Podcast Transcript: Boris Vladimirov on Fed Scenarios, Recession Risks and EM Outperformers  

This is an edited transcript of our podcast episode with Boris Vladimirov, published 8 July 2022. Boris is one of the top macro thinkers in the market. He is a managing director at Goldman Sachs. Before GS, he was partner and portfolio manager at Rokos Capital Management, Fortress and Brevan Howard. In the podcast, we discuss, increased volatility in the business cycle, how close we are to market crunch point, three most likely scenarios for the Fed, inflation, and recession, and much more. While we have tried to make the transcript as accurate as possible, if you do notice any errors, let me know by email.

Introduction

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Now onto this episode’s guest, Boris Vladimirov. Boris is a returning guest and for good reason. I think he’s one of the top macro thinkers in the market. Currently, he’s a managing director at Goldman Sachs. And before Goldmans, he was a partner and portfolio manager at Rokos Capital Management, Fortress and Brevan Howard. Boris started his career on the sell-side, which included working at UBS and Dresdner. I should add that Boris will be giving his personal opinion and not those of Goldman Sachs or any other organisations he may be affiliated to. Now onto our conversation. So greetings, Boris. It’s always great to have you on the podcast show. You’re always one of the more popular guests that we have, so it’s great to have you back.

Boris Vladimirov (02:40):

Thank you so much for the invitation and I’m very happy to join again, to be invited again.

Increased Volatility in the Business Cycle and How Close Are We to a Market Crunch Point

Bilal Hafeez (02:45):

I guess let’s jump straight into it. And one of the biggest challenges we’re all finding in markets right now is what stage of the business cycle are we in? We had a period where everything was going up, growth was going up, inflation was going up, but now it feels like things are changing. People are talking about recessions; people are talking about peak inflation. Where are we in the cycle?

Boris Vladimirov (03:06):

Let me start first with my usual disclaimer, that everything I say, my personal opinion, does not represent the view of Goldman Sachs and that I will focus only on things that are well known and in the public domain and so on. So that’s indeed a very pertinent question and not an easy one. But one thing that we do know is that amplitude in any system matter. When you have a system that has been in a low for a long time and the amplitudes are very long process, it can be very stable and very stale. But if a system is shaken and you have a number of shocks or a sizeable shock, which a big contraction of demand by a very large increase in the saving rate or a very large fiscal stimulus for that purpose could be, then practically the system becomes more volatile.

And what happens in an ecosystem is when the system is not very volatile, the amplitude can be very long. It stretches through time. But when the amplitude of the waves increases, actually time starts compressing. So, the cycle I think is similar with the business cycle. The cycle can take 10 years, but if the amplitude in the shocks are high, then it can become very short and very poor now. So, I think when you think about the relationship between central banking policy and the length of the cycle, you can find out that in pre-world War II, before we discovered the greatest invention of the 20th century, which is fiat money, and we were on the golden stand a very rigid money systems. The cycles were a lot more frequent, because it was much harder to accommodate the shocks.

You had the recession every two, three years. And only once we managed to stabilise inflation, which was the 1780s problem, we could come back to the long cycles of the ’90s, and even pre-COVID, the cycles were fairly long, but for not for dynamic reasons, but because of overburdened balance sheets, but still it was a long one. So that’s where I think that actually, if we take those things into consideration, we might expect a much faster cycle post-COVID. So that means that we might be coming off from the high nominal growth phase towards the phase where financial conditions tighten significantly, because of the policy tightening function. And then we come into the so-called crunch point in which markets and economy both decelerate rapidly, and you have a reset in inflation expectations, and then we can start a new cycle basically.

So, we have the using then coming. I think it’s going to be different this time in a very different way. Like for example, I don’t think that it’s going to zero at any point anytime soon and so on. So, it all has implications for interest rates and how we trade markets and how we view the risk reward, the probability scenarios. But yes. So I would say we are in something that looks very much an end cycle, which recession probabilities rising. And the question is is that going to be something more sinister or is it going to be a shallow recession, because of a number of factors, like high nominal growth starting point or relatively reasonable consumer balance sheet in the post-COVID period.

Three Most Likely Scenarios for the Fed, Inflation, and Recession

Bilal Hafeez (06:24):

So we’ve basically had the shock to the system, we’re more likely to have frequent cycles and recession probabilities have shot up. But as you said, it’s not clear where we’re going to land exactly. So if you had to paint a few different scenarios of where we could go and then what the likely Fed response would be to those scenarios, what scenarios would you pick and what would the Fed do in each scenario?

