THE MONEY GAME, CHEATERS EDITION

The coronavirus has thrown us into truly unprecedented times. Most countries have enforced a lockdown, and global travel has ground to a halt, and this, in turn, has had an enormous impact on the economy.

Stock markets all over the world experienced huge volatility. Wall Street suffered its worst day since ‘Black Monday’, oil prices went negative for the first time in history and governments all over the world have been implementing extreme fiscal and monetary policies.

Many analysts have suggested that rather than coronavirus being the cause of this economic downturn, instead, it was merely the pin that popped the bubble and the enormous debts that have been amounting since long before the 2008 global financial crisis was a disaster waiting to happen.

So, how do we get out of this mess? Who stands to benefit from government money printing? Who has to pay this money back? And, why the fuck is Steve Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury?

To answer these questions and more, I am joined by leading finance experts: Andrea Ferrero, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Caitlin Long, Ben Hunt & Raoul Pal. We look at the corruption and mismanagement of the economy by central banks and governments.

James Bianco: “Is The Fed’s ‘Cure’ Worse Than the Disease?” (Hedgeye Investing Summit)

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[Music]
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alright thanks for staying with us here
00:11
this is the third one in a row again
00:13
it’s my pleasure actually it’s the first
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time that I’ll have Jim Bianco on edge
00:16
ITV so it’s a real pleasure to have you
00:18
here Jim thanks for thanks for making
00:19
the time to do it yeah thank you for
00:21
having me looking forward to it you have
00:23
a you have a lot of fans on both Wall
00:25
Street and on Twitter and I think you’re
00:27
one of the guys that can can merge the
00:29
gap you know if you will between the
00:31
real world and the economy and and what
00:33
Wall Street would maybe like to see
00:35
sometimes so I certainly appreciate that
00:37
there’s been a lot of comments back and
00:39
forth on free market capitalism a lot of
00:41
people are kind of concerned that that’s
00:43
been last year but I know that you have
00:45
a lot of different thoughts on that and
00:46
that’s really the first topic that I
00:47
want to start with was you know the
00:49
legality of what the Fed has done or
00:52
purports to be to be doing and just
00:55
generally how you think about that it is
00:59
legal what the Fed is doing the 13-3
01:02
provisions that the Fed has that were
01:04
revised in the dodd-frank bill give them
01:06
the ability to do this and here’s an
01:09
important caveat provided that the
01:11
Treasury secretary approves of it and
01:14
that’s been what I’ve been trying to
01:17
hammer along was that what effectively
01:19
has happened is we’ve merged the Federal
01:22
Reserve with the Department of Treasury
01:24
and that what’s effectively happened is
01:27
is that the Fed is not buying corporate
bonds or ETFs or commercial paper or now
municipal securities as of last Thursday
it is the Treasury it is the government
that’s buying it the Fed is just
providing the financing and when I hear
Fed officials say to me well we’ll get
01:45
out of this when the time is appropriate
01:46
no you have to get the Treasury
01:49
secretary to approve of you getting out
01:51
of it and that means you need Donald
Trump to say I think you guys are done
money printing I think you guys are done
ramping markets up higher and I have a
hard time believing especially in an
election year that that’s going to
happen anytime soon so getting into
these programs is easy getting out is
going to be the real tough part I think
02:10
and that’s to come and the problems
02:13
associated with that yep oh and we’ll
02:15
get into like you have an explicit
02:16
opinion on whether
02:17
not that this creates a new version of
02:19
economic gravity or not but just you
02:22
know is the beginning of that I mean
02:23
that that isn’t that essentially what at
least phase one its Trump we probably
call it of mmt looks like when you merge
the Treasury fiscal spending with money
printing I think that’s exactly right
I’ve been actually causing calling this
mmt version 1.0 is what we’re doing look
all in all the stimulus is something
02:46
along the lines of four or five years of
02:47
tax receipts and I think a lot of people
02:50
have asked a question of if the Fed and
02:52
the Treasury believes that this works
02:54
that they can print five years worth of
02:56
tax receipts and not have any
02:58
consequence then why do we have a tax
03:01
why do we have a dir S can we just give
03:03
it the IRS then at that point and just
03:04
have them print all the money that they
03:06
need of course not I think that there’s
03:08
going to probably be somewhere down the
03:10
line some kind of consequence to all of
03:13
this money printing what and how we can
03:17
debate but I have a hard time believing
03:19
that we could print several trillion
03:21
dollars for up to a trillion dollars
03:23
right now and it will have only pleasure
03:26
and no pain because if it did then we’ll
03:29
print another a trillion and then we’ll
03:31
print another a trillion until we go to
03:33
the point that it becomes too much well
03:35
isn’t it doesn’t that just mean that
03:36
your and thanks for simplifying it that
03:38
by the way not not many people can do
03:39
that in 30 seconds or less
03:41
but again you isn’t that just at the
03:44
pleasure of the people deciding to pay
03:46
their taxes uh yeah I think that there’s
03:50
a lot of that right now although tax
03:52
payment is not at the pleasure of people
03:54
you know as the great economist Walter
03:57
Williams says you know if you don’t pay
03:58
your taxes they’ll kill you what he said
04:01
go ahead try and barricade yourself in
04:02
your house and not pay your pay taxes
04:04
and see how long that works eventually
04:05
guys what guns will come through the
04:06
front door looking for their taxes so it
04:09
isn’t not quite at the pleasure of the
04:11
people but there will be an argument to
04:13
be made at some point that if it’s not
04:15
let’s do away with taxes it would be why
04:18
do we have to end the money printing why
04:20
do we have to end this stimulus or the
04:22
bailouts or whatever we’re calling it
04:24
this week if there is no consequence to
04:27
it why is it only in a crisis we can
04:29
print
04:31
and borrow a trillion dollars to try and
04:33
get us over the hump but not in a crisis
04:35
why can’t we keep doing it then – that
04:37
will be a debate and a discussion we’ll
04:39
have to have at that point well I mean
04:41
there’s there are plenty of academics
04:43
obviously you and I that’s not that’s
04:45
that’s not where we live day to day it’s
04:48
certainly not where I want to go I think
04:50
I’d be pretty bored but I mean people
04:51
always say hey look can you give me a
04:53
white paper on why use the base effects
04:55
– to predict their use your now Cass I’m
04:57
like here’s the white paper the back
04:58
test it’s like one piece of white paper
05:00
have at it go for it but no stephanie
05:02
kelton for example I mean what do you
05:04
think about that I mean she obviously
05:06
feels like she’s got one step in the
05:08
door on this and maybe Trump or whoever
05:10
beats Trump or if Trump wins and both
05:12
would quite like that yeah I think so I
05:15
think you know to put the Calton in the
05:17
MMT argument you know – a simple task
they believe that you can print money or
borrow and you know increase government
spending pay for college pay for health
care pay for whatever you want to pay
for without inflation until you hit the
end point of inflation their argument is
we can borrow a lot more before we hit
inflation I think my argument would be I
don’t think we’re gonna be borrowed
nearly as much as you think we can
before we get to the inflation point the
emmab tiers do have a point they say
when you get to inflation then you
you’ve gone too far and they they’re
their remedy for that by the way is to
raise taxes and that’s the way you
remove money out of the system good luck
with that
you know it’s trying to turn over turn
over – they want to have tax rates be
like the Fed Funds rate where it goes up
and down with the right level of
inflation set by a bureaucrat like the
Federal Reserve I’m not so sure that
society is quite ready for tax rates to
kind of go along those lines but to the
larger point I don’t think they’re gonna
they’re gonna find we’re gonna find
they’re printing and borrowing to the
extent that we are is going to have a
consequence a lot sooner than we think
it’s going to be the mmm tears thinks
it’s like 10 20 30 trillion dollars we
could do before we hit that level I
06:36
don’t think it’s gonna be nearly that
06:37
much before we start seeing problems
06:39
well what if the consequence is the one
06:41
that we’ve already seen in o8 and again
06:43
it’s not a wait I just don’t
06:44
want to make sure that everybody knows
06:45
that I don’t think it so late I think
06:46
it’s 2020 and it’s quite different it
06:48
could be worse but again you know what
06:50
if the consequence is that people don’t
06:51
believe the bullshit and asset prices
06:53
just go straight back down that is if
06:56
that is a big consequence I think right
06:58
now because it’s a flip side of this
07:00
story is we are going to take you know
07:03
what the Fed is doing in supporting
07:05
markets let me go back to my first
07:07
argument what the Treasury is doing
07:09
through the Fed is nationalizing the
07:10
markets right they are basically taking
07:13
them over and by the way and I’ll give
you the names to Wall Street is cheering
this as loud as they can Bob Michael
07:21
this chief CIO fixed-income of JPMorgan
07:23
Investment Management he’s thinks they
07:26
haven’t gone far enough he wants them to
07:27
set the price of every bond in the
07:30
country
07:31
Rick reader at Black’s Black Rock has
07:33
been cheering this program as well Mike
07:36
Wilson at Morgan Stanley
07:37
David constant at Goldman Sachs has
07:40
abandoned his 2000s a peak all because
money printing is good and what the Fed
and the Treasury are doing is good well
07:50
we’re going to put that to a test right
07:51
now and here’s the simple question you
07:53
have to ask yourself is the market near
07:56
fair value is the market somewhere where
07:59
it would naturally be and I like to say
08:02
if if a red headline came across my
08:04
Bloomberg and it said Jay Powell
08:06
changed his mind cancelled all the
08:07
programs with the market go down a lot
08:10
yeah what because we supported it an
08:12
artificial level I think the Fed can do
08:15
that for a while support a market at an
08:17
artificial level but not forever
08:19
eventually the weight of where the
08:22
market should be will come to bear on it
08:24
and it will fall and it will fall down
08:26
so we’re gonna put this money printing
08:29
thing to a test the difference in o.9
08:31
was they started it after the market was
08:34
down 50 percent and two years later so
08:37
they got if you will lucky or maybe they
08:40
got smart they started it when the
08:42
market was somewhere near a fair value
08:44
level anyway this time around they
08:46
started it two weeks after the all-time
08:49
high and then kept ramping it up all the
08:51
way to last week and continue to ramp it
08:55
up and the question is if the markets
08:57
near
08:58
would have been anyway then this will
09:00
appear to work if it’s if the market
09:02
should be severely lower and that’s what
09:04
my fear is is then it won’t work over
09:07
the long term and work for a while it’s
09:09
it’s a it’s amazing thing I mean I was
09:11
back and forth with Danielle DiMartino
09:14
booth on this there’s this and and you
09:16
you probably could empathize with this I
09:18
think I’m probably barking up the right
09:19
tree if I’m not then too bad but you
09:22
know this this whole discussion you and
09:24
I have discussions with the same types
09:25
of people don’t forget the JP Morgan
09:27
gentleman that you that you named he
09:29
doesn’t quite want to talk to me and I’m
09:30
not completely surprised why JP Morgan’s
09:33
a client to be clear in terms of
09:35
independent research they pay for a lot
09:37
in independent research but again the
09:39
whole haha you didn’t get it you didn’t
09:42
know that you shouldn’t fight the Fed
09:43
like that discussion tell you Jim that
09:46
tries to mean bananas like that that
09:49
tries to be bananas like all you great
09:50
fundamental investors who only talk to
09:52
me about how good the cycle is and how
09:54
it’s different this time as soon as it
09:56
turns fundamentally you turn tail to
09:58
that and you tell me I’m the idiot III
10:01
have a hard time with it you know let me
10:04
let me jump in and say I agree because
10:06
what you’re saying is and let’s let’s
10:08
not mince words here what we’re saying
10:10
is all this analysis we do is bullshit
10:12
right because he works it enough where
10:14
it works in the op but then in the down
10:16
you can forget everything you’ve learned
10:18
about how finance works don’t worry
10:21
the printing press will just bail you
10:23
out well why don’t we even need analysts
10:25
why do we even need anything if that’s
10:27
the way the markets going to work that
10:29
it always is going to be supported by
10:31
some artificial force on the way down
10:34
you know if you believe in free markets
10:37
free markets is remember what free
10:39
markets are supposed to be let’s not
10:40
forget what we were talking about here
10:42
we have an a finite source of capital we
10:45
don’t have is all the money in the world
10:47
you think we did with the Fed and we’re
10:49
trying to efficiently allocate it we’re
