Episodes
Wednesday Nov 06, 2024
"Kamilton": the 2024 election and who tells your story
Wednesday Nov 06, 2024
Wednesday Nov 06, 2024
A reflection on the 2024 election and who tells your story. On Trump’s victory: market implications of a supply side boost from deregulation clashing against inflationary impulses of tariffs and deportations. The ten year Treasury will be the most reliable barometer of all. To conclude, an ode to vaccines and an RFK bibliography.
Thursday Oct 17, 2024
The Thucydides cap on the China equity rebound trade
Thursday Oct 17, 2024
Thursday Oct 17, 2024
For participants in the China equity rebound trade: once you hit your return targets, take the money and run.
Click here to read the full PDF and view the video.
Monday Sep 30, 2024
Mind the Gap: a historically polarized US election
Monday Sep 30, 2024
Monday Sep 30, 2024
Candidate policy comparisons in a historically polarized US Election; China stimulus package
The US is about to conduct its most polarized Presidential election in 100 years. Today’s note looks at candidate policy differences and implications for investors: government spending, taxation, tariffs, trade, immigration, regulation, NATO, energy, price controls and the Electoral College. We conclude with analysis of the China stimulus package, which might have a better chance of succeeding than recent failed efforts.
Tuesday Sep 03, 2024
A severe case of COVIDIA: prognosis for an AI-driven US equity market
Tuesday Sep 03, 2024
Tuesday Sep 03, 2024
NVIDIA and its GPU customers are now a large driver of equity market returns, earnings growth, earnings revisions, industrial production and capital spending.
Tuesday Aug 27, 2024
There’s no place like home
Tuesday Aug 27, 2024
Tuesday Aug 27, 2024
A surge in the Japanese Yen is resulting in home repatriation of Yen-funded positions overseas, and close-out of Yen-funded positions abroad. While Google was found guilty of home bias anti-competitive search engine behavior, any judicial remedies may be worse for recipients of Google’s “shelf space” payments than for Google itself. Work-from-home trends have plateaued at ~30%, which has important implications for distressed office investors. Most distressed sales now require discounts of 60%+ vs pre-COVID levels; the fundamentals of the office sector explain why.
Tuesday Jul 23, 2024
The Lion in Winter
Tuesday Jul 23, 2024
Tuesday Jul 23, 2024
From 1930 to 2010, there were six extended periods of small cap outperformance as it dominated large cap over that entire period. But since 2010, small cap sits alongside value stocks and non-US stocks in the unholy trinity of underperforming portfolio strategies. While poor profit fundamentals argue against a prolonged period of outperformance vs large cap, small cap stocks are at their cheapest levels in the 21st century with potential market and political catalysts in their favor. First, a few words on the CrowdStrike outage.
Tuesday Jul 09, 2024
The Supreme Court vs the Regulatory State
Tuesday Jul 09, 2024
Tuesday Jul 09, 2024
The Supreme Court vs the Regulatory State. Recent Supreme Court rulings may now usher in the largest pushback on the regulatory state since the Reagan Administration. A look at the end of Chevron deference, a revised statute of limitations for challenging government regulations, the Major Questions Doctrine, the right to a jury trial and a District Court injunction against Biden’s LNG export moratorium.
Thursday Jun 06, 2024
A Piece of the Action
Thursday Jun 06, 2024
Thursday Jun 06, 2024
Investing in professional sports leagues and related businesses. As rules around private equity ownership of sports leagues expand, we review team valuations and profitability, emerging sports categories, streaming and broadcast revenues, the decline of regional sports networks, drivers and comparisons of league parity, relegation and financial pressures in the English Premier League, stadium subsidies, sport betting and other adjacent businesses, antitrust issues, the esports winter, the worst teams that money can buy and the best basketball players of all time.
Wednesday May 15, 2024
Animal Farm
Wednesday May 15, 2024
Wednesday May 15, 2024
With spring planting season having arrived in Zone 7, it’s a good time to review agriculture from an investor’s perspective. Topics include agricultural price inflation in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; public and private equity investments in agriculture, farmland ownership and the drivers of farmland returns; seed bio-engineering designed to reduce consumption of fertilizer, fungicide and water; and some satellite data on the immense agricultural damage occurring in Gaza and Israel. The Appendix addresses the avian flu’s impact on agriculture and the food supply.
Wednesday Apr 24, 2024
Cicadian Rhythms
Wednesday Apr 24, 2024
Wednesday Apr 24, 2024
Cicadian Rhythms: the fading prospects of a US disinflationary boom; Japan’s structural reform/M&A emergence; and Eye on the Market mailbag responses to questions on Tesla/Musk, GLPs, housing, China, Truth Social and Meta’s latest open source model