No Talent.

Increasingly, anyone with a bearish opinion about markets or really, anyone who even ventures to suggest that perhaps buying at any price is a bad idea, is being castigated for what the punditry is characterizing as a nefarious attempt to grab headlines by predicting an imminent collapse.

That’s a straw man – plain and simple. That’s not to say there aren’t people out there whose sole purpose for writing research or for blogging is to capitalize off people’s inherent fascination with doomsday predictions. Obviously, there are plenty of those people around.

But you want to be careful about lumping everyone who doesn’t share your sanguine view of markets into the same category.

Any macro analyst worth their salt takes a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding markets. Depending on the analyst, the definition of “cross-disciplinary” could be narrow (i.e. mixing two related fields of study like economics and finance) or wide (i.e. mixing everything from economics, to political science, to philosophy) or somewhere in between. In short: it’s a ton of work and the best macro research is often characterized by monumental feats of holistic thinking.

So don’t be surprised when your narrowly-construed conception of how the world works doesn’t play well with people who are deep thinkers. Similarly, don’t be surprised when people who actually spend their days doing actual macro research come to conclusions that don’t line up well with some kind of absurdly simplistic strategy for allocating assets.

Real macro research is now being systematically trivialized by the punditry. Read these excerpts from a piece called “No Talent” by Josh Brown:

Someone forwarded me a 10 minute video clip of supposedly well-meaning people predicting a market crash ‘within the next 12 months.” Historically, this would be well within the realm of the possible, if not necessarily a high probability.

The link to the video was sent to me reverently, “These guys are really smart, they know what they’re talking about.”

I considered that for a few minutes. It got me thinking about how little talent it takes to make an exhaustive list of all the negatives and things that could go wrong, and then pass the whole pile off as though it’s profound. It is not profound.

I could make that list right now off the top of my head. Domestic issues, international issues, financial issues, technical issues, demographic issues, political issues.

Is that right? Well color me fucking incredulous.

Because no one can “make that list right now off the top of [their] head” – or at least not where “making that list” involves actually understanding the dynamics behind all of the things that would comprise such a list and what the implications are for multiple asset classes.

That assertion – i.e. that one person not only understands how all of those issues interact with each other to influence markets, but that that same person understands it so well as to be in a position to publicly deride someone else for putting in the real effort it takes to actually develop some semblance of an informed opinion – is laughable. Absolutely fucking laughable.

And it gets better (or worse, depending on how you want to look at it).

Here’s Josh again, referencing his contention that the person who put together the presentation referenced above (and it won’t take you five minutes to figure out who he’s talking about if you’re really trying) has “no talent”:

So where does the talent come in?

How about in helping people make sense of all the scary things and see them in context, as opposed to through the lens of the clickbait economy?

Ok, sounds good. Let’s do that. Let’s find people who can actually “help people make sense of all the scary things and see them in context,” because whoever that person is, it definitely isn’t Josh.

For instance, let’s have Josh sit down and debate a political scientist on the likely impact of the Kurds’ independence push in Iraq on oil prices. And while we’re at it, let’s bring in a scholar on Iranian politics to discuss what it means for Washington’s hardline stance on Tehran that IRGC-backed militias are now actively engaging the Peshmerga – because after all, in order to “see things in context” you’ve got to truly understand the context, right?

And let’s have a roundtable with Josh and Barry R. that includes experts on Catalonia’s long running push for independence from Spain and see who is really in a position to provide the kind of “context” that investors need to evaluate euro breakup risk.

You know, I just don’t understand why people do this. I mean, just read those excerpts above out loud and try to imagine saying that in front of a room full of noted economists and political scientists. Something like this: “I am here to proclaim that I can make a list of all relevant domestic issues, international issues, financial issues, technical issues, demographic issues, and political issues off the top of my head.”

It’s like something Donald Trump would say.

And you know, that’s ironic because Josh doesn’t like Trump. So just to rub it in, let me leave you with a fun visual compare and contrast exercise…

Trump

Brown