As I was on the driving range one morning getting ready for a Saturday golf game, our club pro was giving me a few tips on how to work a deeper cut shot. In the background, I heard the distinctively southern accent of one of my favorite members. He sauntered over with a smile and […]
In his 1962 classic essay – Should there be an independent monetary authority? – Milton Friedman posits the following: “The problem is to establish institutional arrangements that will enable government to exercise responsibility for money, yet will at the same time limit the power thereby given to government and prevent the power from being used […]
In the late spring of 1991, I entered the Mariner S Eccles building on 20th Street and Constitution Ave in Washington DC for the first time. I had just finished my fourth year of graduate school in the Economics Department at the University of Rochester, and I was interviewing for a summer research position in […]
For the naysayers who have completely misjudged financial markets this year, the word “uncertainty” has become a constant cover for failure. These folks have let politically charged hostility take over their investment process. As a result, they are now in desperate need of a way to save face. If they could just cloak their apprehensive […]
Before turning to the hot topic of future Fed rate cuts, let me say a few words about performance. So far this year, our beloved risk parity trading strategy registered a +13.75% total return, with spoos +7.75% and blues +6%. That +29.4% annualized run rate ranks as one of the best for risk parity in […]
Here is a link to a column I penned for the Financial Times. It was just published in the online edition, and it will appear tomorrow in the print edition. It is a synthesis of my last two commentaries on overly emotional markets. Good luck trading. ______________ Upcoming Travel Schedule: Jun 11: Washington, DC Jun […]
With the markets calming, I have not written in a couple weeks. That said, during the chaos of April and early May, I wrote much more than usual. And in each of those past notes, I tried to counter the relentless negativity from so many clients, competitors, and colleagues. While others were issuing recession forecasts, […]
Towards the end of the 1987 movie classic Wall Street, as BlueStar Airlines stock was collapsing, a calm Bud Fox enters into the following telephone exchange with an emotional Gordon Gekko: Bud: “You once told me don’t get emotional about stock, Gordon. Don’t. The bid is 16 1/2 and going down, and as your broker […]
Away from all the “we are in recession now” folks choking on their breakfast sandwiches just after Friday’s strong payroll release, a sleepy currency pair was lurching onto the financial market center stage. The Taiwan dollar, which almost always trades in highly stable fashion against the USD, broke all norms and appreciated over 4% on […]
Like many folks, I did not expect the opening gambit in tariff negotiations to be so extreme. In retrospect, I suppose Trump’s time-tested “art of the deal” approach should have had us all more prepared for that posterboard back on April 2nd. After all, his style has always been to push towards the edges of […]