The Pomp Podcast - #822 Inflation Hits 7.5% w/ Darius Dale
Episode Date: February 11, 2022Darius Dale is the Founder & CEO of 42 Macro, the leading macro risk manager adviser. In this conversation, we discuss the macro economy, what's happening in the financial markets, how Darius is look...ing at various metrics, and what you should be considering as you're investing your capital. Darius joins us every Thursday on "The Best Business Show." To see the video with the corresponding charts that Darius references throughout the interview, go to "The Best Business Show: LIVE" YouTube Channel ======================= Today’s episode is sponsored by Abra. Based in California and backed by top VC firms, Abra is an all-in-one simple, secure app that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies, get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral and earn interest with up to 14% APY on stablecoins and 8.15% APY on Bitcoin. Join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the Google Play or Apple App store. If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account. You came, you invested — now conquer. ======================= Unstoppable Domains is THE #1 provider of NFT domains. These aren’t traditional domains, these are domains with superpowers. With your unique NFT domain such as pomp dot crypto or pomp dot nft, you can replace your long complex wallet addresses, verify ownership of your NFTs and join the 10’s of thousands of people who are now using their NFT domain as their Twitter and Discord usernames. Go to unstoppabledomains.com and get YourName dot crypto, dot x, dot nft or a range of other endings for as low as $5 and never worry about gas or renewal fees because with Unstoppable Domains you pay once and own forever! ======================= DeFi Technologies represents what’s next in the digital economy -- providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance and Web 3.0 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols, through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange. Currently listed on U.S. (OTC: DEFTF) and Canadian (NEO:DEFI) exchanges. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit our website at defi.tech =======================
Transcript
Discussion (0)
What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening
to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off.
Darius Dale is the founder and CEO of 42Macro, the leading macro risk management advisor.
In this conversation, we talk about what's going on in the macro economy, what's happening
in the financial markets, how Darius is looking at various metrics, and also what you at home
should be thinking about as you invest your capital. I really enjoyed this conversation
with Darius, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though,
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This episode is brought to you by DeFi Technologies. DeFi Technologies represents
what's next in the digital economy. They're providing simplified, trusted access to crypto,
decentralized finance, and Web3 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors
can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set
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on a regulated exchange. DeFi Technologies is currently listed on the U.S. Exchange at
DEFTF Stock Ticker and the Canadian NEO Exchange at DEFI. For more information or to subscribe to
receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at defi.tech. I'm really
excited about what these guys are doing. I've become an advisor to the business and I highly
suggest you go check them out. Go to their website at defi.tech today. All right, let's get in this
episode. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him
and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp
Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific
inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an
expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. I think we
got Darius right now. Darius, you there? I'm fired up, man. I'm listening to you guys right
now. This is awesome. All right, look, man, you got the floor. What the hell's going on?
Dude, dude, I don't know, man. This is, so I'll start by saying, Joe, that was a phenomenal
speech, man. I appreciate that. On everything that I've been talking about in my career for
the past 13 years. I've been saying this, you guys know me, you know, I grew up very poor.
You know, I've been on Wall Street for a really long time or technically off Wall Street rather,
But, you know, a lot of what we're talking about is we sort of we sow the seeds of this discussion going back to the Fed's response to the financial crisis and their financial their response to every single sort of equity market pullback we've seen since the financial crisis.