10:51
trying to give it to good ideas and take
10:54
it away from bad ideas if we continue to
10:56
go down this road where I’m going to use
10:58
an Austrian term we’re gonna create
11:00
malinvestment we’re gonna just give
11:01
everybody you know Bob Michael JPMorgan
11:04
he wants to fix the price of every
11:07
corporate bond at 2% he said that last
11:10
week on Bloomberg TV
11:12
okay if you fix the price of every
11:14
single corporate bond at 2% there’s no
11:16
point in doing credit analysis everybody
11:18
gets the same price whether it’s
11:20
Carnival Cruise or it’s Amazon whether
11:23
it’s a disastrous business model or a
11:25
great business model everybody’s going
11:27
to get funded and you’re going to create
11:29
an all kind of dislocations and problems
11:32
in the economy because you’re not being
11:34
efficient with getting rid of bad ideas
11:36
and rewarding good ideas well you’re
11:39
being you’re being you know completely
11:41
conflicted and compromised for your own
11:43
interests I mean you know that Bob
11:44
Michael I don’t know who that it now I
11:46
know but his son if he has a son named
11:49
Billy Bob Michael isn’t gonna work on
11:50
Wall Street because like he said there’s
11:52
no job to do right exactly and I think
11:55
you know you know this is what this is
11:58
what the the idea is supposed to be I
12:00
mean in in theory if you believe that
12:03
the market was overreacting in March
12:07
because the what’s happening with the
12:09
virus is not nearly as bad as the market
12:12
was saying then bring it on give me
12:15
great opportunities to make money but if
12:18
you’re going to arrest it before we get
12:21
to some kind of a settling out in the
12:24
market you’re just gonna create more
12:25
problems in the long run I think at that
12:27
point but you know what if you look at
12:29
Wall Street and if you look at policy
12:31
makers no one’s thinking about the long
12:33
run one of the things I’ve really been
12:35
railing against is everybody talks about
12:38
well what’s the second quarter gonna be
12:40
like and what’s the third quarter gonna
12:41
be like when’s the restart gonna start
12:43
and I’ll use some some technical terms
12:46
for you here the second quarter is gonna
12:47
be a shit show the third quarter is
12:49
gonna be less so of a shit show that’s
12:51
all the analysis you need to know what
12:53
we really need to discuss is when this
12:56
is over the virus and it will end what’s
12:59
the long-term consequences of it are
13:02
there going to be changes in social
13:04
behavior are there going to be changes
13:06
in the way we conduct business is there
13:09
going to be some kind of de
13:10
globalization as well and those 17
13:14
million Americans that have been
13:15
unemployed in the last three weeks if
13:17
you believe tomorrow’s numbers supposed
13:19
to be another five million added to that
13:21
role 22 million how many millions of
13:24
those people
13:26
don’t get their job back or have lost
13:28
their businesses because of that what
13:30
kind of anger resentment does that bring
13:32
up to boy these are questions everybody
13:34
looks at their shoes and says point
13:35
let’s just not go there let’s just talk
13:37
about how bad the second quarter is
13:39
going to be so we could talk about how
13:40
much less bad the third quarter is going
13:42
to be and that seems to be the extent as
13:45
far as they want to take it right now
13:47
well I and Wall Street just voted on
13:49
that I think like if you even if I look
13:51
at my own client base which is you know
13:53
hedge funds mutual funds I think we have
13:55
actually the same client base so you
13:57
probably had the same feedback there’s
13:59
this like super super short-term panic
14:02
obviously the pressure on people to
14:03
perform on a very short-term basis at
14:06
the hedge fund level in a quote-unquote
14:07
neutral environments never been higher
14:09
so people are just flat-out you know
14:11
running in fear of their own job but
14:13
yesterday JP Morgan was quote-unquote up
14:15
on the bad news and I’m like just chill
14:18
out I mean let let gravity play out I
14:20
don’t think that people are gonna
14:21
actually believe Jamie diamonds loan
14:23
loss reserves here I don’t think that
14:24
they’re gonna believe his outlook and by
14:26
the way I do believe in economic gravity
14:28
so the credit cycle exists gravity
14:30
exists and we’re gonna go through it so
14:32
I agree you’re gonna have to go through
14:33
the shit show and look at what the
14:34
financials have done in the last 24
14:37
hours
14:37
I mean they’ve led the market lower and
14:39
they’re the first ones to report their
14:41
version of reality which I don’t know if
14:42
you agree or disagree whether you call
14:44
it a shit show or not they have no idea
14:46
yeah I know not only that they have no
14:49
idea but if you look at what they’ve
14:51
done is they just made a guess as to
14:53
what their loan loss reserves are gonna
14:55
be exact yes it’s on those long lost
14:58
reserves are much larger than the
15:00
analysts to cover these companies
15:01
thought that they were going to be as
15:03
well so there is just a guess so far cuz
15:07
for the moment no one has really
15:10
defaulted on a loan if you stop paying
15:11
at three weeks ago it’s not in default
15:13
yet it will be soon but it isn’t there
15:15
just yet and so we have no idea you know
15:19
where this ultimately is going to go and
15:21
that’s what we’re what we’re trying to
15:23
guess and stuff but I ultimately think
15:26
it really comes down to that long-term
15:28
question that no one wants to touch
15:30
right what happens on the back side when
15:33
this is over do we want to have a more
15:36
conservative attitude do we want to
15:38
de-risk
15:39
we wanted to globalize away from China
15:41
do we want to reward to use a Mohamed
15:44
el-erian term do we want to reward
15:46
resiliency in a company’s business plan
15:48
/ efficiency in a company’s business
15:51
plan right now it’s closed everything
15:54
and send it to China cuz it’s cheaper
15:56
but now we’re might say in the bet and
15:58
on the other side we might say how is
16:01
your company going to respond when we
16:03
have to close again for three months are
16:05
you gonna be able to survive and are we
16:06
going to reward companies that set
16:08
themselves up like that well that means
16:10
that we’re going to have a slower growth
16:13
less aggressive attitude than we did
16:16
have say in January of this year now
16:18
Wall Street wants to believe there’s
16:20
going to be none of that that it were
16:23
just it’s gonna be right back to January
16:24
2020 as soon as we’re done with the mass
16:26
graves on Hart island it’s right back to
16:28
2020 and everything’s going to be okay I
16:31
tend to think that that’s not going to
16:33
be the case there is gonna be changes in
16:35
how we do things I may be wrong on what
16:37
the changes are but what would shocked
16:39
me is if the answer is nothing changed
16:42
by the end of the year now we’re just
16:45
back to the way it used to be less
16:48
25,000 dead people yeah that’s I say
16:51
that sarcastically it kind of men you
16:53
know emphasize my point no it’s it’s
16:57
it’s classic actually and predictable
16:59
proactively predictable indeed you know
17:01
that’s how Wall Street thinks they think
17:03
linear and on a linear basis they think
17:05
you go down to one side of the Vienna
17:08
linear basis you could go right back the
17:09
other side of the vena Bob can mark all
17:11
the prices at the top end of the V you
17:13
never have to worry about having any
17:14
double use in between so it’s like it’s
17:16
a that is a shitshow in my mind I mean I
17:19
wonder what you think about this
17:20
framework because you know on the fly
17:22
I’m trying to go from depression to
17:24
what’s the recovery into some version of
17:26
a recession to an actual recovery
17:28
there’s a the work out period you know
17:30
of unemployment what that means and the
17:33
credit cycle which is one in the same
17:34
thing you lose your job if the company
17:36
loses their cash flows liquidity is not
17:38
solvency you know so again that’s one
17:40
two is behaviorally like to your point I
17:43
don’t know point number three is
17:45
actually the one we start talking on a
17:47
research call about a little bit more in
17:48
the last couple days which which is the
17:50
regulatory environment like you know
17:52
what is the new America in terms of how
17:54
you’re allowed to operate how you’re
17:56
allowed to have your liberties or civil
17:58
liberties and your consumption versus
18:00
the prior like this a whole new world so
18:03
those three things to me like and that’s
18:05
that’s starting with a lot you know have
18:08
I left anything big out that I need to
18:10
think about from a from a intermediate
18:12
to longer term cycle perspective no I
18:14
think that that’s exactly right I mean
18:16
those are going to be the things and
18:17
you’re right about the third one which
18:19
doesn’t get which gets talked least of
18:21
all is going to be the regulatory
18:24
environment look what a lot of these
18:26
states have done has been nothing more
18:28
than turn their state into a police
18:30
state now I get it
18:31
there’s a virus out there and we need
18:34
the social distance in hand wash and
18:36
what are we hearing from the White House
18:38
right now hey it’s not gonna be a
18:40
hundred to two hundred thousand dead or
18:41
two million if we did nothing but it
18:44
might be far less than that because
18:46
everybody understood and I was like you
18:49
know you don’t trust people why don’t
18:51
you just lay out the case here’s a virus
18:53
this what you need to do stand six feet
18:54
apart wash your hands wear a mask and
18:56
McDonald’s you can stay open but figure
18:59
out how to work within that framework
19:01
instead of just some merrily closing
19:03
everything right and then deciding when
19:05
we’re gonna open or doing like the the
19:07
governor of Michigan has decided big-box
19:10
retailers have to close their garden
19:12
department but can keep their grocery
19:13
Department open so if you so if you go
19:15
to Target and you buy groceries it’s
19:17
okay but if you go to Target and buy a
19:19
garden hose you’re gonna be arrested I
19:20
mean they’re coming down to that level
19:22
of detail right now in terms of what
19:25
they’re doing with a lot of these
19:27
companies I don’t think they’re going to
19:28
give that back so easily and I do think
19:31
that there’s going to be some anger and
19:32
resentment as they are very very slow to
19:35
give that back and they’ll use the
19:37
argument of reinfection way and when
19:40
months come one week’s come in two
19:42
months which come in two quarters of
19:44
having these restrictions it’s going to
19:47
weigh not only on the economy but on
19:49
society in general
19:50
well that work out period I mean if you
19:53
only use economic never mind
19:55
shallow recessions which we had a very
19:58
long work up
19:59
of corporate leverage come you know in
20:00
as you guys could throw up the history
20:02
of it all guys if you can on slide 33
20:05
we’re just showing Jim what you know
20:06
obviously on the back side of your hand
20:09
what’s happened economically across
20:11
cycles but you know you can look at some
20:13
of the the most actually slide 34 the
20:16
shallowest recession which was again a
20:18
corporate credit bubble in 2001 you know
20:21
the work out period was nine months the
20:23
similarity was that you had an economic
20:24
shock at precisely the wrong time in the
20:26
cycle I think a lot of people screw that
20:28
up too
20:28
they’re like nobody could see this
20:29
coming that’s total bullshit just like
20:32
you know one the economy was slowing in
20:33
2019 and then it just made the virus and
20:36
in that case 9/11 made it slow faster
20:38
but again the work out period was at
20:40
least nine months for the corporate
20:41
credit cycle you know and in terms of
20:44
the economy actually bottom Dazz you
20:46
know in oh one before
20:48
actually the stock market did and and
20:50
that’s that was back that took them till
20:52
Oh – so I don’t even know like where
20:54
people are going when they think like if
20:56
they only studied economic history I
20:57
know it’s never the same but even if you
20:59
took the 44 months of the depression in
21:01
the nine months of oh one you know it’s
21:02
not two months no exactly if you could
21:05
put that slide back up I’d also point
21:07
out something else too if you look at
21:09
the Oh 8 December December December oh
21:13
seven oh nine period peak to trough
21:15
decline was five percent right we’re
21:18
expected in the second quarter to have a
21:21
decline and a total decline in the US
21:24
economy is six percent just in the
21:26
second quarter the second quarter alone
21:28
will be worse than the entire Great
21:32
Recession will be and you know I’ve
21:35
heard people say this without
21:36
understanding some of these numbers
21:38
they’ll talk to me about China and
21:40
they’ll say well China’s 80% of the way
21:42
back to where it was as if that’s a
21:43
bullish argument you mean they’re 20%
21:45
off the top
21:46
you mean that the Great Recession was
21:48
five percent off the top dates four
21:50
times worse that’s it that’s a
21:51
depression it’s what you’re in if you’re
21:53
20 percent in the way the time you have
21:55
to get back to 98 99 percent of what we
21:59
were in January in order to say that
22:02
there’s really no impact if we get back
22:05
to 90 percent of where we were in
22:07
January it would be devastating for I
22:11
think a lot of people keep him
22:12
– at the bottom of the Great Depression
22:14
in 1934
22:16
we still had 75% of the economic
22:19
activity we had at the top and we had
22:22
78% of people still had their jobs that
22:25
means moving 25 percent off the top we
