Hamburger
Request a demo
Close
Close
Macro Markets Insights
Make informed investment decisions with unique insights
 
Topical observations from the Qi macro lens. Build your investment roadmap with the best-in-class quantitative analysis and global data.
Ferenc Horvath Skcfibu91Aa Unsplash
27.09.2021
RETINA™ - Momentum & Miners
A number of new RETINA™ signals make worrying reading for commodity related equites. All are momentum rather than valuation signals.

They could be idiosyncratic stories but they cover global copper miners, Chinese energy, and US metals & mining stocks. For those who want to join the dots, it does not send a positive signal for the industrial cycle.
Premium content, for a full analysis sign up to a month of insights
Omega Nebula 11053 1920
24.09.2021
Round trip
The Evergrande fall-out at the start of the week impacted global financial markets via three channels. Wider sovereign Chinese CDS, higher risk aversion & wider credit spreads.

Those three prompted a sharp re-pricing across asset classes. Two of the three have now completed a round trip. The charts below show all three in z-score terms.

After a sharp 2 standard deviation jump, VIX is once again running below long term trend. Similarly, after a brief spike wider, credit spreads have reverted below trend.
See more
23.09.2021
The Fed revert to type
A little over a year since Jackson Hole first introduced it, last night’s FOMC arguably signalled the end of Average Inflation Targeting as a policy. That at least seems to be the snap response from bond markets as the yield curve flattened & inflation break-evens narrowed. A combination that speaks to a more pre-emptive Fed; or, for the pessimists, a policy mistake.
See more
Adam Birkett 77Hmm5Tg N4 Unsplash
22.09.2021
Your roadmap for slower
Chinese growth
While the jury is still out on whether Evergrande is an idiosyncratic or systemic risk to financial markets, few dispute that recent events will dent Chinese economic growth prospects.

The chart below shows the independent relationship between various global equity benchmarks & Chinese GDP growth. Red versus green dots speaks to macro valuation – rich to macro & cheap to model respectively.
Premium content, for a full analysis sign up to a month of insights
2021 09 22 11 51 05
22.09.2021
Look up™
Qi expands with $10m funding to empower investors with world-first trading analytics

Today we announce a major scale up after four years of research and development and over $10m in funding from three investment rounds.

The company, which has offices in London, New York and Limassol, has clients with total Assets Under Management (AUM) of over $2.5 trillion incorporating Qi’s analytics in their investment process. It is led by experienced macro hedge fund portfolio managers and leading academics in machine learning and signal extraction from Cambridge, Harvard and Princeton, in addition to best-in-class data engineers.

Quant Insight’s AI-based financial market brain (RETINA) scans millions of data points daily to provide a succinct overview on how macro forces are impacting all asset classes, from FX, indices and single stocks, to commodities, bond futures and cryptocurrency. RETINA reduces millions of data points into two to five essential daily insights and is already being used by some of the world’s best known investment banks, hedge funds and asset managers, including Alan Howard of Brevan Howard.

Quant insight was co-founded by experienced macro investor and portfolio manager, Mahmood Noorani, who has previously worked at Morgan Stanley, UBS, BlueCrest Capital, Citi Capital Advisors Global Macro Fund, and Credit Suisse. Other key partners in the business include Professor Michael Hobson, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, who authored the Qi White Paper on methodology, which emphatically validated the Qi algorithm, and Professor Ryan Prescott-Adams, an academic leader on Machine Learning and former lecturer at Harvard, who sits on Qi’s Academic Advisory board. Qi’s investors also include Alan Howard and JP Stein, with additional investors including financial market professionals, the ex-CEO of a major European investment bank, and the Chairman of a top three US investment bank.

Currently, with the rise of the retail trader, Quant Insight is developing an API, which allows them to partner with online brokers and messaging platforms, granting retail investors access to some of the cutting-edge analytical tools and trading signals that are being used by institutional investors.

Mahmood Noorani, Co-Founder and CEO for Quant Insight, comments:

“For too long the investment world has relied on a mixture of subjective research, educated guesses and an abundance of data that has made accurate decision-making impossible.

“To tackle this endemic problem, we have combined advanced mathematics, data science, machine-learning, and decades of financial expertise to create a fully-automated financial market brain, RETINA, that scans markets globally, intraday, ingesting millions of data points daily on high frequency macro information, to identify high probability opportunities and deliver signals in real time.

