RussellNapierMacroVoicesErik:     Joining me next on the program is macroeconomic strategist Russell Napier, also author of Anatomy of the Bear, one of the most respected books on bear markets and bear market bottoms.

Russell, thanks so much for joining us on the program. You recently penned an excellent article emphasizing the case for deflation rather than inflation in the United States, based on central bank policy.

One of the things you emphasized in that article, back at the time it was written everybody and his brother were saying the US dollar is about to crash. You said no, the opposite, the US dollar is bottoming and about to strengthen. And a lot of people thought you were crazy.

Needless to say, the tape action has proven you right, at least so far. We’re seeing very strong positive action in the US dollar.

So please give our listeners a quick overview of your argument favoring deflation, and why you have such a bullish view on the US dollar at this particular juncture in time.

Russell:            Sure, happy to do so. And I would just – there’s many issues I could raise for the US dollar, but let me just pick on two: The level of real rates of interest in the United States of America and the growing prospects of a credit event or a default outside the United States of America.

Both of these, I think, are ingredients for a strong dollar and also ingredients for lower global inflation. And it may be globally feeding back into the United States of America.

The interest rates – I know most people, or just about everybody, believes that US rates are rising to reflect more inflation. And, of course, that could be correct.

I would point out something that’s happened with that US Treasury market that hasn’t happened in my entire investment career, which is now 30 years old, and that is that, as we speak today, central bankers are net sellers of Treasuries.

We know what the Federal Reserve plans to sell this calendar year, $228 billion. We know what the rise in global foreign reserves is, and about 64% of that will flow into the United States’ assets. Slightly less of that will flow into Treasuries.

$228 billion, at the current rate at which foreign reserves are accumulating, we are not going to see foreign central bankers offsetting the sales from the Fed. So that’s a net sell. We don’t know what that net sale will be, but it’s a net sale from central bankers at a time when the Congressional Budget Office forecasts a roughly $1 trillion fiscal deficit.

This is the first time in my investment career that savers will have to fund the whole lot. And it’s perfectly normal that real rates of interest have to go higher to attract those savings.

$1 trillion is still a large amount of money. It can come from anywhere in the world. It can come from outside the United States. It can come from inside the United States. But it’s a liquidation of other assets or a rise in the savings rate, which is necessary to fund this. Either of these things is positive for the dollar.

What we can’t know for sure is how much of the capital to fund the US Treasury will actually come from offshore. But history suggests that huge amounts of money can be attracted into the US dollar at reasonable rates of interest.

I think we’ll come on to discuss whether this is a reasonable rate of interest or not, but the fact that the dollar started to rise in the last few weeks is perhaps confirming that foreigners believe that this is an attractive rate of interest. And it is, obviously, relative to what is available in the so-called risk-free assets that are government bonds – compared to Japan, compared to Northern Europe.

Therefore, that is attracting capital. And that will continue for quite some time. It will clearly have to bring up, to some extent, European yields with it. It can’t bring up Japanese yields. So I think it will continue for some time.

And that’s the first thing that underpins the United States dollar.

Very briefly, because I suspect we’ll come back to it, are these credit events that are recognized in various places in the world. Remember, the United States dollar is heavily borrowed across the planet. And it is also heavily borrowed by people who don’t actually generate US dollar revenue.

The rise in the dollar, the rise in interest rates, the rise in the spread of cost of borrowing dollars in Europe is causing some distress.

My particular bugbear in this is Turkey, where I think the whole country has basically been getting to the edge of defaulting on its debts. It’s a $432 billion credit risk, Turkey, on the global financial system. I think it’s important.

And history shows one thing and one thing clearly. If you get into a situation of a credit event, particularly as it pertains to people who borrow dollars and don’t actually have them or generate them, then you get a strong dollar. We get an unwinding of that situation. And I think if we were very unlucky, it could spread beyond Turkey into other emerging markets.

So that would be the two building blocks for saying why the dollar is probably going up and not down.

Marin Katusa OfficeErik:     Joining me next on the program is Marin Katusa, founder of Katusa Research.

Marin, I was thinking about you quite a bit recently as I’ve been watching the news flow with this escalating tension between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. And I couldn’t help but think to myself, Donald Trump clearly has not read your book Colder Wars, because if he did he would understand the degree to which American is dependent on Russia and trade with Russia.

But, for our listeners who may have missed your first interview on MacroVoices, please explain what I’m talking about. What could go wrong, for US energy policy particularly, if there was a complete breakdown of trade between the US and Russia?

