A narrative backlash is developing against RIAs and other asset managers that took PPP money.

Fair or not, this narrative is pure red meat for anti-Wall Street sentiment, particularly in an election season and particularly as the stock market goes up even as the real economy suffers.

Can a free world survive an endemic COVID-19, where there’s no vaccine but a chronic global affliction?

I used to think yes. Now I think no.

I know it’s forbidden to say this, but I like Woody Allen movies. If you’ve never seen “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* … But Were Afraid to Ask”, it’s worth your time just for the Gene Wilder scenes. And yes, credit default swaps are the sheep in this story.

In 2008, the market came roaring back after Bear Stearns was sold for parts to Jamie Dimon. Why? Because narrative. Because with Bear’s elimination, “systemic risk was off the table.”

That’s the question you need to ask yourself today. Is systemic risk off the table?

We provide an update on our thinking about narrative structure as of April 7, 2020. In short, there is an emerging “we flattened the curve” narrative. We think it has some meaningful implications.

I honestly have no idea what the world is going to look like in six months! I’m sure I’m not alone. And if you honestly have no idea what the world is going to look like in six months, are you going to live up to your commercial obligations (like a lease) over the next six months as if the world is still spinning as always on its axis?

We update our thinking based on the framework we published on 3/17, especially in two areas with active changes in narrative structure: fiscal and monetary policy responses.

After a few weeks of historic market volatility, we reexamine the framework we would use to think about the implications of Covid-19 and the mitigation response for multi-asset portfolios.

There’s a lot of first-level thinking going on, and navigating the transition from uncertain markets back to risky markets means avoiding their pitfalls in our portfolio and risk management processes.

All of our thinking about CV-19 is wrong and all of our decision-making about CV-19 is wrong because we believe we’re getting “information”, when actually all we’re getting is an irrelevant error distribution.

Not gonna lie … this virus got us in the first half.

But if we prepare and strengthen our healthcare systems NOW, particularly in cities like Jakarta, we can still win the game.

Two narratives jumped sharply in structural attention scores over the past few months.

One is something we’ve already written a lot about – Inflation.

The other is something we’re writing a lot about now – China is lying with its nCov2019 data.

The use of central banks to monetize vast new fiscal spending programs in every developed nation on Earth – under the guise of CB-financed Green Bonds for left-leaning governments and CB-financed Infrastructure Bonds for right-leaning governments – is the biggest economic story of, not just the next year, but the next decade.

This is how the Fourth Horseman of the Investment Apocalypse – inflation – rides into town, and it will challenge everything we think we know about investing and asset allocation.

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.