Adam Torres and Joseph Gradante discuss Allio Capital.
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Show Notes:
Allio was born out of an integration of the principles of 20th-century finance and 21st-century innovation. In this episode, Adam Torres and Joseph Gradante, Co-Founder & CEO of Allio Capital, explore Joseph’s journey as an entrepreneur and Allio Capital.
About Joseph Gradante
Joseph is a finance vet from NYC whose Aunt & Uncle helped pioneer the formation of the early hedge fund industry. He has an extensive background in capital markets, having spent several years as a buy-side global macro strategist, sales trader, and private money manager.
A natural entrepreneur who graduated during the ‘Great Recession’ he feels a special kinship and responsibility to Gen Z and Millenials to help them adapt to the new structural changes in the global economy. He used his experience navigating business cycles as the inspiration to build an investment app that truly gives all people access to advanced savings and investment strategies designed to hedge inflation by optimizing upside potential with downside protection via a combination of ML and human oversight via the Allio finance team.
About Allio Capital
Allio is an America first investment company that leverages the power of Altitude AI and macroeconomic insights to help investors thrive in modern finance.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on BR Guest to apply. Alright, to today’s special guest is Joseph Gradante and he is the co-founder and CEO over at Alleo Capital.
Joseph, welcome to the show. What’s up Adam? Glad to be here. Oh man. Glad to have you here. And we got, we got a good topic. So I definitely want to get into Allo Capital and also get into your background and really how you got started in finance. And I guess just to get us kicked off here, I see the, word co-founder.
I’m a co-founder myself. , What got you involved and , what inspired you to start Alleo Capital? Well, I graduated during the, great recession and it was a difficult time. Always thought I was gonna have this easy track in finance growing up in Manhattan watching some of my family members, you know, in the industry.
And, then everything blew up in, in 2007, 2008. So I think, entering the industry at that time gave me a, unique vantage point and, obviously there were a lot of shifts and, FinTech started to form, and so I got to watch it from its Nacient stage. But as I continued in the industry, I, collected multiple vantage points and really wanted to take those vantage points and bring them to the, introduce that to the general public, and that was kind of the inspiration behind Lio.
So you don’t know this, , but some of my long-term listeners may have heard but not , our newer ones. So I started in finance. I was in finance almost 14 years. And a funny, little fun fact about myself or for the show is my first day working at my very first firm was the absolute height of the market in 2007.
The exact day, I can look on a bar chart, find the day based off of that. From that point on, it went down. I was like, I don’t know if I caused it, Joseph. I like, no, I’m just playing. But if I was bad luck or I jinxed it, no. So we I’m curious like what was just for, the younger audience or those that didn’t exactly live or grow up at that exact time?
Like, and I, and actually just for myself ’cause you were in the heart of it. I was experiencing this for context. I was at in Scottsdale, Arizona at that point, working for the Vanguard Group. So I was in a different, world of finance and a different area. What was that like for you?
Like you were in the heart of it? Yeah. You know, it’s an interesting question. The first company that I, I was with, I, I entered with was Canford Shed. And, lost the most people in nine 11. So it was a really, I mean, when I think of the journey of Alleo it’s interesting in that I started there, you know, start point endpoint because I think, nine 11 was really the start of this rise of big government in a deep state that really had all these.
Greater implications, right. For the economy in the long run. So to start out at Canner and get that unique vantage point and then, end up on the buy side as a macro strategist mm-hmm. Trying to, you know, take that. political angle intro because our, you know, our mission and alley is to, really promote economic literacy.
Right? And so that’s the, catalyst behind macro investing. But yeah, basically, I mean, the best way I could sum it up in, in, short form is, I got into the industry, a lot of the guys that were sitting to the right and the left of me were. We’re making, seven figures as traders and brokers and that world went away so quickly with the rise of, of big government.
And so I think a lot of young people today, they didn’t get a chance to see capitalism in, in its purest form. And so I think that’s why a lot of them don’t believe in it. And that’s why, that’s one of the, catalysts behind Bill an alley. Man, I love that you bring that up. And one other just quick, fun fact.
So when I was in high school, I worked for Raymond James and before I, I did graduate before the tech wreck came up in 2002, but you just, when you sat looking at the guys to your right and left that are making seven figures, I remember back then it was like, you know, 98 time period ish to 2000.
