Views on stagflation: Higher inflation and weaker growth

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I am currently writing a long-form article on this subject for a publication, but I thought I would share the gist of it here, as it will mark a trilogy of me discussing the golden cross.

What I have done is I have applied a 50-day cross of a 200-day simple moving average across 7 world stock indices. The choice of the indices is instructive, not complete. My thesis is that almost all the people I come across think they can pick and choose the index that works best for them after doing a backtest. This is a mistake; Taleb would describe it as fragile. It is not research; it is wishful thinking.

You will be hearing more from me on this subject in the coming weeks and months. The way to approach strategy development is to make the strategies anti-fragile, quoting Taleb again.

What you see below is the portfolio return of a moving average cross strategy. Most people will choose the individual backtest, i.e., the S&P 500, and say they have a strategy that makes an excellent return. Most don’t realise they have been fooled by randomness. Taleb quote number 3.

S2N observations

I have not changed my views on stagflation. I see higher inflation and weaker growth.

Facts don’t care about my opinion, but they are starting to line up in the numbers, slowly but surely.

In the name of contradiction, I thought I must share a chart that paints a completely different picture. The Bloomberg Commodity Index is in a multi-decade bear market and continues to look weak. It looks like inflation is coming from other places, such as wages, services, housing, weaker currencies, etc...

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