All Posts By

James Whelan

July 3, 2018
0

## On Our Big Short on Emerging Markets  ##

By | Economics, Emerging Markets, Investing, Macro, Trade War

It’s a curious week in markets when two consecutive vague predictions come to fruition at once. One was CBA spinning off most of its extraneous divisions as predicted (we’ll run through this in a later issue) and the other was that the trade war sabre-rattling is slightly more serious than first hoped. 
The market is taking this slightly more seriously than the last time.
Which was a little less seriously than the time before that.
Which was the first time and that time it was taken very seriously.

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June 12, 2018
0

## Making the Global Macro Fund More Weatherproof  ##

By | Economics, Investing, Macro

The recent shocks in the bond market following the Italian election made us revaluate our preparedness for a bigger, more sustained, global shock. Our stock positions, for the most part, are exposed and unprotected in the market which is something we’d prefer to avoid.

How are we making the Global Macro Fund “weatherproof”?

We’re ensuring the single stock selection part of the GMF always carries with it a stop loss limit to protected it from anticipated global stocks, the like of which we saw in February and late last month.

We’re creating an amalgamated portfolio which brings together the diversity & solid methodology of the ETF Global Theme Rotation service (I’ll run through this another time) and the Global Protected Stock Service.

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June 12, 2018
1

## On Lynch & Extreme Takes on the Future of Banking  ##

By | Banks, Economics, Inflation, Investing, Macro

I was recently reminiscing to colleagues about my first job in broking all those years ago. In my first week a senior dealer helped me out by slinging me a few books as mandatory reading for a junior junior assistant to the assistant, as my role was termed.
One of them was “One Up On Wall Street” by the legendary investor/fund manager Peter Lynch.
I was reminded of Mr Lynch’s great work as I was speaking to some colleagues about the banks’ eventually getting out of their extraneous wealth & advice divisions & how it reminded me of something from the past.
I let it stew for a while but I believe I have the beginnings of a controversial idea….

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May 2, 2018
0

## It’s possibly 10.30  ##

By | Economics, Inflation, Investing, Macro

We thought it prudent to put out a short note on what we’re seeing at the moment and whilst I’ll go on with a few lines on the USD & our refreshed look at Europe something hit me last night that took me back to my first day in broking so many years ago.
I was reading a piece in the FT on the flurry of dealmaking travelling around the market at the moment. “Merger Mania” saw USD $100m of announced deals in a 24 hour window early this week. This brings the total value of deals in 2018 up to $1.7tn. Read those letters there, people.
Trillion.
Any time I see big numbers like that I always look for the “this is the largest since…” comment in the article.
I’ll let the graphic do the talking for me…

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March 27, 2018
0

## It’s LIBOR again…seriously!!?? (oh and some trade war nothing)  ##

By | Economics, Inflation, Investing, Macro

Just when you get set to write a long boring piece filled with doom and gloom the US market goes and puts on its best day since August 2015. Just as well I held off:
a) writing that note (yet) and
b) panicking and taking emergency protective positions.

Regardless the markets have had a week best described as ‘odd’ with many fingers pointing in many directions on numerous reasons. Trade war commentary has been done to death and will be flogged for a while to come. I’ll do my best to add a few cents below too.

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