Macro Hive Conversations With Bilal Hafeez

Latest Episodes:

Fabio Natalucci on COVID, Crypto and Climate Dec 03, 2021

Show notes

Fabio is a Deputy Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department at the IMF. He is responsible for the Global Financial Stability Report that gives the IMF's assessment of global financial stability risks. Prior to joining the IMF, Fabio was a Senior Associate Director in the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board. Between October 2016 and June 2017, Fabio was Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Financial Stability and Regulation at the U.S. Department of Treasury. In this podcast we discuss:

How COVID shocks transmit to markets and the economy
Why haven't bankruptcies picked up?
The likely impact of Omicron
How to know if inflation will be transitory
How leveraged are markets?
What are the risks to China?
How stable are stablecoins?
The investment challenge for climate policy
Books that influenced Fabio: Barbarians at the Gate (Burrough, Helyar), The Divine Comedy (Dante)

[BONUS] Professor Justin Stebbing On COVID Omicron Dec 01, 2021

Show notes

Omicron, the name of the new Covid-19 variant that has recently emerged, caused panic across the world and a selloff in risk on Friday. Following an influx of questions from The Hive, we held an urgent webinar to discuss the strain and its potential impacts on financial markets.

Professor Justin Stebbing of the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London joined us to provide his expert opinion. Justin has published in The Lancet new research on using AI to find drugs to treat COVID-19 and in Foreign Affairs on China's global role in vaccine distribution.

To explore the possible economic and financial market implications, Macro Hive CEO Bilal Hafeez and Senior Strategist Dominique Dwor-Frecaut provide their views.

Nancy Davis on How to Position for True Inflation Risk Nov 26, 2021

Show notes

Nancy Davis is the founder and managing partner of Quadratic Capital Management. She is the portfolio manager for The Quadratic Interest Rate Volatility and Inflation Hedge ETF (IVOL). She founded Quadratic Capital in 2013. She began her career at Goldman Sachs where she spent nearly ten years, the last seven with the proprietary trading group where she rose to become the Head of Credit, Derivatives and OTC Trading. Prior to starting Quadratic, she served as a portfolio manager at Highbridge Capital Management where she managed $500 million of capital in a derivatives only portfolio. She later served in a senior executive role at AllianceBernstein. In this podcast we discuss:

Why ETFs are attractive wrappers for active strategies
How best to capture true inflation risk
The pros and cons of investing in TIPs
How to think about spread exposure
Taking advantage of the shape of forward curve to fund option premium
How the IVOL strategy performed during COVID
Are real yields too low?
Risks for 2022 including stagflation

Edward Glaeser on Will Cities Survive After COVID Nov 19, 2021

Show notes

Edward Glaeser is Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is perhaps the world's leading expert on cities. He recently authored, along with David Cutler, Survival of the City – Living and Thriving in the Age of Isolation. Edward leads the Urban Economics Working Group at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and co-leads the Cities Programme at the International Growth Center. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Public Administration. In this podcast we discuss:

What defines a city?
How have pandemics impacted cities across history?
Why are people healthier in cities than in rural areas?
Why is there large inequality within cities?
Importance of education
What led to the urban renaissance of the 1990s
Why didn't tech revolution end cities?
Will Zoom revolution change cities?
What lead to growth of Silicon Valley
Factors that drive gentrification
Three recommendations for helping cities.
Edward's book recommendations: The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jacobs), Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (Cronon), Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Saxenian), Framing the Early Middle Ages (Wickham) and Origins of the European Economy (McCormick)

Rolf Strauch On Europe's Reboot, Managing Sovereign Risk and Euro Growth Nov 12, 2021

Show notes

Rolf Strauch is Chief Economist and Management Board Member of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), which he joined in July 2010. These entities provide financial assistance to euro-area countries experiencing financing problems. Rolf represents the ESM and EFSF in European fora and negotiates with Member States. Prior to this, Mr Strauch worked at the European Central Bank from 2000–2010 and served previously as an economist at the Deutsche Bundesbank. In this podcast we discuss:

How successful were the European rescue packages during the euro sovereign crisis?
How did the economic policy response to COVID of Europe compare to the US?
How the ESM is changing
Outlook around Europe's Next Generation EU stimulus
The growth of the common EU bonds and green bonds
How advanced is Europe's banking union?
Can Europe's capital markets grow to US levels?
Impact of Brexit on EU institutions
Euro-area growth outlook
Recommended books: The Globotics Upheaval (Baldwin)