Marin: Unfortunately for the Americans, a lot can go wrong. Let’s go back 30 years as the collapse of the Soviet Union – the infrastructure was in place with the Russians where they could downblend their nuclear warheads into cheap nuclear fuel.

The Americans took advantage of that, and now one in every ten homes in America is powered from a Russian-sourced enriched fuel. That’s on top of one in every five homes in America is powered by nuclear energy.

Setting that framework, when you understand that Americans consume a little over 50 to 55 million pounds of uranium a year for their nuclear reactors, and this past year (in 2017) produced just under 3 million pounds, they import over 95% of what they consume.

So it’s by far the biggest energy source that they’re importing. And, more importantly, Russia is in a situation where exactly 45% of the world’s enrichment capacity is owned and operated by Russians.

All of the enrichment facilities in America are actually not operating today. And these are radioactive facilities. So it’s not like you can just show up, turn on the switch, open the doors, and get going again. These are radioactive. There’s a lot of items that you have to do.

When you look at the timeframe – if Russia does play hardball with Trump – right now the nuclear reactors in America have just under 12 months of stockpiles that they can consume of enriched material.

Now, Urenco, which is a very complicated European-structured ownership, they could make up some of that. And a lot of people in the investment community go, well Canada and Australia can just make up the difference. Well, actually they can’t. The Canadians have a long offtake agreement with India. And the Australians have signed major long off-term agreements with the Chinese.

So what will eventually happen is there will have to be a major increase in the spot price for the American facilities to be able to come on because these are not owned by the government. They are owned by private enterprise, and they’ve lost money and they’ve shut down.

So, will anything change overnight? No. Because these nuclear reactors – it’s not like coal or natural gas where they need daily feed. These are set up. The rods are there. But these nuclear reactors – if you think that the price of uranium is about $20 a pound, and if it went to $40 – let’s just say 100% increase – it would not change the spot price of the electricity generated by more than 5%.

So, for a nuclear utility, they don’t really care too much if the spot price is $20 or $25 or $40. But they care about a secure long-term stable supply. So this is the first time ever in the nuclear sector that the government of America has found itself in a serious predicament.

BassmanCudmoreSniderErik:     Joining me next on the program is Harley Bassman, perhaps better known as the Convexity Maven. I should point out to our listeners that we are taping this segment on Tuesday afternoon, so our discussion will not reflect anything that happened in Wednesday and Thursday’s markets.

Harley, I think the big question that’s on everybody’s mind is we know we’ve got at least a correction that’s in play. We have now retested those lows that we saw about eight weeks ago. If it was a correction, it’s probably time for the correction to be over – at least historically, it’s about nine weeks, it’s about time.

On the other hand, it could be that we’re beginning a bear market. So the big question on everybody’s mind is how will we know when the real bear market is on? And, conveniently, you’ve recently written a piece titled “How Will I Know?

Tell us the overview. How do you know whether it’s a correction or a bear market? And what do you see on the horizon?

Harley:            Thank you for inviting me to the show. It’s a pleasure to be here. I have a couple of big thoughts. And if you go to my website convexitymaven.com you can see some of my past commentaries.

You know, the Fed, the ECB, BOJ, China – they’ve pumped money into the system and kind of elevated everything. And, using financial repression, they’ve taken rates down and forced money into riskier assets.

And along with that, you’ve seen this increased correlation between interest rates and equities. So for the last nine years they’ve moved in opposite directions. Stocks up, bonds down, and vice versa. This is very different than what it was prior to 2008/2009 where they moved more or less randomly.

What you’ve seen over this time is people building up positions in risk parity, low volatility, passive investing, that takes advantage of the self-hedging nature of stocks and bonds. I think what’s going to happen at some point is you’re going to see stocks and bonds both decline. Interest rates go up, and stocks decline.

And when that happens, this leverage in the system, it’s going to have to unwind. So that’s what I’m watching for. And you could look for Bloomberg or other sources that basically show the correlation of interest rates to equities.

DariusDaleMVheadshotErik:     Joining me next on the program is Darius Dale, Director of Macro Research for Hedgeye. Our regular listeners know that Hedgeye always sends us a fantastic book of graphs and charts. I highly recommend that you download it as Darius and I will be referring to it throughout the interview. You’ll find the download link in your Research Roundup email.

Our regular listeners are already familiar with the process that Hedgeye uses. But for any new listeners, we’ve asked Hedgeye to go ahead and send us the full chart book. So the first 15 or so slides are for reference of any new listeners.

