Hard to say what today will bring. Risk-off behaviour from US Treasury futures, Bunds, MIB, HSI, Russia index, gold and MXEA. Risk-on behaviour from HG, AUD (so, commods generally), NQ and VIX. NQ seems utterly unstoppable.

Heard an amazing podcast. Too many ideas to summarize here, but very good on how regulation has resulted in the death of mean reversion. Michael Green is a very original thinker. Nice to hear Ben Hunt getting referenced. He and Wolf Richer are two of my favourites, along with Matt Taibbi. Hopefully, these guys will start to get some mainstream audiences.

Now that all sports have been cancelled by the lockdown, gamblers have turned to the (US) stockmarket for entertainment. I created a Koyfin dashboard of day-trader favourite stocks. Enjoy!

Pensions allowed to invest in VC and PE

In this interesting article it’s mentioned that the govt. are thinking of allowing pension investment in Private Equity and Venture Capital. This would be a horrible idea. Both these “asset classes” are “marked to fantasy” where companies are forever being sold to other players in the sector, at a markup designed to ensure that the originating fund maximizes its fees. It’s basically fraud, as this old article from the FT explains. Ultimately, the Treasury & the Bank of England are going to end up as the bag holder. At least George Osborne was being honest when he suggested that the Treasury should just give the money away.