Howard Marks: Thinking About Macro

Oaktree Capital

Regular readers of my memos know that Oaktree and I approach macro forecasts with a high degree of skepticism.  In fact, one of the six tenets of Oaktree’s investment philosophy states flatly that we don’t base our investment decisions on macro forecasts.  Oaktree doesn’t employ any economists, and we rarely invite them to our offices to share their views.

The reason for this is simple: to use Buffett’s terminology, we’re convinced the macro future isn’t knowable.  Or, rather, macro forecasting is another area whereas with investing in general – it’s easy to be as right as the consensus, but very hard to be more right.  Consensus forecasts provide no advantage; it’s only from being more right than others – from having a knowledge advantage – that investors can expect to dependably earn above-average returns.

John Polomny: Regulatory Capture Of The FED By Crooked Former FED Officials. They Get Rich, You Get Screwed

www.actionableintelligencealert.com

Just more crookery as people work at the FED where they ostensibly regulate the banks. We see all these so-called smart people work at the FED and manage our economy. After they blow serial bubbles and ruin average people's financial lives they move to private industry (banks) and get fat salaries and perks.

Goehring & Rozencwajg Q2 2021 market commentary: The IEA Ushers in the Coming Oil Crisis

Goehring & Rozencwajg 

The fundamental problems facing global oil markets are much more severe than 2021’s spike in oil prices would suggest.

Our newest commentary, The IEA Ushers in the Coming Oil Crisis, provides an in-depth look at why global oil demand will not taper off due to ESG-related reasons, as the IEA predicts, and supply growth will likely remain restricted — a recipe for a dramatic oil deficit.

• Problems facing the oil supermajors: Exxon, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and Total
• Shrinking global oil inventories
• Tightness in the US natural gas markets
• Higher-than-expected Chinese agricultural demand

Harris Kupperman Interviews Josh Young Of Bison Interests

In this episode, Patrick Ceresna and Kevin Muir take a backseat and let fan-favourite Harris Kupperman aka Kuppy interview Josh Young from Bison Interests.  Josh has been hitting out of the park when it comes to his energy picks, and he comes back to the Market Huddle to give us his new picks.

Frank Holmes: Texas Freezes in New Commodity Supercycle

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A joint state and federal investigation into the outages has already been announced, and improvements to (and winterization of) aging infrastructure will likely be recommended, if not required, to prevent this from happening again. Such a massive overhaul would require an incredible amount of metals and other basic materials, which would be positive for miners and producers.

We're particularly bullish on copper, used extensively in electrical wiring and circuitry.

Texas is the ninth largest economy in the world, ahead of Canada, South Korea and now Brazil. It consumes more energy than any other US state. Its residents and businesses deserve a world-class power grid that operates reliably in all weather conditions, even those that strike only once every 100 years.

Crescat Capital: February Research Letter

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The year is just getting started and the US fiscal deficit already reached another record, now at its worst level in 70 years. The Fed is facing its worst predicament yet. The current fiscal spending path will lead to record Treasury issuance this year. Foreign investors are unlikely to be the ones funding this operation. With 2020 as a guide, there are no buyers of any size for those securities outside of US banks and the Fed. Major foreign holders of US debt only bought about 5.2% of all Treasuries issued last year. In the face of this enormous new government debt issuance, the Fed faces the impossible task of continuing to prop up already historic asset bubbles while also preventing inflation. The current extreme fiscal imbalances put the central bank on a crash course to fail at both.

MacroVoices: #260 Lyn Alden: Shifting from Monetary to Fiscal Dominance

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• Perspectives on mainstream deflationists adopting a new inflation view
• Limits to excessive deficit spending and fiscal stimulus
• Fiscal vs. Monetary dominance
• Macro asset allocation strategy in fiscal dominance environment
• Perspectives on the Fed’s yield control
• U.S. broad money supply vs. Japanese broad money supply
• Outlook on Gold and Bitcoin