“It’s not a coincidence that the world’s best known hedge funds and asset managers use Qi. Our growing client base of institutional investors has been universally positive, and we have a number of exciting partnerships, product updates and major announcements to unveil over the coming months, particularly as we tackle the retail investment market with increasing efficiency.”
See more
Nasa Scbkw9Akgca Unsplash
21.09.2021
China
Yesterday saw some significant moves in several key macro factors. The charts below detail the sharp escalation in China stress (at the national, rather than real estate sector specific level) & the impact that had on broader risk appetite & the credit market.
See more
Hs 2009 25 Hubble
20.09.2021
A warning sign
Global equity markets are no longer being driven by macro fundamentals. Other variables – such as regulation, sentiment, positioning – have become more important.
See more
Cameron Venti Xkcaeep4Ui4 Unsplash
16.09.2021
Factor Watch - Inflation
This week has seen US CPI undershoot, providing some support for the Fed’s argument that inflation is transitory; but UK inflation surge to 3.2%, a 10 year high.

The temporary versus sticky debate continues to rage but, from Qi’s perspective where inflation expectations in z-score terms are a core input across several models, a couple of things stand out:
Premium content, for a full analysis sign up to a month of insights
Ferenc Horvath Skcfibu91Aa Unsplash
16.09.2021
RETINA™ cautious on Kiwi
RETINA™ has inflection signals on three Kiwi fx crosses.

All three show the Kiwi as rich to its macro fair value; the chart below shows Qi Fair Value Gap in standard deviation terms. All are close to 1y highs.
Premium content, for a full analysis sign up to a month of insights
Juskteez Vu Tirxot28Znc Unsplash
14.09.2021
Inflation
Today’s US CPI report will be viewed primarily in the context of the debate over how transitory current inflation really is. But it is worth taking stock of how global equity indices are reacting to inflation pressures. Which view it as healthy reflation, which see it as a headwind ?
See more
Close
Omega Nebula 11053 1920
24.09.2021
Round trip
The Evergrande fall-out at the start of the week impacted global financial markets via three channels. Wider sovereign Chinese CDS, higher risk aversion & wider credit spreads.

Those three prompted a sharp re-pricing across asset classes. Two of the three have now completed a round trip. The charts below show all three in z-score terms.

After a sharp 2 standard deviation jump, VIX is once again running below long term trend. Similarly, after a brief spike wider, credit spreads have reverted below trend.
See more
Risk Aversion Z ScoresCorporate Credit Z Scores
China CDS are narrowing but at a slower pace. Nevertheless, taken altogether, it suggests the market, for now, is confident Evergrande does not pose broader systemic risk.
China Stress Z Scores
That doesn’t negate fears about the potential drag on Chinese economic growth. Tracking sensitivity to these different macro variables as regimes shift & factor leadership changes will be vital into year-end.
23.09.2021
The Fed revert to type
A little over a year since Jackson Hole first introduced it, last night’s FOMC arguably signalled the end of Average Inflation Targeting as a policy. That at least seems to be the snap response from bond markets as the yield curve flattened & inflation break-evens narrowed. A combination that speaks to a more pre-emptive Fed; or, for the pessimists, a policy mistake.
See more
Thursday
Qi uses the US inflation swaps market to measure inflation expectations. The chart above shows 2y, 5y & 10y expectations all in z-score terms. All three remain above the horizontal zero bound, but they are falling back towards long-term trend.

Qi’s 5s30s yield curve model is in regime & fair value has collapsed dramatically courtesy of events in China. China sovereign CDS is the biggest negative driver; iron ore & Chinese GDP the two biggest positive drivers. So this weeks’ China stress prompted a sharp re-pricing lower.

The spot yield curve has also flattened dramatically but not to the same degree. For those who believe China stress continues & is exported globally, there is scope for the curve to flatten further.

Together, a flatter yield curve & falling inflation expectations suggest the fixed income market is worried the Fed has abandoned AIT, has reverted to its more typical reaction function & the net effect could be detrimental to growth.

For equity investors it is more important than ever to identify & monitor the impact these two macro factors will have on your portfolio.
2021 09 22 11 51 05
22.09.2021
Look up™
Qi expands with $10m funding to empower investors with world-first trading analytics

Today we announce a major scale up after four years of research and development and over $10m in funding from three investment rounds.

The company, which has offices in London, New York and Limassol, has clients with total Assets Under Management (AUM) of over $2.5 trillion incorporating Qi’s analytics in their investment process. It is led by experienced macro hedge fund portfolio managers and leading academics in machine learning and signal extraction from Cambridge, Harvard and Princeton, in addition to best-in-class data engineers.

Quant Insight’s AI-based financial market brain (RETINA) scans millions of data points daily to provide a succinct overview on how macro forces are impacting all asset classes, from FX, indices and single stocks, to commodities, bond futures and cryptocurrency. RETINA reduces millions of data points into two to five essential daily insights and is already being used by some of the world’s best known investment banks, hedge funds and asset managers, including Alan Howard of Brevan Howard.

