Tales of a Bridgewater Associate: The Fine Art of Building Portfolios

Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning into the Market Intelligence podcast! In this video, we are joined by Andy Constan (@dampedspring), Founder, CEO, and CIO of Damped Spring Advisors. Andy has 35 years of experience investing and trading global markets. Over the past 12 years, he honed his macro investing expertise while at Bridgewater Associates and Brevan Howard. Earlier in his career, Andy spent almost two decades working at Salomon Brothers and its successors. He founded two relative value hedge funds focused on Multi-Asset Volatility Arbitrage and Capital Structure Arbitrage. His investment approach integrates cutting-edge systematic quantitative research with insights from discretionary strategies. With that, you may have noticed a progression in our podcast episodes. In the first, Mat Cashman, a former market maker, broke down what options are and how they’re traded. In the second, Vuk Vukovic, founder of an upstart hedge fund, discussed idea generation and using options as tools to express those ideas. In our third episode, Constan dives into how options fit into a balanced portfolio. The key takeaway? While options can enhance portfolios, most investors don’t need leveraged exposure to markets. A balanced portfolio in 2025 can remain straightforward, and here's an expert telling you just that. The host of today's conversation is Renato Leonard Capelj (@renatolcapelj), the founder of Physik Invest and managing director at Benzinga, a data and content provider for finance and media companies. Capelj's past works as a journalist at Benzinga include conversations with investor Kevin O’Leary, ARK Invest’s Catherine Wood, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, Lithuania's Minister of Economy and Innovation Aušrinė Armonaitė, and former Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers. Subscribe for detailed insights into credit and positioning, the economy and geopolitics, and trade theory and structuring.