Inflation Insights brings nearly two decades of experience forecasting and analyzing US inflation data, with a particular emphasis on the CPI. The CPI is a cornerstone of financial markets, and there is no better guide to understanding it than Omair Sharif, the founder and president of Inflation Insights.

Omair has 18 years of experience on the sell-side, including at Greenwich Capital/RBS Securities, where he began his career. Omair was tasked with spearheading the firm’s coverage of US inflation. His publication, Inflation Watch, was widely read among market participants and his unique bottom-up approach to forecasting and analyzing inflation trends won him a wide audience among inflation market participants. He continued building on his success at Société Générale and later at Millennium Management, where he was part of a team that actively traded inflation.

Throughout his 20 years, Omair has continually strived to better understand and accurately forecast the CPI. His experience and knowledge of the CPI’s methodology have given him a consistent edge in forecasting that is uniquely suited to benefit inflation market participants.

Omair’s views are widely sought out by inflation traders, money managers, and the media. He has been quoted in the WSJ, FT, Bloomberg, Barron’s, New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters, Marketwatch and has appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, Yahoo Finance TV, and the Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast.

Ronnie is managing partner of Incrementum AG and responsible for Research and Portfolio Management. He studied business administration and finance in the USA and at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, and also gained work experience at the trading desk of a bank during his studies. Upon graduation he joined the research department of Erste Group, where in 2007 he published his first In Gold We Trust report. Over the years, the In Gold We Trust report has become one of the benchmark publications on gold, money, and inflation. Since 2013 he has held the position as reader at scholarium in Vienna, and he also speaks at Wiener Börse Akademie (the Vienna Stock Exchange Academy). In 2014, he co-authored the international bestseller Austrian School for Investors, and in 2019 The Zero Interest Trap. He is a member of the board of directors at Tudor Gold Corp. (TUD), and Goldstorm Metals Corp. (GSTM). Moreover, he is an advisor to VON GREYERZ AG, a global leader in wealth preservation in the form of physical gold stored outside the banking system.

John Hathaway joined Sprott Asset Management USA, Inc. in January 2020. Mr. Hathaway is a Senior Portfolio Manager of Sprott Hathaway Special Situations Strategy and Co-Portfolio Manager of the Sprott Gold Equity Fund. Previously, Mr. Hathaway joined Tocqueville Asset Management L.P. in 1997 where he was a Co-Portfolio Manager of the Tocqueville Gold Fund as well as other investment vehicles in the Tocqueville Gold Equity Strategy. He was also the Portfolio Manager of private funds. Prior to joining Tocqueville, Mr. Hathaway co-founded and managed Hudson Capital Advisors followed by seven years with Oak Hall Advisors as the Chief Investment Officer in 1986. In 1976, he joined the investment advisory firm David J. Greene and Company, where he became a Partner. Mr. Hathaway began his career in 1970 as an Equity Analyst with Spencer Trask & Co. Mr. Hathaway earned a B.A. from Harvard College and an MBA from the University of Virginia. Mr. Hathaway was also the Chairman of Tocqueville Management Corporation, the General Partner of Tocqueville. He also holds the CFA^® designation.

Ed is the founder and CEO of Devlin Capital. He oversees the process to identify global opportunities and will be responsible for each strategy’s performance.

Ed’s most recent role was as a managing director, lead portfolio manager for US Total Return portfolios and head of Canadian portfolio management after almost 15 years at PIMCO. Ed co-founded PIMCO Canada and led the business to raise over C$50 billion from Canadian clients. From 2009-2014, Ed was based in London and responsible for all sterling and euro denominated Liability Driven Investing (LDI) portfolios, he was a permanent member of the European portfolio committee that oversaw $500 billion in assets. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2006, he worked in London, Tokyo, Toronto, Hong Kong and New York in progressively more senior fixed income positions at Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

He is a Senior Fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute.

Based in Fort Worth, Texas, Gordon Dee Smith is Founder and CEO of Strategic Insight Group, a private intelligence and research firm that serves a client base of large investors, operating companies, and law firms, and works in more than 100 countries. He has advised on over US $120 billion in investment transactions and has conducted projects in areas ranging from geopolitical and global change risk analysis to enhanced due diligence and transactional and market intelligence for the finance, technology, defense, energy, retail, transportation, and healthcare industries, among others. His clients include several of the world’s largest institutional investors.

