The Contrarian Investor Podcast gives voice to those who challenge a prevailing narrative in global financial markets
Eric Chung, chief investment officer of Lighthaven Capital Management, joins the podcast to discuss his view that math, financial models, and algorithms are insufficient when it comes to investing.
“The widespread use of math in the investment management industry, while it can be helpful … I think there’s been some pretty significant overreliance on these things,” says Chung.
Leave a CommentNathaniel E. Baker 0:36
Okay. David Neuhauser of Livermore Partners. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. The economic recovery, the “V shape,” is effectively priced into markets. As we record this on Thursday, June 25. The S&P 500 is up well over 30% off its lows. It seems that there is very little that can upend this buying mentality on Wall Street from investors, whether those investors are people of the Robin Hood crowd or more of the larger institutions, which is another question for another day. But your views here are a lot more bearish. And you are anticipating an L shaped recovery, which is a bit of a misnomer because if it is an L shape, then it doesn’t really recover, does it? So, I’d be really interested in having you lay out your views here for us.
David Neuhauser 1:42
Yeah, for sure, Nate, and thanks for having me. I mean, the way you look at it as you have to still look at you know, markets is just like economies run in cycles. And if you look at the past decade, as we’ve known it’s been predicated on low interest rates which has caused you know, By central banks that has caused, obviously economic development and along with tax cuts, and and that’s where we’ve seen the massive amounts of stimulus, which has fueled growth for a number of years. All that’s great. We obviously seen now with covid 19, that that’s been up ended. And the fight that of course, we’ve seen massive economic stimulus from both government and the Federal Reserve. And that, of course, is helping propel markets. But I do think there’s two, you know, there’s two things you have to look at. One is the economy, as they say, and there’s one that there’s the markets, and from an economic standpoint, even with vaccine, which, you know, at a bull case, I would say you’re talking about 12 months or 18 months from now, you’re still going to look at sustainable, higher levels of unemployment, you’re still going to see a lot lower economic activity, you’re still going to see no just less overall activity in the economy in terms of retail in terms of Travel and Leisure in terms of purchases, and When you include that all in to where we’ve been to where we are today, and where we’re going, you have to look at it and say, you know, big picture, you know, we most likely have seen the best days behind us in the past, you know, five or 10 years and going forward, it’s gonna be a rough road.