Boris Vladimirov (06:47):

Well, we are working with three scenarios, which actually is a fairly complicated matter, because it is hard enough to think and trade two scenarios. But when three scenarios come in play, you have these junctures, like in the past couple of weeks where it becomes almost impossible to structure a book around that. And I think that, okay, so obviously we start with scenario A. Usually you put the nice scenario for scenario A. So, we call it the top landing. And that is a scenario in which basically inflation drops, and inflation expectation drops faster than expected. And the Fed still goes to one and a quarter real rate but drops somewhere around three and a quarter. So basically, inflation expectation, five year dropping to 2% very quickly. And that gives the Fed the scope to moderate, at least on the rate side, and even though I think the balance sheet side might take longer to change direction there, because usually the Fed takes longer time to make balance sheet decisions. But on the rate side, at least three and a quarter.

Bilal Hafeez (07:49):

And on that scenario, what needs to be going on in the world for that scenario to happen would you say

Boris Vladimirov (07:55):

Well, I think it is a combination, not just in the world, but actually what’s going on in U.S. in terms of the labour market is extremely important. Whether the pressure on the labour market will be easing because of the current tightened financial conditions. We just had the jobs number released, and I just saw that expectation with 10.9, it came again about 11. So it tells you that the labour market still… Obviously jobs come with two months delay, maybe two months things look completely different. But I think that the timing of that decision is going to fall around September. So it’s not going to change significantly the next two-months situation outlook and thinking. But September will be very critical and very important for that. So in that scenario, obviously, the most under position asset is equities. And I think that this would probably be the only and the most bullish scenarios where stocks rebound into year end.

And this is a scenario where it’s probably also… It has been and is the most, in terms of probabilities, underrepresented. So we see 20% probability steady around the last two, three months, which is inferred mostly by our prior levels for the short end or oil, for example. So that’s how we for the marketing implied scenario probability, via prior. So practically that scenario A. Scenario B is a scenario where the five-year break even stays sticky around 3%. And what does it mean stay sticky? It stays sticky into September around 3%. So now they’ve dropped to two and a half, but under some conditions and circumstances in which oil doesn’t really go down to 75, 80, lines with certain recession, but bounces back, you might have, or if the labour market is, or if wages average early earnings remain sticky around point three, point four rather than falling to point two.

So that scenario basically of sticky inflation expectations is going to reprice the short end then above four at some point. That’s our scenario B, which is practically more of what we know happens in April and May. It is the same price action. And in that scenario actually oil is not going down, but equities are. So in scenario A, it’s probably the opposite. Oil might be tweaking lower, but equities get a respite of that. And scenario C obviously is a scenario where you get a very sharp weakening in demand with sharp increase in the saving rate, due to the current financial conditions tightening.

In the summer, July, August liquidity conditions aren’t great. So you might get further widening of credit spreads, which I think would be the essential additional one percentage point increase in the financial conditions index that we’re track in the GSFCI. And we have been of the view that in this stabilisation, we need not two, but four points move in GSFCI to bring inflation from point four to point two per month. So we’ll be getting there with the last leg of the credit crunch, so to say. So that’s a scenario C, which is not pleasant, but we think that in that situation, even if we have basically five-year break even then dropping one and a half, then the Fed can stop at 250.

Bilal Hafeez (11:14):

That’s more the recession scenario, isn’t it, this one? Scenario C?

Boris Vladimirov (11:18):

That’s more the recession, the kind of very fast convergence to a dis-inflationary environment. Which I think what’s very interesting is in April and May, that scenario was priced at 10%. So April, May, the probabilities were 20, 70, 10. Mid-June, after a number of the forward looking new orders from the smaller surveys and the site labour markets all started signalling higher probability of one year head recession. So mid-June that probability started shifting higher around 20, 30. And this morning when I was looking at the pricing, especially after the drop in oil yesterday, and what is going on in the short end as well, actually now we have 20, 30, 50. So now scenario C has become the dominant scenario. Now I, personally, think that we might have a swing even up to 60, 70% will be price for C, even though the data in the short term is unlikely to confirm a sharp weakness in the labour market.

