The Vision - November 2019

Welcome to The Vision, your monthly round up of finance news, market insights, and other slices of knowledge I think you might find useful. That’s the criteria… but 3 days is a month in investing right now so we may stray from it occasionally. Click subscribe to be notified of each edition.

Grant’s Observations: Money, Credit, And Financial Repression

As you may know, we had an absolutely incredible two weeks of programming recently at Real Vision—Gold Vs. Bitcoin: What Can Save You? And there really couldn’t have been a better way to kick it off than with the legendary Jim Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, and his straight-talking view on where the central banks are headed. This interview was a Real Vision subscriber favorite, which is why I asked the team to make it available for you to watch, absolutely free. By the way, for those of you who love Jim (honestly, who doesn’t), look out for something very special coming your way later this month on Real Vision…

Is the US-China Trade War a Cold War?

Retired Brigadier General Robert Spalding—who spent years living in China as Defense Attaché in Beijing and served as the chief China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs—has a stark warning: China is fighting an information war, a cyber war, and an economic war, and there aren’t going to be any white flags waved. In conversation with Kyle Bass, General Spalding lays out the multifaceted threat to the US posed by China. In today’s world, where extreme geopolitical risk has become the new normal, this is unmissable—which is why we’ve taken this interview from behind the paywall and made it free for you to watch.

Modern Manipulation: Behavioral Economics In A Technological World

About a year ago, I sat down with the wonderful Dee Smith of Strategic Insight Group, to riff on the globalization backlash, the politics of nostalgia, demographic deflation, AI, and an awful lot more. But the main reason I’m including the interview in this issue of The Vision is our discussion on behavioral economics, which is an increasingly important yet under-analyzed force today. Here’s my 10 second thesis: behavioral economics combined with technology is an unstoppable force which has basically won the world and nobody realizes it yet. Where do we go from here? You can watch this interview for free to find out what we think (and I’d love to read your thoughts on this in the comments, too). 

Using History To Answer The Biggest Questions

Continuing the theme of secular change, this interview with the best financial research writer in the world, Kiril Sokoloff of 13D Research, is possibly one of the best ways you could spend an hour today (it was certainly worth my journey to interview Kiril in the Adirondacks, 100 times over…) Everyone gets different things out of Real Vision content, but for me, it’s all about learning and figuring out how the best think. So this conversation with Kiril is incredibly useful not just for his predictions on our immediate future and the recession question, but also a behind-the-curtain look at his thought process in getting there. Where else would you possibly be able to access this for free? Nowhere, that’s where. 

Learning From the Asian Financial Crisis (w/John Burbank)

Those of us who lived and traded through the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 remember that there were a lot of heroes made and quite a lot of traders taken out on stretchers. Dramatic, spiralling events like this provide important lessons for anyone who is paying attention. In this quick shot lesson, Passport Capital CEO and master macro thinker John Burbank shares exactly what the Asian Financial Crisis taught him and what that means today. 

Why Mark Yusko Always Comes Back to Value Investing

Growth has been outperforming value for the last decade, but Morgan Creek Capital Management founder Mark Yusko argues that value doesn’t die – it just goes out of favor. Interestingly, he also puts forward that value is the only way investors can hope to get an edge in a market increasingly dominated by machine learning and AI. “If you do the work, and you buy assets that are below fundamental intrinsic value, you will eventually win,” he told Real Vision. “Not tomorrow, but eventually, you will win.” Watch the full interview for free right here.