Inside the Hidden Cycles That Rule Markets and Life

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:26)

Let's Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:31)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:33)

So Tracy, our podcast is supposed to be, it's a markets podcast, that's what we both cover. But it seems like markets have been kind of quiet lately, don't you think?

Tracy Alloway (0:44)

Oh my God, tell me about it.

There's only so many times we can write about falling volatility and range-bound markets and like new highs in stocks. It's really, really frustrating as someone whose job it is to actually write about these things.

Joe Weisenthal (1:01)

Right, we have a call every day that we're on and we chat about the themes in the markets and we're like, all right, what's the theme today? And every day it's like, low volatility again, when our rates going to move and break out in a certain direction, it's getting a little repetitive.

Tracy Alloway (1:18)

Yes, why are you reminding me of the futility of our jobs?

Joe Weisenthal (1:24)

It'll change eventually. Right now, we seem to be in this mode where there's no volatility in almost any asset class, but it's always good to be reminded that things change. You go through periods where things are very quiet and then things are crazy, and then when things are crazy, it feels like things will never be quiet again, but things go in cycles.

Tracy Alloway (1:47)

One can only hope. I guess the key thing here is the timing, right? How do we know when things are going to change?

Joe Weisenthal (1:55)

That's always the trick, and if you knew the timing, then you would do very well in the market's business.

Tracy Alloway (2:00)

So why are we talking about this?

Joe Weisenthal (2:02)

So today we have a guest I'm very excited to talk about. He is a longtime veteran of the markets, lots of experience in trading, hedge funds. He's seen lots of these different cycles over time.

And in fact, he's also devoted some of his research specifically to studying market cycles and the patterns that repeat over and over again and figuring out how to time them. And I think it's sort of the perfect guest to sort of figure out where we are and what could be where we could go next.

Tracy Alloway (2:42)

Yeah, this sounds great. And he'll be able to tell us when markets are going to get exciting again, right?

Joe Weisenthal (2:48)

Hopefully, we'll be able to get him to tell us to the day when markets will get excited again, but we'll see if that happens. Our guest is Peter Borish. He's a strategist at the Quad Group. I've had him on the TV show a couple of times, one of my favorite guests. And so I was really excited about the chance to talk longer with him and to get to know a little bit more about his background, which is extremely interesting. So I'll bring him in now.

Peter, thank you very much for joining us.

Peter Borish (3:26)

Well, it's a pleasure. It's really an honor when you talk about how uninspiring and how uninteresting the markets are, that you can have a guest that can join right in who's incredibly uninspiring and uninteresting.

Joe Weisenthal (3:38)

No, it's just the opposite. We're bringing you in because we hope that you'll remind us that just because it feels a little quiet right now, it won't stay this way forever. So it's just the opposite. But before we get into it, tell us a little bit about your background. You've been a, I think, a legitimate veteran in this industry at this point. And so tell us how you got into trading and markets and sort of your path through.

Peter Borish (4:08)

Well, first of all, thank you. It's really fun to be here. And I do very much like to go greater in depth and bring some substance to these issues, which are complicated. I sort of bring everything back to Michigan. I'm a big Michigan guy. I went there for undergraduate in graduate school. And I was very fortunate to get a job at the New York Fed at the Rio recession, which is in 1982 I finished graduate school.

My career arc has been one of pure luck. I started at the New York Fed, as I said, in 1982 That is the summer that S&P Future started.