Max Osbon's Posts

DOGE and GDP Changes in liquidity at the government level significantly impact market returns. It’s challenging and often nearly impossible to predict those liquidity changes unless they are clearly announced and followed through. In 2020, an emergency $10T in stimulus added to US liquidity set off a massive and rapid bull market followed by an inflationary period. In 2022, rate…

Regulation and Markets Markets respond well to the resolution of uncertainty, especially in the face of a potentially delayed or contested result. Consistent with previous Republican outcomes, US equity markets responded positively to the Trump Vance outcome. The deregulation wave is likely the most potent positive factor for the majority of the stock market over the next year. The business…

I recently read “Superabundance” at the recommendation of a friend who shares my optimism and enthusiasm for technology. Co-author Marian Tupy was generous enough to take some time to discuss the book with me. “Superabundance” explores how human innovation leads to increased resources and better living standards, challenging the traditional views on scarcity and global population growth. Simon-Ehrlich wager The…

It’s hard to believe the election is less than two weeks away. I’ve been watching the betting market on Polymarket which now has Trump at 62% vs Harris at 38% based on $2.3 billion in bets placed. Historically the most quoted political betting market has been PredictIt, which has never really been representative because it caps the size of the…

More Quantum I became interested in quantum computing earlier this year when it became clear that AI was reaching its physical limits. You can read past posts on quantum here and here. AI growth today is constrained by total NVidia chip supply and total electrical grid capacity, not to mention the tens of billions of dollars needed to build and…

ETF Loophole My primary focus in writing these articles is to document emergent trends and share my perspective about their implications. Emergent trends cannot be systematically predicted. They are spontaneous evolutions based on changes in the underlying foundational rules that precede something flourishing into an entirely new field. In this case, I see a massive upcoming emergent opportunity created by…

Failure Is An Opportunity The status quo is sticky. Incumbent politicians have reelection advantages, for example. The same is often true for the policies people vote into place. The reason is simple: change is hard. It takes effort and it introduces uncertainty. Big changes typically only occur in the face of a crisis. In Argentina’s case, its own repeated failures…

Yesterday the Fed cut the overnight rate by 50bps from 5.5% to 5%. This sets a pace and precedence for the last two meetings of 2024, Nov 7th and Dec 18th. Two more 50bp cuts would bring short term rates down to 4%. Two 25bp cuts would bring us to 4.5%. Mega cap tech has had the upper hand over…

Rates Next week the Fed will almost certainly issue its first rate cut, likely 25bps, which will bring the rate between 5-5.25%. There are many takes on historical rate cut precedence, what has happened to markets in the past during rate cut cycles, but I am going to focus on just a few variables that I think are important or…