Quant insight was co-founded by experienced macro investor and portfolio manager, Mahmood Noorani, who has previously worked at Morgan Stanley, UBS, BlueCrest Capital, Citi Capital Advisors Global Macro Fund, and Credit Suisse. Other key partners in the business include Professor Michael Hobson, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, who authored the Qi White Paper on methodology, which emphatically validated the Qi algorithm, and Professor Ryan Prescott-Adams, an academic leader on Machine Learning and former lecturer at Harvard, who sits on Qi’s Academic Advisory board. Qi’s investors also include Alan Howard and JP Stein, with additional investors including financial market professionals, the ex-CEO of a major European investment bank, and the Chairman of a top three US investment bank.

Currently, with the rise of the retail trader, Quant Insight is developing an API, which allows them to partner with online brokers and messaging platforms, granting retail investors access to some of the cutting-edge analytical tools and trading signals that are being used by institutional investors.

Mahmood Noorani, Co-Founder and CEO for Quant Insight, comments:

“For too long the investment world has relied on a mixture of subjective research, educated guesses and an abundance of data that has made accurate decision-making impossible.

“To tackle this endemic problem, we have combined advanced mathematics, data science, machine-learning, and decades of financial expertise to create a fully-automated financial market brain, RETINA, that scans markets globally, intraday, ingesting millions of data points daily on high frequency macro information, to identify high probability opportunities and deliver signals in real time.

“It’s not a coincidence that the world’s best known hedge funds and asset managers use Qi. Our growing client base of institutional investors has been universally positive, and we have a number of exciting partnerships, product updates and major announcements to unveil over the coming months, particularly as we tackle the retail investment market with increasing efficiency.”
See more
Qi expands with $10m funding to empower investors with world-first trading analytics

Today we announce a major scale up after four years of research and development and over $10m in funding from three investment rounds.

The company, which has offices in London, New York and Limassol, has clients with total Assets Under Management (AUM) of over $2.5 trillion incorporating Qi’s analytics in their investment process. It is led by experienced macro hedge fund portfolio managers and leading academics in machine learning and signal extraction from Cambridge, Harvard and Princeton, in addition to best-in-class data engineers.

Quant Insight’s AI-based financial market brain (RETINA) scans millions of data points daily to provide a succinct overview on how macro forces are impacting all asset classes, from FX, indices and single stocks, to commodities, bond futures and cryptocurrency. RETINA reduces millions of data points into two to five essential daily insights and is already being used by some of the world’s best known investment banks, hedge funds and asset managers, including Alan Howard of Brevan Howard.

Quant insight was co-founded by experienced macro investor and portfolio manager, Mahmood Noorani, who has previously worked at Morgan Stanley, UBS, BlueCrest Capital, Citi Capital Advisors Global Macro Fund, and Credit Suisse. Other key partners in the business include Professor Michael Hobson, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, who authored the Qi White Paper on methodology, which emphatically validated the Qi algorithm, and Professor Ryan Prescott-Adams, an academic leader on Machine Learning and former lecturer at Harvard, who sits on Qi’s Academic Advisory board. Qi’s investors also include Alan Howard and JP Stein, with additional investors including financial market professionals, the ex-CEO of a major European investment bank, and the Chairman of a top three US investment bank.

Currently, with the rise of the retail trader, Quant Insight is developing an API, which allows them to partner with online brokers and messaging platforms, granting retail investors access to some of the cutting-edge analytical tools and trading signals that are being used by institutional investors.

Mahmood Noorani, Co-Founder and CEO for Quant Insight, comments:

“For too long the investment world has relied on a mixture of subjective research, educated guesses and an abundance of data that has made accurate decision-making impossible.

“To tackle this endemic problem, we have combined advanced mathematics, data science, machine-learning, and decades of financial expertise to create a fully-automated financial market brain, RETINA, that scans markets globally, intraday, ingesting millions of data points daily on high frequency macro information, to identify high probability opportunities and deliver signals in real time.

“It’s not a coincidence that the world’s best known hedge funds and asset managers use Qi. Our growing client base of institutional investors has been universally positive, and we have a number of exciting partnerships, product updates and major announcements to unveil over the coming months, particularly as we tackle the retail investment market with increasing efficiency.”
Nasa Scbkw9Akgca Unsplash
21.09.2021
China
Yesterday saw some significant moves in several key macro factors. The charts below detail the sharp escalation in China stress (at the national, rather than real estate sector specific level) & the impact that had on broader risk appetite & the credit market.
See more
The Evergrande story has been in motion for months. Up until yesterday, contagion had been restricted to immediate peers – Chinese real estate / financial names, a few Australian miners.

