The Contrarian Investor Podcast Posts

Chris Stanton of Sunrise Capital rejoins the podcast to discuss his views of what will upend the raging bull market in risk assets.

Content Segments

• How we got here: the market price action is similar to late summer, 2019 (3:49);
• However, there are some big differences between then and now, starting with volatility (5:44);
• What’s awry? Two things should have people’s attention. One is that the retail market has figured out how to achieve leverage. The second is market structure (10:46);
• Big market makers are being eliminated by the day, including hedge funds (16:59);
• Where are the investors who have been moving the market? Not in the U.S. (20:38)
• Believe it or not, U.S. investors do not appear to be “all in” on the bull market yet (24:48);
• Central banks are setting up everybody’s portfolio to be long. At the same time passive indexing has eroded cash reserves (29:57);
• The “terrible” setup is in place: Vol is elevated against what it has done historically, the market structure is not set up to provide liquidity when it is needed most, and investors are in increasingly crowded trades (37:57);
• What ends the bull market? First thing could be a resurfacing of trade tensions with China (45:56);
• Vaccines could provide a “straight line” out of the coronavirus crisis, removing the need for ultra-loose interest rate policy (49:00);
• It’s only going to take one sentence in the Fed minutes to spook markets. Watch for the whole thing to be politicized too (50:49);
• The next correction we see is not going to be 5%. “I will bet you it’s 15…it’s going to scare the living daylights out of you again.” (53:39);
• Commercial real estate is something else worth watching (57:04);
• For now watch for the bull market to run until March. If that happens, short opportunities should be abundant (1:00:01);
• Finally, keep an eye out for a currency crisis to trip up investors (1:02:02).