22:27
had 22 percent unemployment so I think
22:29
what you need to understand is it
22:32
doesn’t take much for this to upset the
22:35
applecart as well as where we’re gonna
22:37
go and people are not ready to go there
22:40
they’re all mean reverting thinkers they
22:42
all have their model that’s pre virus
22:45
and they think that the virus is just a
22:47
temporary interruption so we can go back
22:49
to that model and we revert back to that
22:52
mean but what I’m worried is they’re not
22:55
really understanding that this is a new
22:57
era and that we need a new model of
23:00
where we’re gonna go it doesn’t have to
23:01
be a disaster
23:04
Madonn handle it right we’re gonna make
23:07
it a lot worse than it needs to be god
23:09
I’m a amazing disconnects between what
23:12
you just said and where our friend Bob
23:14
wants to mark the price or the valuation
23:17
ever you want to you know contend it
23:19
should be there of markets it it’s just
23:22
that is the disconnect and I guess to me
23:24
if that’s what you’re saying is if the
23:26
if there’s a widening disconnect between
23:28
where the officialdom wants the market
23:30
to be priced you know again centrally
23:32
planned in price versus where the actual
23:34
economic gravity is everything in
23:36
between last price to where that washes
23:40
out is the risk I mean that right so
23:42
like have at it I mean it’s a I don’t I
23:46
don’t I don’t I don’t know how else to
23:48
think about that and the answer isn’t
23:49
buy stocks right you know I’ll give you
23:52
an giving an example of what we’re
23:54
talking about with the disconnect if
23:57
something interesting has been happening
23:59
in the bond market which has not been
24:01
appreciated so on march 13th the Fed
24:04
ended this not QE QE argument by saying
24:07
okay we’re going to do a QE we’re gonna
24:09
buy out two 30-year bond and they ramp
24:12
that up to two weeks ago they were
24:14
buying six hundred billion dollars a
24:16
week a week in bonds that since March
24:19
13th they fought over one and a half
24:22
trillion dollars worth of bonds now
24:24
these numbers are hard to understand
24:26
that you bought a trillion and a half
24:28
dollars worth of bonds you know if you
24:31
watch mutual fund flows if you had like
24:32
a two hundred billion dollar year that
24:35
would be a big you know this is a
24:36
trillion and a half in a week so now if
24:39
you look at yields you go okay
24:41
but they haven’t moved much in the last
24:43
two weeks and I’ve argued if this market
24:45
was anywhere near normal with that kind
24:47
of borrowing the 10-year yield would
24:49
have opened at zero and it would have
24:50
been on its way to negative why hasn’t
24:53
it moved because if you look at bun
24:55
flows from ETF’s for mutual funds from
24:58
households from central banks you can
25:00
measure six hundred billion plus of
25:03
selling that has been going on and
25:06
that’s just from the finite set of
25:08
measures we have there’s four other
25:09
metrics that we haven’t seen so when you
25:12
add it up what is happening is official
25:15
term has been buying bonds at the rate
25:17
of trillion plus a month and everybody
25:20
else has been saying you’re holding it
25:22
this at the wrong price and if you’re
25:24
gonna do that I’m selling it to you and
25:27
they’re selling it to their their
25:28
massively liquidating to the central
25:31
banks in a big way they’re making a
25:33
powerful statement that when all of this
25:35
is done I think interest rates are going
25:37
to be a lot higher than they are right
25:39
now either it’s a combination of
25:41
inflation is returning or it’s finally
25:45
that supply is going to crowd out the
25:48
market I started in the bond market in
25:49
1987 and for 33 years I’ve heard people
25:53
say to me that we’re gonna have these
25:55
massive budget deficits that are gonna
25:57
crowd out and drive up interest rates
25:58
and for 33 years that wasn’t the thing
26:01
because we were playing child’s games
26:04
between a 1 or 2 or 3 percent deficit
26:06
maybe 4 or 5 in the middle of a
26:09
recession now we’re talking 15 to 20 is
26:11
what we’re talking now you’re gonna
26:13
finally start to see that crowding out
26:16
so the bond market is trying to tell you
26:18
that the that the fair value is probably
26:22
a far lower price or a much higher yield
26:26
and the only reason you’re not seeing
26:28
that is you’re getting astronomical
26:30
types of buying out of the Federal
26:32
Reserve through their quantitative
26:34
easing program that’s all holding it up
26:36
but eventually like I said they can’t do
26:39
that
26:39
forever and I think that that will
26:41
eventually give away to higher interest
26:43
rates as we move forward from here well
26:46
if you look at them and when you come on
26:47
and people like to talk about the other
26:49
side the other side could also be
26:50
stagflation a recessionary stagflation
26:53
and to get that in the way that my model
26:56
works my 4 quadrant model is that the
26:58
the faster and deeper you go and what I
27:00
call call quad for both inflation and
27:03
growth slowing at the same time quite
27:05
clearly that’s happening despite
27:07
president pump on oil you know to the
27:10
point that you get deep enough you can
27:12
only reflect from there so it doesn’t
27:14
take much you know for that switch to
27:16
turn for you to go from deflation to
27:19
reflation and you know given the
27:21
economic conditions I mean that to me
27:23
every single time I make a call on
27:24
reflation it’s not like german-style
27:26
reflate it’s reflation or inflation and
27:28
i don’t know who knows it could be
27:30
anything to me I don’t I care but I do
27:33
more what the markets doing that’s the
27:35
point
27:35
and it isn’t it amazing that you know I
27:38
call net I think just because it’s got
27:40
some good alliteration and he’s a good
27:41
marketer so I mean I think that wheat
27:43
you and I can do some good marketing to
27:44
president pump did everything that he
27:46
could he made up quite literally the
27:47
barrels per day on one day of tweets
27:49
because he saw that you know he saw he
27:51
was having some impact in the equity
27:52
market and look what our oil does today
27:54
I mean oil the feds not buying oil the
27:56
feds not buying Jamie Dimon stock you
27:58
know so they’re free to fall you know
28:00
and and at some point they’re gonna stop
28:03
falling I guess right you know oil oil
28:06
what’s happened when oil by the way I’ll
28:09
tweet this out for anybody’s watching
28:11
after I get off this call with you is
28:13
the DIA the energy and information is
28:16
association put out there implied
28:18
gasoline demand numbers lowest ever yeah
28:21
down 50% in a down 50% in three weeks in
28:26
other words think a gasoline demand as a
28:29
metric for economic demand and it’s half
28:32
it’s half in three weeks yes man that it
28:36
means it if there is a world of hurt out
28:38
there but to the inflation argument yes
28:41
for the next couple of quarters the big
28:43
story is going to be deflation as we
28:45
deflate the economy but if you’re gonna
28:48
print and borrow trillions of dollars in
28:50
hand 22 million people unemployed
28:53
an extra 600 bucks a week and maybe
28:55
paycheck protection loans and try and
28:58
support these markets you’re gonna
28:59
support demand as best you can but
29:03
supply company’s not working going out
29:06
of business they’re gonna produce less
29:07
stuff higher demand less supply on your
29:10
prices more inflation that seems to be
29:13
where we’re gonna go after we go down
29:16
because I think what we’re doing when
29:18
people ask me what letter we’re gonna
29:19
have I used to say we’re gonna both avi
29:21
in and out we’re gonna have a V which
29:23
means we’re gonna have a big sharp to
29:24
contraction we’re gonna recover some
29:26
after the ricotta after the virus passes
29:29
but we’re not gonna go all the way back
29:31
to the high so that’s your L and if
29:33
you’re going to artificially support
29:35
demand even though you don’t have that
29:37
supply going on you know that we’re
29:39
making things you’re going to have
29:42
higher prices at the end of the day
29:44
you’re going to have some lower prices
29:47
in the form of commodity prices gasoline
29:49
and other things are going to be
29:51
demanded less but people are gonna be
29:53
out there going well I got some money
29:55
here I might as well go buy a
29:57
Playstation or I might as well go buy an
29:59
iPhone because the government’s been
30:01
giving me money they’re not gonna be
30:02
making as many of them because the
30:04
D’Amico’s the supply constraints are
30:06
going to be on them as well – you’re
30:08
gonna have all kind of distortions in
30:09
the economy of course so yeah you can
30:11
have both deflation and then inflation
30:13
be coming out of this both at the same
30:16
time I think I mean that that’s classic
30:18
what the market the market stocks and
30:21
credit which have had you know basically
30:23
a hundred different w’s in terms of
30:25
expectations into it since the market
30:27
crash you know the bond markets got that
30:30
they had that right deflation that’s
30:31
when bond yields go down obviously it’s
30:33
where the Fed panics it’s what the
30:34
commodities markets told you it’s what
30:36
the foreign currency markets have told
30:37
you it’s just this this this this
30:39
incessant debate about the stock market
30:41
that can drive can drive human beings
30:43
mad okay I’m gonna start – if you don’t
30:47
mind gonna start to knock out some of
30:48
these questions here in the queue
30:49
because sure you have a lot of like I
30:51
said wide following and some there’s
30:54
some really good questions here on on
30:57
the first one you know why why why there
31:00
seems to be no movement or revolution
31:02
away from the Fed I think that this is
31:05
like you know why are in bay
31:06
who the question is why are Americans
31:07
fine with this I don’t know if they are
31:10
they’re fun they’re fine with it because
31:13
they think it’s gonna work
31:14
they’re like wall street at the end of
31:16
the day you know Wall Street can say
31:19
this is how the world works this is what
31:21
I believe but all they want is they want
31:24
prices to go up
31:25
and if they think this is gonna work
31:27
there’s going to be no pushback on it
31:30
right now and their argument is going to
31:32
be has it worked the last time they
31:34
tried it which was in o8 and so I think
31:38
the pushback comes at the failure of it
31:41
to work at the failure of it who to come
31:46
to pass and I’ll give you if you want a
31:48
statistic to look at in fact I was just
31:50
writing this a few minutes ago I think
31:53
right now the most important economic
31:55
statistic everybody watches his initial
31:57
claims how many people lost their jobs
31:58
this week
31:59
remember that’s initial how many people
32:01
filed this week for unemployment
32:04
insurance there’s another statistic
32:05
called continuing claims how many people
32:07
are staying on unemployment next week in
32:10
the week after the week after that
32:12
number is expected in the next two weeks
32:15
to go above 20 million well if the
32:17
Paycheck protection plan loans and the
32:20
Fed is going to work that 20 million 25
32:24
million of people on unemployment claims
32:27
should start to follow fast because not
32:30
because the economy is recovering but
32:32
because the assistance programs are
32:34
getting them back in their jobs even
32:36
though they’re getting paid to do
32:37
nothing I’m a fear it’s not gonna happen
32:40
that they’re gonna stay unemployed and
32:43
then at the end of the day all this talk
32:46
about this program and that program and
32:49
the Fed did this and the Fed did that
32:50
I’m gonna look at continuing claims
32:52
you’re gonna look at continuing claims
32:54
I’m going to go there’s tens of millions
32:56
of people that have lost their jobs yeah
32:58
it nurse that is going to then feed that
33:01
resentment that we’ll see look we could
33:04
be wrong and maybe that 20 million of
33:06
Continuing claims will quickly become 8
33:10
million or 7 million of Continuing
33:13
claims because remember if a company
33:15
takes out a personal a paycheck
33:17
protection a ppthey alone they have to
33:19
hire bad
33:20
everybody and then they have to apply at
33:22
the end of the summer to show that they
33:24
still are they still have everybody
33:26
didn’t lay off of anybody and then that
33:28
loan is forgiven and they get to keep
33:30
the money so if we see that continuing
33:35
claims dwindle away to very little
33:37
numbers then these programs work if we
33:40
don’t they didn’t work and if they
33:42
didn’t work then you’re going to see the
33:44
resentment right now no one’s mad
33:46
because they think that these things may
33:50
work they’re waiting to see whether or
33:52
not they work or not but if they don’t I
33:55
don’t think you’ll see that resentment
33:56
well that’s that’s another way to talk
33:58
about like the short-term panic by both
34:00
the Fed and the fiscal is that it’s
34:02
trying to get it all done now in the
34:04
absence of having the time for it to
34:06
actually play out and the way that I’ve
34:08
looked at that is that it finds its way
34:10
into market volatility so the market
34:12
volatility shows you that markets are I
34:14
think there are equity markets and parts
34:16
of high-yield are uninvested but again
34:19
until the volatility goes away the
34:20
volatility goes away when the economic
34:21
circumstances become clear that
34:23
generally is a function of cash flows
34:25
coming back people getting their jobs
34:26
back but on slide 78 guys just so that
34:29
people can see what Jim means because
34:31
III think I said this every meeting that
34:33
I had for the last year because US
34:35
economy as you know peaked at the end of
