Macro Hive Conversations With Bilal Hafeez

Latest Episodes:

Jim Leitner On Growth vs Value, Digital Options And Bitcoin Dec 11, 2020

Show notes

This episode is supported by private equity platform Moonfare.

One of our most popular guests, legendary Jim Leitner, returns on this episode. He gives his take on the big picture themes of the day, how best to implement trades and much more, specifically we discuss:

Why the rotation trade from growth to value may not work
The importance of looking at the structural trends in undervalued sectors
Why today's tech boom is different from the dot-com mania
The problem with 60:40 portfolios.
The importance of real estate investments
How low bond yields change how to value equities
The power of digital options in implementing views and the bullish CNY story
The 'risk arbitrage' of vol-focused market makers and trend focused investors
The importance of limited trades a year
The relationship between demographics and equities and the positive Japan story
Reshoring and smart manufacturing
The potential of bitcoin
Advice for early career, and recommended books Checklist Manifesto (Gawande) and Superforecasting (Tetlock)

Professor Kevin Dowd On The Problem With MMT, Banking's Lack Of Capital And Free Markets Dec 04, 2020

Show notes

In this show, I talk with Professor Kevin Dowd. He is professor of finance and economics at Durham University and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He has written extensively on the history and theory of free banking, central banking, financial regulation, and monetary systems. His books include Private Money: The Path to Monetary Stability, Laissez‐Faire Banking and Alchemists of Loss: How Modern Finance and Government Intervention Crashed the Financial System. In this podcast we discuss:

Was government intervention in 2020 the right thing to do?
The capital problems of the banking and insurance sectors
Why free banking (no/light regulation) works
The problem with MMT
Why debt levels matter
How negative rates could hurt

Mickey Down And Konrad Kay On Their New HBO Finance Show Industry Nov 30, 2020

Show notes

This episode is supported by private equity platform Moonfare.

I'm a big fan of the new HBO show Industry. It follows a group of young graduates competing for permanent positions at fictional investment bank, Pierpoint & Co. It's the most authentic depiction of a trading floor that I have seen on a TV show, so I had to get the creators of the show, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, on to my podcast show. In this podcast we discuss:

Their backgrounds working at investment banks
Where they filmed the trading floor
Why they avoided storylines like insider trading
How they captured the details of sales/trading and M&A
What the show tells us about young people today
Will there be a season 2?

Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam On Ending COVID, Vaccine Complacency And Business Responsibility Nov 27, 2020

Show notes

This episode is supported by private equity platform Moonfare.

In this show, I talk with Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam. He is the founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute and the founder of EndCoronavirus. He received his SB and PhD in physics from MIT in 1978 and 1984 respectively. Since the late 1980s he has contributed to founding the field of complex systems science, introducing fundamental mathematical rigor and real world application, ranging from the global financial crisis to stopping the 2014 Ebola outbreak. He has advised the CDC, the Chairman's Action Group at the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the National Counter Terrorism Council, and other government organizations, NGOs, and corporations. In this podcast we discuss:

Yaneer's January paper with Nassim Taleb and Joseph Norman on the coming COVID crisis
Using complexity science to understand pandemics
The importance of restricting travel and bringing cases to zero
The mistake of countries that lift restrictions before zero cases
Why the West managed COVID poorly compared to Asia and Africa
The poor comparison to seasonal flu
The economic benefits of aggressive action vs cost of soft lockdowns
Why the vaccine doesn't mean countries should lift restrictions
How investors and the business community can help end the COVID crisis

Dirk Willer On Emerging Markets Rallying, EM Inflation And Latam Challenges Nov 21, 2020

Show notes

This episode is supported by private equity platform Moonfare.

In this show, I talk with Dr. Dirk Willer. He's a Managing Director and Global Head of Emerging Markets FX and Fixed Income Strategy at Citigroup in NY. His research covers global emerging markets for FX, local rates, and credit. Dirk and his team have been ranked as the top team in the 2019 institutional investor survey for emerging markets strategy in FX and rates. Previously, Dirk worked at Omega Advisors and RHG Capital as a global macro strategist and at Swiss Bank as Russia strategist. He's also recently published an excellent new book called "Trading Fixed Income and FX in Emerging Markets: A Practitioner′s Guide". In this podcast we discuss:

How markets treated the US election like an EM election
Impact of Biden's win on major EM
Why EM does well with the vaccine breakthroughs
Which EM will do best in post-COVID world
Will EM inflation pick up?
Can EM survive higher US rates?
Is China a good long-term buy?
Should we be worried about Brazil's fiscal numbers?
How much does EM depend on global factors?
Trading rules for EM markets
Books that influenced Dirk: Market Wizards, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism

Professor Justin Stebbing On Vaccine Breakthroughs And Herd-Immunity By Summer Nov 12, 2020

Show notes

This episode is supported by private equity platform Moonfare.

