Crescat Capital: December Research Letter The End Game

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Markets are cyclical. Today, stocks trade at record high valuations while commodities are historically undervalued in relation. The setup is in place for a macro pivot in the relative performance of these two asset classes. Comparable conditions were present with the 1972 Nifty Fifty and 2000 Dotcom bubbles as we show in the chart below.

As capital seeks to redeploy towards the highest growth and lowest valuation opportunities, we expect analytically minded investors will soon be rotating, if not stampeding, out of expensive deflation-era growth equities and fixed income securities and into cheap hard assets, creating a reversal in the 30-year declining trend of money velocity.

Today’s Modern Monetary Theory world with its double barreled fiscal and monetary stimulus is crashing head on with an accumulation of years of declining investment in the basic industries such as materials, energy, and agriculture. In our analysis, the “end game” for the Fed’s twin asset bubbles in stocks and bonds is inflation. We can already see it developing on the commodity front.

Taylor Collins: Mind Blowing Valuations – Tesla, AirBnB, DoorDash

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The stock market, and in particular, stocks popular among millennial “Robinhood traders” (who have never had the privilege of experiencing a deflating bubble) have been all the rage lately.

It’s fascinating to see companies like Tesla being added to the S & P 500, when it took 16 years for the company to even turn an annual profit. What’s even more astonishing is the enormous market capitalization of Tesla (and similar companies we’ll look at), when compared with their senior and more established competitors.

Tesla’s market cap currently stands at $658 billion ($659 billion if rounding up), beating out Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway by roughly $133 billion. This is incredible considering Tesla only has a global market share of 1% for passenger vehicles. The chart below illustrates how Tesla’s market cap exceeds the combined market cap of the world’s biggest auto makers – keep in mind Tesla has added 80 billion to their market cap since this chart:

Frank Holmes: Bitcoin Cracks Record High Due To Institutional Buying

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This week the Federal Reserve left interest rates near zero and committed to continue its bond-buying program until “substantial progress” has been made regarding employment and inflation. Initial jobless claims increased for the second straight week, hitting 885,000 in the week ended December 12—the most since early September.

I was floored to see just how much the Fed is buying—and will continue to buy—each month. The central bank is gobbling up as much $120 billion of debt, split between $80 billion of Treasuries and $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities (MBS).

The size of the Fed’s balance sheet now stands at a staggering $7.36 trillion, or 34% of gross domestic product (GDP).

MacroVoices #250 Kyle Bass: Commodity Bull Market, Inflation & Singapore

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All-time highs despite the pandemic – are we shifting into a new paradigm?

Impending inflation and how to trade it 

Is gold still the best hedge against fiat debasement?

Is the bond bull market finally done and are we headed toward negative yield?

Negative yields in Europe – will this recover as inflation begins?

How will Biden administration change the macro outlook?

Implications of electrification of the economy

Will Singapore be replacing Hong Kong as the financial center in Asia?

Perspectives on crypto currencies

Jesse Felder: Find The Courage To Act

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A few months ago I wrote Master The Art Of Doing Nothing, in which I argued that, while it may be the most difficult thing for an investor to do, the vast majority of the time an investor should simply do nothing at all. Truly wonderful opportunities don’t come around very often but having the patience to wait for them is what separates the best investors on the planet from the rest.

However, it’s not only the waiting that is critical to success; it is also the courage to act when the time arises. Aside from being too active, another major mistake investors make is simply being too timid, or becoming too comfortable with doing nothing at all and this can be just as costly if not even more so. As Warren Buffett has said, mistakes of omission, or failing to act, have cost him far more than mistakes of commission, or acting when he shouldn’t have.

Eric Nutall: Ninepoint Partners Energy Update November 2020

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Crescat Capital November Performance Update

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Surrounded by speculative excess everywhere, our short positions in select hyper-overvalued US equities remain key tactical holdings in Crescat’s Global Macro and Long/Short funds. November’s market move appears to be a last gasp for stocks, which are suspiciously out of sync, with the downturn in the business cycle already in progress. In our view, investor positioning is historically imbalanced based on a composite of indicators:

-The put to call ratio for US stocks just hit its lowest level since 2000

-Options volume has surged to its highest on record

-21.6% of all call options were bought by small traders, the largest level since the tech bubble

-Median short interest for the S&P 500 has plunged to 17-year lows

-We now have the largest percent of S&P 500 members above their 200-day moving average in 7 years

-Market sentiment, measured by the Investor’s Intelligence, is at its highest level since just prior to the Volmageddon shock in 2018.

-According to SentimenTrader, for the 1st time in 15 years, 60% of their indicators are showing an excessive amount of optimism, the highest reading yet.