And then you layer on the fiscal policy response that, in our opinion, was a function of the zeitgeist against the incessant monetary easing at every equity market sniffle that we've had really throughout my career.
and this is what you get. You get food inflation. It's up at a 40-plus year high. You get shelter
inflation. It's at a 30-year high. You get utilities inflation, how much it costs to turn
the light on. And I'll tell you, I've been evicted seven times in my life. I've probably spent a
cumulative year of my lifetime of my childhood doing homework in the dark because we couldn't
afford to keep the lights on. And that inflation statistic is at an all-time high. And what do we
get out of it we got a stock market when you think darius about what's going on right now
how do you underwrite what the actual inflation number is right seven and a half percent i think
everyone here agrees this is really really bad but i actually don't think it is highlighting
how bad of the scenario it is and there's two components one is is the official number actually
accurate and then two is everyone in an economy obviously doesn't experience the same level of
inflation like how do you think about like how bad is it for the most vulnerable people in society
It's terrible. So I'll say it's two things. One, when you look at CPI statistics, you know, the BLS is making a tremendous amount of assumptions on what goes into the basket, what comes out of the basket.
For instance, they made some revisions in this month's data to sort of more accurately account for the shift to consumption patterns throughout the pandemic.
So there's a little bit more weight on goods inflation relative to services inflation.
But number two, obviously, when you look at it in person, and I would say the BLS actually does this on a biannual basis in terms of surveying consumers and their expenditures and how much different sort of quantiles of consumers with respect to their income or their wealth distribution, how much they spend on certain goods and services.
And the last time I checked that out was a few years ago. But the reality is the lower you go down the income spectrum, the greater and greater the shares of things like, you know, rent, energy, medical costs and those things take up of your consumption.
Your consumption is very much not discretionary. If anything, the last time I checked, it was pretty much consumers are operating at around a negative net negative margin.
I mean, you factor in everything that they probably have to spend money on.
And so you need wage growth, obviously, to perpetuate any sort of growth in that cohort.
When you start to think about various parts of the metrics, like things like gasoline is up 40 percent.
How much of that is like monetary fiscal policy and the lack of discipline there and some of the past actions over the last 24 months versus supply chain?
And is it possible to break out like the monetary policy impact versus whether it's supply chain pipeline, you know, regulation, whatever else is going on there?
You could parse it out, but there's no point to write like, you know, when we talk about supply chain disruptions, we have to remember supply chain disruptions is not just supply, it's demand as well.
You can't have a supply demand imbalance without factoring in demand.
And obviously, as a function of the record monetary and fiscal policy that we received throughout the pandemic, you know, biggest fiscal programs ever.
I think we did about 25% of GDP in fiscal stimulus. Obviously, the Fed's balance sheet
doubled. Those two dynamics really contributed to an excess amount of demand relative to a decline,
a declining or significantly reduced productive capacity of the global economy. And so that's
what you have is a sort of overstimulated demand and an understimulated sort of supply dynamic
that created a lot of this inflation. So in my opinion, you can try to parse it out. And I think
it's important to parse out as an investor because that allow you some more visibility on which
avenues to further express these types of bets but the reality is as a human being as a consumer
who gives a fuck you know and part of my language right like highest all-time you know highest food
prices you're spending since 19 in 1981 you know there's not a family in america that gives a fuck
right you know i'm sorry and again sorry i'm part of my language but i'm very frustrated by this
Cause I, I, I felt this for many, many years of my life and I understand what people are
going through and they're struggling right now.
And they're probably asking folks for questions and tune into shows like yours.
And thank you for providing a leadership here because the reality is there's not enough
leadership on wall street for what is a goddamn disaster.
What is your take on a interest rate hikes kind of moving forward?
Obviously, uh, you know, we see people like, you know, Jamie diamond, JP Morgan saying
that there's going to be six, seven different rate hikes.
There's various metrics in the market that are showing, you know, pricing in of people thinking 50 basis points in March, a full percentage point.
Like, what's your take on how many and how severe?
And at this point, can they ignore it anymore?
Like, do they have to hike interest rates after a CPI print like this?
Well, let me start by saying the funny joke in the room right now is that they're still buying bonds.
The Fed is still doing QE right now.
I mean, it's obviously not funny.
It's a disaster.
So you made a great point earlier, right, about, you know, once the rich people start losing money, then they'll phone up the Fed, they'll phone up the Treasury and say, hey, look, guys, this inflation is a problem now.
