Mar 15, 2019 | Featured, Framework
Extrapolation has killed more people, companies and portfolios than almost anything else we can think of. You assume that you’ll continue to be healthy until you get that cancer diagnosis or fall to the floor from a heart attack. You assume profits will continue to...
Sep 11, 2018 | Featured, Framework
Bethany McLean has written a book titled Saudi America on fracking and how it might contribute to the next financial crisis. She writes: Some of fracking’s biggest skeptics are on Wall Street. They argue that the industry’s financial foundation is unstable:...
Jul 19, 2018 | Asia, Emerging Markets, Featured, Framework
Failing to spot the Asian currency crisis of 1997 would have been disastrous for an investor. In the case of Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, it took almost a decade for equity markets to reach January 1997 levels again in nominal terms. But, how can you see a...
Jul 11, 2018 | Featured, Framework
The financial media and economists are almost always late to a trade. That’s because they’re reporting on what has been performing well and are simply extrapolating that performance into the future. Retail stocks are the latest example. There is no shortage of...
Jun 13, 2018 | Featured, Framework, Global Economy, Japan, US Economy, US Equities
Recessions are like death – it’s not a matter of if they will happen, but when. Morbid? Perhaps, but as Steve Jobs put it, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life… death...
May 10, 2018 | Framework, Leading Indicators
Variant perception is the effort to become sufficiently knowledgeable about whatever the subject is, that at a time to be at variance from consensus, because one of the few sure ways to make money in the market is to have a view that is off consensus and have that...
Sep 22, 2017 | Framework, Global Economy
In addition to our usual shorter blog posts, we will be posting a series of longer, more in-depth posts that illustrate our framework, and explain how we look at markets and the economy. In this first post, we tour through the work of Hyman Minsky and Charles...
Jun 29, 2015 | European Economy, Featured, Framework
At the start of 2012, Variant Perception’s research team wrote a paper on the best way to break up the euro. A lot has happened since this paper was written. However, it still provides a clear, solid analysis of the problems leading up to the current situation....
