Hedgeye Podcasts

Listen to this special Real Conversation with Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough and legendary investor Mario Gabelli. Mario discusses his top stock ideas for 2018 with Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough. Following this deep-dive discussion, Keith and Mario take viewer questions.

"Josh Crumb, Cryptocurrency expert, discusses the ICO bubble and the revolutionary nature of cryptocurrencies. He believes that most ICOs will return to their intrinsic value of 0, but cryptocurrencies are here to stay. Crumb also questions the transparency of ICO proceeds and predicts a period of rounding up and jail time for some ICO participants. The podcast also explores the significance of Bitcoin as a real asset class and its classification as a commodity or currency."

You’re going to want to listen our exclusive discussion with best-selling author John Mauldin. How will risky Fed policies impact the U.S. economy? When will America’s pension crisis reach it’s tipping point? Will driverless cars lead to massive job loss? The answer to these questions will shape what happens in financial markets for years to come.

Precious few PhD-trained economists understand the inner-workings of financial markets. Then again, very few economists have actually worked as a portfolio manager for such investment shops as PIMCO, the Ecofin Global Oil & Gas Fund and Citadel. Economist Daniel Lacalle holds this market pedigree and then some. In the latest edition of our Real Conversations video series, Lacalle joins Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough for a dynamic discussion about the divergence between the strengthening U.S. economic outlook and Europe’s slow slide into stagnation. No punches pulled here. Lacalle draws a sharp contrast between the two. “The problem with analyzing the U.S. economy is that if you base it on your political views, you forget that this is an economy that relies less on the government than in Europe,” Lacalle says in the video above. “A lot of economists said the only solution for the U.S. economy was the government would have to start borrowing massively to drive the economy. But what has proven to be the success of this economy is that it is driven by families and companies. A profit led economy is a lot more sustainable than a spending led economy.” Think of the big battle being waged between Wal-Mart and Amazon. “Wal-Mart is a stronger company today because of Amazon,” Lacalle says. “The economy isn’t going to get stronger by poor capital allocation directed by the government.” Lacalle lays out a scenario in which U.S. growth heads back to 3.5% versus 3% reported most recently for 3Q 2017. Europe faces an entirely different problem. “The problem of the European Union is that every single economic position is based on the pillar of not touching the welfare state,” Lacalle says. Consider the numbers. Europe is about 3.5% of the world’s population, 24% of its GDP but 55% of its public spending, he says. “One of those numbers is at risk and it’s big.” Most investors see newly-elected leaders, like France’s President Emmanuel Macron, and hope Europe is changing its ways. Lacalle is emphatically skeptical. “In the EU we live in varying degrees of socialism. France is the epicenter of this. We have seen these reformists before. Sarkozy promised big reforms but it didn’t happen. You have to remember that the first serious economic position Macron took was to nationalize a shipyard. Yea, that’s going to definitely make the economy stronger.” Another prime example: Think back to the European Union’s post-recession “austerity” measures. “The European Union took government spending to almost 50% of GDP, then it lowered it by 5% and they called it austerity,” Lacalle says. “It’s like you spent three years eating donuts, then you have an orange juice and say you’re in detox." Lacalle shares some equally compelling thoughts on Catalonia, calling it “bad for Spain and bad for Catalonia.” He calls it “absurd” that economists “don’t pay attention to demographics.” He rails against socialism: “Socialism doesn’t fix anything.” You won’t hear another economist speak quite as eloquently about markets as Lacalle.

Iconoclastic, best-selling author Jim Rickards joined Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough one-on-one in the studio to discuss their divergent market and economic outlook. Don’t miss this “Real Conversation” between two of the sharpest minds in finance.

The omnipotent PhDs leading the world’s central banks equate economics to physics. Like Newton’s laws of motion, an economy at rest will remain at rest unless compelled to grow by some outside force. Enter the Fed, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan, which have collectively added more than $20,000,000,000,000 worth of asset purchases globally since the onset of the Great Recession. This endeavor has been fundamentally misguided from the start says economist, author and Tressis CIO Daniel Lacalle. In his latest book “Escape from the Central Bank Trap,” he dissects what central bankers can and can’t do, while providing some healthy advice toward finding a better way. In this latest edition of our Real Conversations video series, Lacalle joins Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough for a frank discussion about central bankers and the growth setup for U.S. and European economies. Lacalle offers some particularly interest insights about France and Italy. As a European-based economist, Lacalle is extremely skeptical of France’s newly-elected President Emmanuel Macron. In particular, whether the self-described reformist will drastically alter France’s love affair with Socialism: “The first position Mr. Macron has taken was to nationalize a French port because the Italians were going to buy it. Is that the reform that we’re thinking about? There’s been no labor market reform. There’s been no public sector reform. Their public sector is one of the largest in the world (about 22% of the workforce). It’s a very directed economy. If the first decision of an allegedly free-market oriented leader is to nationalize a port, I think that we should be a little bit skeptical about saying it’s going to be different this time.” In his book, Lacalle is equally pithy. Here are two quotes from the book (bolded) along with his additional commentary (italicized) from the video above: 1. “Central Bankers cannot print growth.” “What central bankers can do is provide liquidity and generate a level of backstop in the markets in an environment of panic. But what they cannot do is make people decide to invest or force consumers to be more confident. The first thing people are not is amnesiac and the second thing they’re not is stupid. Everybody perceives reality and interest rates so low are an anomaly … They also see extreme liquidity and it’s not changing the perception of overcapacity and companies instead of investing they buy back shares and use that extra liquidity to increase dividends. It makes absolute sense.” 2. “Cheap money becomes very expensive in the long run.” “With all this massive liquidity, what happens is that all that money is going somewhere, and we don’t pay attention to it because it’s not making prices rise. However, it is creating very perverse incentives. We’ve seen in the latest Bank of international settlements report that zombie companies are going through the roof and how excess capacity and excess debt are perpetuated. Instead of helping deleverage, low interest rates incentivizes more debt and more risk taking. Imbalance between risk and price signals.” This is a must-see interview from an economist who is also a market practitioner, a skillset combination sorely absent from the résumés of our illustrious central bankers.

