Adam, The Head Chef

I'm often wrong

[Adam, The Head Chef @themacrodaddy]

Go out an lever the shit out of a "sure thing" trade with FX options, and if you're left holding the bag, just call it a value trap. Got it.

[Iron Condor @longironcondor]

Citadel wants 4 year non-competes for their Florida staff🤣🤣

[Rishi Mishra @aRishisays]

How Liberation Week played out in Rates!

[Adam, The Head Chef @themacrodaddy]

@Nico_aliaga @RadishHarmers @NlNJAGOmovie @steinkobbe I just read the article & I find it interesting that no mention was made about his job/work. Clearly we don't have full details, but my first instinct after noticing that was he's possibly no longer working for the company on his initial work visa. That's grounds for deportation.

[Adam, The Head Chef @themacrodaddy]

Rightfully so. Powell also said earlier that the biggest issue now is the policy uncertainty. Once the dust from that settles, the uncertainty premium will be resolved.

[Nick Timiraos @NickTimiraos]

Powell starts talking about the May FOMC meeting and then adds: "It feels like we don’t need to be in a hurry." This is Fedspeak for don't expect a cut at that meeting.

[Adam, The Head Chef @themacrodaddy]

@HayekAndKeynes The French too. Say what you like about them, but they've been fighting. It took Macron & the left pulling shenanigans in the last election to stop Le Pen. They've now banned her from running and might throw her in jail.

[Adam, The Head Chef @themacrodaddy]

@Jonathan_Witt @elonmusk Not just non-black citizens, but legal foreign-born black residents and naturalized black citizens (post 1994) are not considered "truly" black by the Gvt.

[NewsForce @Newsforce]

😭😭

[Adam, The Head Chef @themacrodaddy]

@clairlemon Claire, didn't you leave X when it became clear you were wrong about Covid & you couldn't handle the heat anymore?

[Adam, The Head Chef @themacrodaddy]

@__paleologo Nobody gives a shit what chef thinks. So I'm safe either way.

[Adam, The Head Chef @themacrodaddy]

@madaboutmarkets You lost me at "Coro gets it"

[Jetski Grizzly @Jetskigrizzly]

Still the greatest to ever do it. John McAfee's resume is absolutely insane 🤯

[Adam, The Head Chef @themacrodaddy]

😄

[Chris Bakke @ChrisJBakke]

Satya Nadella learning from his lawyers that despite investing $13B into OpenAI, they have zero information rights or say in the day-to-day management, and will continue to get their information on X like the rest of us

[𝐄𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐇𝐲𝐩𝐞 @EffMktHype]

oh cool just a 3sigma reaction to a regular CPI print

[Adam, The Head Chef @themacrodaddy]

@ImUmairShahzad @HumansNoContext 😄😄

[Frederik Gieschen @FrederikNeckar]

Aswath Damodaran: "I have often said, we read too much and think too little. I don't have that problem. I have lots of time. ... an idle mind is often where you get your best connections of ideas. Your best thinking is done when you have nothing in your mind per se that you have to get done. The advantage of not having a to-do list on most days is I get more done when I have not to-do list than when I do."

[Geiger Capital @Geiger_Capital]

“So Stan Druckenmiller put on a leveraged 2yr position in October and literally nailed the top. They’re down like 40 bps in 2 weeks. He’s been doing this consistently for decades now. In my opinion he’s the greatest investor of all time.”

[Inverse Cramer @CramerTracker]

SBF never stood a chance

[Frederik Gieschen @FrederikNeckar]

Last week, macro trader Scott Bessent of Key Square
appeared on the Money Maze @podcast_maze . Here are some of my favorite quotes.

"We study history, we observe the present, and try to imagine the future."

Global Macro: "You are observing the world, you're observing markets, you're observing what you think should happen, and you're observing what is happening. You're looking for mispricings. You are looking for policy errors. You're looking for political changes. You are looking for change on the margin and you want to see what the market is giving you. What is the market giving you? What's the opportunity set?"

The importance of imagination. Scott's father had "the largest science fiction collection in South Carolina."

