Transcripts
Erik: Joining me next on the program is David Rosenberg, famously the author of “Breakfast with Dave,” a newsletter that has persisted through, I think, three or four different job changes.
Dave, thanks so much for being with us on the program. Listeners, we’ve got a great slide deck that Dave put together a few months ago. This is dated from March, but it is every bit as relevant today as the day that it was published in March of 2018. You’ll find the download link in your Research Roundup email and I strongly encourage you to download it as we’ll be referring to it throughout this interview.
Dave, the first few slides you’ve got here – you’ve done such a brilliant job as always at getting together some of the smartest people in the industry and quotes from – all kind of on the same theme, which is we should be pretty much coming to an end of this cycle.
But I was particularly caught by Jeremy Grantham’s comment on Slide 3 where he says this thing ought to be over but, on the other hand, as a historian, there’s also the possibility that we’re just going to see a great big blow off or melt-up phase at the end of this bull market. And he’s saying the potential of maybe another 60% surge up before it’s finally over.
So where does that bring us? This was a few months ago. What’s the current update on your outlook on the market? Are we looking at maybe that last hurrah? Or is this cycle finally ending?
Erik: Joining me next on the program is Dr. Pippa Malmgren, the founder of DRPM Group and the author of a new book, which won’t be out until October. We’ll get to that later in the interview.
Pippa, I want to start with the trade wars. China. Obviously, you are well-known as a geopolitical analyst, having served as an advisor to several US presidents. So tell us about your perspective.
Is Donald Trump bluffing with [President] Xi about this trade war stuff? Is this all part of the “art of the deal” stuff? Are we really at the risk that appears to exist of a major trade war breaking out that could cause, as some people think, a meltdown in the stock market?
What’s the real story here? And what are the various actors up to? What’s their real intention?
Erik: Joining me now is Chris Cook, former director of the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) and now a senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategy Resilience & Security at University College London, as well as an independent energy consultant.
Chris, the reason I’ve been keen to get you on the show is that you come from a very different perspective than most of our guests, who approach the finance industry from a background of knowledge of economics. As a former regulator, you are an expert on how cheaters cheat and how manipulators manipulate.
With that background and a particular focus on those kinds of things going on in energy markets, you’re able to draw from that experience as a regulator of one of the biggest energy markets in the world when you were with IPE. So I’d like to dive into the current situation in WTI as well as the much bigger picture of what’s going on with oil markets.
But, before we do, since your background is so interesting, please give us a little bit of color on what you learned about markets from your experience as a regulator and how that experience colors the way that you think about markets today.
Erik: Returning now for his second feature interview is One River Asset Management’s Eric Peters.
Eric, I’m so excited to get you back on the program. There’s quite a number of topics that I’m looking forward to talking to you about.
One of them we’ve been discussing quite a bit lately is the reserve currency status of the US dollar. And, particularly, the fact that a lot of people around the world have an incentive to change that status – even though, I think, a lot of American investors don’t take this risk seriously.
The US derives a lot of benefits from having that reserve currency status. Recently, Sergei Glazyev, the Russian scholar who has been credited as the mastermind of the de-dollarization campaign that is trying to persuade the BRICs countries to abandon the dollar, had a video in English. (We’ve got the link to that in the Research Roundup email for listeners’ benefit.)
Eric, I know you’ve done a lot of thinking and a lot of research about this. Most people I talk to, either they’ve never heard of this stuff or they’re not concerned about it.
How do you feel? Am I crazy to think that we should be concerned about the people in the world who would like to replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency?
Erik: Joining me next as this week’s feature interview guest is Luke Gromen, founder of the forest for the trees. Luke prepared a fantastic deck of 35 charts and graphs for us, so be sure to download those. Registered users will find the download link in your Research Roundup email. If you’re not registered yet, just go to macrovoices.com and click the red button that says Looking for the Download.
Luke, it’s great to have you back on the program. You have been one of our most outspoken long-term secular dollar bears. You’ve articulated a very coherent argument which basically says it’s inevitable that the US dollar will lose its hegemony in the long term over the world financial system – and not having that artificial demand for dollars is going to weaken the dollar in the long term.
But I believe that you’ve actually turned short-term dollar bullish. So please fill us in. What has changed your thinking? Is it a change? Or is this just a tactical view that you have? And what do you see short, medium, and long term for the US dollar?
Luke: Hi, Erik. Thanks for having me back on. It’s certainly great to be here.
We had a tactical shift a little over three months ago, really. And it was based on, effectively, what we were seeing in markets. And so, as we stand on the dollar versus where we came into the year, we think that the second half of the year is going to be really what we call on Slide 2 “A Tale of Two USD Trades.”
There’s dollar trade number one, which is, near-term, a US dollar short squeeze as Fed hawkishness [continues] despite softening emerging market currencies. We think is likely to continue. And we’ve talked about this in our research over the last three months as the Fed is potentially shooting the hostage. Or, in more draconian terms, burning down the world. And that is the near-term tactical shift you’re referring to.
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