34:37
q3 of 2018 you know initial claims in a
34:40
recession is weekly number the number
34:42
one causal factor to be watching in
34:45
terms of the pace of the economy this
34:46
thing is way off the chart like there’s
34:49
no like if you and I like bean counters
34:52
like we can’t analyze it I can’t believe
34:55
that all these people are so certain in
34:57
their grand central plans that you can
34:58
knock out essentially don’t forget to do
35:00
not you’re gonna knock out depending on
35:02
what this number is on the right side
35:03
there the cumulative employment gains
35:06
you’re gonna knock up 90 percent of the
35:08
cycle that’s a hundred and twenty nine
35:09
month economic cycle and then
35:11
everybody’s just gonna magically come
35:13
back I mean our our you know we’re
35:15
saying that at least two-thirds of the
35:17
jobless claims are permanent right and I
35:20
think that that’s going to be the real
35:22
fear is that the officialdom is hoping
35:25
that these plans are going to get
35:26
everybody back to their job and that
35:29
their you’re going to get paid to do
35:30
nothing but you’re going to be there for
35:32
the restart is what they’re going to
35:33
want
35:34
to do right um but if you’re right
35:37
two-thirds of it is permanent there’s
35:40
gonna be a big backlash that’s going to
35:41
be considered a gigantic failure on the
35:45
part of official demand if that happens
35:48
and at the same time those markets are
35:52
perceived to have not fallen apart which
35:55
is for the moment where the authorial is
35:58
on this 50% retracement of the decline
36:00
you’re right back to the anger that you
36:02
had in late oh nine with the Tea Party
36:06
movement in Occupy Wall Street that the
36:08
rich and connected got bailed out
36:09
through artificially supporting in their
36:12
their asset prices at high levels but
36:14
everybody else didn’t get bailed out as
36:17
well too so that’s going to be a real
36:19
problem I think you’re right that
36:21
ultimately the thing that’s going to
36:24
matter the most is going to be that
36:26
initial claims which becomes continuing
36:28
claims yeah how many of those people get
36:30
their jobs back because if not enough of
36:33
them get their jobs back then this
36:35
didn’t work this being these bailout
36:37
plans and everything else to try and
36:39
support the economy didn’t work and if
36:42
the stock market decides to have you
36:44
know bubble fever again and make a run
36:46
at 3,000 on the S&P and you’ve got CNBC
36:50
and Bloomberg and Fox Business telling
36:51
you the markets are okay but you lost
36:54
your job you lost your life savings in
36:56
your restaurant yeah that’s not gonna
36:58
sit well those two things are not gonna
37:00
that’s oil and water trying to put those
37:02
two things together at the same time
37:04
yeah that’s that’s correct that’s
37:06
Batsuit crazy I mean to think that
37:07
that’s all gonna work on a linear basis
37:09
right the another question here and this
37:12
is this is an important one as well and
37:14
and you know Trump being as
37:16
chameleon-like as he always is as most
37:18
likely and already has moved towards the
37:19
new narrative like calling it the Wuhan
37:21
crisis one of our clients the other day
37:23
called it the China 19 you could see how
37:26
people go there on the blame game but as
37:28
US companies reassess their reliance on
37:31
China or wanting to do with them at all
37:33
is there a possibility of another China
37:35
trade deal follow up before the election
37:37
oh I think that there’s very little
37:40
chance of a China trade deal before the
37:42
election at this point I do think
37:46
the thing about whether or not you think
37:48
China was at fault or not the fact of
37:51
the matter is it started there and it
37:52
came out of there and so we know that
37:54
when you start hearing rick scott
37:57
senator from florida last week on TV
38:01
getting very emotional and angry and
38:03
saying something along the lines of
38:05
anybody that buys a product made in
38:07
china is immoral now 60 days ago he
38:10
would have been mocked and laughed at as
38:12
a kook for saying that today who’s gonna
38:15
support china who is McCrone gonna
38:18
support china he’s got 17,000 dead
38:20
people in his country is italy gonna
38:22
support China is Boris Johnson go to
38:24
support China he nearly died himself
38:26
from this as well so anybody that’s
38:29
gonna want to push on China and say
38:32
they’re at fault remember it came out of
38:34
there and it’s your fault and we need to
38:36
punish you there’s gonna be no natural
38:39
constituency that’s gonna push back
38:40
again is Biden gonna push back against
38:43
it does he think that that’s going to be
38:44
a winning strategy to defend China after
38:47
what everybody has gone through so there
38:50
is going to be the scapegoating from
38:53
China now maybe it’s not skipper maybe
38:54
it is appropriately assigning blame
38:56
because of the way that they’ve
38:58
mishandled it as well too and I think
39:00
Trump opened the door for that yesterday
39:03
with his I’m not gonna fund who anymore
39:06
the World Health Organization that is
39:09
almost by definition saying that who got
39:12
it wrong because China told them to get
39:15
it wrong and that’s what we’re gonna go
39:17
so there’s gonna be a lot of anxiety
39:19
let’s put it that way with China I don’t
39:21
know if I I’d be shocked if we’re gonna
39:23
be looking at more trade deals look over
39:26
the weekend Larry Kudlow who signed off
39:29
his shelf for 10 years I believe free
39:31
market capitalism is the best way to
39:33
prosperity said the government should
39:36
pay the moving costs of American
39:38
companies to relocate back to China
39:40
that’s not very free-market capitalist
39:42
but it might be something that will get
39:45
a lot of play and a lot of understanding
39:48
in the country as well too so in that
39:51
environment no there’s gonna be no trade
39:53
deal Trump I think is you know he keeps
39:57
saying the Chinese are gonna buy all
39:59
these soy bean
39:59
from us and we’ll see whether they do it
40:01
I think he’s waiting for them to not do
40:03
it and then he’s gonna unleash on them
40:05
as well – funny – do it
40:09
the cuddler thing just cracked me up but
40:11
I mean I remember going on Kudlow and
40:15
company for probably as long and not as
40:17
long as you did you’ve been doing it for
40:18
longer than I have but I’m 45 years old
40:20
I was he would start every show with you
40:23
know like you said free market
40:24
capitalism King dollar Jim King dog you
40:28
know right and cash flows are the
40:31
Mother’s Milk of the stock market now
40:35
you have cash flows pre virus that it’s
40:37
loads of 0% growth in the US he doesn’t
40:39
say jack shit about the dollar at all it
40:43
got this part which is just like I mean
40:46
I yeah yeah some of these questions – in
40:48
the queue and maybe you know I don’t
40:50
know if you want to address it just
40:51
generally but people are apoplectic
40:54
watching like these discussions saying
40:57
how can these the kinds of discussions
41:00
that that you and I are having right now
41:01
how can this not be had in America you
41:04
know as in the face of the establishment
41:07
like you have any ideas on that because
41:09
I’m certainly a game for it if there’s a
41:11
way to do it right I mean these
41:13
discussions again I think they really
41:15
come down to this giant hope that that
41:19
official term whether it’s the Treasury
41:22
it’s Washington it’s the Federal Reserve
41:24
it’s the foreign entities that are the
41:27
equivalent of them all together can fix
41:30
this problem and that’s what they’re
41:32
really hoping for is that they can fix
41:35
this problem this problem really being
41:38
that my portfolio has lost a lot of
41:41
money and that’s really what’s untenable
41:43
and I need that to go back up they don’t
41:46
believe in the Schumpeter creative
41:48
destruction for every decline in every
41:51
change there’s an opportunity and if you
41:53
let the if you let the organism of free
41:57
market capitalism exist it will bend and
42:00
fold and change itself into something
42:02
else that’s better we don’t want to
42:04
change anything right now we want the
42:07
status quo and that’s what they’re
42:09
really pushing on is the status quo to
42:12
hold
42:13
print all this money hold the market up
42:15
at these levels as well too if you want
42:19
to look at a good example is you know
42:22
the the auto bailouts of ten years ago
42:24
we couldn’t allow because everybody’s
42:27
got this perception that when a company
42:29
goes out of business it goes away it
42:32
doesn’t go away it restructures is what
42:35
it does it changes in what it is and
42:38
that we didn’t allow the auto companies
42:40
to restructure and change to the point
42:44
that we allowed a Tesla to become the
42:47
bubble that it became because everybody
42:48
looked at Tesla and said they’re leading
42:51
the way to where autos can go now maybe
42:54
the evaluations became insane and
42:57
ridiculous but what we also are saying
42:59
at the same time is for GM Chrysler and
43:01
the rest of you you can’t you are
43:03
incapable of leading us to where we need
43:06
to go so we look to these messiahs like
43:09
the Tesla’s of the world and say they’re
43:11
going to show us where we need to go
43:13
with these industries because we don’t
43:15
allow them to change because change
43:17
means somebody might lose a job but
43:20
another job might be created along the
43:22
way so we are really trying to really
43:26
recreate January 2020 that’s what we’re
43:29
really what we don’t want anything to
43:31
change from that but it’s going to
43:33
change from that and that doesn’t
43:35
necessarily again that doesn’t mean it
43:38
has to be a disaster it can just be
43:41
different but we don’t even want
43:43
different we want January 2020 and
43:46
that’s why we’re printing all this money
43:48
and doing all this stuff to try and go
43:50
right back to there and you know the
43:52
political establishment Trump he wants
43:54
twenty twenty more January twenty twenty
43:57
more than anybody else
43:58
remember he famously tweeted in January
44:00
twenty twenty the stock market’s up
44:02
ninety percent since I got elected
44:04
you’re not up for ninety percent what
44:05
did you do wrong that’s what he wants he
44:08
based his whole election strategy on the
44:10
Dow going higher and higher and higher
44:13
and and so we’ll see right now there’s a
44:17
big hope especially among the JP
44:20
Morgan’s of the world and the Goldman
44:23
Sachs’s of the world that this will work
44:25
in
44:25
them back to where they were in January
44:28
but when the reality comes in that they
44:30
can’t get us back to January then we
44:33
have to start asking a hard question
44:34
okay we don’t have no economy we have a
44:38
different economy and how is it
44:39
different and who are the winners and
44:41
losers in the new economy we’re not
44:44
ready to go there just yet yeah that’s a
44:46
that’s a good wind up here man that’s
44:49
that’s that’s a lot and it’s and it’s
44:51
the truth and and maybe my last question
44:53
on that is you go back to January and I
44:55
mean not withstanding when it was
44:58
shortly thereafter that Robin hoodie
44:59
accounts for driving Tesla to 925 bucks
45:02
I mean there’s you know people couldn’t
45:03
see any of this coming of course we had
45:05
we work we had plenty of imbalances the
45:06
biggest corporate credit credit bubble
45:08
in US history but I remember and I’ll
45:11
never forget I live in the great state
45:13
of Connecticut which sure certainly is
45:15
in a Republican state I’m not a
45:16
Republican or a Democrat I’m a Canadian
45:17
guy I just don’t like politicians
45:20
generally but my most raging Democrat
45:25
clients let’s just say in you know
45:27
institutional money managers they were
45:29
kind of okay with Trump you know they
45:31
they’re okay because it was working
45:33
right they’re getting paid markets going
45:35
up they’re levered long they say yeah
45:37
you know he’s clever he’s gonna keep it
45:39
going you know I don’t know how much of
45:40
that you’ve got in your neck of the
45:43
woods but man they’re gonna be quick to
45:45
turn if that if if what was getting em
45:47
paid through the lens of dig they were
45:49
willing to ignore it but now they’re
45:52
certain ask the questions was he telling
45:53
the truth it’s just like the words
45:56
turning pretty quickly here you know
45:59
everybody that’s listening to this
46:00
podcast isn’t is interested in the
46:02
investment markets in one way or another
46:04
has their in the history of the world
46:06
ever been anybody to bitch and complain
46:08
that they made money whether or not it
46:11
was they made it by luck or they made it
46:13
by smart or they fell into it or they
46:16
saw it coming if they bought something
46:18
and it won up they’re good with it and
46:20
you know don’t don’t start telling me
46:22
that I got lucky or I maybe I did and
46:24
I’m I’m good with the president good
46:27
with every if this guy keeps tweeting
46:29
every three days that he’s causing the
46:31
stock market to go off even though I
46:33
might believe he didn’t it’s going up
46:36
and I’m making money and there’s no
46:38
complaints here
46:39
and then the minute thought stops going
46:41
up this one everybody then starts asking
46:43
the real hard questions yeah that’s a
46:45
real hard questions it’s getting harder
46:47
I mean he had a tough trade their
46:48
president pump on that oil trade right
46:53
you know it’s it’s it’s an amazing thing
46:56
that what’s happening with the with the
46:58
oil trade is Trump has you know he might
47:01
not be wrong on it but he’s he’s decided
47:04
that the energy sector is as important
47:08
as the consumer sector now from an
47:10
economic standpoint that’s actually
