Information Revolution

11/05/13 07:42AM EST

“The mechanization of ginning, spinning, and weaving the cotton launched the industrial revolution.”

-Jack Weatherford

The cotton gin was 1793. Twitter was 2006. Eli Whitney and Jack Dorsey had more than a few things in common. One was their age (Whitney was a 28 yr old teacher and Dorsey was a 29 yr old web developer/failed shoe salesman). That’s where revolutions come from, baby. As my man Brandon Flowers wrote in “Only The Young” (great tune):

“Look back in silence; the cradle of your whole life. There in the distance, losing its greatest prize. Nothing is easy, nothing is sacred. Why? Where did the bough break? It happened before your time. Only the young can break away, break away…“

And so it continues to begin – the unearthing of every single Western academic dogma about economics and markets ever spun. The unraveling of a weave of storytellers that only my God can be smiling down upon as stronger currencies lead new peoples to the promise land of purchasing power. Behold, the Information Revolution in financial markets is here!

Back to the Global Macro Grind

Tomorrow at 11AM EST, Hedgeye veteran blue-liner, Daryl Jones, and Hesham Shaaban will host a Black Book conference call on the Twitter IPO (if you’d like information on how to access the call, ping ). It’s a fascinating story within the history we are building here @Hedgeye. I see it as our Trojan Horse in taking down the #OldWall of aforementioned dogmas.

Mr. Market, take down that #OldWall!

How is that going to work? Let’s just look at what we did using Twitter yesterday in order to front-run a ridiculous #OldWall financial media meme that the Fed being on taper-hold is a “good” thing for growth:

  1. All research starts with asking the right question – our clients often ask, “Isn’t #RatesRising Bad for Growth?”
  2. So we created a video answering that simple question with a simple answer @HedgeyeTV:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BthNo_F6yvQ
  3. And we went on to answer two more big client questions we have been getting, then tweeted it (and re-tweeted it)

In the stone age of perceived financial market and economic wisdoms, you didn’t have Twitter, Videostreaming, YouTube, etc. So you actually had to take the government’s (and the banks they bail out) word for it on these economic history matters.

Ginning, spinning, and weaving, these academic dudes (and dudettes) who have never risk managed markets can get really creative. So was Karl Marx in introducing the adored Obama concept of #ClassWarfare in the first sentence of the Communist Manifesto.

And who the heck am I to call these people out? Sometimes I feel like a modern day version of some Iroquois or Creek Indian who is sitting here creating things (like cotton and rubber - you know, the stuff all the white dudes actually started to use). But what do I know?

What do you know?

The more I read, the less I know. So, admittedly, I do get a little frustrated to see central planning bureaucrats like Jim Bullard @FederalReserve on Big Government Intervention TV spewing economic forecasts that are rarely right, but never in doubt.

At one point yesterday @CNBC, Bullard actually said that it’s time Americans see QE (money printing, Dollar Devaluation, and 0% rates of return on your hard earned savings accounts) as a “normal policy position.”

Normal?

Go back to that Iroquois style @HedgeyeTV video Darius Dale and I did and see the next popular client question: “How Concerned Are You About A Major Dislocation in the Credit Markets?”

Bullard, dude, there is nothing normal about credit markets that go no-bid when a bond ticks down half a point. Wake up man. You and your boy Bernanke have a “new normal” alright. It’s called a MBS bond bubble that people can’t get out of!

In other counter-Keynesian-consensus-dogma-economic-news this morning:

BREAKING: UK Services PMI for OCT hits a 16yr high at 62.5

Huh? With austerity and a #StrongerCurrency (we’re long the British Pound) the United Kingdom is seeing #GrowthAccelerating? You bet your Danny Blanchflower (Dartmouth Dogma professor of Currency Devaluation and Big Government Spending) it’s accelerating.

This morning, to be sure on my historical account, I went back to the time period I reviewed with my kids this weekend in the movie “Free-Birds” (where turkeys try to turn back the clocks on being slaughtered for Thanksgiving), and the replay still shows that there has never been a country that has devalued its way to long-term economic prosperity. Danny, you can’t turn back the clock. Gobble, gobble.

#StrongCurrency = Deflates The Inflation and real (inflation adjusted) consumption #GrowthAccelerating.

On the margin, that’s Europe now (not the USA –it was the USA 10 months ago):

  1. Swiss Consumer Prices (CPI) drop to -0.3% y/y in OCT = consumption tax cut for consumers
  2. Eurozone PPI (producer prices) drop -0.9% y/y in SEP = cost of goods tax cut for producers (good for margins)

And on what planet are Old World pundits allowed to fear-monger you that Deflating The Inflation is a bad thing? I guess maybe Pluto, Dartmouth (sorry guys, I’m picking on Blanchflower), or one that doesn’t have Twitter. Good luck keeping that one alive. As another revered American revolutionary, Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us, “a lie cannot live” forever.

Our immediate-term Risk Ranges are now:

SPX 1

DAX 8

Swiss Market Index 8159-8232

USD 80.17-80.98

Euro 1.34-1.36

Pound 1.60-1.62

Best of luck out there today,

KM

Keith R. McCullough
Chief Executive Officer

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