has on investment strategies for different types of investments, including alternative investments. This blog will also teach and discuss the skills and techniques that I have learned in my MBA courses and real-world experiences that I have used in order to profitably trade different financial instruments. It will be written in a way that effectively teaches investing principles to an audience who is presumed to have little to no experience with investments.

Although the performance of stocks is typically inverse to the performance of bonds, 2022 was an exception to this. In addition to poor stock market performance, 2022 has also been the worst year on record for the bond market. This is partially because interest rates have skyrocketed since this period last year and partially the result of continuously high inflation’s negative impact on fixed-income asset prices. During times like these, including alternative investments in your portfolio is a sensible and logical choice. However, due to the erratic fluctuations in asset prices, these types of investments should ideally comprise no more than 20 percent of your portfolio. 

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I look forward to helping people learn about investing, as well as other relevant business topics and issues.