Darius, why don’t we go ahead and focus on your three main topics, starting on Slide 18. A lot of our listeners think of your colleague Keith McCullough as probably the most bullish guest that we’ve had on this program. So even Hedgeye is turning bearish in this environment. The first of your three macro themes for the second quarter: Is the USA growth cycle perhaps reaching a cyclical peak? Tell us more about it.

Darius: Thanks, Erik. Thanks for having me. I’m a huge friend of the show. I guess before we even get started I just wanted to address the hearsay amongst your listeners. We definitely appreciate the kind words, but within the hallways of Hedgeye, Keith is certainly no permabull. We like to go both ways at Hedgeye in terms of sequencing the cycle, but I would say Keith probably has more of a bearish bias. When he gets out of bed, we kind of have to cajole him a little bit to turn bullish. Fortuitously, we’ve caught some pretty big up moves.

Erik:     Well, I think that probably the way to describe it is Keith is a very outspoken individual. And the times that he’s been on the show in the past he has been very adamant in a bullish view. And he’s been proven right by the market. So we’ve got to credit him with that. Even Keith McCullough has turned bearish though.

So what’s going on with the peak cycle theme that you’re focusing on as your number one topic for Q2 of 2018?

Simon WhiteErik:     Joining me next on the program is Simon White, managing editor at Variant Perception. Simon has prepared an excellent chart book for our listeners. You can find the download link in your Research Roundup email.

Simon, I think the question on everybody’s mind is – we’re speaking on Thursday morning, actually, just before the market opens, so we’re one session behind the listeners in terms of market history – Are we at the end maybe of a correction that’s perhaps played out? Or are we maybe at the beginning of something much bigger in terms of equity markets?

What do you guys see on the horizon?

Simon: Hi Erik. Thanks for having me on the show. That’s an excellent question and one unsurprisingly we’ve been getting from many of our clients. I think the lead into this market is extraordinary. The last year we had virtually no bears left. Everyone was no doubt tempted in by a market that had like 202 consecutive days last year within 3% of an all-time high, which is obviously quite extraordinary price action.

And then we had – late January, early February – we had, essentially, the vol spike. We had many different players in the markets that were short vol either implicitly or explicitly. You know, things like risk parity. And we had this sort of mini-crash.

Now, once you get a crash, the market dynamics tend to change very quickly. And then you’re kind of in, to some extent, uncharted territory because you have different players taking their cues off one another. And you get much more volatile price action.

So we have tried to put some sort of template on what happens. We discovered a book, a really good book, by a guy called Didier Somette, called Why Stock Markets Crash. This guy is a geophysicist and he applied the maths of plate tectonics to stock market crashes. And what he noted was that stock markets tend to display very similar behavior after crashes, which is what physicists call harmonic oscillation.

Now, this is the sort of motion that a pendulum – if we go to the slide deck, which I think your listeners can get hold of – on Slide 7 on the bottom chart there you can see a sort of a stylized example of what this motion looks like. This is like the motion of a pendulum, as I said.

You get this self-correcting force towards the center of the movement, but with declining amplitude. And what’s uncanny is how previous crashes, such as in 2011 and 2015 in the S&P – and we have these charts there as well – have followed this pattern.

Generally, it lasts for eight to twelve weeks. And, obviously, we’re kind of eight weeks into that thing. The crash was seven or eight weeks ago. What normally happens is you get a retest of the lows at some point towards the eight-week horizon in that total pattern that we’re going through right now. And we’re kind of bang on. As I say, it’s kind of extraordinary how similar this particular mini-crash is to previous crashes.

For us it’s kind of like we’re right on the precipice, if you like. This is the point where, if we have just seen the lows retested in the last couple of days, and we almost had a very strong rebound yesterday that seems to have followed through to today – Thursday as you say, Erik.

If that’s something that is the lows being retested, then we should expect to see some sort of short-term rebound because that crash pattern dynamic is over. But we’re kind of right at the precipice. I wish I had a 100% solid answer, but when you’re in this sort of highly volatile state as we are today, it’s extremely difficult to know 100% for sure.

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MACRO VOICES is presented for informational and entertainment purposes only. The information presented in MACRO VOICES should NOT be construed as investment advice. Always consult a licensed investment professional before making important investment decisions. The opinions expressed on MACRO VOICES are those of the participants. MACRO VOICES, its producers, and hosts Erik Townsend and Patrick Ceresna shall NOT be liable for losses resulting from investment decisions based on information or viewpoints presented on MACRO VOICES.

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