At first, right, like we have record corporate operating margins here in the U.S. if you look at the S&P 500 constituents.
And part of the reason we have record corporate operating margins is because all of this inflation that us consumers and businesses are eating is going straight to the bottom line of these major corporations who are obviously in bed with Wall Street, who are obviously further in bed with the folks down in D.C.
So, you know, there's they're laughing to the bank. And this is why you've seen a record earnings bonanza.
That's why you see, again, record operating margins. But there comes to be a point where it becomes a political problem.
At some point, it's a political problem for the people who run the banks, the people who run these companies, when their workers are showing up saying, hey, look, I'm out of here if you don't pay me X, Y, Z.
And once all that starts to happen in mass, and we're obviously seeing that in the most recent jobs report on last Friday, we got the average hourly earnings statistic jumped up to 9% on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of change basis.
That's the fastest number we've seen in a year.
But the employment cost index, which measures everything that you have to pay your employees to get them to sit in a seat and make you richer, that number ticked up to the fastest growth rate we've seen in 20 years, going back a couple weeks ago.
So the reality is it's now starting to become a problem for them, which ultimately means it's going to become a problem for markets because that's the kind of the feedback mechanism that the Fed uses to drain liquidity and ultimately demand out of the system.
What questions you got, Joe?
Darius, what's going on, man?
Appreciate that shout out at the beginning.
That was good, man.
Real good stuff.
My question would be around that, though.
Like, what do you think people should do, right?
I think it's easy for us to sit here and say, hey, start buying equities, go invest in the
stock market, make sure you can capture some of this upside if this was to happen again,
maybe go get a raise at work.
But ultimately, some of these things are really hard to enact if you're in a position where
you're not able to do this stuff.
What is your general advice, your general take on kind of what people in this position
should be doing?
Yeah. So I'll start by saying I did this. I asked for a raise and didn't get it and left and bet on myself. And that turned out to be the best decision I've ever made in my entire life. And so you obviously need to be financially empowered to make decisions like that. And so hopefully the folks listening to your program are watching and understand the central core message you guys have been making this entire time, as long as I've known you guys to be doing this, which is, look, create yourself, give yourself some financial freedom and flexibility by making thoughtful investment decisions.
by saving money, by allocating assets appropriately, and ultimately giving yourself
some financial freedom. Because again, the only solution to this as a human being is, again,
to walk into your place of employment, say, what you're paying me is not keeping up with the rate
of inflation. I know you've made a shit ton of money in the last few years. It's time to share
some of that. And if your boss says, go F yourself, then you leave and you walk out of the
door and you bet on yourself. And I understand most people listening to me or listening to this
program now probably don't have the means to do so. So the second best thing is start saving money.
You know, I, again, very much as a personal experience of mine in the last years, I would
not have been able to leave and start my own firm if I didn't save money in the preceding years
in anticipation of potentially having to make that pivot. And so you need to give yourself
financial flexibility, which means you can't be going to the damn Gucci store every week.
You know, you can't be, you know, going out to eat every weekend. You can't be partying and
picking up bar tabs and stuff. This is not the time, you know, in a serious inflation episode
to be sort of, you know, cavalier about your spending. You know, if anything, you want to
create yourselves, give yourself incremental flexibility and start saving money in case you
do have to make that change. And ultimately, I think a lot of folks will and already have.
Serious. I don't know if you can see this, but I got your slogan on the back of my shirt there.
