“If you’re not learning while you’re earning, you’re cheating yourself out of the better part of your compensation.”
-Napoleon Hill
One of the great blessings of this profession is that we are overly compensated to learn. Think about that relative to what some of our parents (and theirs) had to do to make a living for our families. I, for one, am grateful for the opportunity to learn.
Everyone has different goals in life. One of mine is to do everything I can to help make people better than I was when I was their age.
Whether that’s with my kids at home, the boys I coach on the ice, or the colleagues I work alongside every day… that’s important to me. Ultimately, rather than focusing on how much money you make, I think that’s how you earn respect.
Back to the Global Macro Grind…
Today is going to be a great learning day @Hedgeye as we’re hosting our 3rd annual Macrocosm conference in New York City. Our vision with the Macrocosm conference series is quite simply to get people to think outside of the mainstream macro consensus.
So far so good on that front. Returns for macro tourist funds continue to lag most active fund manager strategies.
I remember last year’s NYC Macrocosm like it was yesterday. Post Trump’s election there was plenty of emotion, confusion, and excitement in the room. There was a healthy dose of both bullishness and bearishness at that stage of the game. I loved it.
The non-consensus view was that the #accelerating data would trump politics. One year later, not being consensus won.
Being non-consensus for the sake of being non-consensus is as silly as pulling up Zero Edge for the scare-crow-tourist-promo-of-the-day. Silly is as silly does. Some people make a lot of money because you click on their bait.
Are these current Hedgeye Macro Themes consensus or contrarian?
- US GDP #Accelerating
- US Profits #Accelerating
- Globally Synchronized #Divergences
It’s taken almost a full-year of my team and I trying to find creative ways to say the same thing, but I’d say that what were contrarian views on both the US GDP and Profit Cycles are now morphing into consensus.
By definition we’re calling the 3rd Macro Theme contrarian as it’s a play on mainstream (WSJ Macro) media headlines that we are in a “Globally Synchronized Recovery.” We used to be.
With China and Top 10 Global GDP countries like Italy #slowing, we aren’t in a synchronized #acceleration anymore. Chinese Exports just slowed (again) to +6.9% year-over-year growth in OCT. What we call Old China is slowing from its Q1 2017 cycle peak, indeed.
What isn’t slowing is US Technology (and Nasdaq) Earning’s Growth. Now that we’re > 80% of the way through Q317 Earnings Season, here’s the latest rate-of-change data on that front:
- US Tech in the SP500 currently has an aggregate year-over-year EPS growth rate of +25.7%
- Nasdaq (80 of 102 companies have reported) = aggregate year-over-year EPS growth of +22.1%
- Russell 2000 (182 Tech companies have reported) = aggregate year-over-year EPS growth of +19.8%
Yeah, cry me a river on the “valuation” of some of these companies. Instead of whining about it, the winning portfolios of 2017 made the call that US Tech Earnings Growth would see one of its biggest #accelerations ever.
Much like the all-time part of all-time highs, derivatives of ever are good ones to be long of. God willing, I’ll never stop learning from all of my mistakes and I’ll forever find time to help people be better than I’ll ever be.
If you have not yet signed up for today’s Macrocosm in NYC and would like to attend, we have a few spots left. Please contact for pricing and availability.
Our immediate-term Global Macro Risk Ranges (with intermediate-term TREND views in brackets) are now:
UST 10yr Yield 2.28-2.46% (bullish)
SPX 2 (bullish)
RUT 1 (bullish)
NASDAQ 6 (bullish)
Nikkei 229 (bullish)
DAX 13077-13654 (bullish)
VIX 8.84-11.23 (bearish)
USD 93.86-95.11 (bullish)
EUR/USD 1.15-1.17 (bearish)
YEN 112.99-114.63 (bearish)
Oil (WTI) 53.15-57.85 (bullish)
Gold 1 (bearish)
Copper 3.06-3.20 (bullish)
AAPL 167.00-178.75 (bullish)
AMZN 1039-1189 (bullish)
FB 175-185 (bullish)
GOOGL 1010-1071 (bullish)
TSLA 293-332 (bearish)
Best of luck out there today,
KM
Keith R. McCullough
Chief Executive Officer