47:12
right if you look at the amount of GD
47:14
the energy sector puts out and the
47:17
amount of GDP would that would be
47:19
enhanced by an oil price cut it’s about
47:22
50/50 and so he’s not entirely wrong on
47:25
that but boy he does really come off as
47:28
is trying to say that he doesn’t want
47:30
anybody to have a cut of gasoline prices
47:32
they should if the economy is gonna go
47:34
down this hard then that should be the
47:36
natural consequence of it is one dollar
47:38
gasoline is what it would be um gasoline
47:41
is supposed to represent some measure of
47:44
economic prosperity in the country too
47:46
because it’s its demand will move up and
47:49
down with it and if we are unemployed
47:52
remember the biggest reason you drive is
47:54
to go to work and if you are unemployed
47:57
then you get the gasoline demand numbers
47:59
we got today the lowest ever cuz
48:01
everybody’s sitting around talking to
48:03
people on skype like we are right now
48:06
and we’re not in our car yeah and that’s
48:08
going to continue to be the case as we
48:10
move forward yeah if you haven’t looked
48:11
at it which I’m sure you have maybe
48:13
others haven’t the mannheim index you
48:15
know used cars just complete collapse
48:18
and that that index used cars has been a
48:20
pretty good leading indicator for a long
48:22
time but it’s it’s episodic and
48:24
generally not trending but when it
48:25
crashes it crashes for for a reason and
48:28
adjust it again so that’s kind of sad
48:30
there’s a lot if there’s a lot of about
48:31
this Jim that’s that’s just set and you
48:33
know I appreciate that you’ve been open
48:37
and honest about it I think there’s a
48:38
there’s an analytical weaponry to that
48:40
but there’s also a courage
48:42
you know not everybody to your point on
48:44
Wall Street’s willing to again we’re not
48:47
making shit up here this is the truth
48:48
and you’ve been illuminating suffice to
48:51
say and
48:51
educational in terms of laying it out
48:53
there so thanks for thanks for taking
48:55
the time to do that with me
48:56
thank you I appreciate it he’s Jim
48:59
Bianco you can actually find him on
49:01
Twitter he’s a great contributor to the
49:03
debate out there and I think he’ll be on
49:04
the front lines of it I think you’ve met
49:06
three people in particular today that
49:08
that will be I think courage is a big
49:10
part of leadership and I’m gonna you
49:12
know it depends on what people wanted to
49:13
find Americas but that’s how I’m gonna
49:15
define mine thanks for joining us today
49:17
we will be right back at it tomorrow for
49:19
the final day of the investing summit
49:21
[Music]
49:28
you

How to Build a Recession-Proof Investment Portfolio (w/ Danielle DiMartino-Booth & Chris Cole)

Imagine being furnished with generational wealth under one condition – you must choose only one asset allocation for your portfolio and stick with it for 100 years. Where would you even start? Chris Cole, CIO and founder of Artemis Capital Management, returns to Real Vision to answer that very question. He sits down with Danielle DiMartino Booth of Quill Intelligence to discuss the optimal portfolio construction for the long run, regardless of market condition. With uncertainty everywhere despite all-highs in the market, Cole discusses how to navigate Charlie Munger’s “death of the efficient frontier.” He explains the allegory of the Hawk and Serpent and breaks down the construction of his 100-year portfolio. Cole and Booth provide viewers with the tools to traverse the “incremental death of alpha,” and markets that are increasingly subject to the amplified volatility of increasingly passive investments. This piece is a much-watch for the pension fund or endowment that has no long-volatility exposure in their portfolio. Filmed on February 7, 2020 in Austin, Texas.

9:27

00:02
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Well, hello.
00:03
This is Danielle DiMartino Booth with Real Vision, and today we’ve got a real treat.
00:07
We are bringing your Christopher Cole with Artemis Capital.
00:10
We’ve been waiting for over two years for a follow-up to his seminal paper.
00:14
It’s out there.
00:15
You have to read it.
00:16
Share it with people– maybe not people under 18.
00:18
They wouldn’t understand it.
00:20
But everybody needs to get a copy of this and read it.
00:23
We’re going to discuss what it’s all about today.
00:26
Welcome.
00:27
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Thank you.
00:28
It’s a pleasure to be here and back on Real Vision again.
00:30
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: So I’m going to start with an anecdote.
00:34
Years ago, I was in Omaha, and I visited with Charlie Munger.
00:38
And he made the comment to me that the entire pension fund advisory business one day would
00:45
go out of business.
00:46
It would go the way of the dodo bird because of the group think that surrounded the industry
00:51
because of the way that the portfolios were being designed in a world where central banks
00:57
were effectively running the show.
01:00
And he made the comment to me that he saw in the future, he said, I might not live to
01:05
see, but you will, the death of the efficient frontier.
01:09
So I’m curious about your thoughts on portfolio construction, how it’s done, and how it that
01:18
evolution has changed basically the way this entire generation approaches investing.
01:24
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Well, beginning with that and looking at what Munger has said, as a
01:28
follow-up to my last letter, the Ouroboros letter that talked about the cycle of risk
01:33
and how volatility has been used as both a proxy for risk and also as a source of return.
01:40
I thought, how can I– what will disrupt that– what will disrupt that cycle?
01:46
I posed a question to myself saying, well, if we’re going to see what happens in the
01:50
future, we have to look to the past, and the distant past, not just the recent past, not
01:54
the last 10 years, not the last 40 years.
01:57
We need to look back 100, 200 years to understand the cycle of capital creation and destruction.
02:03
And I posed this question to myself.
02:06
I said, imagine that someone gives you generational wealth, enough money that you can live and
02:15
your children’s children can live at a high level.
02:19
But it’s subject to one question, one dynamic.
02:26
You have to choose an asset allocation and stick with that allocation over 100 years.
02:32
What allocation do you choose so that your children’s children will have prosperity?
02:41
And taking that cue, I went back and looked at 90 years of historical data, backtested
02:48
a wide range of popular financial engineering strategies, everything from risk parity, the
02:55
traditional pension portfolio, short volatility, long volatility strategies, commodity trending
03:01
strategies, and looked and how do these perform?
03:03
And what asset allocation is the allocation that’s going to provide wealth, not only consistently
03:11
over 90 years, but through every generational cycle, through both periods of secular growth
03:17
and secular decline?
03:19
And what I found surprised me, that echoing Munger’s statement, the allocation that the
03:28
majority of US pension systems and retirees are following, which approximately today is
03:33
about 70% equity-linked products- – that could be everything from stocks to private equity,
03:39
things that are the profit from secular growth– and about 20% bonds.
03:44
That portfolio has done incredibly well over the last 40 years.
03:49
But when you look at that portfolio over 90 years, you see a very, very different reality.
03:58
And that has a wide range of social, economic, and social ramifications that become quite
04:06
startling.
04:08
But looking at that, I say, what asset allocation can I find that will actually provide protection
04:17
over that 90 years consistently?
04:19
And that answer came not from a macro view.
04:24
It doesn’t come from me having an opinion about whether or not we’re going to go into
04:29
a recession or whether or not there’s going to be some continued economic prosperity.
04:33
It comes simply by looking at data, using mathematics, looking at data, and looking
04:39
at empirical data over a lifetime to come to that determination.
04:44
And I think the results are quite shocking.
04:46
And I think they run somewhat counter to the consensus knowledge as to what optimal portfolio
04:52
allocation should be.
04:53
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: So Charlie Munger was right.
04:55
CHRISTOPHER COLE: I think he’s right.
04:57
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Take a step back to the October 2017 paper, if you will.
05:04
Back then, you drew the scope of the financialization of the markets of the economy.
05:13
You talked about risk parity, and share buybacks, and the massive effect that they had had on
05:20
the crowding in to certain asset classes.
05:25
So talk about what effect this herding instinct has had on the way this generation views investing.
05:37
CHRISTOPHER COLE: You and I have a very similar writing style.
05:40
I love metaphors.
05:42
I think visually.
05:43
I think I think you do too.
05:44
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Yours are better.
05:45
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Yours are– they’re very good.
05:48
But in that 2017 paper, I think I wanted to use the idea of an Ouroboros, this concept
05:55
of a snake devouring its own tail.
05:58
And what this was a metaphor for– what is now about $3 trillion in equity markets alone.
06:04
This is just equity markets, US equity markets.
06:08
The number is much larger if you expand that across asset classes.
06:13
But of strategies that use volatility as an input for taking risk, but also seek to generate
06:21
excess yield, either through selling volatility or through the assumption of stability.
06:29
So in this number, you have implicit and explicit short volatility strategies.
06:34
And I think there’s a lot of confusion as to what this means.
06:38
Explicit short volatility strategies are strategies that they will sell derivatives, so they’ll
06:44
sell options.
06:45
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: So the easiest would be selling the VIX.
06:47
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Selling the VIX, that’s right.
06:48
So this paper came out prior to the XIV blow up, and it talked about how the VIX ETPs were
06:55
likely to have significant problems.
06:57
But that’s a very small component of that short volatility trade.
07:00
A much larger component of the short vol trade are strategies that replicate the risk parameters
07:10
of short volatility trades but may not actually be shorting volatility.
07:14
So strategies like this might be things like volatility targeting funds or some elements
07:20
of risk parity, for example.
07:21
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Risk parity is still something we don’t hear a lot about, even
07:25
though it’s massive.
07:26
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Yes, yeah.
07:28
And indeed, the framework there is– this could be anything between literally shorting
07:34
vol– literally shorting volatility, what I’ll call short gamma or being short trend–
07:38
and we could talk a little bit more about that– short correlations, short interest
07:44
rates.
07:45
These are risk factors of a portfolio of short options that various financial engineering
07:49
strategies will replicate, maybe not all of them, but certain aspects of them.
07:53
That doesn’t mean all these strategies are bad.
07:55
It just means that they are formulated to a world where interest rates are dropping,
08:00
assets are mean reverting, and that volatility is quite low.
08:05
And guess what has happened the last 40 years?
08:09
We are at generational lows in volatility across asset classes.
08:15
Asset trending– I think this is something most people don’t realize that, actually,
08:20
assets, equity for example, used to trend higher and lower.
08:25
You can measure that through something called autocorrelation.
08:28
All that means is that if today was down, it is likely that tomorrow will be up and
08:36
vice versa.
08:37
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Buy the dip.
08:39
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Buy the dip, that’s right.
08:40
So the assets for the greater part of a lifetime were autocorrelated in the sense that higher
08:49
prices resulted in higher prices, and lower prices resulted in lower prices.
08:54
That autocorrelation peaked right when Nixon delinked the dollar versus gold, or the US
09:01
dollar versus gold.
09:03
And we have underwent a multi-decade decrease in autocorrelations.
09:09
And now, we’re at really peak mean reversion markets.
09:13
So a lot of strategies make the assumption that mean reversion is implicit to asset price
09:20
behavior.
09:21
That’s definitely not always the case.
09:23
So to that point, one of the strategies we actually tested was buy the dip.
How would buy the dip perform going back 90 years?

09:33
This is very interesting.
09:34
Buying the dip, you don’t think of it as a short volatility, strategy but it is short
09:38
gamma, what’s short that autocorrelation effect.
09:42
Well, buy the dip has performed incredibly well over the last 10 years, and really over
09:50
the last 20 years, as central banks have been very reactive to market stress.

09:54
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: That’s an understatement.
09:56
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Right?
09:57
Well, it’s very interesting.
09:58
If you go back and you test buy the dip over 90 years, that strategy goes bankrupt three
times.

10:06
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Bankrupt’s a big word.
10:08
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Flat out loses all of its money three times over a 90 year history.
