AiC is Kuppy’s Korner
Nearly 15 years ago, I became one of the first financial bloggers, not because I sought fame, but because I needed a better way to share stock ideas, vacation pictures, and the occasional political rant with a few close friends. Out of the ether, random people I had never met, asked to be added to […]
I Just Don’t Know…
Long-time readers of this site know that I prefer an investing style that is both highly-concentrated and hyper-aggressive. My only goal is to maximize returns over rolling three-year periods. As a result, I’m completely agnostic about volatility, usually running my book well over 100% net-long, while rarely hedging. At the same time, I’m not a […]
On Inflecting Trends…
As a long-time inflection investor, I’ve learned that many themes simply do not inflect. There are multiple causes for this; often tied to a bad thesis, or a bad set of assumptions. Sometimes, it’s simply bad luck as some other macro trend supersedes my trend. Even when I get it wrong, there is often still […]
2022 Position Review
It seems that everyone has a blog these days. Once a year, we must stop everything, tally up the scores and see who got it right. Besides, what’s the point of going through all this effort, if you cannot point to your record of continuously nailing major trends and investment themes. Even when I get […]
The Fed Is Fuct (Part 5)…
I know that I touched upon this in Part 2 of this “Fed is Fuct” series, but I just cannot let go of this topic. It is simply too important of a question—in fact, it seems to be the only question in my mind as we find an event-path for “Project Zimbabwe” to re-accelerate. Let’s try a thought […]
Are DMs now EMs…???
The history of finance, is basically the history of ruined speculators claiming that “no one could have seen that coming.” I believe to be successful at this game, one must focus on the unexpected—the tail risks that no one is even thinking about. However, in the echo-chamber that is modern finance, these tails often get […]
The Fed Is Fuct (Part 4)…
I believe the Fed is trapped in a box of their own creation. As a result, they may want to talk tough, but their ability to maneuver looks severely restricted. The Fed claims that they’re targeting a terminal rate of 4.6% for Fed Funds, but if they did that for any period of time, they’d […]
OPEC’s Counterattack…
The Federal Reserve has been attacking inflation. The problem is that after printing trillions of dollars, they’re ill-equipped to succeed at their task. Partly, this is because all that cash has to go somewhere and partly this is because their mandate does not extend into ensuring that global energy production expands. While Owners’ Equivalent Rent […]
The Fed Is Fuct Part 3
Investors like to focus on QE and QT, because of the belief that the quantity of money has an immediate effect on risk assets. In the same way, we like to focus on the Fed Funds Rate as the price of money also has a dramatic effect on risk assets. Oddly, we rarely focus on […]
The Pause…
I have frequently described “Project Zimbabwe” as a highly inflationary cycle where both fiscal and monetary stimulus go into insanity mode. While I sincerely hope we don’t go hyperinflationary like Zimbabwe, I certainly think we see an elongated period of substantial and debilitating inflation. When this cycle finally ends, society and our financial system will […]
Volcker and Inflation…
For my entire career, Paul Volcker has been deified. In fact, I cannot think of an unelected government official, since the Generals of WW2, who is held in such esteem—which may also be a function of how terrible most government functionaries are. As JPOW suddenly pretends that Volcker was his boyhood hero, I think it’s […]
The Fed Is Fuct (Part 2)…
Let’s try a thought experiment here. Fast forward into winter. The Fed has been on autopilot and has continued to raise rates. They’ve managed to crush risk assets and the “negative wealth effect” is rapidly filtering through to the consumer economy. All the guys trading meme stonks and monkey JPEGs have now returned to their […]