In this edition of Real Conversations, Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough welcomes Christopher Whalen, chairman of Whalen Global Advisors, in an extensive discussion ranging from his newly-released book Ford Men, a study of Ford Motor Co and the Ford family, to a host of important financial market issues affecting investors.

You don't want to miss this no-punches-pulled unplugged Q&A session with bestselling author Jim Rickards and hosted by Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough. Exclusively on HedgeyeTV.

Most investors will dismissively tell you gold prices are entirely driven by greed and fear, and that the only way gold works as an investable asset is if the world ends.That’s simple-minded. Gold is a stable store of value. It’s money.“If you saved in gold over the past 20 to 25 years rather than any currency anywhere in the world, gold has outperformed all these currencies,” says Stefan Wieler, Vice President of Goldmoney. Wieler continues:“We don’t think that gold will make you rich but it will help you retain your purchasing power. So yes it has gone up several thousand percent since the demonetization of gold but it still buys you the same amount of oil or the same size house it’s just very good money.”In the HedgeyeTV video interview above, Wieler and Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough discuss…What drives gold prices (“real interest rates and energy prices,” Wieler says)The impact of upcoming Fed rate hikes and what that means for gold pricesAnd on the U.S. economy: “Even in an absolute goldilocks scenario, gold prices would only come off a little bit until we hit the next recession and the Fed has to lower rates,” Wieler says.For more, check out our interview with Goldmoney co-founder Josh Crumb, “GOLD: The Complete Investor’s Guide From the Smartest Guy In the Room.”

It is an age of heightened global angst and uncertainty, an era of discontent. An age which gives birth to brazen, Never-In-a-Million-Years political outsiders like Donald Trump. And Brexit, Britain’s equally shocking decision to exit the EU. Political “elites” might argue recent voting decisions of their electorate are chaotic, or mad. Whatever you call it, it’s the reality we must grapple with today, says Pippa Malmgren, founder of economic consultancy DRPM Group and author of the best-selling book “Signals.” “The philosophical question of our time is are you a globalist or are you a patriot,” she says. “And can you be a global patriot or a patriotic globalist?” Once you accept that the global zeitgeist is divided along these two competing interests, Malmgren says, the world falls more neatly into place. Malmgren knows a thing or two about simplifying the complex. She’s had a storied career on Wall Street and in Washington, having served as special assistant to President George W. Bush for economic policy on the National Economic Council. She also has considerable experience interpreting financial markets, serving as Deputy Head of Global Strategy at UBS and Chief Currency Strategist for Bankers Trust.“What I find is that people in financial markets love to go around blind in one eye. They only look at things through a mathematical or data lens,” Malmgren says in the Real Conversations interview above with Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough. These people miss a lot of things. On Brexit or Trump’s victory, Malmgren had the foresight to see both coming long before these events shocked markets.“What’s fascinating is that you see this populist uprising everywhere in the world and everywhere people think it’s a local issue,” Malmgren says.The underlying driver is really simple. The debt burden is so big it can’t be paid down so that causes lack of jobs, slow economic growth and kills your hope for the future, she says.Meanwhile, the only solution policymakers have come up with is to inflate away that debt by devaluing the currency. This hurts domestic purchasing power as citizens see their paychecks worth less and less.“The question then becomes how come my wealth is being distributed to some other guy and not me?” Malmgren says.That leads to a final question that should frighten any career politician desperately clinging onto their post, “Why are you in charge?”If you follow this line of logic the rise of Trump in the U.S. or Le Pen and Macron in France isn’t a big leap. Malmgren has some intriguing ideas on Trump:“I’ve been describing Trump as the “Uber of politics.” It’s important to think this way because he is literally disrupting, displacing, disintermediating the traditional power structures. That includes the media. It also includes the fundraisers, because there’s no need for them if you can win the presidency without them. It’s the technocracy, where I come from, and where people are normally hired into the senior jobs in bureaucracy and expect to get big titles. They’ve all been told we can run the government without you.”Populist tides are clearly rising in Europe too. Malmgren lives with her family in London. She watched as the Brexit vote unfolded in real-time. As freaked-out investors watched at home, Malmgren watched with curiosity as Italian banks got whacked in early morning trading as British voters repudiated their EU membership. The market was sending a clear message to politicians across the continent. Get your act together or more countries could leave the Eurozone.The reaction also served as a self-perpetuating feedback loop. With share prices tumbling, the pressure was on Italian banks to come up with more capital. The government stepped in:“Italian politicians said we’ve got to have a bailout because this is such a structurally important institution. And the public heard this and said ‘We’re going to find $5 billion to bail out a bank