10:14
It is only really in the last 10 years where it’s compounded at about 10% a year where
10:19
we’ve seen that outperformance.
10:20
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: I think that might– let’s see.
10:22
Is that the quantitative easing era?
10:23
CHRISTOPHER COLE: I think so.
10:25
It’s not a coincidence.
10:26
Yes, not a coincidence at all.
10:27
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: So you tweeted out something a few days ago about long-term deflationary
10:35
trends.
10:36
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Yeah.
10:37
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: It feels like we keep going there.
10:41
What in your mind could possibly ignite inflation?
10:46
Because it’s the one thing that nobody is expecting.
10:49
We’re all expecting wash, rinse, repeat.
10:52
More deflation next time there’s a disruption of any kind, and again, every central bank
10:57
comes riding into the rescue with more stimulus.
10:59
CHRISTOPHER COLE: More stimulus– so look at looking back at– there have been other
11:03
cycles across history that are like an Ouroboros eating its own tail.
11:08
If we take this beyond just short volatility, we can think of it as part of the entire debt
11:13
deflation cycle.
11:14
So this idea that you start out with something good, you start out with real economic growth,
11:19
technology, and demographics, and that leads to growth.
11:23
And fantastic– you’re growing.
11:25
The economy is growing.
11:26
It’s fundamental growth.
11:28
At a certain point in time, the fundamentals get stretched and we become reliant on fiat
11:36
devaluation and debt expansion.
11:38
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: So think of the baby boomer generation generating genuine
11:42
economic growth, and then they’re starting to move to spending less.
11:48
And how do you fill that gap?
11:49
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Exactly.
11:50
So to this point, we start out in this framework.
11:53
It’s in the period of 1984 to 2007– one of the most incredible periods of asset price
12:02
growth and asset appreciation growth in not just American history, in history period.
12:08
90% of the returns of a 60-40 stock-bond portfolio came from the 22 years between ’84 and 2007.
12:17
Just 22 years drove 90% of the gains of that portfolio over 90 years.
12:21
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: I probably couldn’t count on one hand the number of investors
12:24
who have been around since before 1984.
12:26
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Exactly.
12:27
The average investment advisor is 52 years old.
12:30
They were a kindergartener during the stagflationary period of the 1970s.
12:34
So you have all these baby boomers, 76 million baby boomers– largest generation in American
12:39
history.
12:40
They’re teenagers right into the devaluation of gold in the 1971.
12:45
That is driving a tremendous amount of inflation at that point in time.
12:49
Interest rates go up to 19%, and then these baby boomers, 76 million of them, enter the
12:54
workforce in the early ’80s.
12:56
And they start making money.
12:59
They start making money, and they start spending.
13:01
They start investing.
13:02
So you have baby boomers coming on in.
13:05
Then you have a trend towards globalization, so we’re able to export our inflation overseas.
13:10
You have a technology boom as well.
13:15
And then, interest rates begin dropping.
13:17
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Oh, yes.
13:19
CHRISTOPHER COLE: So and– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: May he rest in peace, Paul Volcker.
13:22
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Exactly.
13:23
And as if that’s not enough, taxes start coming down.
13:28
So you have this once-in-a-generation, once-in-several-hundred-years economic boom, asset price boom that occurs,
13:37
driven as baby boomers come into the workforce, begin savings, enter into their prime earning
13:42
years.
13:43
But now, those boomers are going to be retiring.
13:46
They are going to be drawing $20 trillion dollars out of markets instead of putting
13:50
that into markets.
13:52
This, obviously presents a tremendous deflationary force.
13:56
So I’d like to think about this as a snake.
13:59
If we take the snake metaphor and we pull it out, it’s not just short volatility.
14:04
It is almost like a snake devouring its own tail as part of a business cycle.
14:08
The snake is eating prey and naturally compressing inwards through secular growth.
14:15
And that’s healthy.
14:16
But towards the end of the secular growth cycle, that snake relies on financial engineering,
14:23
excess leverage, and begins eating its own tail.
14:28
And that is where we’re at, I would say, in the cycle right now.
14:31
And you’ve written beautifully on this about some of the debt problems out there.
14:34
Currently, we’re at 48% debt to GDP, highest corporate debt to GDP, highest level in American
14:41
history.
14:42
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: You tack on– you aggregate non-financial, we’re at 74%.
14:45
CHRISTOPHER COLE: 74%.
14:47
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Unheard of numbers.
14:49
CHRISTOPHER COLE: And what are we doing with this?
14:51
What are corporations doing with this debt?
14:52
They’re issuing debt to buy back their own shares at a trillion dollars a year.
14:56
And then institutions are funneling that in in order to– they need to find ways to generate
15:03
yield absent any fundamental growth.
15:05
So we had a year like last year, where there’s no actual earnings growth, but it’s all multiple
15:12
expansion driven by share buybacks and speculation.
15:15
So this is– we’re at this end of the cycle, where the snake is devouring its own tail.
15:19
Now, this can go on for a long time.
15:21
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Clearly.
15:22
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Well, what breaks that cycle?
15:26
And this comes to the image in the paper of the allegory of the hawk and serpent.
15:31
And I was thinking about this.
15:33
Outside our offices here, we have a peregrine falcon that flies around.
15:36
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: I saw that on Twitter.
15:38
You need to tweet more often, by the way.
15:40
Can We.
15:41
Got on “Real Vision” thumbs up on that?
15:43
Thank you.
15:44
CHRISTOPHER COLE: I do a lot of research and work, but I’ll try.
15:49
I’ll try a little bit more.
15:50
I’m still getting used to it, by the way.
15:53
The whole retweet thing– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: It gets tricky.
15:55
CHRISTOPHER COLE: It gets tricky a little bit.
15:59
But that hawk– I noticed the idea of hawk.
16:02
And there is an old symbol of a hawk fighting a serpent.
16:06
And this symbol has deep roots.
16:10
It’s actually on the great seal of the US.
16:13
It’s on the coat of arms of Mexico.
16:15
It has important ramifications across different traditions ranging from Aztec to Egyptian
16:23
to Indian.
16:24
But this idea to me, what it represented is the serpent represents the secular growth
16:29
cycle that becomes corrupted at a certain point in time, where the serpent begins devouring
16:35
its own tail.
16:36
It is unable to generate growth naturally and has to self-cannibalize.
16:41
And the hawk comes down and represents the disruption of that cycle.
16:46
But the hawk has two wings, which also work with the probability distribution.
16:50
On the left wing– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Wow, that’s deep.
16:52
OK.
16:53
CHRISTOPHER COLE: So the metaphor goes deeper.
16:56
On the left wing, we have debt deflation.
16:59
This is what Japan has experienced.
17:02
That’s one way you get out of this decaying growth cycle.
17:05
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Slowly.
17:06
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Slowly.
17:07
Painfully.
17:08
That’s what the US experienced in the ’30s.
17:10
But on the other end of it, you have fiat devaluation and reflation.
17:15
That is where you simply devalue your currency.
17:18
And that could be helicopter money, devaluation currency, money printing.
17:23
That is another way that you get out of that crisis.
17:27
This is as old as money itself.
17:29
And one wing can occur before the other.
17:33
You can have a deflationary crisis before you have a reflationary crisis.
17:38
So to get back to your original question, what will cause– what I see causing inflation.
17:43
You have a scenario today where the two largest blocks of the US population are baby boomers,
17:51
at about 22% of the population right now.
17:54
They’re rich.
17:55
They have a lot of money.
17:56
They’ve lived through one of the most incredible periods of asset price growth in history.
And they want to protect that money.
18:03
So they are going to– they’re going to support policies or are incentivized to, I should
18:09
say.
18:10
They don’t need to, but they’re incentivized to support policies that protect their retirement
18:14
and their entitlement benefits.
18:18
Now you have millennials, which are now the largest generation at 26% of the population,
18:23
and Gen Z following, are likely to be the first generation in American history to be
18:28
poorer than their parents.
18:29
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Remarkable.
18:30
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Remarkable, yeah.
18:32
Lower household creation rates– they have– the average millennial has substantial student
18:37
debt.
18:38
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Low savings.
18:39
CHRISTOPHER COLE: No savings, that’s right.
18:41
So the incentive of the average millennial, they’re incentivized in essence to pursue
18:45
policies that represent redistribution of wealth and seek to tax, redistribute, and
18:53
cause inflation.
18:55
So I think the time to look, and maybe what could cause inflation is the political sea
19:00
change towards– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: At some point– we’re at $23 trillion now.
19:06
But to your point, at some point, you’re going to hit a level of debt if truly all of these
19:13
social spending initiatives are financed by printing money.
19:17
Theoretically, at some point, you will hit a limit.
19:20
I agree with you.
19:24
You talk about passive investing.
19:25
It’s a hot button.
19:27
90% of flows go into passive strategies.
19:32
Even pensions are in passive strategies.
19:35
Talk about the perfect– perfect liquidity of passive investing.
19:40
CHRISTOPHER COLE: The concept of passive– and now, we are at a point where passive investments
19:46
have eclipsed active for the first time in history.
19:50
And my friend Mike Green who’s a friend of “Real Vision” has a lot of fantastic research
19:53
on this.
19:54
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Yes, he has.
19:55
CHRISTOPHER COLE: And I’ve done some work, in essence, trying to replicate his assumptions
20:00
using some toy models and was able to do that.
20:07
His theory, at the end of the day, is that at a certain point, if the market is dominated
20:14
by passive actors, it not only amplifies volatility, which I completely agree with– if there is
20:21
no other incremental seller against a buyer or buyer against a seller, each incremental
20:32
buy or sell will result in massive movement in the underlying.
20:37
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: It’s an amplifier.
20:38
CHRISTOPHER COLE: It’s an amplifier.
20:39
Because if you look at active investors, active investors are a volatility dampener.
20:44
Value investors will come into the market, and they will buy when there is a big collapse
20:49
in asset prices.
20:50
So they will in essence put a floor underneath asset prices.
20:53
And they’ll sell when asset prices go to high.
20:55
Well, you remove all the active investors, and that will amplify volatility.
21:00
The other factor that comes into play a lot of the time is this idea that it actually
21:04
reduces the alpha available to active participants.
21:07
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Clearly.
21:08
We’re watching one asset manager after another, one hedge fund after another go away.
21:12
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Because, in essence, passive is in its own right a systematic strategy.
21:18
It has elements of– it is a basic systematic strategy.
21:22
So it goes back to the soul of investing.
21:24
There are two different competing thought processes, I think, that are at war with one
21:30
another.
21:31
The one thought process is that assets should have a value, that there should be a value,
21:38
and that market participants are fighting to determine what that value is.
21:43
But there is, in theory, some intrinsic value to it.
21:46
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Price discovery.
21:47
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Price discovery.
21:48
There is a second school, which I think is gaining strength right now, which is forget
21:56
intrinsic value.
21:58
All that matters according to this school of thinking is the price momentum of the asset.
22:06
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: You can burn your MBA.
22:08
You don’t need it anymore.
22:10
CHRISTOPHER COLE: That’s right.
22:11
So aspects of factor investing follow this principle, whether it’s momentum, quality,
22:18
whether it’s FANG, or whether it’s ownership of company management.
22:25
Whatever the factor is, as long as people believe in the factor, and keep buying, and
22:30
keep providing– as long there continues to be liquidity, that creates value.
22:37
I’m clearly in camp number one.
22:39
I clearly believe that there’s intrinsic value.
22:40
I believe– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Well, if you go back 100 years, there is.
22:44
CHRISTOPHER COLE: There is.
22:46
And I would like to quote Harley Bassman, who once had a fantastic quote.
22:51
He always says this, that pigs can fly if shot out of a large enough cannon.
22:55
They always return to earth as bacon.
22:59
He’s so right on the money with his usual wit.
23:04
With a large enough amount of central bank stimulus and enough ability to create debt,
23:10
you can create this illusion as to momentum in these factors that– so I actually think
23:16
passive investing is actually just a liquidity momentum trading.
23:19
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: I would agree with you.
23:21
Look– well, October 2018, it was not pretty.
23:24
It acted as an amplifier, but on the downside.
23:27
But we haven’t seen a lot of that.
23:30
You put venture capital and private equity into your 70% slice of the pie.
23:40
Explain that.
23:41
Because I don’t think that if you went down to Texas teachers, for example, I don’t think
23:47
that they would say that– they would say it would be at the opposite end of the spectrum,
23:51
and it would be a diversification strategy against publicly traded equities.