But that scenario, 70% will be definitely overpriced. I would say. That’s how I see. So I see that the next quarter or up to six months as a shift from one to the other. And there will be really quick transitions, maybe a few weeks, maybe up to a month inland, there will be overweighting while on the other, until we find the right path in which the system is going. And one interesting thing is that there is no direct transition from scenario B to scenario A. I think that the transition from scenario B to scenario A goes through scenario C being overweight. Because in order to bring down those very rough inflation expectations, you have to go through the recession scare.

Main Street vs Wall Street Liquidity

Bilal Hafeez (13:07):

Okay. Yeah. Understood. How do you think about the liquidity regime that we’re in? You touched on how the next business cycle, the amplitudes are changing towards less long cycles, more frequent cycles. And we had a certain regime after the GFC period up until COVID or just after COVID, you could say. And now we’re in a new, different environment, seems like higher volatility, more frequent cycles. And then there’s also a question of liquidity as well. We’re seeing these abrupt multiple standard deviation moves occurring in markets. How do you think about this?

Boris Vladimirov (13:35):

Liquidity has two main tracks, as I think about. One is what public sector does to liquidity. The other is what the private sector does to liquidity. Because we can have liquidity expanding or contracting because of decisions made on both sides, both public and private. Now the public sector has mixed effects, I would say, but on the margin, especially in U.S., it has been a very significant withdrawal of policy support based on the variables that we are following and very fast one. So of course that comes after an unprecedented stimulus during COVID. The size of the COVID stimulus based on our index of policy support was three X the limit time, three times larger. And clearly the counter move is very large as well now. When you think in broader terms, the key question now is what extent fiscal is going to accommodate the cost shock or the inflation shock.

And the more it does, the more it will be supporting liquidity in a way, but it’ll be also extending the duration of the inflation shock. So there’s a bit of preference choice here, which is very political or in terms of political economy could be defined as political in nature. But again, that would favour countries that have low public debt to GDP and they can afford to provide some support to the more vulnerable, which is absolutely not the right thing to do. For countries that have very high public debt to GDP, then the question is will you be doing more harm and good in the medium term. Not even in the long term, but tell you in the medium term that you’re going to make your matters more complicated and your stabilisation even harder if you do that. And isn’t it easier to tighten the belts if the country GDP per capita is high enough to be sure that people will be able to survive a consolidation period.

Of course, for low income countries that does not come question and their international institutions and International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, they are putting and will be putting eventually into the October meetings more resources to make sure that, for example, the food price shock is mitigated as much as possible, and this is absolutely the right thing to do.

How to Understand Money Supply (M2)

Boris Vladimirov (15:44):

So the dimensions of market liquidity I see also very interesting in one other way, which is Main Street versus Wall Street. And let me explain what I mean by that. We are tracking an index, which we call money out of the gate, which is basically money market funds and the RRP relative to M2. And that index actually is a great lead for vol and credit spreads. And we think that the increase in the RRP facility, which is practically money at zero velocity, because there is not even on the other side that go back through the budget into the system, but this is money taken out of the game literally. Its to the extent, the last one year was about 1.4 trillion taken out of the system.

That is equivalent to around 7% of M2. And paradoxically, this is about the size of the M2 growth coming through fiscal and credit lending from mainstream.

Bilal Hafeez (16:41):

And just for people who aren’t aware, the RRP, the Reverse Repo Facility at the Fed is a way for financial institutions to get hold of treasury bills through the Fed’s balance sheet. But as you say, it has zero velocity, I.e., it’s not coming from the treasury, it’s coming from the Fed. And this shows, I suppose, that people who are using that facility are very cautious, I imagine. They basically want the safest security held, taken from the central bank and they aren’t really willing to put that capital at risk elsewhere. So, it’s kind of very defensive posture.

Boris Vladimirov (17:15):

Exactly. If asset managers sell the assets and put the money into bank deposits, that will reflect basically M2. If it’s gone to the RRP, that slows down M2 growth. So the big question here is is that M2 growth necessary for maintaining the bank credit growth and maintaining nominal GDP growth or not, because in the past few years, especially on COVID, there has been a much clearer relationship between M2 and nominal GDP growth. And that’s because of the large fiscal. Now the key question that we need to answer is because M2 momentum has collapsed to zero almost. Does that mean that nominal growth is going to face a significant headwind a year from now? Because that’s about the lag.