Currently, he is: a board member of Global Americans (a think-tank on hemispheric issues based in Washington, DC), a board member and past president of the board of the Dallas Committee on Foreign Relations; and immediate past chair and a member of the Advisory Council of the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies and Benson Library of the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York; of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs) in London; of the Bretton Woods Committee in Washington, D.C.; and of the Advisory Board of the Houston Committee on Foreign Relations. He has been active on several boards in arts and cultural organizations in Texas, New York, and Wyoming, currently including the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.

Mark Yusko is the Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Morgan Creek Capital Management. He is also the Managing Partner of Morgan Creek Digital. Morgan Creek Capital Management was founded in 2004 and currently manages close to $2 billion in discretionary and non-discretionary assets. Prior to founding Morgan Creek, Mr. Yusko was CIO and Founder of UNC Management Company (UNCMC), the Endowment investment office for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before that, he was Senior Investment Director for the University of Notre Dame Investment Office.

Mr. Yusko has been at the forefront of institutional investing throughout his career. An early investor in alternative asset classes at Notre Dame, he brought the Endowment Model of investing to UNC, which contributed to significant performance gains for the Endowment. The Endowment Model is the cornerstone philosophy of Morgan Creek, as is the mandate to Invest in Innovation. Mr. Yusko is again at the forefront of institutional investing through Morgan Creek Digital Assets, which was formed in 2018. Morgan Creek Digital is an early stage investor in blockchain technology, digital currency and digital assets.

Mr. Yusko received a BA with Honors from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA in Accounting and Finance from the University of Chicago.

Mr. Gundlach is CEO of DoubleLine.  In 2011, he appeared on the cover of Barron’s as “The New Bond King.”  In 2013, Institutional Investor named him “Money Manager of the Year.”  In 2012, 2015 and 2016, he was named one of “The Fifty Most Influential” in Bloomberg Markets.  In 2017, he was inducted into the FIASI Fixed Income Hall of Fame.  Mr. Gundlach is a summa cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College, with degrees in Mathematics and Philosophy.

Founder, Dreamium Labs and Founding Board Member, Kwaai.ai, Mike is a visionary leader with a passionate focus on innovation and execution. His background includes instrumental roles leading to multi-billion-dollar exits at Compaq (HP), AltaVista (Yahoo), Shopping.com (Ebay), and Broadcom that helped to shape the previous two major computer eras, the PC Era and the Internet Era.

He’s led breakthrough product introductions and market-shaping initiatives such as affordable color scanners, PC market segmentation, multimedia PCs, advanced 3D graphics engines, digitally connected device infrastructure, internet search advertising, e-commerce, DRM for digital media, wireless streaming, productizing EVs, and green Bitcoin mining rigs. His strategic and operational leadership led to the development of six separate #1 market-leading and profitable businesses.

He is the founder of Dreamium Labs which pioneered self-sovereign identity for Web 3 and AI applications. He is also the founding board member of Kwaai.ai, contributing the technology building blocks to standardize open-source AI that ethically solves issues of authentication, privacy, and personal intellectual property.

He’s a strong believer in the power of highly diverse teams aligned behind an aspirational purpose. He recently led a company in crisis to its first “Best Places to Work” award while delivering record growth and profitability. Success starts with a culture of respect, teamwork, and relentless focus on customer delight which he’s embedded in shaping the culture of Dreamium Labs.

Barbara is a former top-ranked sell-side Equity Analyst and the Founder of Brady Capital Research Inc., a leading-edge investment research firm focused on technological, societal and economic disruption.

Barbara ranked as an All-Star Analyst for four consecutive years, achieving top-three standing each year in the Business Trust Sector in the Brendan Wood annual institutional survey. Barbara’s analytical prowess is built on a rich foundation of over fifteen years in sell-side equity research across both Canada and the US, encompassing a diverse range of sectors. This multi-dimensional perspective is her secret weapon: a panoramic view that’s invaluable in today’s fragmented AI landscape.

