Epsilon Theory Professional
In The Flow
Media attention to an inflation narrative turned dramatically in December, and I see signs of it continuing to accelerate to the upside here in January, particularly in sell-side analysis and reports.
This a classic “Emerging Narrative” set-up. We are a couple of CNBC missionary statements away from everyone knowing that everyone knows that inflation is off and running.
Every year, I try to put together a series of notes that captures where I think we are, from both a political and investment perspective. This year, that series is The Long Now. I’ve compiled the four notes in that series into a single PDF, attached here.
We need to get together and talk about all this.
We’re relaunching a Debt and Credit narrative Monitor on ET Pro, as we’ve made some advances in formulating search queries to capture a meaningful signal from all the noise. If you’re involved in FI or credit markets, you’ll want to check this out.
Also, the 2019 Cohesion Crash in macro narratives continues to accelerate, with (I think) important implications for asymmetric trade opportunities.
Narrative Monitors
Monitors updated through December 31, 2019.
ET Pro Inflation Monitor
We track the prevalence and attention of inflation topics in financial and broadly circulated news sources, including their attachment to narratives around financial markets.
Updated through December 31, 2019. Updated monthly.
ET Central Bank Omnipotence Monitor
We track the prevalence and attention of credibility attached by a wide variety of news sources to central banks and their influence on participants in financial markets.
Updated through December 31, 2019. Updated monthly.
ET Trade and Tariffs Monitor
We track the attention paid to and sentiment of a various trade and tariff-related topics in a range of news sources, especially with respect to their attachment to financial market narratives.
Updated through December 31, 2019. Updated monthly.
ET US Fiscal Policy Monitor
We track the strength and consistency of narratives about US fiscal policy, including budgets, tax policy and debt.
Updated through December 31, 2019. Updated monthly.
ET Credit Cycle Monitor
We track the strength of narratives about the credit cycle in general, plus lending, liquidity and other trends in credit markets.
Update as of November 30, 2019: After our hiatus, we have reworked the queries and logic on credit to arrive at a better representation of the topic we wish to track. Any reports from May 2019 and before will be retained for posterity, but represent an old and different methodology.
ET US Recession Monitor
We track the strength and consistency of narratives about potential US recessionary pressures.
Updated through December 31, 2019. Updated monthly.
In Focus
ET In Focus reports are single-issue topical analyses. They cover investment and portfolio construction topics, issues relating to the businesses of investment management and wealth management, and narrow analyses of the narrative structure and trends on specific issues, companies, sectors, countries or financial markets.
Our updated positioning views for the month of September 2019.
At the request of some ET Pro subscribers, we explore current Big Tech Monopoly narratives. We find an increasingly cohesive, negative narrative that has almost no market attention.
The updated views for August from our ETNA framework for the analysis of narrative structure on US Equity sectors.