McCullough: This is Why A Lot of Macro Funds Shut Down This Year - keith cartoon

Below is a brief transcription from  The Macro Show  earlier today with CEO Keith McCullough:

“Crude oil is literally the only position in all of macro, across equities, fixed income, currencies and commodities, where people are overly bullish. They’re not bullish on the Nasdaq. And you should be happy about that because that means Wall Street isn’t bullish enough.

In fact, the Nasdaq is one of the least bullish. But look at that chart. People are ragingly bearish on Natural Gas, of course, because it’s down -30% this year. Silver, just a godawful place to be in 2017. Aluminum just got plowed then bounced. Those are bearish too.

McCullough: This is Why A Lot of Macro Funds Shut Down This Year - ficc 12 21 17
(Editor's Note: The column to look at in the chart above is the 1-year Z-score. This shows you current Wall Street net consensus positioning versus where it's been in the past year... to be more precise it's the standard deviation.)

This is why a lot of “active macro managers” have had a very hard time for the last decade because they’re constantly chasing their tails. I’m talking about the consensus guys, the guys who are shutting down these days and just getting into crypto because it’s a little easier. Crypto is easy. You just buy it and it goes up.

It’s a lot harder to get currencies, commodities, equities, growth and inflation right isn’t it. It’s a tough job. At the end of the day, this is a very important time because a lot of people haven’t been bullish enough on stocks. And they’re quite bearish on things after they go down. That’s not quite useful to you as a person who’s looking to pay someone 2 & 20.

If I’m paying you 2 & 20 you’ve got to beat the market with a relative level of volatility that I can handle, something that isn’t going to blow up the minute the market goes the opposite way of how you’re positioned.

This is what actually happens. People chase high and sell low. That’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to identify what’s likely to go higher and buy those things on pullbacks. We’re trying to identify what’s likely to go lower and short those things on bounces.   

It's a very different strategy and we’re very happy to be doing it."

McCullough: This is Why A Lot of Macro Funds Shut Down This Year - the macro show