What changed yesterday was the move in sovereign China CDS. In z-score terms, this was a 3 standard deviation move. Sovereign CDS liquidity is poor but the signal function is unmistakeable – markets moved this from an idiosyncratic story to one with potentially far broader ramifications.
China1
For the first time in a while the risk off move had a material impact on the credit markets – European financials & high yield especially. Again it was around a 3 standard deviation move.
Chinacredit
The spike in VIX was a 2 standard deviation move on Qi. VXEEM, VDAX & the gold/silver ratio experienced similar moves.
Chinarisk
What next?

China is the epicentre of current market moves & your view on how the Evergrande story unfolds is critical. China bears will see these factor moves as a genuine re-pricing. If so, Qi can high-light those markets that are lagging versus the new environment.

For example on current patterns that combination of China stress & broader risk-off spilling into credit has pushed Qi model value for 10y US Treasury yields below 1.00%. There’s more of a flight-to-quality move to come for USTs.

Alternatively, those who see Evergrande as localised, & simply a catalyst for a complacent market overdue a correction, use Optimise Trade Selection to screen for single stocks, sectors, ETFs sensitive to Chinese sovereign CDS spreads & with a negative Qi Fair Value Gap.

In times of stress it is more important than ever to quantify relationships between asset price & the macro environment.
Hs 2009 25 Hubble
20.09.2021
A warning sign
Global equity markets are no longer being driven by macro fundamentals. Other variables – such as regulation, sentiment, positioning – have become more important.
See more
Intuitively, such drivers can be more volatile. New regulations may arrive unanticipated; positioning & sentiment are prone to wild swings. When macro fundamentals cannot explain price action, markets are at the mercy of more transient factors. Those can work as tailwinds or headwinds but they do imply enhanced volatility.
Image 1
The chart above shows macro model confidence across global equity benchmarks. Most lines were trending sideways at high levels – denoting that the majority have been in strong, stable macro regimes for around 18 months. But in the last two weeks macro’s ability to explain price action in the S&P500 has fallen 28% & model confidence now sits at just 16%.

The same phenomenon has occurred in Europe (Stoxx 600 confidence down 23% in the last 2weeks to 53%) &, to a lesser extent, Asia. In Japan, Nikkei 225 model RSq has fallen 13% to 77%.

The Kospi is notable – it was one of the first to see model confidence fall but has subsequently entered a new macro regime. One where FX shifts are critical.

The two outliers are the Shanghai Composite & the NASDAQ. Both fell out of their macro regimes earlier - around the end of the first quarter - & model confidence remains low.

Regime shifts are natural & macro fundamentals will reassert themselves. The emergence of new regimes & the drivers that lead them can be tracked in real-time on Qi. In the meantime, caution is warranted & sizing of risk becomes all the more important.
Juskteez Vu Tirxot28Znc Unsplash
14.09.2021
Inflation
Today’s US CPI report will be viewed primarily in the context of the debate over how transitory current inflation really is. But it is worth taking stock of how global equity indices are reacting to inflation pressures. Which view it as healthy reflation, which see it as a headwind ?
See more
Qi quantifies the independent relationship between any equity index & inflation. The chart below captures that sensitivity on the horizontal axis; the further out to the right any market is, the greater the benefit it derives from reflation.

Then we add a valuation overlay – red dots are rich to macro, green are cheap, faded colours means that model is not in a macro regime. Some standouts:
Tuesday
The models on the left (with a negative relationship with inflation expectations) are all out of regime. Put another way, on Qi there isn’t a single equity market in a macro regime that see’s inflation as a bad thing. Equities don’t fear margin compression or Central Banks being compelled to tighten policy early.

There is a bit of a Europe versus Asia split in terms of valuations. Japanese equities are the extreme with both Nikkei & TOPIX over 1.5 sigma rich, although both are seeing model confidence roll over. Malaysia (EWM) is also one sigma rich while a host of China-related plays are modestly above macro-warranted fair value.

The majority of green dots are European – notably Austria (EWO), Italy (FTSE MIB) & the broader Stoxx 600.
Close
Thank you for request
A team member will contact you soon shortly.
Find out more
Explore Quant Insight's unique data, analysis and solutions to understand how you and your team can easily integrate our information into your workflow.
Book a 15 minute intro call here



Or, simply complete the short enquiry form on this page, and one of our team will be in touch via email.
Name: 
Company email: 
Tel number (optional): 
Company: 
My geographical location is:

My asset class focus is:
Submit