Michael Covel interviews Ben Hunt. Ben is the Chief Risk Officer at Salient Partners and the author of “Epsilon Theory.” This is his second time on Trend Following Radio. He has an interesting way of looking at capital markets–through the lens of game theory. Michael and Ben start the podcast off talking about buy and hold and why the strategy does so poorly. Ben moves on to break apart monetary policy and domestic politics and how they are intimately intertwined. When you have a world of massive debt, like we do today, then deleveraging naturally should take place. Instead, in today’s world you have the ownership of that debt shifted from private entities taking responsibility of it, to the government. Central bank policies are always a direct reflection of the politics that are going on in the big four economies that drive the world; U.S., China, Europe, and Japan. The domestic political interactions going on in those countries are what you see in the world’s economics. This leads to cooperation during economic crashes, for example, during the great recession. Countries inflate their economy to get out of economic crashes. Going to a lower or negative interest rate is a perfect way to devalue a countries currency. Right now, we are moving from a positive sum on trade, to a zero sum on trade and Ben says that the outcome is very predictable. He says that we have seen this movie before and it isn’t hard to see how it is going to play out. Michael brings up Ray Dalio and asks the question, “Why are all these companies putting their money in one place, with one company and with the same model?” Ben notes Ray Dalio’s massive amount of money that he manages and what Bridgewater (his company) has created is an easy process that is implemented in an automated and quantitative system. The whole notion of having a rigorous process and managing clients money within that process is Bridgewater and Dalio’s most widely spread influence. Bottom line, instead of trying to predict what is going to happen we need to try and react quickly to circumstances. In this episode of Trend Following Radio: Monetary policy What drives the value of currency? Economics in recessions Systematic models Central Banks Policy controlled markets Expectations of the public markets