Interview Recorded - 16th of March, 2023

On todays episode of the WTFinance podcast I had the pleasure of speaking with Michael Kao, a Private investor with 30 years experience and author of the great newsletter Kaoboy Musings.

During our conversation we spoke about what is happening with the banking crisis, whether shadow banks will be at risk, if China could be the canary in the coal mind, structural inflation for longer and what this mean for assets moving forward. I hope you enjoy!

0:00 - Introduction 
1:38 - What is currently happening with the bank crisis?
9:08 - Are Central Banks willing to do whatever it takes to save banks?
15:34 - Illiquid asset funds at risk?
21:38 - Can banks save themselves?
24:13 - Why will interest rates and inflations be higher for longer?
30:28 - When will supply singularity occur and will it be in all commodity markets?
35:18 - What assets will perform during an inflationary, commodity period?
39:58 - What indicators will tell Michael when we are at the bottom?
45:28 - Which Central Banks will be more dovish?
48:08 - Where do find Michael’s work?

Mike has been in the investment business for ~30 years and has experience analyzing and investing in many markets and asset classes, spanning commodities to credit to convertible/capital structure/event arbitrage to distressed debt/equity investing. 

Mike began his career in the commodities unit at J. Aron/Goldman Sachs in NYC in the early 90’s and traded over 25 different commodity markets and their derivatives. Mike left Goldman to pursue an MBA in Finance at The Wharton School. 

After business school, Mike joined Canyon Partners, a credit-oriented hedge fund in Los Angeles, where he went on to become partner and co-founder of the Canyon Arbitrage Fund, which focused on various strategies including convertible and capital structure arbitrage as well as event-driven/risk arbitrage.

After 5 years at Canyon, Mike decided to leave Canyon and begin his own investment firm, Akanthos Capital Management, LLC. At Akanthos, Mike ran an opportunistic, value-driven investment strategy that looked for “fulcrum securities” up and down the capital structure. 

Mike stopped actively managing external capital in 2019 and now invests primarily for his family office and enjoys blogging about the markets and economy on Substack at urbankaoboy.substack.com and Twitter @UrbanKaoboy. 

Mike holds a BS in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from UC, Berkeley and an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Michael Kao - 

Substack - https://urbankaoboy.substack.com/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/UrbanKaoboy
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaomichael/

WTFinance - 

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/67rpmjG92PNBW0doLyPvfn
iTunes -https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wtfinance/id1554934665?uo=4
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-fatseas-761066103/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/AnthonyFatseas