And we have no clear, straight answer to that question, because the money supply is not the only variable that defines the ability of the banks to extend credit and the willingness. I think actually the asset liability ratios are not constraining banks to extend credit. So it depends a lot more whether the overall feeling and level of risk aversion is going to constrain demand for credit, and we are going to get the slow down there. But indeed, there is a process where Wall Street is actually going on the brakes for liquidity, which eventually should have some impact on nominal growth and from there also on the inflation as well.

Bilal Hafeez (18:49):

And the liquidity mainstream gets would be through borrowing, like bank lending to mainstream, to credit cards and things like that?

Boris Vladimirov (18:58):

Yes, exactly. And that, of course, once you have such a level of a risk aversion among financial investors, you would probably expect that lag rate standards are going to start tightening and you start having a bit more caution, even though the level of employment and the balance sheet quality of the U.S. households, as you remember in the IMF spring world economic outlook, there was a box showing that practically almost all the debt piles of U.S. income distribution have delivered substantially. Apart from the lowest one, almost all, from the 20th upwards, all delivered between 50 and 20%, which is basically can be leveraging, because of the fiscal transfer. So that on the margin. And also, the fact that for corporates, the interest payments to revenue ratios are still relatively reasonable. So, these are factors that are good recession predictors, and they’re still showing relatively low probability of recession. So the private sector is healthier, that would make you think that r* is higher, that would make you implicitly structurally overweight scenario B, if we didn’t have the market shock.

Which EM Markets Will Perform?

Bilal Hafeez (20:06):

So, in terms of scenarios where we’re oscillating between scenario B, sticky inflation versus recession risks, more risks, perhaps for the recession risk because of the volatility that we’re experiencing right now, we need to watch credit a little bit more and money supply, M2, but it’s a bit complicated, just the composition’s important and so on. It’s not so straightforward, because fiscal isn’t driving M2 anymore. And so, what does this all mean for emerging markets? That’s one of your big focuses. We’ve seen the quite divergent performance across the year, and we’ve seen some central banks very aggressive, others a bit slower. Do you have a framework? Are you breaking EM down into different groups?

Boris Vladimirov (20:43):

Of course, yes, we do all the time. And of course, that framework is dynamic as well, because the dominant factors change, obviously. The first half of the year, because of the strength in commodity prices, in terms of trade, was a very important factor. And now we are rotating more towards balance sheets strength. So, we are looking at which countries gets diluted the central bank balance sheet a lot during COVID. So, we are looking back at these ratios where we look into COVID, which is total gross assets versus FX reserves. So how much QE the countries have done and how much they have in terms of FX reserves. For example, I give you a very interesting comparison here is that countries that have very high level of reserves, which in this context of rising interest rate differentials start caring a lot more negatively.

They may have to consider ethics intervention in order to reduce these reserves. This is so called reverse currency wars. And basically, we have noises around that from the SMB. We have the Czech national bank, basically doing that and willing to do that in order to tighten liquidity, we have potentially Bank of Israel at some point maybe trying to reduce reserves, because central banks, in this world of excessive volatility, they realise that public sector has gone everywhere. And this is the key composition of their reserves. So actually, they’re carrying a lot more risks maybe than benefits by having very large reserves. So, they want to reduce that. And that is in contrast with currencies and countries where reserves are relatively low. And I think that the realised volatility between the first group and a group where reserves are low eventually, especially if we start heading towards scenario C, could be quite different in nature. The inflation outcome between the two groups will be different in nature, obviously, and as such investors can make already now informed decisions on country, currency, and location.

Bilal Hafeez (22:46):

And what are some of the countries in each of these groups? The high reserves, you mentioned, were in G10. What are the type of countries we have in there?

Boris Vladimirov (22:54):

These are all high reserves. Well, if you look in Asia, Korea, they do have relatively strong reserves. Even India has relatively strong reserves. I would say China as well. They have good ability to control the level of their currency. Countries where reserves have drop considerably over the last three, six months are some of them, obviously you know Egypt, but which will be important if they get on IMF programme, which we think is going to happen. But for example, country like Hungary who have created a lot of liquidity around COVID and then a very large fiscal, they will have to resort to a lot more orthodox measures to stabilise, because they do not have a lot of reserves. So that is one potential differentiating factor. In Asia, Thailand as well, has relatively large reserves as well. So, they could afford to reduce some of the reserves if the currency is weakening.

Bilal Hafeez (23:48):

And how about somewhere like a Brazil say, or South Africa?

