Global Macro...To Care or Not to Care?

I’m headed back west this afternoon. I have been grinding away in New York the last three weeks, but as always, it was worth it and I had a great time. Today I did a long podcast with Patrick O’Shaunessy and that wore me out. He says it will drop next Tuesday.

Next week is the 8th, 9th or 10th Stocktoberfest on Coronado and I am excited to see some old friends from the financial community and make some new ones.

Onward…

My friend Charlie outlines the end of ‘End of Easy Money‘ and with that I have been catching up on some global macro research.

A global macro strategy is a hedge fund or mutual fund strategy that bases its holdings — such as long and short positions in various equity, fixed income, currency, commodities and futures markets — primarily on the overall economic and political views of various countries or their macroeconomic principles.

I have a lot of smart global macro friends who write on the subject (and trade) and they are excited. They believe the conditions are set for the return of global macro excitement.

Should you care?

If you are a startup founder I say continue to care about your next 10 customers, your runway and recruiting the best team. Let your venture capitalists worry about interest rates and politics.

If you are an investor, you are welcome to care, but I think you should read this post from Morgan Housel.

I long ago cut global macro worrying from my portfolio and started focusing on prices and trends I could really touch, see and feel.

As Charlie mentions in the closing to his post…’no one really knows because we’ve never been in this situation: over 9 years into an expansion with the Fed just now moving to a neutral policy. This is the end. But what comes next is far from clear. There’s simply no precedent’.

I will say that I think one trend that will accelerate in this global macro environment is decentralization, so you might enjoy the two articles I have linked to below…

I really liked this post from 13D that takes a nice dive into the subject with ‘Why decentralization could prove the most disruptive tech megatrend of the next decade‘.

I also loved this read titled ‘The Long Shot‘ which chronicles Augur’s beginning and the attempt at creating the next big orediction market…this time decentralized.