23:56
CHRISTOPHER COLE: So one are the concepts on doing this paper is I wanted to find a
24:00
asset allocation that is a solution.
24:04
What asset allocation can work over 90 years that can protect you against the deflationary
24:11
elements of the left wing of the hawk and the reflation three elements of the right
24:15
wing of the hawk?
24:17
That led me to a very big conclusion, and it ties into the question about private equity.
24:23
Most people think that excess return– that you want to take to asset classes that both
24:30
have solid returns, and bring them together, and that you’ll get a better result from.
24:36
That they prioritize the search for yield and prioritize excess return.
24:41
And what I found is that, actually, what people should prioritize is secular diversification.
24:50
And what that means is that you should look to large asset– look to asset classes that
24:57
can perform on the left or the right tail, and boldly size them in your portfolio.
25:02
That means boldly sizing countertrend asset classes that perform when stocks and bonds
don’t.
25:10
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: So gold’s not like the little 10% just in case?
25:13
CHRISTOPHER COLE: That’s right.
25:14
Gold shouldn’t be 1% or 2%.
25:16
It should be 20%.
25:20
Volatility should be 20%.
25:23
Commodity trend should be 20%.
25:25
And then stocks and bonds can make up the other remaining 20 and 20.
25:30
Well, so private equity– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: That stands the conventional wisdom
25:33
on its head.
25:34
CHRISTOPHER COLE: It does, where many individuals have big problems trying to even allocate
25:38
3% of their portfolio to gold.
25:41
Well, this gets back to the private equity VC question.
25:45
Now, these are relatively new asset classes.
25:47
It’s tough to see their performance going back 100 years.
25:51
But Cambridge has fantastic data going back a good 20 years, 20, 30 years.
25:58
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: When I was at DLJ, we had a merchant bank.
26:01
Private equity was this cottage industry.
26:04
Leon Black used to walk the halls.
26:06
This was way before– what, they’ve got $4 trillion?
26:09
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Yeah, it’s massive.
26:10
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Massive.
26:11
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Massive.
26:12
Well, it becomes very clear from looking.
26:15
You can just look at the return data from private equity NVCs to see that these asset
26:20
classes are secular growth asset classes.
26:23
They are correlated to the business cycle.
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: So they move in concert with publicly-traded equities.
26:28
CHRISTOPHER COLE: They move.
26:30
Sure, you might get some excess return, but they are correlated to equities.
26:35
They will lose money in the event that there’s a widescale recession.
26:38
Well, I should say, they have historically lost money when that has occurred.
26:43
I cringe when I hear leaders of very large– and I’ve heard this.
26:51
Leaders of very large pension systems, huge, huge systems that have a lot of money, and
26:56
they say that private equity and venture capital are diversifies because they’re lagged.
27:05
This doesn’t work with the data in view.
27:10
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: I’ve been harping on this issue for years and years.
27:15
When we went into the crisis, the baby boomers were still an actuarial accounting assumption
27:21
you could fudge with.
27:23
Heading into the next downturn, they’re going to be a cash flow issue for pensions.
27:29
And when you factor in the illiquidity aspect of the alternatives, it just makes no sense.
27:36
CHRISTOPHER COLE: No, it does not.
27:37
And this is what we’ve seen.
27:39
So I put about a post on Twitter.
27:41
And I had three asset classes.
27:43
And they were just sine wave graphs.
27:45
The two asset A and asset B were highly correlated with one another, and they were slightly offset
27:53
from one another.
27:54
And asset C, the last asset, was a countertrend asset.
27:58
It was an asset that didn’t make any money, but made money when all the other assets lost
28:04
money.
28:05
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Did it lose?
28:07
Lose money?
28:08
CHRISTOPHER COLE: It lost money, actually– lost a little bit of money.
28:10
It was flat.
28:11
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: A little– OK, critical words.
28:12
OK, continue.
28:13
CHRISTOPHER COLE: And I posted to Twitter.
28:14
I said, which of these would you combine.
28:16
You can choose two assets to have the optimal portfolio.
28:18
And of course, everyone says, well, we’re going to choose the high returning asset and
28:22
the countertrend asset because that’s going to result in a dramatically better risk adjusted
28:29
return as opposed to combining the two assets that have similar return profiles, which results
28:35
in bigger gains, but bigger losses.
28:38
So Twitter got that answer correct.
28:40
80% of people chose the trend and the countertrend asset.
28:45
But what’s interesting is that the big institutions around the world are doing the exact opposite.
28:51
They’re taking equity exposure, and then they’re layering on more and more private equity exposure,
28:55
and more VC exposure, and more high yield credit exposure, and short volatility exposure,
29:01
and you name it, all because they have to reach the 7.25% return target.
29:07
And at the end of the day, what you have is a portfolio that is tilted to secular growth.
29:16
Will perform in secular growth, but in the event that we have any regime change, any
29:22
period of secular change, either on the left wing of the hawk with deflation or the right
29:28
wing of the hawk with reflation fiat devaluation, that portfolio will struggle and struggle
29:36
terribly.
29:37
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: I wasn’t surprised about most of what you wrote.
29:40
But I was intrigued about how you view real estate as an asset class.
29:47
It’s got the highest return, but– CHRISTOPHER COLE: Yeah, so real estate is– real estate’s
29:53
quite interesting as an asset class, because I think most people don’t really think of
29:56
it as– it is a levered secular growth asset.
30:00
And your average person, I think, the average retiree– maybe not the institutions, but
30:05
the average retiree, they would never go lever their stock portfolio five times.
30:11
But you own a home, and that is a levered investment.
30:14
That’s not saying it’s a bad investment.
30:17
I’m not saying that.
30:19
But most people don’t look at it in that light.
30:23
So in the same way that you structure– that one should structure trend and countertrend
30:28
assets to balance the hawk and the serpent, the idea of including real estate in one’s
30:33
thinking about one’s personal portfolio, I think, is really important because, oftentimes,
30:39
your job is driven by the economic growth cycle.
30:43
Your home is driven by the economic growth cycle.
30:46
And then you’re Levering that exposure to the economic growth cycle.
30:49
And then you’re also adding stock exposure onto that.
30:52
So the average retiree with some– or the average working individual with a mortgage
31:00
has tremendous exposure to the secular growth cycle levered– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH:
31:04
And there’s an extraordinary percentage of baby boomers with mortgages.
31:08
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Yes, yeah.
31:09
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: And the rest of their portfolio’s in an index fund.
31:12
CHRISTOPHER COLE: And very few people think about this.
31:15
And the concept at the end of the day that somehow that will be insulated– stocks dropped
31:23
86% in the Great Depression, and real estate dropped to the same degree.
31:29
Now, in prior cycles, when interest rates were at 19% and were able to be lowered, that
31:39
created a dynamic where real estate performed somewhat like a bond.
31:43
Every single time that rates went down, it increased the affordability for people to
31:48
buy bigger homes.
31:50
So that provided a cushion for real estate.
31:52
Well, when rates are at the zero bound, several bad things begin to happen.
31:58
First of all, your 60-40 portfolio can struggle in the sense that your bonds are not getting
32:03
as much benefit.
32:05
But on top of that, your hold price is not going to get as much benefit if rates can’t
32:10
be lowered.
32:11
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: At the margin.
32:12
CHRISTOPHER COLE: At the margin, yeah.
32:13
So I don’t see people realize this.
32:15
Rates where they are today, for us to get the same benefit on a bond portfolio, on a
32:21
long-duration bond portfolio, or the same pickup in mortgages that we got after ’08,
32:28
the Fed would have to lower interest rates to negative 1.5%– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH:
32:32
Ooh, don’t say negative.
32:33
CHRISTOPHER COLE: –to get the same benefit as people got right based on where they lowered
32:38
in 2008.
32:39
I’ve never going to say that’s not feasible anymore, because God knows what is feasible
32:43
now.
32:44
But I will say there are major social ramifications if they pursue a course like that.
32:48
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Talk about one way that you would play volatility long.
32:57
Or if there is no way, one way, how do you– you said 20% long volatility.
33:05
How do you do that?
33:06
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Now, I take a very broad definition of what long volatility is.
33:09
So let’s start out with specifics.
33:12
I actually went back and I tested using very defensible assumptions.
33:17
What different traditional explicit volatility strategies, how they would have performed
33:23
over periods like the Great Depression, over the 1970s.
33:26
So for example, it’s very popular to do covered calls.
33:30
People will own stock and they’ll sell calls against that.
33:32
Large pensions do that as well.
33:34
Some people will do tail risk catching.
33:36
They’ll buy put options– various strategies.
33:38
So I tested all of these strategies using very realistic assumptions going back to the
33:44
1920s.
33:46
And those assumptions are laid held in very high detail in my paper.
33:52
So one of things I found, just to start out with– short volatility strategies, which
33:59
in equity markets, currently there’s upwards of about $200 billion of these strategies,
34:03
are very popular, have performed extremely well since the ’80s.
34:08
These mean reversion short vol strategies, pretty much every single one of them showed
34:14
complete annihilation of capital over 90 years.
34:19
And I would say that based on very defensible assumptions that people should not only avoid
34:24
these strategies, but also institutions that robotically and systematically apply them.
34:31
And I believe there is a place for these strategies if they’re used tactically.
34:36
Using human discretion, say, this asset has overpriced volatility.
34:39
We’re going to sell it as part of a trade.
34:42
That’s very different than what a lot of institutions are doing, which is they are constantly systematically
34:48
selling volatility for excess yield.
34:51
And this includes even collateralized short vol strategies.
34:55
So most people have come back and said, well what about something like a covered call strategy?
34:59
Why would that show impairment of capital.
35:02
And well, let’s take a look at that.
35:06
In the 1930s, the stock market dropped 80%.
35:10
Now, if you were selling calls on the way down, you would have done a little bit better
35:16
than someone who was just holding the stock.
35:20
But then, we had the deflationary left tail.
35:24
Then you have the right tail, where they do the 1932 Banking Act, and they devalue.
35:32
Lower rates– devalue, and also, devaluation versus gold.
35:39
At that point, you had a 70% rally that occurred over a month and a half.
35:44
So imagine that you’re selling calls, earning a little bit of money.
35:49
But you’re holding that against stock.
35:50
And you’re losing all the way down.
35:52
You lose 70% of your capital that way.
35:55
And then, you’re selling calls into a 70% rally that occurs over a month and a half.
36:01
And that wasn’t the only rally.
36:03
There was another rally that occurred in the ’30s, that over 80% over four months.
36:08
And that was the Roosevelt devaluation versus gold.
36:11
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Hard to pivot in that short period of time.
36:13
CHRISTOPHER COLE: That’s right.
36:14
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: That’s your point.
36:15
CHRISTOPHER COLE: So these are political risks.
36:16
You have deflation.
36:17
And then, you all of a sudden have a political shift that causes reflation, either through
36:21
monetary or fiscal policy.
36:23
And if one thinks they can predict that, they’re wrong.
36:29
There’s just no way unless you’re psychic.
36:33
So with that same understanding how shortfall performed, we can look at how longfall has
36:39
performed.
36:40
Long volatility, truly buying a straddle, buying puts and calls, would have been positive
36:46
carry for decades.
36:48
It would have made money in giving you diversification over the 1930s all the way through the ’40s,
36:55
and also would have given you income in the 1970s.
36:59
So to this point, one of the things we’ve advised is something we call active long vol,
37:04
which is this idea that you forego the first movement in volatility.
37:10
You’re not looking to protect against exogenous risks.
37:13
But when the market moves a little bit, you catch the momentum of volatility.
37:17
And this is how we modeled it.
37:18
It is an attempt to model systematically what active long volatility managers seek to do,
37:24
which is provide portfolio insurance type of protection for lower cost security.
37:29
But there’s other long volatility strategies or countertrend strategies that are also really
37:35
effective.
37:36
Commodity trending is an example of a strategy that can be very effective.
37:40
Commodity trend has not been very popular in recent years, but was particularly effective
37:47
in the 1970s during that inflationary period and was effective in the 1930s.
37:52
And then finally, gold, is a long– I would say a long volatility asset because it plays
37:57
off of that fiat devaluation that occurs.
38:00
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Of course.
38:01
CHRISTOPHER COLE: So in this sense, by having parts of the portfolio, all of these asset
38:05
classes, all of these asset classes are countertrend to equities and are uncorrelated to bonds.
38:15
They show no correlation to equity and bonds.