I love it, man. Bet on yourself, dude. Yeah, that's exactly it. This is and this is what
this is what one the the silver lining in COVID because obviously it's not been great for a lot
of people particularly people um have been impacted by the disease but the reality of the silver line
in COVID is that we've we've leveled the playing field for the dissemination of information for
the connection of people in societies and communities and ultimately you don't need to
go through these main channels anymore um to sort of build a business start a business connect with
customers it's never been easier to bet on yourself right Joe and so um you know I'm really proud of
what you guys have done and the leadership you're showing the community, because at the end of the
day, this is the only way out. You can't wait on Wall Street to fix the solution. You can't wait
on the Fed. And sorry, to answer your question earlier, yeah, the market is betting on six plus
rate hikes at this point over the next year. So it really, at that point, the rate hikes are kind
of a sideshow, at least in terms of institutional finance. We're all really concerned about the
speed of the change in the balance sheet. Are they going to quantitative tighten at a much quicker
pace. Right now, they're kind of talking about letting paint dry in terms of letting the
principal maturities roll off the balance sheet. I happen to think based on today's inflation data
and really the last few jobs reports and inflation reports that that's not going to be an effective
solution. They're going to have, if they really want to get this under control, and maybe they
don't, maybe they're just giving us lip service, but to the extent that they want us to get this
under control, they're going to have to do a lot more QT than they've already sort of gave the
guidance tool. Darius, what can the Fed do? Like, is that all they can do? So there's three,
they have three policy levers, right? They have the policy rate, they have the balance sheet,
expansion or contraction, and then they have forward guidance. So they maxed out on the
forward guidance, right? I mean, you know, there's not much they can do or say that would tell the
market that they're going to be incrementally hawkish outside of saying, hey, we think 50
basis points at a meeting or any meeting is new, although the latest forward guidance, Lisa,
through this report would suggest that's a low probability event. They can give us more forward
guidance on the quantitative tightening, but ultimately, you're not going to sap demand out
of the system by talking. You need to sap demand out of the system by making it harder for
consumers and businesses to obtain financing. And obviously, the easiest way to do that is just make
it more costly by raising interest rates. And then you can also make it harder for asset markets to
function and for speculation to continue taking hold and ruling the day. And then you can do that
by contracting the balance sheet. And what effectively happens when they do QT or quantitative
tightening, as it's called, it's more or less the opposite of quantitative easing, although it's not
quite the opposite. Because at least with quantitative easing, we kind of know where
they're buying. The reality is when they do quantitative tightening, we don't necessarily
know the sort of resulting supply of treasuries that the private sector has to take down.
Now, if they sell us treasuries, then we know what they're selling. But at least in this,
as they currently authorize it, we don't know. We won't know until the Treasury Department starts
to issue debt and the Fed is not there to buy that debt. And that's that's the that's that's
what causes problems in financial markets is we're forcing more debt securities from the
federal government to the private sector balance sheet than would otherwise have if the Fed doesn't
shrink its balance sheet. So that's an issue for asset markets. And we certainly think that will
be a big issue as we progress throughout this year. Darius, you sent us a chart that we're
going to pull up here about the Fed's never waited this late in the business cycle to begin removing
accommodations. Describe a little bit in terms of like how odd or how much of an outlier it is
that they're waiting this long to actually address some of these issues. Yeah. So, yeah, I think it
was the third chart I sent. Yeah. Yeah. This one right here. So the blue line in this chart shows
the unemployment rate, the headline unemployment rate. The red line shows the Fed funds rate and
the black line shows the labor force participation rate. And the panel below just shows the trailing
three-year change in the labor force participation rate. We have never seen this. All the dotted
black lines denote the start of a Fed tightening cycle, irrespective of kind of the length of the
cycle or the magnitude of the cycle, just where the cycle began. And as you can see with each
dotted line prior to this sort of episode. We've never been this far into the labor market cycle
for the Fed to start raising rates. And the reason this is so critical is because it probably means
we're late in the business cycle, or rather, we are later in the business cycle than we have ever
been prior to the Fed starting to raise interest rates. So I guess the key takeaway for this is
that, I said this last week, I think my bold prediction for 2022 is that by the end of the
year, we're going to be talking about recession risk. And that's a low probability event occurring
in the near term. And this is why you're not hearing anybody talk about it. You're not really
seeing markets price in the risk in any material way yet. But I suspect as we progress throughout
this year, that word recession by the end of the year will certainly be something that you and I
and a lot of other analysts and investors are having conversations about. Yeah. It's pretty
incredible to watch this all play out and how much do you think uh appointed positions versus
elected positions like i've been thinking a lot as to like if the federal reserve uh positions
were elected do you think that would help or hurt their ability to actually manage stuff like this
like there's no direct um accountability by the american people for these roles it's all by
appointment and we can hold their bosses accountable, but there's no direct accountability
to the individuals making these decisions. Do you think that'd be better or worse?
