The Capital Cycle and the Business Cycle

Tian Yang was a fascinating guest and we covered a wide range of subjects. He explains why ChatGPT may be useful in solving accounting problems, but it produces gibberish when asked about investing. We talk about his work on the commodity super cycle, looking at rubber, whaling and fur. 

He explains how he applies quantitative techniques to the capital cycle framework championed by Marathon Asset Management and featured by Edward Chancellor.

His work encompasses 3 different timeframes – the long term fundamental, the 6-12 month business cycle and the shorter term tactical trades – Tian is unusual in that he understands fundamentals but also what he calls playing the game, the tactical business of quarterly earnings and similar.

We discuss the new environment which he terms the age of scarcity -investors need to understand the implications of the end of age of abundance which rested on the availability of cheap labour, cheap commodities and cheap money. All this now changes, which means different equity allocations are necessary.

See the website ⁠for full show notes.