38:18
So to the same point, instead of chasing excess yield, what people need to be doing, particularly
38:24
the large institutions need to be positioning portfolios boldly in asset classes that are
38:33
non-correlated to stocks and bonds, preparing for a period of secular change.
38:40
Danielle, the numbers are amazing.
38:42
The numbers are amazing.
38:43
In my portfolio, the replication portfolio going back 90 years that we show in the paper,
38:49
you’re able to achieve consistent performance above the 7.25% pension return target that
38:55
is consistent through every generational cycle.
38:58
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: And that’s how pensions should be invested for the long haul.
39:01
CHRISTOPHER COLE: That’s right.
39:02
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Absolutely.
39:03
We’re going to go in the weeds, and then we’re going to pull back out.
39:07
Describe the evolution of cross-asset volatility.
39:11
There used to be an order of things– FX, rates, equity.
39:16
Has that been destroyed in this era of all– you name it– VIX, move, every gauge of volatility
39:25
is at a record low.
39:26
CHRISTOPHER COLE: That’s right.
39:28
Actually, equity vol, US equity vol is actually relatively expensive comparative to other–
39:32
comparative to like currency vol, for example, which is truly at all-time lows right now.
39:37
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: And that’s a massive market that nobody ever talks about.
39:39
CHRISTOPHER COLE: I think one of the things that’s really– we talk about the short volatility
39:43
trade.
39:44
And I say, OK, it’s close to $3 trillion in equity markets right now.
39:49
The portfolio insurance was only 2% of US equity markets, but in 1987.
39:56
And that, now, these short volatility strategies of all of their styles are now closer to 10%
40:02
of the market.
40:03
That same trade is being replicated across multiple different asset classes.
40:07
so we’re seeing it replicated across multiple different asset classes.
40:10
And of course, you have the, which is something you’ve written quite brilliantly about, the
40:14
reaction function of central banks.
40:17
And that’s something I also talk about in a 2015 paper, where they are preemptively
40:23
getting in front of– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Yes, this is– I’ve tried to communicate this.
40:30
And I don’t think that the market quite understands Jay Powell and how different he is because
40:36
he does understand credit volatility, and he does understand what’s at stake.
40:41
So he’s unlike his three predecessors.
40:43
He’s actually trying to get out in front of what’s happening.
40:47
And that– it truly changes– it’s not reaction function right now.
40:52
He’s trying to proactively get out in front of this.
40:54
CHRISTOPHER COLE: That’s right.
40:55
Preemptive– very similar to the way that the Bush administration sought to do preemptive
41:00
strikes against terror.
41:02
They are doing preemptive strikes on financial stress.
41:06
And I think we saw this– we have different models that look at thousands of different
41:14
economic indicators.
41:16
But this last– economic and technical indicators.
41:20
And a lot of the drivers of volatility were there in the fourth quarter of last year.
41:25
We saw CCC yields begin exploding higher.
41:28
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: They still haven’t come back in, a lot of them, though.
41:31
CHRISTOPHER COLE: They still haven’t come back in, yeah.
41:33
We saw value begin to outperform momentum stocks– very interesting.
41:38
We saw, obviously, a re-steepening of the yield curve after an inversion.
41:41
That’s a bear signal.
41:42
And then, finally, the granddaddy of them all, we began to see blow outs in the repo
41:47
market.
41:48
Of course, what that will do is, inevitably, if that continues, you have a deleveraging
41:54
of various hedge fund strategies that will impact asset markets.
41:57
All of these things were big risk-off flex.
42:00
However, I think the Fed obviously saw the same thing.
42:06
I don’t think people fathom this.
42:09
They created $400 billion worth of liquidity to inject into the repo system, the largest
42:17
expansion of the balance sheet since 2009.
42:20
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Well, it was only $85 billion when it was QE3.
42:25
So this is bigger.
42:26
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Bigger.
42:27
It’s remarkable.
42:28
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: It is bigger.
42:29
And I understand what J Powell is trying to do.
42:34
I get it.
42:35
Because he saw the credit volatility genie start to come out of her bottle in the fourth
42:39
quarter of 2018, and it scared the Dickens out of him.
42:42
Public pensions had the worst returns for that quarter.
42:46
It’s anarchy, and we’ll get to that in just a minute.
42:50
So he understands the gravity of the situation.
42:53
But it seems like the market has begun to play him.
42:56
For every 100 decline– 100 point decline in the Dow, you have 1 basis point of rate
43:01
cut immediately priced in.
43:04
You can follow it on your Bloomberg terminal.
43:05
It’s like clockwork.
43:06
CHRISTOPHER COLE: It’s the moral hazard of the problem.
43:09
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: And they’re playing the Fed.
43:11
The market players are playing the Fed.
43:13
And I don’t think people– this is the last thing that Jay Powell wanted.
43:17
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Yeah.
43:18
It absolutely has become this point where it appears that they’re really between a rock
43:24
and a hard place.
43:25
Because on one aspect, you are risking a complete melt up in markets, which is already occurring.
43:31
You look at the behavior of Tesla, for example.
43:34
It’s fun to try to watch the media justify it, but there’s no justification.
43:40
I think Tesla’s vol term structure was dramatically steeper than the vol term structure of the
43:46
VIX the other day.
43:47
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Yeah you tweeted that out.
43:49
I was like, wow.
43:50
CHRISTOPHER COLE: It’s really– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: There’s so many different ways to look
43:51
at it.
43:53
But the main is there.
43:54
This is like 1999 and 2007.
43:56
You walk into a bar and hook up.
43:59
Sorry, that probably wasn’t very politically correct, but you’ve got the leverage and you’ve
44:02
got the mania.
44:04
You’ve got the two of them together.
44:05
CHRISTOPHER COLE: I could not put it any better myself.
44:08
I think you’re right.
44:09
And these are the two realities.
44:12
And maybe they’re trying to keep it together until the election.
44:16
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: We don’t have to go there.
44:20
But I don’t I think Jay Powell is probably the least political fed chair since Paul Volcker,
44:25
but he also understands credit volatility, and he talked about it in October 2012 specifically.
44:31
CHRISTOPHER COLE: And this ends up– it’s interesting how this ends up impacting so
44:38
many different things, because not only is there market expectations built on this, this
44:43
results in the enhancement of that mean reversion effect that we talked about.
44:49
I think one of the reasons why volatility worked for 70 years in all of its forms is
44:54
because there was not mean reversion in markets.
44:58
It had less to do, sometimes, about the absolute spikes or the big down days or up days in
45:05
markets and more to do with the fact that markets would trend.
45:08
Well, now, because people anticipate this reaction function, the mean reversion is so
45:14
baked into markets, and then that incentivizes people to follow financial engineering strategies
45:20
that profit from that mean reversionary expectation.
45:23
And today, there’s a whole cottage industry in the vol world about gamma hedging.
45:29
That’s something that people talk a lot about now.
45:33
And it’s a complicated issue, but effectively, when big institutions come out in short volatility,
45:40
the hedging of those volatility shorts reinforces mean reversion to markets.
45:46
It’s a little like a rubber band, the gamma hedging.
45:51
And what I mean by that is that the rubber band stretches out, and you have a down day
45:55
or an up day.
45:57
And the hedging of all the short volatility products results in it coming back in.
46:02
So people will buy the dip or do the opposite of what the market’s doing.
46:07
The dealers will do this to hedge.
46:08
But if you get a big enough shock where that rubber band stretches too far, it could snap
46:13
in either direction.
46:14
It can snap on the left tail or the right tail in either direction.
46:19
So in essence, it’s not just the human beings that are now anticipating what the Fed– anticipating
46:27
this behavior pattern from the Fed.
46:28
But now you have machines that are being attenuated– DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: That’s why it feels
46:34
so systemic.
46:35
CHRISTOPHER COLE: That’s right.
46:37
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Speaking of systemic, let’s end this– I could talk to you for hours,
46:43
by the way.
46:44
This is just fascinating.
46:45
But let’s wrap this up today with where you conclude this wonderful paper.
46:53
Richard Fisher and I met years ago when I was still inside the Fed.
46:56
We had lunch there were riots in the streets of Athens at the time.
47:01
And I said, I said, Richard, what do you make of this?
47:07
What can we draw from this?
47:09
I’d been writing about pensions for 20 years.
47:13
And he said, Danielle, I fear that we’ll have those riots in our streets one day, that the
47:23
public pensioners and the people who are paying for the public pensionersif you’re Joe
47:29
Q with an IRA or 401(k), and you lose most of the value of your equity holdings, and
47:36
you’re told that your property taxes or your income tax, state income taxes are going to
47:41
have to go up to top off the pension that’s just lost as much– you talk about these things
47:47
in public forums, and individuals go at each other.
47:53
Talk about the societal implications of where we are today what you see potentially happening,
48:01
because you used the word systemic.
48:03
CHRISTOPHER COLE: So the way that the average institutional entitlement portfolio is structured
48:09
today- – and this is not an opinion.
48:12
I’m looking back across history.
48:14
There is a recency bias.
48:16
This is constructed for the last 40 years of unprecedented asset price growth.
48:22
But if you look beyond that 40 years and look at how that portfolio will perform, at a best
48:28
case, you’re looking at a 5% type of return.
48:32
In a worst case, given where debt levels are and where leverage is, you’re looking at something
48:38
much, much worse.
48:40
So if we just assume the best case, it makes 5% or 4% over the next 20 years, these entitlement
48:50
programs.
48:51
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Which is not enough.
48:52
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Not enough, because they’re targeting 7.25%.
48:58
That will cause an expansion of the unfunded liabilities in just the state systems alone
49:04
to about $3 trillion.
49:07
If we end up getting a lost decade, that could go as high as $10 trillion.
49:10
That $3 trillion number, that is the cost of four bank bailouts.
49:15
It is the entire tax revenue of the US government over the next year.
49:22
That is your base case.
49:24
These entitlement programs, which right now, based on the 7.25% assumption, will go from
49:30
70% funded to under 50% funded, and a third of them will be under 30% funded.
49:36
And this is not including corporate programs and other personal retirement programs.
49:42
This issue of asset allocation is an issue of systemic risk.
49:51
It is an issue of social stability, because we will be at a point where these entitlement
50:00
programs will go belly-up and face insolvency unless we can think differently about the
50:07
portfolio construction.
50:09
I could see a lot of different things happening.
50:12
I could see a day where the Fed prints money to buy pension obligation bonds.
50:17
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: Chris, if I can tell you something, during the crisis, when
50:19
I was inside the Fed, it was debated.
50:22
CHRISTOPHER COLE: Wow.
50:24
That’s amazing.
50:26
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: The idea– if you tech logic to the end game, the idea of the
50:32
Fed buying municipal bonds is perfectly feasible.
50:36
CHRISTOPHER COLE: That’s right.
50:37
And that will be a backdoor bailout of Wall Street if that happens.
50:41
You could see a radical progressive dynamic, where we shift to seize capital, and where
50:47
there’s– it causes massive inflation.
50:50
There’s numerous ways.
50:51
But the question at the end of the day is the average portfolio is only attenuated to
50:58
this last 40 year period of growth.
51:00
It’s not about being afraid.
51:03
It’s about being prepared.
51:04
So my parents, during the great financial crisis, they came out ahead because they had
51:11
allocations to volatility in gold, and that saved them and allowed them to retire on time.
51:20
I think the institutions, the large institutions and the average investors, if they can find
51:26
ways to invest large portions in countertrend assets, not only will they get a better overall
51:34
return profile and more safe return profile, but this will be a way for these institutions
51:40
to be able to prosper during a period of secular change, rather than suffer.
51:45
So I think this is a major– it is more than a financial issue.
51:51
It’s a social issue.
51:54
That these defensive assets, they’re not for a rainy day.
They’re for a rainy decade.
52:02
The problem that we face is not a problem of financial management or economics.
52:09
It’s a problem– it’s a social problem.
52:12
It’s an emotional problem.
52:15
It takes a lot of social discipline and to think differently.
52:20
Many of our leaders would rather fail conventionally with the herd than succeed unconventionally.
52:26
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: They’re not Genghis Khan.
52:28
CHRISTOPHER COLE: That’s right.
52:29
That’s absolutely right.
52:31
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: It was great talking to you today.
52:34
Thank you so much– CHRISTOPHER COLE: Thank you.
52:35
DANIELLE DIMARTINO BOOTH: –for being with Real Vision.
52:36
CHRISTOPHER COLE: I had a great time.