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Questions for Janet Yellen

As many of you are aware, we are holding another Global Macro Speaker Series event next week ‪on 2-Apr-2018 in New York City. It will be the usual fireside chat structure, lasting about one hour. And this time our guest will be Janet Yellen. As was done with our prior...

Risk Parity Is Dead, Long Live Risk Parity

February and March of 2018 have not been kind to risk parity lovers like myself. The start of the year was just fine as spoos ripped higher and rates suffered only a mild sell-off throughout January. Then, the higher than expected wage data in the February payroll...

Jay Gets an A

Hawkish hype surely gained traction in the lead-up to Jay’s first FOMC meeting this week. Talk of four – and whispers of even five – rate hikes in 2018 was becoming ubiquitous. But in the end Jay delivered a calm, cool, and clean FOMC rate-hike decision. His...

Janet Was Right… Partially

Janet was always convinced that there existed excess labor market slack in the post-crisis economy. And as such, the low participation rate and low employment-to-population ratio were never permanent fixtures in her long-run economic view. She also believed that...

Are Fortune Cookies and Sauerkraut Next?

Well, it had to happen at some point. We all knew Trump had the power to set tariffs unilaterally as long as he invoked national security concerns. And steel and aluminum were certainly natural candidates. The questions now of course center on international escalation...

Optimism ≠ Hawkishness

A new Fed chair does not enjoy all the luxuries afforded a veteran. Small missteps can create plenty of anxiety in markets. We all got to know Janet, Ben, and Alan over many years. But it did take a while, and looking back at the initial courtship periods, there was...

Reckless Supply Stories

Ten-year US Treasury yields have backed up about 50bps to start the year. And to be sure, there exists no topic more discussed in financial markets than what’s behind this rate move. The two most common explanations I hear from clients and colleagues are: Higher...

A Minsky Millisecond

So much for the haters’ time in the sunshine. Those all too familiar dark clouds came through last week to dump plenty of rain on the “it’s all going to go horribly wrong” parade. By Friday this camp must have been sitting at their desks with faces-in-palms wondering...

The Powell Pout

Last week created some handsome dividends for the haters!! If you have been beating the drum about instability from short volatility positions, or dangers associated with crowded passive investment strategies, or risks of an outsized inflation shock, it really doesn’t...

Training Day II: Starring Jay Powell

There are some great movies based on catastrophic first days on the job: Men in Black, The Devil Wears Prada, and Inception, just to name a few. But for me the best has to be Training Day, where Ethan Hawke plays Jake Hoyt, a rookie policeman who pretty much has the...
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