Eye On The Market

It’s Mostly a Paper Moon: Alternative Investments Review

A review on industry returns in private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, commercial real estate, infrastructure and private credit

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Not That 70’s Show

Six questions and answers on the intersection between geopolitics, US politics and financial markets

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New York, Just Like I Pictured It

Comments on NYC compared to 21 other US cities with respect to urban recovery, commercial real estate, mass transit, crime, outmigration, work-from-home trends, tax rates, economic pulse, fiscal health, unfunded pensions, energy prices, industry diversification and competitiveness.

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What was I made for: Large Language Models in the Real World

I asked Chat GPT-4 questions on economics, markets, energy and politics that my analysts and I worked on over the last two years. This piece reviews the results, along with the latest achievements and stumbles of generative AI models in the real world, and comments on the changing relationship between innovation, productivity and employment.

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The Rasputin Effect

Global resilience to higher rates

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Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride

The impact of underperforming 2020 and 2021 US IPOs

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Letters to the Editor

Comments on mega-cap stocks and artificial intelligence. Then, it’s time for some of my unsolicited letters to Barron’s, MSNBC, “No Labels”, FHFA and more.

Too Long at the Fair

Time to retire the US/Emerging Markets barbell for a while

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The Places We Could Go

Before getting into the US$ discussion, three quick things. First, despite strong US data in Q1 and Q2, the US still appears headed for a slowdown later this year. As shown below, many longer-horizon leading indicators point in that direction. Excess household savings are also being run down and should be 60%-70% depleted by the end of the year. Stable copper prices are one exception but its usefulness as a business cycle indicator is affected by China’s reopening and the copper intensity of the energy transition. Click here for a chart collection on these leading indicators.

Frankenstein’s Monster

Frankenstein’s Monster: banking system deposits and the unintended fallout from the Fed’s monetary experiment; commercial real estate, regional banks and the COVID occupancy shock; the wipeout of Credit Suisse contingent capital securities; a market and economic update; and an update on San Francisco, which has experienced the weakest post-COVID recovery of any major city in North America.