That's a phenomenal question. I think probably the best solution would be to have a cohort of
individuals or policymakers that are up for election or do change seats or whatever. You
can have a certain set of seats that are up for election every time and then another set of seats
that are probably a little bit more stable.
You know, kind of how we have with the House and Senate, right?
Like the Senate, six years, the House is, I want to say, four years.
Don't quote me on that.
Two years, either two or four.
Don't quote me on that.
I should probably know that as the Yale degree.
But at this point, I see that you know that.
Yeah, so I mean, look, at the end of the day,
we're dealing with a flawed system, right?
The global monetary system significantly outgrew our ability to control it
with a bunch of people sitting around a table.
It just it just it's too complex. There's too many avenues of financial intermediation.
There's all sorts of ways for companies and businesses and more importantly, non-bank financial institutions to create to gain access to leverage, you know, sort of, you know, to create credit.
It's just it's crazy to think that these guys can ever have it under control.
It's the illusion of control, the illusion of certainty that keeps markets tame.
And I think the risk every day we allow this inflation problem to continue without them actually doing something major, we actually start to lose that control, that illusion.
Once you open that curtain and reveal that the emperor has no clothes on, that's a really big, scary situation for asset markets.
So I'm not saying that's a high probability outcome, but the more they do nothing or the more they don't do enough and then more inflation continues to climb and irrespective of what they keep jawboning, that that risk becomes a greater and greater outcome or outcome.
Yeah, it's I guess another piece of this, too, is when you start to look at the inflation number and the relationship to midterm elections, we're talking earlier, like the best way for American people to do just go vote.
right like i don't even care who you vote for just go vote and have your voice be heard etc
uh i got to imagine that these policymakers are getting a lot of pressure right now
to not go into election season with five six seven eight percent inflation as the official number
right they lost the election a long time it was no offense to the democrats you know i fancy myself
very apolitical um democrats if you listen to me you guys lost the election republicans if you're
listen to me don't celebrate too much because you're probably going to lose the next one we're
going to be playing hot potato from a political um perspective for a while now as long as we're
still in this fourth turning dynamic because the reality is the fourth turning demands big change
and the reality is neither party is equipped to to sort of deliver big change we're probably going
to see something that looks like a third party emerge at some point in this decade um to actually
start to enact big change and more importantly if that doesn't occur probably going to have to
have a bigger crisis that can get everybody on board and signing off on whatever that solution
is so um you know so expect more hot potato from a midterm election and general election standpoint
that that's that is what it is but again going back to once we got that october inflation print
when we went up to um 6.2 i want to say yeah i think we jumped over six percent the midterm
elections were lost democrats lost in the term elections on that number i uh i just can't wrap
of my head around this like i knew it was going to be high i didn't know would it be above or
below expectations you know what's going to come down i think i saw somebody tweeting the other
day they're like it's gonna be four i was like yeah you're an idiot uh the uh the thing i just
can't wrap my head around though is like what is going on behind closed doors these conversations
right like are they just like eh let's just keep it easy no i i see i i i think there i think there
are people in the in close to the Fed that are going in, right, like the, you know, the people
who were on Jackal Island, right, like those people are going in. But today's, you know,
kind of bureaucratic Fed heads, the guy sitting on that board, you know, I genuinely believe that
these are, you know, public servants, right? Like Jay Powell, if you look at his press conference,
and, you know, you kind of look at it through any sort of kinesic lens, which is the study of
people lying and being dishonest, he's telling the truth, like he's a very honest person, right?
