Verdad Weekly Research
Short, data-driven weekly notes from Dan Rasmussen's quant shop on small-cap value, leverage, credit spreads, private equity and crisis investing, plus free long-form e-books on crisis and countercyclical investing.
Free to read
Verdad's weekly research applies long historical data sets to questions most managers answer with anecdotes. Recurring themes include why leveraged small-value stocks resemble the buyout deals of the 1980s, whether private equity and private credit really earn their fees, how high-yield spreads signal the economic cycle, momentum crashes, Japanese equities, and what history says about tariffs and oil shocks. Each note is short, chart-led and ends with a clear conclusion.
The firm's featured papers go further. Crisis Investing studies how assets behave in and after panics, and Countercyclical Investing builds an allocation framework around the credit cycle. Both are free PDFs.
Use the weekly notes as a running seminar in empirical finance. Pick a theme and read the related notes together, and keep in mind that Verdad sells the strategies its research supports.
Start with
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1
Crisis Investing: How to Maximize Returns During Market Panics (2019)
The firm's core study of buying risk assets after spreads blow out.
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2
Countercyclical Investing (2021)
A 50-page framework for shifting asset allocation with the economic cycle.
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3
Why Hedge Funds Got Better While Private Equity Just Got Bigger (February 2026)
A recent note in the house style on fees and returns in alternatives.