Mauldin Newsletters

Hoisington Investment Management – Quarterly Review and Outlook, First Quarter 2014

2014-04-23T14:43:00+00:00

In today’s Outside the Box, Lacy Hunt and Van Hoisington of Hoisington Investment have the temerity to point out that since the Great Recession officially ended in 2009, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) has been consistently overoptimistic in its projections of US growth. They simply expected QE to be more stimulative than it has been, to the tune of about 6% over the past four years – a total of about $1 trillion that never materialized. Given that dismal track record, our authors...

Dare to Be Great II

2014-04-16T12:52:00+00:00

I can’t tell you how many thousands of hours I have spent, over the years, thinking about, reading about, and talking about how to be a consistently successful investor; but I can tell you this: I’m still working at it. And once in a while – less frequently as the years pass, it seems – I come across investment advice that strikes me as fundamentally strong, innovative, and worth assimilating. I feel that way about today’s Outside the Box. It’s a client memo sent last week by Howard Marks,...

Every Central Bank for Itself

2014-04-12T14:59:00+00:00

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” – Mike Tyson For the last 25 days I’ve been traveling in Argentina and South Africa, two countries whose economies can only be described as fragile, though for very different reasons. Emerging-market countries face a significantly different set of challenges than the developed world does. These challenges are compounded by the rather indifferent policies of developed-world central banks, which are (even if somewhat understandably)...

Risk On, Regardless

2014-04-09T14:12:00+00:00

When Gary Shilling was with us here last fall, he and I were feeling considerably more sanguine about the near-term propects for the US and global economies. In fact, I said about Gary that “that old confirmed bear is waxing positively bullish about the future prospects of the US. In doing so he mirrors my own views.” In today’s excerpt from Gary’s quarterly INSIGHT letter, he tackles head-on the shift in sentiment and economic performance that has ensued since then. He steps us through the...

The Lions in the Grass, Revisited

2014-04-05T21:00:00+00:00

“In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them. “There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the...

Hollow Men, Hollow Markets, Hollow World

2014-04-02T15:45:00+00:00

I’m sitting in the British Airways lounge at Heathrow terminal 5, or in other words in my usual office, and trying to catch up on my reading. I was particularly intrigued by my good friend and economic philosopher Ben Hunt’s latest Epsilon Theory post, which he calls “Hollow Men, Hollow Markets, Hollow World.” As he points out, an increasingly smaller portion of trading in the markets is between individuals looking to actually own a fractional portion of a public company for the long term....

When Inequality Isn’t

2014-03-29T18:47:00+00:00

“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” –Plutarch, Greek historian, first century AD “In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them. “There is only one difference...

Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis

2014-03-25T23:55:00+00:00

Looking back, I see that I have mentioned the name Hyman Minsky in no fewer than ten Thoughts from the Frontline letters in just the past two years; and his name has popped up in all four letters so far this month, most notably on March 1, when we brought back one of my most popular pieces, “Black Swans and Endogenous Uncertainty” (the “sandpile” letter) and last week, when the letter was titled “China’s Minksy Moment?” I wasn’t consciously aware of how often I had trotted Minsky out as I...

China’s Minsky Moment?

2014-03-22T11:48:00+00:00

In speeches and presentations since the end of last year, I have been saying that I think the biggest macro problem in the world today is China. China has run up a huge debt, and the payments are coming due. They seem to be proactive, but will it be enough? How much risk do they pose for the global system?

Gavekal on Russia and Japan

2014-03-19T20:06:00+00:00

I look at dozens of sources a day on global macroeconomics, but one source I go to every day is my good friends at Gavekal. The Gavekal partnership – father Charles Gave, son Louis-Vincent Gave, and noted economist and journalist Anatole Kaletsky – spans three continents: Charles is based in Paris, Anatole is in London, Louis has set up shop in Hong Kong, and the firm also has an office in the US. And they have an extensive team of outstanding analysts. Gavekal’s publishes global macro...