Like, you know, I think he actually does want positive outcomes for society.
The problem with Jay Powell and really is not him. It's the problem with the seat that he sits in.
He also needs positive outcomes from the market because ultimately he understands that the market is his boss. Right.
And so it is what it is. I mean, and let's not forget, like, as much as we all want to believe that the Fed is this sort of, you know, kind of shadowy, you know, kind of nefarious institution pulling some strings.
we'll have to forget that these people are government employees like this is a government
agency like it's a lot of bureaucracy you know they probably don't even have they all don't
even have bloomberg terminals like you know like it's just this is a government institution doing
the best they can do to sort of you know kind of control global monetary dynamics that they are
very uncontrollable and so sometimes it looks like they're doing a good job sometimes they're
doing a poor job but the reality is they're really not doing anything other than talking
and sort of reacting to the asset markets.
Yeah, it's, I don't know, John,
when you think about this and you see this,
how many people your age
do you think even understand what's going on?
I don't think a lot understand what's going on.
I think they understand that prices
are getting higher for stuff
and only on like, they only really look at it,
you know, what do you buy as an individual?
Groceries, if you use Uber, anything like that,
like those are the prices that I think matter.
Shelter, stuff like that.
But no, I don't think they're looking at just overall,
like oh you know that when they go to the gas pump yeah gas is up but they're not just like oh gas is
up 40 percent year over year i don't think they really look at it like that yeah they don't
understand the actual inflate the numbers themselves yeah it's more expensive john that's
that's so interesting you say that because i that kind of rhymes with what i think too
i think everybody's sort of our age and like so i'm a millennial and maybe you're just you're a
millennial at the cusp but you know i think everyone's sort of in this you know younger
than Gen X, we sort of, our relationship to inflation has largely been by choice, right?
You know, we've lived in, we've grown up, we've been born, and again, these numbers are all over
the, you know, in terms of the last time we saw numbers like this, they're all older than all of
us, right? And so we've been living in this environment where if we want to spend more
money on stuff, we can, like spend $15 on a damn vegan smoothie or $8 on a cappuccino mocha latte,
You know, like we've chosen the inflation. We've chosen to go on trips and, you know, the millennial experience or whatever.
And so now this is the first time really in our lifetimes that we're not choosing inflation.
We're just being pushed inflation. And so you're to you. I believe you're right.
There is a little bit of bewilderment and not understanding.
I'm down here in Miami with you guys. Like I was talking to my buddies like they're getting rent increases that are not on schedule.
like, like before their lease ends, the landlords are just pushing through one, two, $300 of
rental inflation. Like I've never even heard of that. I've been living for 35 years. I've never
heard of that. And so to me, it's like, this is the first time we've had to deal with inflation
as people. And so it's going to be interesting to see, you know, what the kind of side effects
of that are. I don't know if we know the answer yet. Joe, what do you think? Yeah. I mean,
I agree with that, right? Like some of the stuff that we've seen, not only in rents,
but in other things too are crazy.
There was a restaurant, Darius,
that we talked about the other day here in Miami
that John went to and you scan the menu
and they had like basically prices
that were changing throughout the day with the QR code, right?
So they were literally, it was depending on,
obviously market-based prices for seafood
or something like that is somewhat normal, right?
But when you think outside of that,
that's not very common today.
So seeing that in somewhat of a well-run establishment
is kind of shocking, I think, to most people.
And it's a sign of the times, right?
people are very confused as to what's going on. You talk to any business owner, anyone that has,
uh, you know, is in charge of a balance sheet and payroll and all these different things.
