Aarion Capital Founder and CIO Aarush Garg views the United States, Canada and Mexico as parts of an increasingly interconnected North American financial system shaped by rates, energy, commodities, currencies and cross-border capital flows.

The lines separating national financial markets are becoming increasingly difficult to draw. Interest-rate decisions can move currencies across borders. Changes in energy and commodity prices can affect inflation expectations, corporate earnings and economic growth. Capital can move quickly between regions, while geopolitical events and real-time information can reshape investor sentiment across multiple markets at once.

 

For Aarush Garg, Founder and Chief Investment Officer of New York-based Aarion Capital LP, understanding those relationships is an increasingly important part of modern investment management. Aarion does not currently operate in Canada or maintain a dedicated Canadian investment strategy. Garg instead views the country through the firm’s broader global-macro and North American framework.

 

Aarion takes a multi-asset approach across equities, fixed income, commodities, options and derivatives. Its research process considers macroeconomic conditions and event-driven situations, particularly when changing expectations create potential market dislocations. Within that framework, the United States, Canada and Mexico are not treated as isolated stories. They are parts of a regional system connected through trade, capital, commodities, rates, currencies and business activity.

A North American Market That Does Not Operate in Isolation

Aarion’s investment philosophy starts from the idea that markets influence one another. An economic development rarely affects only one security, industry or country. Central-bank policy can alter financing conditions. Financing conditions can influence corporate investment and valuations. Interest-rate differences can move currencies and redirect capital. Commodity prices can affect inflation, growth and sector leadership.

 

Those relationships are especially visible across North America. The United States is the region’s largest capital market, Canada has significant exposure to energy and natural resources, and Mexico plays an important role in manufacturing, trade and cross-border economic activity. Developments in one country can therefore change the operating environment faced by businesses, investors and policymakers elsewhere in the region.

 

Garg’s broader macro research focuses on themes including rates, inflation, energy, growth, volatility and cross-border capital movement. Rather than treating each variable independently, Aarion attempts to understand how they interact and where second-order effects may emerge.

 

That interconnectedness is one reason Garg believes investment firms should think internationally even when their headquarters, personnel and primary operations remain concentrated in one country. Markets, information and capital increasingly move across borders faster than organizational footprints do.

Canada as One Part of a Larger System

Canada is relevant to that analysis not because Aarion is manufacturing a Canada-specific investment thesis, but because the country occupies a meaningful place in the wider North American economic system. Its energy and commodity exposure, monetary policy, currency and commercial ties with the United States can all affect the broader environment investors are evaluating.

 

Energy provides a straightforward example. Moves in oil and other commodities can influence inflation expectations, transportation costs, industrial activity, corporate margins and the relative performance of different sectors. For a global-macro investor, those relationships can matter even when the underlying security being analyzed is not Canadian.

 

The distinction is important: recognizing a macroeconomic relationship is not the same as inventing a country-specific strategy where one does not exist. Garg’s approach is to understand the connections that can influence risk and opportunity without overstating the firm’s exposure or presence in any particular market.

Rates, Currencies and Cross-Border Capital

Interest rates create another link across the region. Differences in monetary policy between major economies can influence currency valuations, financing conditions and the movement of capital. Those changes can then affect relative valuations, business activity and investment returns across asset classes.

Aarion’s research process therefore considers central-bank policy alongside inflation data, economic releases, geopolitical developments, commodities, corporate catalysts and market positioning. The objective is not simply to predict the next policy decision. It is to understand how a change in expectations might travel through currencies, equities, bonds, commodities and cross-border capital flows.

 

That broader view also extends beyond the United States and Canada. Garg has traveled to Mexico for business, giving him direct exposure to another part of the North American commercial landscape. The experience reinforces the idea that regional markets are shaped not only by financial data, but also by how companies, investors and operators conduct business across borders.

Volatility Requires Structure, Not Just Speed

Garg’s interest in markets began when he was young, and early experiences with volatile assets eventually pushed him toward a more structured approach to risk. Rather than treating volatility itself as an opportunity, Aarion now works within position-sizing limits and broader portfolio risk parameters before capital is deployed.

 

Garg sees volatility as a period in which expectations, positioning and pricing can change rapidly, whether markets are moving up, down or sideways. Those conditions may create dislocations worth evaluating, but they do not automatically create attractive trades.

