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Macro

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197 stories

You Understand Now, Why You Came This Way

Brazil’s October 25 runoff puts Bolsonaro’s likely victory at the center of a bullish regional-stock case; Golar LNG (GLNG) also reports…

@StableBread 6 clicks

Fajasy on X

The S&P 500 lost 18% in 2022, and the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate, the main U.S. bond index, lost 13%, its worst year since it began in 1976. Over the same year, $XLE, the S&P 500 energy sector ETF, returned 64%, gold was flat, and cash earned ~1.5%. Now what if I told you there's a framework that would've said to own cash and energy in 2022, not stocks and bonds? That framework is called Gave's Four Quadrants, after Charles Gave, co-founder of Gavekal, a macro research firm. It uses two ratios built from market prices, the S&P 500 vs. Oil and Gold vs. Treasuries, to place the economy in one of four environments, and it describes what to own and what to avoid in each. Here's how stocks, bonds, gold, and cash tend to perform in each environment: → Deflationary boom: Stocks, bonds, and cash rise, and gold underperforms. → Inflationary boom: Stocks and gold rise, cash does very little, and bonds fall. → Deflationary bust: Bonds and cash rise, gold stays fairly stable, and stocks fall. → Inflationary bust: Gold and cash rise, while stocks and bonds fall. In my backtest of Gave's rules from 1970 to September 2026, a portfolio split equally between cash, the S&P 500, and either 10-year Treasuries or gold, whichever the framework favored, would have returned 5.7% per year after inflation. Its max drawdown was 28%, vs. 54% for the S&P 500. As of the end of September 2026, the two ratios place the U.S. in an inflationary boom phase. But since January 2025, the S&P 500 to gold ratio has been below its 7-year average, which has often come a few months before the S&P 500 to oil ratio drops below its own 7-year average. If that happens, the U.S. is back in an inflationary bust phase, like 2022. So how do you read the two ratios yourself, and what do they say to own today? That's what I walk through in my new ~20-minute video!
@orrdavid 1 click

David Orr on X

I bought the dip in the RV parts company $PATK in 2022. Back then everyone was sure we'd have a recession even though we had super negative real rates. Today $PATK is once again down 50%+, a spot I usually contemplate buying. However, today nobody is talking about a recession (except the perma doomers who don't count) and we have super positive real rates. The housing market is also weak, vs very strong back then. IE Home owners (a big group) suddenly had a lot more cash than they had a few years prior. That setup is gone today, too. I don't think I'll buy $PATK this time. It'll be the first time since I started that I pass on the opportunity. The whole setup here is very concerning for the general market, something I try not to think about too much.