Alex Gurevich On Trading COVID, Inflation and Games Nov 05, 2021

Show notes

Alex Gurevich is the Founder and CIO of HonTe Advisors, LLC. Alex has been involved in trading for over 20 years; holding various roles on Wall Street that included the launch of fixed income derivative trading franchises as well as running the macro book at JP Morgan. More recently, Alex has transformed his very successful family office into a global macro strategy suitable for institutional investors. He is the author of The Next Perfect Trade (2015) and soon to be published The Trades of March. Alex was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia and earned his PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago. On this podcast we discuss:

How games like chess, go and poker can help your investing
Why sticking to take profits and stops is important
Which markets follow valuation
Alex's experience of trading COVID in March 2020 and lessons learned
How to think about the current inflation debate
US real yields could head lower
Recent front-end sell is overdone
Australia could be a stand-out market
Dollar view
Why equities don't follow the economic cycle
Books that influenced Alex: Lord of the Rings (Tolkien), On Being Certain (Burton)
Sci-fi book recommendations: Hyperion (Simmons), Ender's Game (Card), Rise of a Merchant Prince (Feist), The Dagger and the Coin (Abraham), Expanse (Corey)

Scott Lynn on Investing In Art, Diversification and NFTs Oct 29, 2021

Show notes

Scott is the Founder and CEO of Masterworks, a platform for investing in art markets. Scott has been an active collector of contemporary art for more than fifteen years and has built an internationally-recognized collection of Abstract Expressionism that has included works by Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and more. In addition to Masterworks, Scott serves on the board of v2 ventures (Adparlor, Giant Media, Reachmobi, Amply, and Sellozo), Payability, and the Brooklyn Rail (a non-profit publication in the art industry). In this podcast we discuss:

What determines the value of art
Importance of gallery representation and marketing
How liquidity has evolved in the art market
Where the main buyers of art are from
How different segments of art market have performed
What the expected return of art is
How art correlates to other asset classes
When art has underperformed
Examples of artists whose art has performed well: from Basquiat to Gilliam
How investors can get exposure to art
Views on NFT
Books that influenced Scott: Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman) and Competitive Strategy (Porter)

Azeem Azhar On the Exponential Age, Unlimited Companies and Tech Challenges Oct 22, 2021

Show notes

Azeem is the creator of Exponential View, a leading platform for in-depth tech analysis. His weekly newsletter is read by 200,000 people from around the world, and his podcast has featured guests including Yuval Noah Harari, Tony Blair and Kate Raworth. A member of the World Economic Forum's Global Futures Council, Azeem contributes to publications including the Financial Times, Wired and the MIT Technology Review. His new book is called Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do. In this podcast we discuss:

The four technologies driving exponential age
What's different between today and previous tech transitions
How tech companies defy conventional understanding
Why productivity has been low
Climate change and productivity
Understanding US/China/Europe tech rivalry
Importance of big tech in dealing with cyber risk
Books that influenced Azeem: Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital (Perez) and Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke)

Boris Vladimirov on Reverse Goldilocks, Central Bank Credibility, and Market Winners Oct 15, 2021

Show notes

Boris is one of the top macro thinkers in the market. He is a managing director at Goldman Sachs. Before GS, he was partner and portfolio manager at Rokos Capital Management, Fortress and Brevan Howard. Boris started his career on the sell-side which included working at UBS and Dresdner. Boris will be giving his personal opinions and not those of Goldman Sachs or any other organisations he is affiliated to. In this podcast, we discuss:

What is reverse goldilocks?
Parallels and differences to 1970s stagflation
The challenge of the current regime
How will policymakers respond?
What gives central banks credibility?
What does it mean for macro environment?
Views on China
How will equities, bonds and FX perform
Why terms of trade matter

Marc Rubinstein on Understanding Banks, the Crypto Challenge and Private Equity Oct 08, 2021

Show notes

Marc is author of Net Interest – a leading weekly newsletter on the world of finance. Before this, Marc spent ten years at leading hedge fund Lansdowne Partners, where he was a partner and portfolio manager. This was after he spent time on the sell-side working for Barclays Investment Bank (BZW), Schroders and then Credit Suisse, where he was head of the European banks research team. In this podcast we discuss:

How to predict financial crises
How are financials different from other companies
What do banks price-to-bank ratios tell us?
Can banks rebrand themselves as fintech?
What are the key fintech trends
How will credit evolve
Is the crypto challenge to finance real?
How to do well in angel investing
Why have private equity firms institutionalised better than hedge funds
What is the state of sell-side research?
Books that influenced Marc: Fooled by Randomness (Taleb), Origin of Wealth (Beinhocker) and The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets (Mandelbrot).