Beyond numbers, Barbara’s written narrative unfolds across ten critically acclaimed books, including recent insights into technological paradigm shifts like The New Cyber Decade and Secrets of the Amazon. Her works have not just predicted disruptions but illuminated pathways for organizations to navigate and thrive amidst them.

But what truly sets Barbara apart? It’s her unwavering belief that the past informs the future. Drawing upon her vast sectoral coverage—from North American consumer trends to industrial products and energy landscapes—she translates historical data into future opportunities. It’s this rare blend of retrospective analysis and forward-thinking strategy that makes Barbara an indispensable guide for companies aiming to unlock unparalleled value through AI.

Barbara has a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance) from the University of British Columbia (1993) and earned her CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) designation in 1997.

Niall Ferguson, MA, DPhil, FRSE, is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is the author of sixteen books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, Empire, Civilization and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Prize. He is an award-winning filmmaker, too, having received an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. His 2018 book, The Square and the Tower, was a New York Times bestseller and was also adapted for television by PBS as Niall Ferguson’s Networld. In 2020 he joined Bloomberg Opinion as a columnist. In addition, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, a New York-based advisory firm, a co-founder of Ualá (a Latin American financial technology company), and a trustee of the New York Historical Society, the London-based Centre for Policy Studies, and the newly founded University of Austin. His latest book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, was published in 2021 by Penguin and was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize. He is currently writing Kissinger, 1969-2023: The Player and serving as a visiting professor at the London School of Economics.

Martin Fridson is “perhaps the most well-known figure in the high yield world,” according to Investment Dealers’ Digest. At brokerage firms including Salomon Brothers, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch, he became known for his innovative work in credit analysis and investment strategy. For nine consecutive years he was ranked number one in high yield strategy in the Institutional Investor All America Research Survey.

Fridson received his B.A. cum laude in history from Harvard College and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He has served as president of the Fixed Income Analysts Society, governor of the CFA Institute, director of the New York Society of Security Analysts, and consultant to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

The Financial Management Association International named Fridson the Financial Executive of the Year in 2002. In 2000, he became the youngest person inducted up to that time in the Fixed Income Analysts Society Hall of Fame. A study based on 16 core journals ranked Fridson among the ten most widely published authors in finance in the period 1990-2001. In 2013 Fridson served as Special Assistant to the Director for Deferred Compensation, Office of Management and the Budget, The City of New York. The CFA Society New York, presented Fridson with its Ben Graham Award in 2017.

In 2000, The Green Magazine called Fridson’s Financial Statement Analysis “one of the most useful investment books ever.” The Boston Globe said his 2006 book, Unwarranted Intrusions: The Case Against Government Intervention in the Marketplace, should be short-listed for best business book of the decade.

Fridson’s commentary on economics and financial markets can be found on forbes.com

Gerard S. Cassidy is a Managing Director of Equity Research with RBC Capital Markets. Gerard S. Cassidy was a Managing Director of Equity Research with Tucker Anthony Sutro Capital Markets, which was acquired by the Royal Bank of Canada in 2001. Mr. Cassidy joined Tucker Anthony Sutro in March 1988 as a bank equity analyst. He is responsible for providing bank and regional economic research to the firm’s clients. Prior to joining Tucker Anthony Sutro, he was employed by UNUM Corporation as a senior bank analyst. Mr. Cassidy began his professional career with Gulf+Western, Industries as a merger and acquisitions analyst.

Mr. Cassidy is the creator of the Texas Ratio, a ratio used by investors to determine whether a bank could be insolvent. He is often quoted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Forbes, Business Week, The American Banker and other leading newspapers and periodicals regarding the banking industry. Additionally, he has appeared on CNBC, CNN, NBC, BNN, National Public Radio and other leading broadcasts discussing banking and economic issues and its impact on bank stocks. Mr. Cassidy earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maine in accounting and finance in 1980. He received his Masters of Business Administration degree from St. John’s University in 1984. Mr. Cassidy is a former Board of Director and Secretary of the New York Bank and Financial Analysts Association. He is currently the President of the BancAnalysts Association of Boston, Inc. Mr. Cassidy was also on the Board of Directors of Tucker Anthony Sutro Capital Markets.