About
Shane Hixon
I spent five years at an independent registered investment advisor in Los Angeles, working with high-net-worth families on portfolio construction, allocation, and planning.
Most of that time went to the parts of a portfolio that do not fit a model. I owned our team’s structured note book, evaluating new issuance across issuers and payoff structures, tracking calls and maturities, and executing reinvestment as notes rolled off. I built and maintained allocations across private equity, private credit, real estate, infrastructure, hedge funds, and interval funds, and ran the manager due diligence behind them: strategy, fees, liquidity terms, capital call mechanics, performance attribution.
I got there through a spreadsheet. Early on I rebuilt our structured note management and trading system in Python and VBA, replacing manual position monitoring and reporting with something that ran on its own. Building the system is how I ended up running the book.
What I write about
Markets, capital, and power.
The framing is broad on purpose. Most market commentary treats price as the subject. I am more interested in the systems underneath it: how capital gets allocated, who decides, what constraints they are actually operating under, and what history says about how similar arrangements ended.
The House View is the flagship. It runs on the argument that most of what looks unprecedented has a precedent, and that the precedent is usually better documented than the present.
Research pieces are narrower and often cover individual investment ideas. That is where five years of doing the work rather than reading about it is worth something.
I am not selling advice. Nothing here is a recommendation, and I have no advisory relationship with anyone reading it. When I hold a position in something I write about, I say so on the piece.
Before that
I studied economics and sociology at UCLA. The sociology half was not a detour. A good amount of what moves markets is people behaving predictably in groups, and economics does not teach that as well as it thinks it does.
I was a team analyst in the Federal Reserve Challenge and founded the Bruin Investment Association.
Credentials
CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional
California Life & Health Insurance License, current
Formerly registered, FINRA Series 7 and Series 66
Elsewhere
I race Ironman and marathons. Outside of training and work, I am with my family. I read more fiction than most people in this industry, which is on the reading list. Conversational Spanish, slowly improving.
