Single Best Idea with Tom Keene: Scott Clemons & Dean Curnutt

Published Sep 3, 2024, 5:00 PM

Tom Keene breaks down the Single Best Idea from the latest edition of Bloomberg Surveillance Radio.

In this episode, we feature conversations with Scott Clemons & Dean Curnutt.

Watch Tom and Paul LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

Summer's over single best idea, and the answer is here. It's the beginning of the new year a million years ago. It really started Wednesday after Labor Day, and that's changed because across the nation so many people have kids back into school before Labor Day, the whole sports oocracy of America and you know, athletic teams and all that. But also I think it was just a sense, particularly in the more affluent East Coast climbs, of getting the September fifteenth, maybe September tenth, I don't know, but somewhere out there is the new year. We're committed. It's single best idea and across all of Bloomberg Surveillance to give you the best conversations we can on economics, finance, and investment. We started incredibly strong. Today. I was surprised the interns all left. Lisa Mateo's interns left two weeks ago because she was on sabbatical. But walking today and there's only two or three interns left from the hoard that got us through the summer, and so we had a really good set of conversations out there today. I thought that Linda dissol At Federated was really quite good about figuring out the balance between value and the growthiness of the mag seven call it mag Eate now with Berkshire Hathaway. Scott Clemens is the Brown Brothers Harriman with some huge multi decade experience. We talked to Scott Clemens simply about the valuations of the market.

We've been very encouraged since really the beginning of June. I guess to see the market broaden now a little bit. So small caps have outperformed over the past two months three months now, NASDAK hasn't necessarily led the way. That's encouraging to me. I get worried when the market is so top heavy, top heavy, narrowly led markets tend to be volatile. I think all that a little bit. In early August we had a couple of days worth of reminder of that. I don't think that's gone away. Volatility tends to a company turning points in economic activity, turning points in monetary policy. We may be on the verge of that, so buckle up, but pay attention to the long term into fundamentals, and.

What I'd pay attention to is a tape today I really know, Brent crude three dollars move West Texas Intermedia. You know, by the time you listen to this, you may be under seventy a barrel, under seventy one dollars a barrel in West Texas Intermedia. Brent crud sliding down above that. But the whole global slowdown feel and you know the ISM numbers that come out the first of the month. John Ferrer puts a huge amount of weight on ISM. Maybe I put less weight on, but the reality is ism manufacturing coming in below. Survey gets your attention and we're off to the races on this idea. Okay, rates come down, but does GDP come down with it? Maybe that's a titanic battle through the week. We'll have all sorts of economic data on that. Dean Kurnent, we've been trying to get into the studio since well August whatever. When the market blew up. The vis went out through the Lehman thirty out to sixty something came right back. It was a flash crash, I guess. We talked to Dean Kernet at Macro Risk Advisors about that. But far more importantly, away from indexes, the correlations between individual stocks Dean Kurnit looked at Invidia and Apple.

Just take in Vidia and its correlation to Apple, it was actually running negative for a period of time. That's unheard of to have the two largest stocks, both three trillion dollars plus market caps, to be uncorrelated. If you think about the impact that that's having on overall levels of realized volatility the S ANDP, it's significant. And why does that matter. It's because in today's day of investing, volatility is not just a statistic we watch. It's actually an input into how portfolios are sized, a mathematical input. So you lower the realize volatility and people get longer, they think they can run bigger levels of exposure because your value at risk is lower because VOLL is lower. And so one of the things Tom I think is a big, you know, unknown, but something we should be really watchful for, is a shift in the correlation. So if the mag seven magate starts to get more correlated to the S and P, or if these names start to become more correlated to each other, we certainly got a glimpse of that on August fifth. That's going to add a lot of volatility to the index.

It's unfair. I mean ding Current. It's on macrorisk Advisors and I'm soost wax philosophical here about what he just said as an arch quant and the answer is, my brain is still on summertime, so bear with me. Buried in that brilliant discussion of interrasector correlation individual stock correlation, and as a partition this goes back to a getting Tu Shushande at MIT years ago. There's correlation across indexes and sectors, and that's as a general rule, very different than correlations between individual stocks. The pro dan current there talking about individual stocks, and buried in that was a Global Wall Street mantra called value at risk or var VAR. You study value at risk, and some people believe in it. It's sort of an institutional requirement and measurement of big banks. They're trading desks, their investment desk, whatever you want to call it. And the answer is, you make a decision if you believe in this malarkey, and I'll tell you I'm death on VAR. I really listen carefully there to Dean Current, But I just think the VAR measurements is a trap for Global Wall Street of the highest highest level. It's just it's just something to really watch out for their Dean Curnet on Nvidia and Apple. It's so simple. We're on on YouTube, subscribe to Bloomberg Podcasts, also on Apple podcasts. It's single best I

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