"We would sit, look at the stars, try to imagine things, are there people on other planets? It's just this imagination that there could be something different and it could be on a different planet or in macro investing. It's regime change, which is I think why I gravitated to it. You need a good imagination."

Information diet: "I don't have a Bloomberg. For me, there's no information value in watching things turn yellow or red constantly. We have a lot of respect for the markets. I look at 270 charts every night.

We're not a think tank, you're just looking for either things that are changing, anomalies, or what you think is clearly a mistake, or something that's maybe unsustainable, and then you identify, why now? Is that unsustainability going to break?"

Keep it simple: what is the key square? "You can have these big trends and you can either be part of the trend, George Soros's theory of reflexivity is really a momentum strategy, and at the turn is when you can really make a lot of money. With key square, it's when the're just two kings, several pawns, and there is one square you can move to, and you win.

If you think about the financial markets, many times, there is one investment you can do, and you win. Whether it is John Paulson CDOs or Stan Druckenmiller shorting the pound. Again and again, you see these things and we try to keep things very simple. We have few positions and where are we going to and what is the key square?"

Games: "Even though our firm names based on a chess move, I think investing is much more like cards or backgammon. You don't know what the dealer or the dice are going to give you. Chess, everything's on the board. Does your opponent make a mistake?"

Asymmetry: "Stan Druckenmiller is incredible in thinking about asymmetry. What's the market giving me, what's my upside, downside, and how should I size that? That's what most people missed on the sterling exit from the ERM. We could keep pushing the Bank of England up against the band. They would only push us back to the other side of the band. And there was a chance that maybe the band would break."

Information use cases: "When we're talking to a company, we aren't necessarily trying to get an edge on the company. We're trying to get an edge in the economy. Everyone's trying to predict the Microsoft earnings, or everyone's trying to figure out the FedEx earnings. I'm trying to figure out ... what is the UPS wage round, if it bleeds into a FedEx wage round, then tell me about a wage price spiral in the US. It's the same information. We just have a different use case"

Saturday is sacred. "I try to put my devices away, try to spend it with family, exercise, and then by Sunday afternoon, start up again. My secret weapon, even since university, has always been starting the week on Sunday afternoon. Starting 1, 2 o'clock, maybe working until 8, 9, 10, and then you have a jump on the week. But that's because Saturday has been sacred.

Not hiring from Harvard. "It's not a Yale bias. In life, it's probably good to have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder. Maybe you didn't get into Harvard, but you are number 1, number 2 in your university and people haven't told you you're special the whole life, or you've failed at something. I'm finding that these Harvard kids are quite coddled. ... very difficult for them to take constructive criticism.

George Soros. "I would say the best trade George ever did was hiring Stan. Working with George was good at two different times. One on December 31st, when the check came and then the other, you always had to be ready ... I had to have my thoughts organized and George would probe for the weak spot in your argument."

People say to me, why don't you just manage your own money? I find the discipline of having other people's money and having to have my thoughts organized is very helpful as opposed to just I'm intuiting this. I believe this it'll eventually work out. It's discipline."

Change in market structure. "The 70s, even into the 80s, markets trended much more. So if you read the alchemy of finance, Plaza Accord happens, the currencies move 7%. George is adding a 300 percent position because they're going to keep going. If you have a great idea, it can never be big enough.

I think his quote is, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. I think there's a change in market structure and either the fish can shoot back or the metal ties holding the barrel together have gotten bigger and the bullet can bounce back and hit you. Got to be much more adept and much more attentive to the other players."

The current regime change. "We've had 40 years of disinflation. Now we're going the other way. I started in the investment business in 1984. For my entire adult life, capital has gotten treated better to the death of labor. Thatcher came in in 79, Reagan came in in 80, and then life just kept getting better for owners of capital. ... We've got this incredible labor shortage. I think that someone in my office told me this week, there are thousand pilots at United Airlines who are gonna make over a million dollars this year. ... You're seeing this UAW strike on autos, and my sense is that the American people are behind the strikers, which is first time in my working career that the public is with them.

We're going to see a very natural overshoot. And the amount of the profits going to capital and it's got to come back to labor."