In this show, I talk with Professor Justin Stebbing. I had him as a guest in July when he argued that we could see a COVID vaccine around US election time. He was right and so I wanted to get his latest views. For background, Justin is a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial college London. He specializes in cancers and immunotherapies. He has an extensive research background having published over 550 peer-reviewed papers. Earlier this year, he published in the Lancet new research on using AI to find drugs to treat COVID-19 and recently published in Foreign Affairs China's global role in vaccine distribution. In this podcast we discuss:

The significance of Pfizer's 90% efficacy rate
Vaccines from other pharma companies including from Russia & China
The science of vaccines – B-cell and T-cell responses
Fast tracking of vaccine approval by FDA
Managing public opinion and anti-vaxxers
Logistics of vaccine distribution
When will we get to herd-immunity
Remaining uncertainties around vaccines
Mink factories and mutations
Long COVID and athletes
Which countries have secured vaccine supplies

Gary Gerstle On Trump Not Conceding, Democrat Failures And The Upcoming Test Of The US Political System Nov 07, 2020

Show notes

The US election did not see the Democrat wave that many had expected, so I have US Presidential history expert of Cambridge University, Gary Gerstle, return to our podcast show. He gives his take on all things US elections and beyond. In this podcast we discuss:

The parallel Presidencies of 1876
The current risks of unrest if the results are not certified soon
What pollsters missed
Were the Democrats too left or not left enough?
How will Biden manage the left and a Republican Senate ahead of 2022 midterms
The return of state rights over central government
How a divided congress shifts power to the President and the Supreme Court
The profound importance of the Republicans winning State legislatures
Thoughts on a Georgia Senate run-off

Michael Melvin On Quant Strategies In Currencies, Impact Of QE And Machine Learning Oct 30, 2020

Show notes

Michael was Managing Director and Senior Research Advisor in Multi-Asset Strategies at BlackRock. Prior to that he was head of Currency and Fixed Income Research in the Global Market Strategies Group at BlackRock and Barclays Global Investors. Michael is currently Executive Director of the Master of Finance program and also serves as Executive Director of the Pacific Center for Asset Management at UC San Diego. He has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Board, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank for International Settlements. In this podcast we discuss:

The difference between quantitative and fundamental investing
How to systematically earn alpha in FX markets
How to think about FX carry and momentum strategies
Does flow data have any value?
How the QE-era has fundamentally changed FX investing
The importance of China and the Chinese yuan
How to use machine learning for trading
Why understanding transaction costs is critical
How to benchmark the performance of currency managers
Papers mentioned: Preserving Alpha: The Effect of Trade Size and Rebalancing Frequency on FX Strategy Returns and Active Currency Investing and Performance Benchmarks
Books that influenced Michael: Active Portfolio Management and Autobiography of a Yogi

John Kay On Smaller Government And Business Failure, And Why Greed Is Dead Oct 21, 2020

Show notes

John Kay is one of the UK's leading economists. His books on the tax system, corporate strategy and banking have been widely praised. He helped establish the Institute of Fiscal Studies, is a fellow at St. Johns College Oxford, and was the first dean of Oxford's Saïd Business School. In this podcast we discuss:

The importance of science for policymakers and why they do not use it more
The problem with the focus on short-term earnings
Why people are pro-social rather than individualistic
Why the 1970s failed and later why neo-liberalism failed
Why productivity could be under-estimated
The problem with the rights movements
The need for decentralization and disciplined pluralism
How the EU helps the creation of smaller states
Why regulation is helping big banks
The importance for businesses not to obsess about profits
Recent book that influenced John: The Secret of Our Success (Joseph Henrich)

Gary Gerstle On Trump Authoritarianism, Biden's Challenges, And Polarisation Oct 17, 2020

Show notes

Gary is Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge University. Before that, he was at Vanderbilt University where he was James G. Stahlman Professor of American History. He is a social and political historian of the twentieth century, with substantial interests in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He got his PhD from Harvard University. He has also testified before the US Congress on immigration matters. In this podcast we discuss: