This week, we speak with Jawad S. Mian, who is the founder and managing editor at Stray Reflections, an independent global macro research and trading advisory firm with a focus on major investment themes. His clients include some of the world’s largest hedge funds, family offices, and institutional investors. Mian studied finance and economics at the University of Western Ontario and is a CFA and CMT charter holder.
We discuss what makes a secular bull market so strong, pervasive, long-lasting, and resilient. Rather than focusing on future predictions, he focuses on trying to fully understand what is going on right now, a task that is much harder than it sounds.
Mian explains why, despite all the predictions to the contrary, we have not fallen into a recession. Rate sensitivity in the US economy is historically low. Post-GFC, the “beautiful de-leveraging” (as Ray Dalio of Bridgewater termed it) took time, but post-pandemic, the economic recovery was much faster and stronger. Fiscal stimulus boost to incomes and a further drop in costs led the Household debt service to disposable income ratio to its lowest point, below the 1980 levels, when the data series first began.
A list of his favorite books is here; A transcript of our conversation is available here Tuesday.
You can stream and download our full conversation, including any podcast extras, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, YouTube, and Bloomberg. All of our earlier podcasts on your favorite pod hosts can be found here.
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Liz Hoffman, Liz Hoffman, the Business and Finance Editor at Semafor. Previously, she was a senior reporter at Wall Street Journal covering finance, investment banking and M&A. Following a string of front-page articles on Goldman Sachs push into Main St, and the travails of the world’s largest VC, she moved to Semafor. Her new book is Crash Landing: The Inside Story of How the World’s Biggest Companies Survived an Economy on the Brink.
Jawad Mian Favorite Books
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
The Alchemist, 25th Anniversary: A Fable About Following Your Dream by Paulo Coelho
Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain
The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Letters to a Young Journalist (Art of Mentoring) by Samuel G.Freedman
The Mathnawi of Jalalud’din Rumi, Vol. 2: Containing the Translation of the First & Second Books by Reynold Nicholson
The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
The Money Game by Adam Smith
