Podcast Summary: Exchanges — "Looking for Trends: One River Asset Management’s Eric Peters"
Host: Tony Pascarello, Global Head of Hedge Fund Coverage, Goldman Sachs
Guest: Eric Peters, CEO of One River Asset Management & Coinbase Asset Management
Date: December 22, 2025
Episode Overview
In this episode, Tony Pascarello interviews Eric Peters, the founder and CEO of One River Asset Management and Coinbase Asset Management. The discussion dives into Eric’s journey from the Chicago trading pits to leading a multi-asset alternative investment manager and digital asset platform. Core topics include risk mitigation, trend following, the evolution of crypto, and macroeconomic trends shaping investment strategies today and into the next decade.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. Early Career Lessons: The Corn Pit and Risk Management
- Open-Outcry Origins: Eric began his trading career in the Chicago corn pit, learning key lessons in risk and survival, noting most peers were gone within two years.
- Quote: "Back in those days... you’d go through this orientation class and it was look left, look right, and not many people gonna make it. And that's—it was all about survival." (02:01)
- Risk Sensibility: Emphasis on surviving and managing personal capital planted the seed for Eric's lifelong risk mitigation ethos.
2. Building an Investment Philosophy: Wall Street and Beyond
- Transition to Wall Street: Initially resistant to Wall Street's bureaucracy, Eric thrived in London's entrepreneurial trading scene during the ERM crisis.
- Operating Experience: Founded and sold a financial company during the dot-com era, subsequently launching One River in 2013.
3. One River’s Approach: Risk Mitigation & Trend-Following
- Risk Mitigation Focus: One River specializes in combining trend-following with "long volatility" strategies as proactive risk mitigants, aiming to outperform equities over time.
- Opportunism: Constantly seeks emerging risks and opportunities, with a significant move into crypto investing in 2020.
- Quote: "The biggest thing we do for our clients is bring risk mitigation together with their existing portfolios to help them compound at a better rate than equities." (04:43)
4. Hedging: Theory and Practice
- Philosophy: Views 'hedging' holistically, more as portfolio insurance than tactical trading.
- Investor Blinders: Notes large investors often see hedging as too difficult or unnecessary due to long time horizons, but argues well-structured hedges not only protect but enable better compounding.
- Quote: "If you have good hedges in place ... when something happens you have your hedge which produces a lot of cash when mentally you're probably prone to make some pretty bad decisions." (06:13)
5. The Art & Science of Trend Following
- Trend As Universal Skill: Asserts that all great investors are, fundamentally, trend followers—whether systematic or discretionary.
- Discretionary vs. Systematic: The best discretionary investors (e.g., Soros) concentrate early in trends, while systematic approaches spread bets and remove emotion, often capitalizing on unforeseen dislocations.
- Quote: "All great investors are trend followers. They just are. Because what are you doing when you’re trying to capitalize on a trend? You are foreseeing something… that the market underappreciates today and you believe will somehow get priced in." (08:35)
- Performance Stats: Combined S&P and hedging up to 2x index; S&P, hedges, and trend following up to 40x since 2007. (11:34)
6. Recognizing Trend Endings: The Human Element
- Maximum Pain Indicator: In discretionary trading, Eric relies on market ‘pain points’ rather than valuation; systematic approaches struggle to codify this, though AI efforts continue.
- Quote: "You can’t teach that, unfortunately… If we ever figured it out, we have the magic money machine." (12:20)
7. Macro Trends: Debt Expansion & Policy Response
- Biggest Structural Trend: Identifies burgeoning government debt and lack of fiscal restraint as the defining global trend, leading to potential financial repression and long-term crisis.
- Quote: "There seems to be little to no spending restraint anywhere in the world... the size of government debt, unless we have a real productivity boom... probably leads to a very large financial crisis here sometime over the next decade." (14:16)
8. Interest Rate Expectations & Policy Strategy
- Government Priorities: Predicts the government will stoke economic growth, propel AI development, cheapen energy, suppress rates, and use policy to extend the cycle—delaying but not averting crisis.
- Quote: "During that period of time it’ll feel great… but I think you’ll still see these spending dynamics and... whatever crisis that comes in the backside of this AI boom... will be significant." (16:12)
9. Crypto Sector: Recent Bitcoin Movements & The Fundamental Framework
- Market Dynamics: Recent sharp sell-off driven by Wall Street-driven digital treasury companies, hype cycles, leverage, and then rotation out as AI and gold surge.
- Quote: "The price action’s been terrible... you just hit a point of saturation for the time being. And then there’s a lot of leverage in the system." (17:44)
- Bitcoin as Collateral: Sees bitcoin’s long-term potential as a decentralized, government-resistant form of global collateral, especially as trust in traditional sovereign assets erodes.
- Quote: "Bitcoin could become a blockchain or digitally native form of collateral that governments really can’t interfere with... bitcoin actually is the first big scale asset that could provide that source of collateral that no government in the world can touch." (20:16, 22:06)
10. The Future of Asset Management
- Generational Wealth Transfer: Envisions upcoming speculative shift as baby boomer wealth moves to younger generations, with greater risk appetite and DeFi technology influencing traditional markets.
- AI & Robo-Advisory: Predicts broad adoption of AI-driven investment tools, especially among younger investors, fundamentally reshaping market dynamics.
- Crisis Risk: Expects a coming debt-induced crisis (“like 08, but even bigger”) due to the government’s role as both ultimate backstop and source of risk.
- Quote: "We’re going to end up in quite a speculative market, which means the highs will be higher, the lows will be lower. I do think over the next decade we’re going to have this debt sustainability crisis." (24:09)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
- On Risk:
"I'd rather go home long a bit of volume than short vol. And that's just part of who I am." (06:06) - On Bitcoin Value:
"If bitcoin were worth as much as gold, it’d be like 1.3 or $4 million. Bitcoin, 30 trillion assets. And it's not." (20:44) - On Information Synthesis:
"I triangulate really well... I talk to a lot of people. I read a lot… For me, I don't care if an idea was my idea or not. I really just want to figure out how to make money for our investors." (25:49) - On Writing:
"When you put upon yourself the pressure to publish every week, it's a blessing and a curse... it rewires your brain." (26:31) - On Personal Life:
"I hope at the end of the day, like, I go down with a grizzly bear or a shark or, you know, something like that, as opposed to something really, really boring." (30:20)
Timestamps for Key Segments
- 00:59 — Eric Peters’ early risk management lessons in the Chicago corn pit
- 03:35 — Career development, Wall Street, and starting One River
- 04:27 — One River’s investment approach: risk mitigation and trend following
- 06:03 — How to think about hedging in today’s market
- 08:25 — The framework for trend following: discretionary vs. systematic
- 11:57 — Managing trend endings—discretionary “pain points” and systematic codification
- 14:14 — The most critical macro trend: global debt expansion
- 15:57 — Government’s economic strategy and AI focus
- 17:44 — Recent bitcoin price action and its drivers
- 20:16 — Bitcoin’s potential role as digital collateral
- 23:26 — The asset management industry over the next 5-10 years
- 25:49 — Eric’s greatest strengths, advice received, and investment heroes
- 29:54 — Life outside investing: passion for the mountains
Conclusion
Eric Peters shares a nuanced, perspective-rich take on macro investing, emphasizing the enduring importance of risk management, the evolving role of trend following, the narrative forces powering crypto, and the coming generational and technological shifts likely to reshape finance. Both philosophical and practical, this episode offers valuable insight for institutional and sophisticated investors seeking to prepare for the next wave of market change.