Victor Haghani on Death of Random Walk, and Passive, Buybacks, and LTCM

Victor Haghani — founder of Elm Wealth, co-author of “The Missing Billionaires” and former founding partner of Long-Term Capital Management — joins Monetary Matters to explain why the stock market doesn't follow a random walk. Drawing on his new paper "Who Killed the Random Walk?", Victor lays out a model where value investors, static asset allocators, and "extrapolators" interact to produce the excess volatility, momentum, and boom-bust cycles that classical finance theory can't explain. Jack and Victor debate whether passive investing is really to blame for market distortions, why stock buybacks are propping up the entire market, and why Elm Wealth's own models say US equities should only return about 6% a year despite blistering AI-driven earnings growth. Victor also breaks down the strange truth that "return chasing" and momentum investing sound identical but perform in opposite ways — and reveals how Elm actually allocates client capital across US and international stocks today. Recorded before Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness hedge fund imploded on a leveraged AI trade, Victor's answer about what really went wrong at LTCM in 1998 turned out to be eerily well-timed. Recorded July 21, 2026. Victor Haghani (Elm Wealth) on X https://x.com/ElmWealth Jack Farley on X https://x.com/JackFarley96 “The Missing Billionaires: A Guide to Better Financial Decisions”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119747910?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback Follow Monetary Matters on: Apple Podcasts https://rb.gy/s5qfyh Spotify https://rb.gy/x56dx5 YouTube https://rb.gy/dpwxez