About

We are a small group of Irish economists, asset managers and investors. Our role is to be the bad influence, the contrarians encouraging you to take a look outside of the accepted belief system and viewing economics and investing through a less emotional and impartial lens. We believe that an understanding of the “Big Picture” is of primary importance to each of us as investors. 

One of our primary concerns is the malicious and insidious nature of momentary inflation and the intended and unintended consequences of global monetary and fiscal policies. As social observers, we find it despicable what governments, economists and central bankers are doing to societies and economies globally. As participants in the financial industry, we benefit by taking advantage of these distortions and misallocations created by the above and by being positioned on the correct side of the trade.

We as newsletter writers, economists, investors, and asset managers try to remain impartial to the latest news/rhetoric coming from our central bankers and across the airwaves. Quite often the latest news, analysis or press release is derived or contrived, wittingly or unwittingly, innocently or maliciously, from a particular ideology. We have all witnessed the misallocations of capital, manipulation, financial repression, and distortions, intended and unintended consequences over the last decade or two. Some have benefitted, some have lost, and some have been destroyed. It is our mission to root out fact from fiction when it comes to deploying capital and present it to you as raw as possible.

When it comes to investing what tends to give you a better statistical chance are rational and reasonable goals, due diligence, discipline, a common-sense approach to risk management, balanced portfolio, (sectors/asset class, and geographical diversification), proper position sizes, trailing stops, let the winners run and cut your losses with no exceptions (based on your risk profile).

It is our opinion that we are entering a period of great volatility, and there are great buying opportunities coming. As we proceed, we shall have opinions to re-balance and diversify to take advantage of the big trends happening globally. Namely:

• Inflation: This trend is set to intensify over the coming years as governments worldwide try to fight deflation and finance debt. We will have our battles with deflation, but ultimately inflationary forces will prevail.
• Gold and Silver are set to continue to rise as governments try to inflate. We would suggest you hold bullion outside of the banking system.
• The currencies of central banks are set to continue on their volatile paths as they grapple with their monetary and fiscal policies, inflation, the balance of trade and sovereign debt. We suggest you hold multiple currencies as a hedge against central banking debasement.
• Interest rates are extremely manipulated, and this financial repression is distorting the markets, the basic price mechanism is distorted, i.e. the clearing mechanism between supply and demand is no longer a reliable indicator.
• Bond prices will fall, and interest rates will rise as the Bond Vigilantes and the market punish the Keynesians.
• Volatility: We do recognize that we will have volatile times ahead and are prepared to take advantage of this volatility. Within each and every crisis there is an opportunity. We seek to own productive assets, businesses that are capital efficient and well managed, businesses that are geopolitically diversified and have exposure to currency diversification. Global businesses that have “economic goodwill”. Global real estate that is income-producing. We view both the technology and the pharmaceutical industries as catalysts for change and are prepared to participate in future growth.
The sectors and asset classes that we tend to follow are based on our philosophy above: Value, Distortions, Need, Speculation and the Horizon.