Larry McDonald – Global Macro Series – 25th July 2020 - a podcast by Niels Kaastrup-Larsen

Today we are very lucky to welcome Larry McDonald as our guest. Larry is the founder of the Bear Traps report, and has extensive experience in consulting and investment banking. His bestselling book “A colossal failure of common sense”, described his time as a Vice President at Lehman brothers where Larry had a ringside view of the last financial crisis. Needless to say this gives him an interesting perspective on the current state of the global markets. Our very enjoyable conversation covered a wide range of topics from high level macro, across Silver and Copper, and down to individual stocks like Tesla.



Topics Discussed in this Episode



Risk Indicators

Unemployment

Modern Monetary Theory

US Dollar



"At the end of the day, so the dollar ripped 82 to 104 and that moved crushed middle American jobs and really, I think it partially cost Hillary Clinton the election… I think the Trump camp has learned that you really can't have a runaway dollar heading towards an election. You really want that dollar down and that will help whatever is left of middle America.



Inequality

Inflation



“The inflation camp, every one of them is pegging it on twelve to eighteen months from now. Whereas, the deflation camp is pretty high conviction that we're going to have a problem near-term. ”



Gold and Silver

2020 Election



"I just don't think that the White House really wants to have a problem with China in the last two, three months before the election."



Tesla



" Tesla is at close to three hundred (billion), so Tesla would come in at anywhere between twelve and ten in terms of the S&P 500. So it would come in, basically, in the top twelve companies which has never happened before."



Warren Buffet 

Fed balance sheet 





Links

Catch up with Larry McDonald and learn more about his work:

The Bear Traps Report



Follow Niels, Moritz, & Rob on Twitter:

Niels Kaastrup-Larsen

Moritz Seibert

Rob Carver

Subscribe on:



Full Transcript

The following is a full detailed transcript of this conversion. Subscribe to the podcast to get access to all of our transcripts as eBook downloads!

Larry

When my book came out, Charlie Munger invited me to Omaha. I went out to see the annual meeting and it was incredible. There were just so many people, about 30,000 people in Omaha, Nebraska, in the stadium. Then he invited me, on Sunday, we went into the Marriot Hotel and there was one room that was Buffet with the pension funds and in another room, there was Bill Gates.

I'll never forget, I'm in the room waiting for Charlie Munger and in he came and I introduced my wife and he said, one thing that he said to me that I will never forget, he said, "Larry, the toughest thing in the world to do is stare at a screen all day and do nothing. He was talking about... This was a couple of years, this is several years ago, he was talking about how Berkshire will sit there and wait.

Then I look at the last two years and this has just been incredible. They have one hundred and thirty-six billion in cash and they didn't buy any stocks in the drawdown in 2018 when there was a 20% drawdown. Then in 2020, we had a 36% drawdown and they didn't put any money to work. So it tells you that they're sitting in their boat and they're waiting for better values.

Introduction

Our guest today is someone who looks for the unexpected instead of focusing on the obvious as he analyses the intersection between politics and markets which is a relationship that is, perhaps, more important than ever before in our lifetime and where politics could well be the key driver of markets. On top of this, he's a New York Times Best Selling Author with his book, A Colossal Failure of Common Sense,

Further episodes of Top Traders Unplugged

Further podcasts by Niels Kaastrup-Larsen

Website of Niels Kaastrup-Larsen