Boris Vladimirov (23:51):

They’re high reserve. Brazil actually is a high reserve level country. Mexico is the low reserve one among LatAm, but Mexico has been very much hands off from the currency. And because of the strong remittances, the Mex peso has actually been doing a lot better than the S&P beta, which Mex normally has would suggest. So actually, it has been relatively easy for the central bank there, situation where they do not have to worry about that. But normally under textbook framework, you would assume that countries that do not have reserves, like South Africa, for example, if they have pressure from inflation and from the markets. And I would just mention that the South African Rand is one of the most cyclical currencies. It responds very well to high commodities, but also it tends to weaken and compensate if commodities go down and global growth goes down. So, these countries then have to work more on the real rate side. They may have to hike rates more, the ones that have low reserves.

Bilal Hafeez (24:52):

So, these low reserve countries are the ones that either need to raise real rates, or they could see currency weakness and they’re vulnerable there. So, they have to do the orthodox thing, tighten everything. Whereas the other guys, the high reserve guys, they have more stabilisers in place in some ways?

Boris Vladimirov (25:09):

And the country that combines all those in terms of very low, deeply negative real rates and very low reserves is Turkey. So that’s obviously a country that just has unorthodox policies for a while and has reached a point where the environment is challenging. Obviously, the summer period is always better for Turkey, because of tourism receipts and so on. So it’s not a straight line, but it stays up in the risk area, so to say, among countries and comparison.

What Happens to EM During Recessions?

Bilal Hafeez (25:39):

How does emerging market tend to trade around recessions?

Boris Vladimirov (25:44):

So that’s very interesting. So, you have obviously different asset classes to look at. You have EM equities, you have EM hard currency credit, you have EM local, which can be hedged or un-hedged and EMFX just as a simple expression. So, into recessions, in the year before the recession, you generally see weakness and that weakness is mostly related to FX. The dollar is higher, and it usually happens because commodities tend to go down in that period and you have sensitivity to commodities, commodity currencies, which have traded very well into the high growth pre-recessionary period. Then they reverse and they weaken.

What happens in credit and local is that actually, because U.S. treasuries tend to rally into recession, that tends to support actually the returns of EM credit and hedged EM local. They both start doing well. And we have seen more interest to discuss the long end, the duration, basically, both in terms of external and local bond, but because of the very extraordinary nature of the inflation shock that we are seeing now, the various complications on the supply side, I think investors will only pull the trigger once they have reasonable confidence that we have passed the most risky period in terms of underlying energy drivers, for example. So it’ll take more time than under a normal recessionary situation.

So, EM equities actually tend to rally before their G10 peers, somewhat earlier, mostly because investors tend to start looking at a positive impact from Fed easing and think that EM would benefit most. Once inflation expectations start going up, people start thinking about Fed easing, and then they say, “Okay, what’s going to rally?” The problem now is slightly different because actually, if we do not think that the Fed is going to be very fast to accommodate, we only say drop to neutral, even though the environment is challenging, then it is difficult to say the first thing you buy is EM. So, you might be a bit more cautious until you know that there is scope for more accommodation and until you know that EM is doing well. So, you can be selective, of course. Big, good stories that you like in terms of balance sheet strength, in terms of fiscal. There are stories that are good at the moment.

At the moment we are seeing more interest towards China. Obviously, the October Congress is very important. And the expectations are that the outcome of the policy mix after the Congress could be towards more easing on the monetary side this time, not just on somewhat more fiscal support. And that can add potentially one bright spot in the overall picture if that happens, because the key problem that China has is that they have been so focused on stabilising the currency that they practically have done quantitative tightening since 2013. That means that they have kept the monetary base unchanged to lower over almost a decade while M2 and the higher aggregates basically have been expanding.

When you do that, you increase the required velocity of narrow money significantly, and you start having either pressures or short end rates as we saw when U.S. reserves dropped below 1.4 trillion, the repo started spiking, or you start having credit stress in the system. And this was the prelim period where basically reserves were unchanged or very like modestly growing for very long time, while the reverse side of the pyramid expanded a lot, especially around the housing bubble. And that led to that type of short-circuiting process.

The Chances of a China Stimulus

Bilal Hafeez (29:33):

So I guess what you’re saying on the China side then is that we could see an important shift in policy more towards the monetary side. Because we’ve heard lots of stories like stimulus for the past year, a year and a half in China and it hasn’t really gained traction. Now some of it is to do with the lockdown policy, but even outside of that, there’s always been this hope that there’s stimulus around the corner, but you feel like it feels like the monetary side has to fall into place as well?

