Regime Shift: What Trump Means for Markets

It’s interesting how quickly the consensus around what a Trump presidency means for markets went from “it’d be an unequivocal disaster” to “his policies will bring forth a new and lasting economic expansion.”

Moral of the story: consensus has a habit of being wrong and reality tends to be bit more nuanced.

What should we make of all the hoopla then?

Let’s first note that:

  1. Presidents and political parties don’t drive business cycles, they simply enhance or dampen them.
  2. There are still many unknowns regarding exactly what a Trump presidency will look like.

Trump will be moving his oversized self-portraits into the West Wing at a time when the current bull market will be nearly 3,000 days old — 34 months longer than the average advance since the 1930s.

Obama was able to dodge a recession during his presidency (apart from the one he inherited). Trump won’t be so lucky.

But the little that we do know about Trump’s intended policies are, for the most part, very equity market positive.

The tax cuts/reforms, foreign profit repatriation, and deregulation are all low hanging fruit that will help boost the economy. His “yuuge” fiscal and infrastructure spending plan, if passed in full, will drive GDP up a few points through demand growth.

The single most important thing I gather though, from the election of Trump, is the change we’re experiencing in public sentiment.

The concern over public debt that put many “Tea Party” republicans into congress has now clearly been supplanted by a “growth at any cost” narrative. We’re seeing a global shift from fiscal austerity to a call for free spending.

This is a massive regime change that will impact markets over the coming decade.

Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater (world’s largest and most successful hedge fund) wrote a note this week that is worth reading in full..

Ray thinks Trump’s election means we’ll “have a profound president-led ideological shift that is of a magnitude, and in more ways than one, analogous to Ronald Reagan’s shift to the right.” And he remarks that “there is a good chance that we are at one of those major reversals that last a decade (like the 1970-71 shift from the 1960s period of non-inflationary growth to the 1970s decade of stagflation….)”.

He included this nifty chart of real returns broken down by asset class per decade.

Asset Class Real Returns By Decade

Stanley Druckenmiller, another market slugger, flipped his previous call for impending market doom to one of constructive bullishness. Druck thinks “there’s so much low-hanging fruit in terms of deregulation and tax reform, we could get a jolt of 4% growth for about 18 months”.

Both Druck and Dalio agree the secular cycle of falling interest rates is now over and that rates have only one direction to go — up.

And while they think the stock market will benefit from Trump’s fiscal expansion, the lasting positive impact on equities will depend on how quickly rates rise.

Here’s Dalio again.

The question will be when will this move short-circuit itself—i.e., when will the rise in nominal (and, more importantly, real) bond yields and risk premiums start hurting other asset prices. That will depend on a number of things, most importantly how the rise in inflation and growth will be accommodated…

Since the election, rates have had one of their swiftest climbs in years. The 10-year treasury rate now stands at 2.22% — it’s highest level in over a year.

 10 Year Treasury Rate

The increase in rates is being driven by both inflation (inflation expectations shot through the roof since the election) and a rise in real rates, which you can see on the chart below of the 10yr yield decomposed.

10 Year Yield Decomposed

This is a regime change. It’s the start of our first secular rate rising cycle in over 30 years. And it includes a Republican president who aims to carry out one of the largest deficit fueled fiscal spending programs in US history outside of wartime.

All I can say is, as a dyed in the wool macro trader, I’m looking forward to the next four years…

 

 

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Brandon Beylo

Value Investor

Brandon has been a professional investor focusing on value for over 13 years, spending his time in small to micro-cap companies, spin-offs, SPACs, and deep value liquidation situations. Over time, he’s developed a deeper understanding for what deep-value investing actually means, and refined his philosophy to include any business trading at a wild discount to what he thinks its worth in 3-5 years.

Brandon has a tenacious passion for investing, broad-based learning, and business. He previously worked for several leading investment firms before joining the team at Macro Ops. He lives by the famous Munger mantra of trying to get a little smarter each day.

AK

Investing & Personal Finance

AK is the founder of Macro Ops and the host of Fallible.

He started out in corporate economics for a Fortune 50 company before moving to a long/short equity investment firm.

With Macro Ops focused primarily on institutional clients, AK moved to servicing new investors just starting their journey. He takes the professional research and education produced at Macro Ops and breaks it down for beginners. The goal is to help clients find the best solution for their investing needs through effective education.

Tyler Kling

Volatility & Options Trader

Former trade desk manager at $100+ million family office where he oversaw multiple traders and helped develop cutting edge quantitative strategies in the derivatives market.

He worked as a consultant to the family office’s in-house fund of funds in the areas of portfolio manager evaluation and capital allocation.

Certified in Quantitative Finance from the Fitch Learning Center in London, England where he studied under famous quants such as Paul Wilmott.

Alex Barrow

Macro Trader

Founder and head macro trader at Macro Ops. Alex joined the US Marine Corps on his 18th birthday just one month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He subsequently spent a decade in the military. Serving in various capacities from scout sniper to interrogator and counterintelligence specialist. Following his military service, he worked as a contract intelligence professional for a number of US agencies (from the DIA to FBI) with a focus on counterintelligence and terrorist financing. He also spent time consulting for a tech company that specialized in building analytic software for finance and intelligence analysis.

After leaving the field of intelligence he went to work at a global macro hedge fund. He’s been professionally involved in markets since 2005, has consulted with a number of the leading names in the hedge fund space, and now manages his own family office while running Macro Ops. He’s published over 300 white papers on complex financial and macroeconomic topics, writes regularly about investment/market trends, and frequently speaks at conferences on trading and investing.

Macro Ops is a market research firm geared toward professional and experienced retail traders and investors. Macro Ops’ research has been featured in Forbes, Marketwatch, Business Insider, and Real Vision as well as a number of other leading publications.

You can find out more about Alex on his LinkedIn account here and also find him on Twitter where he frequently shares his market research.