You just put money in the.com and you’re making money. Right? They put.com at the end of anything and you were doing something. I was like, oh, that’s how you make money. It’s so easy. That’s what you invest in Joseph? Yeah. I thought life was gonna be so easy. You know, when I was entering college, my friends were making seven figures their first year out.
Oh. And I was like, ah, this is gonna be a cake, Walter. My life’s gonna be great. And 2008 changed all that. All right. Enough lick in our wounds. so your thesis, your original thesis, or I shouldn’t say your original thesis, but when you for Allo Capital, specifically as a strategist and thinking about like making investment decisions based off.
Interplay of elections, policy, economics, like a lot of different routes that you could have gone, or different thesises or different angles that you could have gone. Why this, and why was this something that you felt like so strong about that you’d be, starting a firm based on it, number one and number two, just know that this would be a direction you take in life.
Well, ’cause when I look at FinTech, right, and I think of there’s, there’s really, it’s bifurcated, but, we’ll, start on the left side, which is the more popular side, the trading apps. 92% of people are losing money there, right? Mm-hmm. And it’s because they have this bottom up approach to investing.
And you know, my uncle who had started the fund and was involved in their, you know, the early formation of the hedge fund industry, I came outta college with a degree in economics, political science, and public policy. So he taught me the macro framework. And I really didn’t know anything about fundamental analysis yet.
I noticed that I was, my portfolios were doing better than a lot of the, the CFAs, if you will. Mm-hmm. That were looking just at fundamentals strictly because. I understood the geopolitical landscape and I could pick, asset classes and sectors based on how geopolitics was setting that up. And now, you know, we’re in the, the alternate macro climate.
I didn’t know that when I was starting allo. Yeah. That it would play out so strongly, but it’s, that narrative has continues to play. Since, you know, artificially low interest rates that were introduced as a result of the, Great Recession. And I think there’s so much opportunity. I’ll just give you an easy example, right?
Like Trump gets elected proposes these 145% tariffs on China, the market panics and it sells off. So now you have all these stocks and ETFs that are super cheap. And yet there’s no underlying economic weakness to support the devaluation, right, of these companies. And mm-hmm. It was just panic. It was just based on psychology.
And so people understood the way that geopolitics move markets they can exploit that and reap the gains. And I don’t think the current solutions today in the market really set people up for success. I think they, they actually position them for failure. Hmm. So speaking of Trump, I mean, do you think his presidency has the opportunity to restore or help American prosperity versus hurt it?
Like, like where do you stand on the issue? I. Oh, I don’t think there’s any debate. Help it. I think you know, America’s going into its 205th anniversary and we are extremely fortunate to have Trump as our president. And I think a lot of young people haven’t had a chance to experience what’s coming in the Trump presidency.
But if you just look at, $5 trillion of new investment, mm-hmm. This reconciliation bill, you know we’ll either create. Or save, you know, up to 8 million jobs, you’re talking about up to $12,000. More annual take home per individual, 13,000 per family. So I think, you know, it goes back to Calvin College’s, quote, the Business of America is business.
And yet that’s been. Taken away from us on a lot of levels, and I think the Trump presidency is gonna just introduce this climate of rapid growth and innovation that’s gonna help the younger generations really not just learn, but experience what it truly means to be an American. Hmm. and that concept of like the prosperity and like what I said I would be done looking at like, being like sad about 2008, but what you talked about, and it takes me back as the possibility of what you’re saying right now.
Like, graduating and you didn’t say this, I’m saying this graduating college when there’s an upswing of potential. and of new things happening and new investment and new opportunity versus, you know, when I graduated and we were going into the, housing crisis and it was not a very trusting time for the market.
And that whole, you know, pocket of generation is kind of. Lost for certain things in terms of years. So if, you know, the things play out like they could in this current cycle that we’re in man, what, what opportunity for our youth, and not, not just our youth, but those that are participating in the market.
Do you, do you agree with what I’m saying? Or am I off anything percent? I think hundred percent. Rising tide lifts all boats, right? Yeah. And so fiscal policy, this goes back to. The core of macro investing, which is mm-hmm. You know, understanding fiscal policy and monetary policy, and I think. You know, a lot of people have been indoctrinated in, in the higher learning experience to believe that somehow government’s gonna be the solution, you know, to our problems.