 

“The best investment decision is sometimes the one you don’t take,” Garg says.

 

That principle matters in an interconnected market because shocks can move quickly from one asset class or geography to another. A disciplined process is intended to help the firm distinguish between a meaningful change in the opportunity set and noise that does not justify taking additional risk.

Technology Supports the Research Process

The amount of information investment teams must process has also increased. Real-time financial news, social media, algorithmic trading, options activity and artificial intelligence have accelerated the speed at which information reaches markets.

 

Aarion has developed VAL — Volatility Analytics and Logistics — as an internal system that supports research and portfolio analysis by organizing market conditions, exposures, catalysts and internal information into analytical outputs. Garg emphasizes that VAL is not designed to manage the portfolio autonomously. Final investment decisions remain human.

 

“AI is useful when it directly helps you make better-informed decisions,” Garg says.

 

For Garg, the value of technology is in helping an investment team process information, compare scenarios and evaluate exposures more efficiently. He is more cautious about treating models as though they can predict markets with certainty. Information can be incomplete, assumptions can fail and unexpected events can change conditions quickly.

Information Is Faster, but Understanding Still Matters

The same technological shift that gives professional investors more tools has also changed the experience of individual market participants. News can arrive almost instantly, analytical platforms are more widely available and market commentary is continuous.

 

But more information does not automatically create more understanding. A headline may reach millions of people at the same time, while its implications for rates, currencies, commodities, positioning and individual securities can take much longer to evaluate.

 

Algorithms can accelerate reactions. Social media can spread information and misinformation. Short-dated options can add leverage and hedging activity. Global liquidity can transmit developments from one market into another. Aarion’s response has been to focus less on consuming the largest possible quantity of information and more on applying a repeatable framework to what matters.

Building a Process Around Uncertainty

That framework has become a central part of how Garg thinks about building Aarion. The firm maintains internal research, strategy records and documentation around investment decisions so the team can examine not only whether a trade succeeded or failed, but why the decision was made in the first place.

 

The goal is to preserve institutional knowledge: which assumptions supported a decision, what changed, which parts of a thesis held up and which did not. Garg sees that process as a way to improve decision-making over time while acknowledging that uncertainty cannot be removed from investing.

 

“My role today is no longer simply about finding the next trade,” Garg says. “It is about continuing to develop the strategy, building processes around it, and creating an organization capable of executing and improving that approach over time.”

Thinking Beyond One Country

Aarion Capital is headquartered at The Spiral in Hudson Yards, New York City, and primarily operates in the United States. It does not currently maintain dedicated Canadian operations or Canada-specific investor relationships. The firm has instead been developing its investment process, research capabilities, technology, team and broader international relationships.

 

For Garg, a physical presence in every country is not required for developments there to matter. Canadian energy markets can influence the macro environment. Differences in U.S. and Canadian monetary policy can affect currencies and capital flows. Mexico’s trade and manufacturing links can shape regional business conditions. Companies themselves increasingly operate through supply chains, customers, investors and counterparties that cross national borders.

 

This is why Garg views North America less as three separate financial stories and more as a network of interconnected economies. Geography still matters, but isolation is increasingly difficult to assume.

Looking Toward the Investment Firm of 2030

Garg expects the investment firm of the next decade to become significantly more technology-enabled and internationally connected. AI and quantitative tools will likely play a larger role in research and portfolio analysis. Information will continue moving faster, and capital markets will remain closely linked across borders.

 

But he does not expect those developments to eliminate the basic requirements of investing. Human judgment, risk controls and accountability remain central to Aarion’s approach.

 

For the firm, that means continuing to build a process capable of analyzing an increasingly complicated world without assuming that technology or access to information can remove uncertainty. Canada is one component of that picture, alongside the United States, Mexico and markets farther abroad.

 

The larger challenge is understanding how rates, commodities, currencies, capital flows, business activity and market expectations interact across borders — and deciding when those relationships create risks or opportunities worth acting on.

 

For Garg, that increasingly interconnected view is becoming less of an international overlay and more of a basic requirement for modern investment management.

To learn more about Aarion Capital and its investment approach, visit aarioncapital.com.