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Macro Confessions Part XX IV (2006) This week risk is resetting. Things changing. There will be opportunities. There will be blood. Let it be the other guy. Let's get absurd. The boys review the slaughter of the innocents, namely the abject poor performance of some of last year's most hyped new companies to emerge on the stock market.

The conversation is fast paced. Chris has led Hugh to the Valley of Happiness but he wants to know more about what's causing the melt down in high profile stock names Peloton, Deliver and Oatly. 

No new Hedge Fund wannabee can afford to miss this journey from the past to the present day where Hugh reveals his latest macro insights and explains his Quantity Theory of Insanity. The Alchemy of Finance, it is not...

This week they consider The Secret Policeman's Macro Ball, an annual illuminati gathering of the great minds in macro hedge fund management. The event you are assured not to receive an invitation to. Just why do the greatest minds share their best-ideas with their competition?

Regrets, Hugh has a few and he travels back to December 2008 to confront his younger self. You see back in early 2006 he predicted a deflationary event that would send Treasury bond prices surging and the gold price crashing. But when his prophesy came true, he failed to load up on gold. Hugh is raging mad with his younger self.

And with markets in turmoil, the chart rotator returns to examine the Dow Jones constituent 30 stocks to determine where prices are versus their slower, longer-dated moving averages. Hugh invokes his Acid Capitalist powers to draw predictions and stock ideas for the coming year. 

Chris continues to spin his wheel...

Tune-in or be square...

Charts can be found here
 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs4X8HJf2dQog8-CCaDBlsg

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Macro Confessions Part XX III (November 2005) This week the boys kick back. Inspired by Jeff Bezos, and his recent jaunt to St Barts, Hugh reveals his 20 hour fast and avocado regime. He believes that longevity and contrarian investing are bedfellows. Chris shakes his head in disbelief.

The conversation is fast paced. Chris has his runner's legs on and wants to know more about what's knocking the capital markets this week. Bonds, not James but the ongoing disturbance in the US Treasury market are discussed. Better to construct an inventory of ideas than trade a market whose long-term trend has yet to change course, cautions Hugh. Check your premises!

No new Hedge Fund wannabee can afford to miss this journey from the past to the present day where Hugh reveals his latest macro insights and explains how sometimes he outwitted the market's smartest minds.

This week they take on The Raiders of the Lost Ark, via Cathy Wood's flailing tech fund, and ask why markets generate mysticism to create retail super-star managers and why their unwieldy funds often hit the skids.

Shorting is this week's focus. Why do it? The epic short squeeze of Volkswagen in the midsts of the chaos of October 2008 is explored. Hugh shares his November 2005 Eclectica investment letter to lavish praise on John Armitage, a legendary British hedge fund manager who stopped shorting entirely. The cautionary tale of AW Jones, the manager who first brought  L/S strategies to the public's attention, is examined. You wont believe the paradox of what befell him in 1969.

No one is spared. Hugh loved Ken Fisher's book Superstocks but less the man himself. The gloves are well and truly off and at the end Hugh confesses that he's starting to see a re-awakening in the gold sector. Really? Is that possible?  Chris' insatiable curiosity remains dialled to the max.

 Tune-in or be square...

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Macro Confessions Part XX II (October 2005)
The Scottish tormentor, Chris Sweeney, is pumped to the max as he seeks to understand the inner workings of Hugh's orthogonal Eclectica Fund. The boys use his monthly client letters as a Hedge Fund boot camp to reveal what he was really thinking at the time and why he made the decisions he did. No new Hedge Fund wannabee can afford to miss his journey to the present day where he reveals and expounds upon his latest macro insights and his chagrin for those that got away.

This week, Chris continues to audit great hedge fund managers' recent performance. Hugh gives them a pass. And Chris is channeling investments via his viewing habits. He asks, is Succession accurate? Are investors petty or the guardian dogs of capitalism? Hugh favours the latter interpretation and  responds in an Ayn Randian manner. Never apologise for the wealth created by your intellectual graft, he barks.

The investment discussion goes back to 1979, 1982 and 2005 to ask questions about today's epic bull market in the US Treasury market. Hugh accepts that bond yields will rise over the next 40 years but cautions that nascent bull markets protect their bounty of profits with enormous moats. Investors seeking to capture a bear market in Ts better beware. Adopt paradoxical investment techniques to capture the upside.