But history has told us that government is rarely, in fact, for the most part, never the solution to our problems, the solution to our problems. That is human ingenuity. But you need macro conditions to foster that ingenuity. And so when you look at something like. Trump administration is introducing in the form of deregulation and tax cuts.
That is a net debit to the country in the sense that, you know, now you’re unleashing all this capital which leads to unlocks the, animal spirits and, that leads. Jobs. And ironically, believe it or not, I mean it also leads to the social programs that, you know, many of us care about. There’s actually more money coming into the government to pay for those social programs.
So it’s a net win on so many fronts. And and the last thing I’d say even, you know, shutting down the borders. I mean, from that perspective at least there’s a finite number of people then chasing. X amount of jobs and so workers can get higher wages ’cause they’re not being undermined by, by this cheap labor.
So really it’s a win-win on all fronts. We haven’t seen anything close to this. I mean, think of the Walt that was created in the eighties and nineties, right? Yeah. When, when Reagan and Volker introduced their policies. this is what I’m alluding to with macro investing. Mm-hmm. And the importance of history.
‘ cause you look at what happened then, and I think, you know, this wave could be even bigger than that wave. People have to be in the market, like you said, to be able to take advantage of it. And by market, I mean in the economy, I don’t necessarily just mean the stock market. So it’s great to be there as well.
and I don’t, I want this to come across as a loaded question, especially for my audience. I want everybody understand that at the end of this, I’ll give Joseph the opportunity to leave. Websites, contact information, things like that so that you can, follow up questions, you can ask about your direct situation.
But in general, Joseph, what are some like themes that investors that are either in the market or not in the market, what, should people, what should be on their mind right now? what should they be considering? you know, again, not to tie in this investment team, but I. what we’re seeing right now is you wanna have a combination of risk on and risk assets and so, mm-hmm.
You know, the innovation that I just mentioned, you’re gonna see growth in, tech. The deregulation’s gonna lead to growth in finance. But I think you always want to be prepared for a potential Black Swan event. ’cause there’s things, you know, outside of the administration’s control. I mean, you look at the China, Taiwan situation, so I think, like.
Gold risk, off asset, Bitcoin having these hedges built into the portfolio. Yeah. So, you know, that’s what we’re seeing in, that context. Yeah. That’s great. Yeah, I think I have to agree with that. And what becomes also, I like that you bring up the, black swan side of things is just seeing like, ugh.
I think one, thing I’d add to it is also just not saying you left it out, but just a consideration is just thinking about like what your actual goals are with your investments. Right. just thinking about like what, how everything works together and what, your plans are for that money.
Because it’s not always, like you said, risk on risk off, right. Situation, but it’s not always about milking every bit of return. Like you gotta make sure you’re safe still, that you’re, you’re investing towards your objectives, right? Oh, a hundred percent. I, I think, you know. On that front.
I would add, and this goes to the right side of FinTech, you know, a lot of the so-called roboadvisors, they offer these 60 40 portfolios. And certainly, I mean, if your goal is to take your money out in, a, five year timeframe, you might want to minimize volatility. But I think in general, younger people should have a lot less exposure to bonds.
’cause again, all things equal and all things are never equal. So I’m, I’m speaking in generalizations here, but if you’re younger and you have this, you know, dirty, you’re fortunate enough to have this 34, 30 to 40 year outlook on your investments, well then, your goal should. For most people, right?
Everybody’s different. But for me it’s growth and it’s always growth. And therefore that’s why I’m alluding to that perfect combination mm-hmm. Of risk on risk off assets where you have some hedging in there. If things shift quickly, you could take advantage of that. You know, with something like gold and Bitcoin as opposed to say an an asset class like bonds, which are more designed to minimize volatility, but are mm-hmm.
Positively correlated to equity. So I think, you know, their use in portfolios has become, it’s a lot less important than it was when Markowitz came out with modern portfolio theory. Mm-hmm. Well, Joseph, this has been great. If somebody’s watching or listening to this and if they wanna follow up, they wanna connect with you and learn more, how do they do that?
Yeah, Allo capital.com, A-L-L-I-O allo capital.com. You could also check us out in the iOS or the Google Play Store. And yeah, perfect. And for you listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put those links in the show notes so you can just click on the link and head right on over . and speaking to the audience. If this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button.
This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Joseph, thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you, Adam.