Things Will Get Worse

October 09, 2022

“If something looks irrational — and has been so for a long time — odds are you have a wrong definition of rationality.”

– Nassim Taleb

RESEARCH

Bridgewater on the Fed, inflation, the labor market, and financial conditions.

Source: Bridgewater

.Maybe It’s Time for a Boring Investment

With both stocks and bonds down and still falling, it may be time to investigate an asset that’s a little less…eventful.

Over the past 20 years, the NCREIF Farmland Index has outperformed the S&P 500 with less volatility.1

Research from Nuveen, the $1.3 trillion investment manager of TIAA, has shown that adding 2-5% of a portfolio to farmland and/or timberland can improve a portfolio’s overall returns and at the same time reduce risk.2

AcreTrader makes it simple to invest in professionally reviewed farmland online and seek passive income.

In the past couple of months they’ve reported on their first four fully realized deal cycles, and now have offering hitting the platform each week.

And they added timber offerings to the platform earlier this year.

Try boring. Try farmland by visiting www.AcreTrader.com/meb.

1Source: (2022, August 11). Morningstar. The annualized return for the NCREIF Index is calculated based on the published Index levels from 3/31/91 to 6/30/22.

.2Source: (2021, May). Nuveen. Resiliency and diversification from uncorrelated market exposure.

 Investing is hard. Link

 Stanley Druckenmiller speaks with Palantir CEO Alex Karp on global instability, the Russia/Ukraine war, and creating a company that thrives in chaos. Link

Now we’re in a situation where no one wants to talk about how bad it could get because people are more realistic that it could get that bad. 

 Bill Gurley on layoffs, remote work, the state of start-ups today, the structure of Benchmark, & more. Link

You have to play the game on the field. If everything has reset, it has reset. The sooner you get in touch with that, the better you’ll do.

 John Hussman looks at valuations, the historical precedent of lost decades for US stocks, interest rates, & more. Link

The way that bubbles unfold into preposterous losses – 89%, 82%, 50%, 55%, and I expect this time between 50-70% – is through multiple periods of decline and even free-fall, punctuated by fast, furious “clearing rallies” that offer hope all the way down. By the time investors experience the second or third free-fall – and we’ve hardly experienced the first one yet – the psychology of investors is not “this is the bottom” – but rather, “there is no bottom.”

Goldman Sachs’ Head of Commodity Research touches on the underinvestment in supply, why ESG makes this cycle different from past cycles, and why the risk of a policy error.

From The Episode:“By the way, the coal guys are trading 75%-100%. For those who don’t follow this, what does that mean? You can buy the company out in one year. So, if it’s trading at 75%, you buy the company out, take it private and you own 75% of it one year. What does that mean? These companies will end up going private and go completely out of the purview of ESG, which is why it’s not a sustainable solution here.”

“Prof G” touches on various topics from his new book, Adrift: America in 100 Charts, which looks at how American has evolved since WWII and what he thinks needs to happen to solve the problems the country faces today.

Chris Miller[9/30/22 – 52 minutes]Apple | Spotify | Google

Miller is an economic historian and author of the new book, Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology.  He walks through the history of semiconductor supply chains, Taiwan’s outsized influence in production today, and how semiconductors are impacting geopolitics. 

From The Episode:China spends more money importing chips than importing oil every year.

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