And they all say it's way worse than what they're being with them, what the average person is being
led to believe, not only from an inflationary standpoint, but hiring and all these other
things. So, um, I think people, the best thing they can do is just get educated around this
stuff. I think that's probably the most important thing and then figure out how you can take care
of yourself because ultimately that's what you should be worried about. It's less about kind of
how everyone else is feeling and impacted and just take care of yourself first and the rest will
work out you're spot on man i went to uh dinner with my fiancee on saturday and it was the first
time i can remember in a long time like going back to when i was poor like right out of college
where i was like wow that was expensive you know like like wow like holy cow that was an expensive
dinner you know like geez what happened like we all and i started looking at the receipt you're
like what the hell like did we order like what the hell and it was just no this this is stuff
is expensive you know and and and this is what inflation this is what it feels like it's what
it looks like um you know i'll i'll one pushback pushbacks is too strong of a word but you know
one thing everyone has to keep in mind when we when we hear these stories about hey like my
inflation is xyz or you know and and but the government's reporting abc you know it was that
was that disconnect don't forget like these are percentage change statistics and so if you're on
smaller can base, then your inflation rate will be higher based on the same aggregate sum of
change. But when you talk about on an economy-wide basis, then the percentage changes get smaller
because, you know, it doesn't, you know, the sum of all that change is not as big of a percentage
change for the overall economy. So, you know, a bunch of 25% inflation rates can add up to a 7%
inflation rate is what I'm saying. Darius, on the back of that, I have one more quick question for
which is we were talking earlier about Shelter's place in inflation, right? So we were reading a
tweet earlier that said that Shelter was a third of the CPI, reading 33%, and it came in at 4.4%
this year, which based on kind of whatever measure you want to look at, seems very underreported,
given everything that we've seen in the market. What are we missing there? Like, is there some
disconnect that we're just not thinking of, or is that just completely inaccurate and kind of
misleading by the Fed? Great question, Matt. So yes, what we're missing is the way the BLS
calculates, and maybe this is right, maybe this is wrong. I happen to think by the time we're all
gray hair or no hair, that they'll have all this just digitally. We have the technology for it. I
don't know why we haven't implemented it yet. But the reason that it's so much lower than where we
see rental inflation in different places like Zillow and all these other alternative data
services is because the BLS calculates it in a very funky, wonky, weird manner. The key summary
is that it takes the panels, the sort of samples that they're measuring inflation by, it takes
basically a full year for them to remeasure the sample. And so you're basically on a full year
lag in terms of measuring various samples. And so obviously, in terms of getting multiple hits
from any one particular unit or MSA, metropolitan statistical area, it just takes a much longer
period of time, which means shelter inflation, even though it'll lag what we're all observing
and feeling and being pushed it'll just continue to rise sustainably over the next 12 to 18
potentially 24 months which is typical of these inflation cycles in in housing um so we're going
to have we're going to be dealing with rising shelter inflation for an extended period of time
uh it may not get to where we ultimately see the inflation but all of it will eventually get priced
in just based on that that we're like there's where can we send people to subscribe uh to your
work. You continue to put out amazing work. Subscribe to my rants now.
Yeah. Where can we send people? Yeah. I'm a lot more buttoned up in the day job. So I run a firm
called 42 Macro. We help institutional investors, retail investors, anybody with capital that they
don't want to get blown up. We help them with their macro risk management. And what that means
is not effectively not taking advantage of things in macro, not getting blown up by things in macro.
We fancy ourselves among the best at that particular skill set. So come check us out.
i'm at twitter on 42 macro.com or sorry sorry 42 macro d dale at twitter john go ahead darius just
always remember you taught me this i appreciate it doesn't matter if you're bullish or bearish
being positioned in the market is what matters being positioned it doesn't matter if you're
bullish or bearish positioning yourselves and things that are about to go up and not being
positioned in things that are about to go down is how you make and save money there's a matter
John, that's the
I'll catch you back here next week, man.
All right. Later, buddy.
Thank you, Darius.
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
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