And somewhere in the mix they discuss African jeep safari research trips and the prejudice of the present. Tune-in or be square...

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Macro Confessions Part XX (Autumn 2005)
We welcome back again,  the Scottish tormentor, Chris Sweeney, to chronicle the inner workings of Hugh's orthogonal Eclectica Fund. The boys use his monthly client letters as a Hedge Fund boot camp to reveal what he was really thinking at the time and why he made the decisions he did. No new Hedge Fund wannabee can afford to miss his journey to the present day where he reveals and expounds upon his latest macro insights and his chagrin for those that got away.

This week, they examine the first time Hugh really got a good hosing. Warning, it's a shocking tale. And having navigated Christmas,  the boys are channelling The Beatles back catalogue; inspired by Let it Be, they ask why exactly was Hugh channeling Abbey Road back in 2005?  More big currency gyrations this week. This time Hugh attempts to fit together the jigsaw pieces of 5 year lows in the Japanese yen, the sell-off in US Treasuries and the absurd and persistent cheapness of volatility in Japan. Blame Netflix, but Hugh fears a direct meteor strike on planet "markets" and he is dusting down some convex trades.

And somewhere in the mix they discuss Money Heist and wading through pools of reindeer blood. Tune-in or be square...

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Ever attended a Hedge Fund Christmas Party? We've super charged the subtitles as we welcome back the Scottish tornado, Chris Sweeney to once more chronicle the inner workings of Hugh's orthogonal Eclectica Fund. The boys use his monthly client letters as a Hedge Fund boot camp to reveal what he was really thinking at the time and why he made the decisions he did. No Hedge Fund wannabee can afford to miss the journey to the present day where Hugh reveals and expounds upon his latest macro insights and his chagrin for those that got away.

This week, we examine Hugh's relationship with Crispin Odey, his vexation at seeing music business valuations explode to the upside this year. He rues his failure to buy EMI back in 2005 when valuations where just 5% to 10% of today's levels. It all makes for A Blue Christmas, the boys are channelling Elvis as they pick over this week's big currency gyrations from Turkey, a country of 85 million inhabitants with a GDP equal to less than a quarter of the value of Apple's stock market capitalisation. Apples and Turkey...merry Christmas one and all.

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This week we have a Shared Confession. Former macro hedge fund manager, Hugh Hendry, is joined by Dr. Angus Fletcher (Phd, Yale) , a neuroscientist and professor of Shakespeare. Angus rocks ! His latest book, Creative  Thinking, was written especially for US special operatives engaging with live risk. We discuss the carry over principals for all wannabe hedge fund investors. This is hedge fund bootcamp for narrative warriors. The pursuit of linguistics and rogue imagination over data; the rejection of logic. Data predicts yesterday. We suggest a non logical mode of intelligence that dares to see tomorrow. We explain how to react at the speed of life. If you can open yourself up to all the points of perspective when everyone else is rooted in the past then maybe you might just come to find yourself "in the moment". We discuss the principals for seeing the future. Brains don't need spreadsheets but exceptional data. Chaos is brain food.

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Ex macro hedge fund manager, Hugh Hendry, again invites his former investment partner, Tom Roderick, to review the global macro landscape. This week Tom discusses his new macro essay, China's Zodiac Doomsday Clock. Hugh becomes nostalgic for March 2009 and his slow train journey to Wuhan which revealed abundant evidence of China's property overbuilding 12 years ago. 
Tom explains why their China blow-up fund never made them a billion dollars. The answer was written in the stars. China's wise men acknowledged Confucius - wise man's clock is slower. Beijing's bureaucrats socialised risk and relied upon rapid gdp growth, urbanisation and population growth to remedy the situation.  
The Chinese zodiac has 12 characters like our own system but takes 12 years, not months, to travel the galaxy and back. The gonzo investor shakes his head. A question of faulty time keeping ? 
The boys move on and consider whether inflation is deflationary ? This is macro conjecture for grown-ups and Tom asks why investors never consider debt levels to wealth rather than GDP ? The episode concludes with the contest between real and nominal US Treasury yields...which is the centre of our financial universe ?

