Transcripts
Erik: Joining me now is Katusa Research founder, Marin Katusa.
Marin, the last few times we’ve had you on the program, you made some really bold calls and you got lucky with one of them which was Nevsun.
I shouldn’t say you completely got lucky. It was a good call and it was good analysis. But you got lucky on the timing. It just broke out crazy about two or three days after you recommended it on this program. So I think the timing on that was luck.
The next one that you described on a subsequent interview, you couldn’t tell us at the time the name of the company because it only for your subscribers. But we can now tell them that was Uranium Royalty Corporation. You got your subscribers in on a financing on that one.
How has that performed since we talked to you about it, I can’t remember how many months ago?
Erik: Joining me next on the program is Greg Weldon, the founder of Weldon Live, well-known commodities expert. Greg, everybody knows you as the commodities guy and probably are expecting me to dive right in to commodities.
But I think before we go there we should talk about central banks, monetary policy, and the general condition of the world. Because I think something you and I agree on is that, to understand the commodities picture, you’ve got to understand the monetary policy picture first.
So where do we start in terms of the situation that the world is in and where we’re headed? Do you want to talk about the Fed or the ECB? Where do you want to start?
Greg: I don’t know. If you’ve got three or four hours, then we can discuss it all. What I find interesting is the commodities angle because in the business 35 years, started on the trading floor in the COMEX in the World Trade Center back in the early ‘80s. And what I see is that everything has been commoditized.
So we are the commodities guys because we look at everything. It includes stocks and bonds. And everything is now a commodity because of this secular credit bubble that goes all the way back to 1971.
And now you’re at a point that’s becoming more and more obvious as – particularly today as we’re recording, when Mario Draghi is in the headlines and this continued push for even more stimulus beyond QE, beyond negative actual deposit rates and official policy rates.
Erik: Joining me now is Josh Steiner, who heads up the Financials and Housing sector research department at Hedgeye Risk Management.
I always love interviewing the Hedgeye guys because they always come with really great slide decks. Josh is no exception this week. He’s put together a really excellent slide deck for us. It will be a challenge to get to all of the slides.
But I’m sure that you, our listeners, will enjoy every bit of it just the same. You can find the download link in your Research Roundup email. If you’re not yet registered for Research Roundup, just go to our home page at macrovoices.com and look for the red button that says Looking for the Downloads next to Josh’s picture.
Josh, last time that we had you for a housing update I think was when you spoke at our live even in Toronto last summer. Give us the update on US and Canadian housing, which is the same topic we’ve talked to you about before. Quite a bit has happened since then.
Let’s go ahead and dive into your slide deck.
Erik: Joining me next is Santiago Capital founder, Brent Johnson. Brent is extremely well known for his dollar milkshake theory which, in my opinion, along with Jeff Snider’s dollar squeeze theory, is really one of the most insightful explanations of what’s been going on with the dollar index and the reason that we’ve seen so much strength in the dollar, even when interest rate differentials would seem to suggest otherwise.
I want to refer our listeners, before we get into the interview with Brent, to a couple of previous episodes. We’ve had Brent on – not in his own feature interview; this will be Brent’s first feature interview today – we had him almost as a rebuttal to Luke Gromen’s last feature interview.
The link to that interview, including Luke Gromen’s very dollar bearish story along with Brent’s dollar bullish rebuttal, you can find that in your Research Roundup email or on our home page at macrovoices.com next to Brent’s picture. Also, Brent recently did an All Stars appearance for MacroVoices where we talked a little bit about the dollar.
Brent, I think that since we have not had you on the program as a feature interview guest before, I’d like to just do a quick recap of your Dollar Milkshake theory. What is this all about? And why is it that you think about the US dollar index a little differently than most analysts who tend to think that, really, the value of the dollar has everything to do with interest rate differentials. And a lot of analysts really don’t see some of the other aspects that you believe are driving the dollar.
Erik: Joining me now on the program is Lakshman Achuthan, cofounder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI). Lakshman prepared not just one slide deck but actually sent us four different slide decks, all of which are linked in your Research Roundup email. And we’ll be referring to some of those throughout this interview, so I encourage you to download them.
If you haven’t yet registered at MacroVoices for your free account to receive our Research Roundup email, you can just go to the home page at macrovoices.com and look for the red button that says Looking for the Downloads next to Lakshman’s picture on the home page.
Lak, thank you so much for joining us on the program. The reason I really have been looking forward to this particular interview is you are an analyst of cycles. You’ve been looking at business cycles and economic cycles for as long as anybody can remember.
We’re suddenly seeing this phenomenon where so many of our expert guests on this program are using the same phrase, late-cycle dynamics, saying that we’re very late in the current business cycle, get ready for it to end soon. And we’re looking for both confirmation or opposing views.
So, as a cycles guy, what do you think? Are there really justifications to say that we are late in the business cycle?
And, for that matter, what cycles are we talking about? Because some people talk about the business cycle, some people talk about the credit cycle. Are these the same thing or are they different things? And what should we be looking for?
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