Boris Vladimirov (29:57):

Czech bank reserves. Bank reserves are still down 15% from the high. And they were growing at 20, 30% year on year in the 2003, 2013 period. So there has been a huge structural shift since 2013 in bank reserves. And if that changes, I think this will be positive and I can tell you why. Because of course, if you start increasing bank reserves, the currency can modestly weaken even though the current account surplus is still big enough to not to worry too much about that. A modest weakness plus better growth and less credit risk inside China will actually be positive for Asia and will combine less inflationary, but more growth supporting mix into the world mix, which is at this point, which we are peak inflation actually is a positive rebalance.

Bilal Hafeez (30:46):

So in terms of EM markets overall, it sounds like you’re leaning a bit more positive Asia and a bit more concerned about LATAM, EMEA. That’d be a general bias that you have right now?

Boris Vladimirov (30:55):

Absolutely. And I think that there are things going for Asia, the strength of the balance sheet, the low public debt to GDP, the ability to have relatively large to start building up more on the domestic demand side, so to say. And also, interregional trade as well. So that is a gravity that will keep the momentum going on the positive side. And of course, the other countries in Europe and LATAM, they do have various types of policy challenges, which they will need to basically do more to address. And that is in an environment where inflation is creating political frictions is much harder to do.

Bilal Hafeez (31:35):

Well, I think we’ve covered a lot of ground and we could talk for much, much longer. I did want to ask you one personal question, which I’ve asked you before, book recommendation and so on. But I’ve added a new question to my list of questions to ask to guests. And I didn’t ask you the last time and this is more to do with people leaving university. So, there are lots of people that have graduated, they’re looking for jobs. What advice would you give to youngsters leaving university and just entering the job market?

Boris Vladimirov (32:03):

Well, I would be totally biased in my answer, because of my passions, but I would say irrespective of which area you’re in, take as much data science courses as you can. Learn Python, because it is always good to speak foreign languages, but speaking Python is going to take you to places where you cannot imagine over the next 5 to 10 years. And I’m saying that, because I think that the arrival of quantum computing is going to be completely revolutionary in the way we can understand and predict the world, because some of the key constraints of our prediction models in a complex environment is variable selection under the permutation constraint, which you can accelerate massively with quantum computing. So, if you have well specified models, everything will become a lot more efficient and, in every area, in every area. And those who ride that wave as pioneers are going to go a long way. So, it will be difficult to do that unless you understand how things work, even though you don’t have to be a rocket scientist. Understanding how things work and how they can work in the area you are particularly specialising or interested in is going to take you very far over the next decade, which will be exciting and dynamic. It’s not going to be boring; I hope.

Bilal Hafeez (33:32):

That’s a lot what you’ve said. And I do totally agree as well. It feels almost like when I was first starting out on banking, this was more than ’90s, being a whizz on Excel or Visual Basic was the big thing. If you were good at that that was fine. But I think now the basic entry level almost is Python. That just a minimum requirement. And as you say, as compute power improves, and especially if we get a threshold change with quantum, then that will be everything. So, no, your very salient important advice there. So, I appreciate that, Boris. Well, with that thanks a lot, Boris, and hopefully listeners learned a lot and hopefully people will be able to navigate these markets in a more informed way. They’re quite challenging obviously. And I think the summer months are going to be particularly challenging as well. But with that, thank you very much, Boris.

Boris Vladimirov (34:17):

Thank you. I wish everybody good luck and a wonderful summer.

Bilal Hafeez (34:21):

Thanks for listening to the episode. Please subscribe to the podcast show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Leave a five-star rating, a nice comment and let other people know about the show too. Would be super grateful. And remember to get your free seven-day pass at macrohive.com and also sign up for our free newsletter at the site too. We’ll be back soon, so tune in then.

Bilal Hafeez is the CEO and Editor of Macro Hive. He spent over twenty years doing research at big banks – JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, and Nomura, where he had various “Global Head” roles and did FX, rates and cross-markets research.

(The commentary contained in the above article does not constitute an offer or a solicitation, or a recommendation to implement or liquidate an investment or to carry out any other transaction. It should not be used as a basis for any investment decision or other decision. Any investment decision should be based on appropriate professional advice specific to your needs.)