GM01: The COVID-19 Fallout ft. Julian Brigden

Our guest in todays episode is Julian Brigden, co-founder of MI2 partners. Julian has decades experience in investment banking on both sides of the Atlantic, and is a true original thinker. We had a highly enjoyable conversation with Julian, who has a unique knack of explaining his frequently controversial views in a thoroughly entertaining fashion. He has a wide knowledge of topics as varied as silver and shale oil, and his historical references ranged from the 2008 crash all the way back to the Black Death in the middle ages.

Topics Discussed in this Episode

The consistency of the US dollar cycle

The COVID related March funding squeeze

US current and capital account deficit

Why Risk Parity strategies might be a bad idea going forward

The many visible signs of ‘the Fourth Turning’ and why global markets are at an inflection point

Unemployment

"The U.S. just hit post Second World War highs (for unemployment), and if you don’t, post Great Depression highs. The point is that we are starting in an economic hole which is, arguably, much, much deeper than many of our peers. And that is in virtue of the fact that we have a super flexible labor market"

Why recent Federal Reserve liquidity injections into the market may not have been part of Quantitive Easing (QE), which could still be yet to come

“As the economy starts to recover, that’s when we will come out with old fashioned QE." I’m like, “Jesus, what’s that? Is that another 80 billion a month, trillion a year?” And the answer is, “Almost certainly.”

Yield curve control

The independence of the Fed

The case for Systematic Trend Following commodity funds

Why Bitcoin may be a dangerous long-term investment

"(That) is the day that you are presented with the option of handing your bitcoin over in the same way that you did with gold in the ‘30s or trying to keep hold of it and if you’re caught ending up in a big dark hole with a bloke called Bubba who calls you Shirley"

Financial repression

Why government bond yields may struggle to rise again

The history of global pandemics

"There was this little bloke called Martin Luther who hung around as all the Catholic priests fled out to their country properties when we had the black death, who stayed and helped. Guess what? That was the cycle high of Catholicism. That was a relatively big turning point in History. Pandemics kind of do that"

Commodity markets

The case for Silver against the US dollar

How market cycles tend to repeat themselves

The importance of central bank policies when trying to gauge markets