Why the “Fully Invested Bear” Wins in This Market | Jeff deGraaf
2025-12-10
This is one of my favorite interviews of 2025. I just sat down with Jeff deGraaf, founder of Renaissance Macro Research, to get his thoughts on markets, cycles, and risk.
Jeff built his career translating technical analysis into actionable investment strategies for institutional clients. Institutional Investor has named him the #1 technical analyst for over a decade.
In this conversation, he walks through Jeff’s market cycle clock—a framework that plots inflation against growth to forecast stock market returns—and explains why inflation matters more to stocks than GDP growth does.
We cover:
• Why trend following beats mean reversion for long-term investors
• How to identify bubbles—and what to do when you’re in one
• Where semiconductors and healthcare sit on the valuation spectrum
We Have Entered the “Speculation” Phase of the Market Cycle | Michael Howell
2025-11-26
Zero interest rates didn’t exist for 4,000 years of recorded history. Now CrossBorder Capital founder Michael Howell believes we’re about to find out why.
Howell developed his framework for tracking global liquidity while working at Salomon Brothers, where he watched capital move across trading desks in real time. One core insight: the ratio between debt and liquidity—not debt-to-GDP—is what actually predicts financial crises and asset bubbles.
In this interview we cover:
– How policymakers created the “everything bubble” with zero rates and excess liquidity
– Why $70 trillion of debt must be refinanced every year
– What happens as that debt comes due while Fed liquidity slows
– How to think about asset allocation at different points in the cycle
– Why China is driving gold prices
The End of Easy Money: Why the AI Trade Has Changed Forever | Brent Donnelly
2025-11-20
The CNN Fear and Greed Index hit extreme fear territory this week. Yet when Brent Donnelly surveyed investors, he found something different: a market repricing risk rather than fleeing from it entirely.
Brent runs Spectra Markets and remains one of the sharpest currency traders I know. His survey revealed that zero-revenue AI plays and debt-heavy infrastructure names are getting hammered while companies with actual cash flows hold up better. The pivot point came in late October with Meta’s earnings.
Brent’s survey found that 65% of respondents would rather short OpenAI at a $500 billion valuation than go long on a three-year horizon. Most believe AI is a bubble, but they don’t think it’s topped yet.
We also discuss what happens when OpenAI’s $20/month subscription model can’t support
The $12 Trillion Bubble’s Final Stage Has Begun | Jared Dillian
2025-10-31
Are we living through 1997/98 all over again? Former Wall Street trader Jared Dillian breaks down why today’s tech market looks eerily similar to the dot-com bubble—but we’re not at the peak yet.
We dive into the troubling rise of circular deals, where companies like Nvidia are investing billions in their own customers—just like Cisco did in the late nineties. Jared reminds us that “it’s never different.”
We haven’t had a real bear market in 17 years (outside the pandemic), and Jared raises a critical question: Will the magnitude of the coming drawdown be proportional to the length of this bull market?
Plus, Jared reveals how he wrote his upcoming book in just 10 days, and why it’s the guide nearly every investor should follow.
Learn more about Jared Dillian here:
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