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Former macro hedge fund manager, Hugh Hendry, again invites his former investment colleague, Tom Roderick, to review the global macro landscape.  
This week they argue over inflation. Hugh is sceptical, Tom less so. The gonzo investor rails against the media’s shock and outrage on witnessing higher prices. “We closed the world for more than a year and then jolted it back to life with the greatest ever cash incentive to buy...why are we surprised that some prices have surged?” bellows Hugh from his cave in St Barts.  
The boys consider a means to overcoming their differences and suggest that the Fed should take note. Tom has an ingenious idea – The Rule of 2 %. That the Fed should only announce a hike in rates should the 10-year Treasury yield breach 2%. But could the Fed ever admit to its lack of omnipotence in the rate setting arena even though the bond market always calls it right? Tom then explains why macro managers own gold in their hedge funds - hint, it’s the cheapest inflation hedge. 
This is macro conjecture for grown-ups and part I concludes with a review of a recent and revelatory thread by Michael Pettis, a prominent macro economist. Does China’s undervalued exchange rate and / or low wages export deflation onto an unsuspecting West? The boys de-construct the logic to confirm that yes, it is trade policy and not interest rates that govern our financial universe. Unless surplus nations mend their ways, risk-free rates will likely remain pinned to the floor and cautious investors will continue to forgo maximising future returns in favour of avoiding even greater losses.  

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Hedge fund manager, Hugh Hendry, again invites his former colleague, Tom Roderick, who manages macro at Trium in London, to review the revelatory and impending bust of China's legendary Evergrande Property. Macro hasn't been seen in Chinese waters for almost a decade. A strong currency with a positive carry and a stock market seemingly impervious to shocking state interventions has ensured a lack of willing naysayers. The Acid Capitalist, Hugh, and Tom, explains how China's property companies were the safest stocks in the global sector owing to their ability to transfer risk quickly. That the least risky companies are now in jeopardy does not bode well especially as Chinese property, relative to household wealth, is 4x greater than in the US. The boys consider a bull market in fear where sovereign Chinese bonds will supplant property as the de facto collateral position. They can conceive of a steeply inverted yield in a land more accustomed to wearing flats and they ask whether flaunting opulence and the mania for luxury may not sit well with the modern creed of common prosperity. Buckle up! This is macro conjecture for grown-ups.

Chapters:
00:00 Shared Confessions China's Geometric Risk Taking
02:45 Why Macro didn't Short the Red Lines
05:15 Why the $ is red Cabbage in Beijing
10:55 China Property Market was Risk Free
15:35 Fechner and the Geometry of Chinese GDP Growth
17:25 Why Now ? And the Grapes of Wrath
21:30 FX chart, Mad Max Leverage Internal or External ?
26:45 Everything is Macro
32:40 Is there a China Macro Trade with no Tears for Fears?
37:35 China the Land Of Flat Yield Curves
40.45 Stay At the Money with Your Strikes
42:00 Apathy is the Catalyst for Perplexing & Engaging Trades
46:15 Common Prosperity Questions Luxury Valuations

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Hedge fund manager, Hugh Hendry, invites former investment partner, Tom Roderick, to dive under the hood and examine how one becomes a hedge fund manager. They revisit the summer of 2005, the S&P has been marooned for 2 years moving sideways as the economy and corporate profitability improve. What would an aspiring young manager do?

Hedge fund pirate Hugh Hendry chronicles the inner workings of the uncorrelated and legendary Eclectica Fund. Hugh's discussions with other though leaders are deployed as a hedge fund boot camp to reveal what he's thinking and why in real time. No new Hedge Fund wannabe can afford to miss the journey to the present day where Hugh reveals and expounds upon his latest macro insights. 

This week we find a rather pallid Hugh cursing his demons from the night before and his newfound love of Pickle-Ball and tequila. Tom quizzes him on why he was 75% net long and not 35% or 120% long? And how did he size risk positions? How did he seek to optimize his portfolio in a world before the rule books had been written. Was this risk taking on the hoof, a form of dopamine bingo, with creativity the deciding risk factor? Hugh and Tom reveal all.

Chapters:
00:00 Shared Confessions Acid Capitalist
05:10 Optimal Risk Sizing
10:30 Soros / Druckenmiller Lite Risk Model
14:00 Losing My Curiosity
15:15 The macro narrative of 2005
18:00 The Status Quo Changing
21:00 Dopamine Bingo - Creativity at Risk (CaR)
22:30 Eclectica Fund Attribution
28:00 Longs 2x Shorts but shorts bigger than longs..? 
30:00 2005 the year institutions crashed the Commodity scene
35:00 Not a Bull Mkt till you've had Violent, Painful Corrections

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