THE Constraint Framework Brought to life
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"Geopolitical Alpha is quite literally a bookend for a new paradigm in global markets. Geopolitics is now as relevant to investors as macroeconomics and central banking were in the last paradigm."
Alan Howard
Founder
Brevan Howard
Not long ago, financial markets danced and central bankers called the tune. Today, investors confront a discordant world transformed by political paradigm shifts. In Geopolitical Alpha, investment strategist Marko Papic shares his framework for making sense of the new macro landscape.
By focusing on material constraints, investors can ignore the ephemeral and irrelevant, generating consistent alpha even in the face of extreme uncertainty.
Geopolitical Alpha is the guide to the future for anyone interested in geopolitics, economics, and finance.
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Author
Marko Papic
BCA Research - Chief Strategist
Marko is a Senior Vice President and Chief Strategist at BCA Research, the world's oldest independent macro research firm. At BCA Research, he leads the firm's premier service, BCA Access. As the firm’s macro concierge, Marko is the clients’ focal point to access the firm’s vast expert network and in-depth,
custom, research. He also produces the fully discretionary, thematic, GeoMacro Strategy.Prior to re-joining BCA Research, Marko was a Partner and Chief Strategist at Clocktower Group, an alternative investment asset management firm based in Santa Monica, California. He led the firm’s Strategy Team, providing bespoke research to investors and partners on geopolitics, macroeconomics, and markets. While at Clocktower, Marko helped seed discretionary macro hedge funds and started a green technology fund.
Marko founded BCA Research’s Geopolitical Strategy practice (GPS) in 2012, the financial industry’s first dedicated political analysis investment strategy. The GPS service generates geopolitical alpha by identifying gaps between the market’s political expectations and the firm’s forecasts. He began his career as a Senior Analyst at Stratfor, a global intelligence agency where he contributed to the firm’s global geopolitical strategy as well as its analyst recruitment and training program. In his academic work, he helped create the Center for European Union Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He has lectured at Stanford University, The Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins, Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto, McGill University, and the University of British Columbia (UBC). Marko holds an MA in Political Science from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA from the UBC.
Born in Belgrade, Serbia, he has lived in Iraq, Jordan, Switzerland, Czechia, Canada, and the U.S. When he is not writing macro and geopolitical research, you can find him coaching his kids’ basketball games or balling with the locals on the mean streets of Santa Monica.
Reviews & Media
Matt Gertken
Chief Geopolitical Strategist, BCA Research
"Throughout the work, the analytical style can be characterized as restless energy in the service of cool, chess-playing logic."
Momoe Ikeda-Chelminska
Director, Educational Events & Programs, CFA Institute
"Papic posits that investors can prepare for upcoming events and beat the market while they’re at it..."
Ted Seides
Founder of Capital Allocators
"... an imminently readable book... Marko's approach is akin to Moneyball for politics, challenging the orthodoxy..."
BLOOMBERG
The Best Books of 2020 List
"... We are in a new world. To understand it, step away from the economic textbook and pick up Geopolitical Alpha..."
Jacob Shapiro
The Perch Pod
"... Geopolitical Alpha, was a special treat... gives real world, tangible insight into how to apply geopolitics as a methodology to investing..."
Lauren Foster
Take 15 Podcast
"... takes listeners on a worldwide tour that starts with his constraints-based framework and continues through the recent US presidential election and on to US-China relations, Brexit, the Middle East, and Russia..."
Sarah p. & Mike R.
What Goes Up
"... discuss how the current economic and market cycle will be vastly different than the tepid recovery from the global financial crisis. He jokingly uses slogans from Reddit's WallStreetBets forum to describe the risk-taking posture he believes investors will maintain..."
Leslie Norton
Q&A
"... Many geopolitical analysts expect a bifurcated planet organized around U.S. and Chinese interests. Not so for Marko Papic, chief strategist of Clocktower Group, who sees a return to a 19th-century system in which nations act solely in their own interests, and allies become frenemies..."
Buttonwood
The Pitfalls of trading geopolitical risk
"... But there are pitfalls for the unwary, as Marko Papic of Clocktower Group, an alternative-investment firm, argues in his book “Geopolitical Alpha”... As Mr Papic shows in his book, the pattern from the 1962 Cuban missile crisis onwards is for a short-term fall in America’s stockmarket to be followed by a rally over the following year, and often quite a strong one."
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The Constraint-Framework in Action
2024 - Capital Decanted
A New Global Order: Integrating Geopolitics with Marko Papic
2023 - MacroVoices
Investment Implications of Geopolitics Around the World
2020 - Real Vision
2020 Setting the Stage: The Next Decade for Geopolitics and Markets
2021- Real Vision
Generating Geopolitical Alpha
2022 - Market Huddle
Predicting Macro Soup
2021 - Market Huddle
Bathe Yourself in Indifference
