IRONSIDES MACROECONOMICS LLC

Our Mission

​

We provide macroeconomic and public policy strategy for institutional and individual investors, banks and corporations.  

​

Integral to our approach is utilizing corporate data to analyze macroeconomic secular and cyclical trends.  Most economists and strategists focus on the same macroeconomic data series, our micro to macro analysis detects turning points, and the impact of macro trends on corporate performance is what investors are really solving for.  Additionally, we have long written reports under the title, 'It's Never Different This Time' underscoring our use of historical analogs to better inform the business cycle.  We analyze economics and policy from the lens of a long-time market participant, in other words, our focus is on sustainable trends and assets we believe that are either under, or over, valued given our economic and policy outlook as well as risks that are underappreciated by markets.

​

We will offer forecasts and asset allocation for major asset classes, equities, interest and exchange rates primarily, but not exclusively, for the US with a variable investment universe.  In practice the variable universe implies offering forecasts when we have strong conviction in our outlook for the economy, policy or an asset class.

​

Background

​

My interest in macroeconomics began during a period when Milton Friedman and Paul Samuelson renewed the Keynes and Hayek debate over the role of government in economic policy in Newsweek magazine.  Art Laffer's supply-side theories, Al Kahn's deregulatory policies and Milton Friedman's classic liberal economic ideas were pivotal in U.S. and U.K. '80s recovery from the stagflation of the '70s.  The battle between those drawn to the fatal conceit of central planning, and what F.E. Hayek called 'the spontaneous economic order', is again a central economic question in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.

 

I have worked in a variety of capacities in my 3+ decades on the street, in the 1980's I began my career as a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch, then completed an MBA in 2 years at night while working for Fidelity Investments.  I spent the 90's in equity derivatives at Lehman Brothers during a period of rapid product innovation when technology was first utilized to implement modern portfolio theory.  Examples include sector swaps using basket trading that preceded ETFs, equity index and bond options, futures and basis trades to help investors implement tactical asset allocation, and swapping cash and carry stock index arbitrage to money market funds.  

​

In the 2000's I moved into principal trading at Lehman as my interest in macroeconomic strategy became my primary focus.  Just prior to the bankruptcy I had agreed to move into research as the U.S. Portfolio Strategist for the Equity Division, a position I carried to Barclays Capital through the bankruptcy.  For the first half of the 2010's I continued in this role where I wrote a weekly report which built into a distribution list of ~10,000, I appeared ~60 times per year on CNBC, Bloomberg, BNN (Canada) and Fox Business. I met with ~300 institutional investing clients per year.

​

In mid 2014 through mid 2016 I moved to BlackRock Financial Management to help manage ~$40bn in unconstrained fixed income funds.  My research expanded on my long tenure at Lehman/Barclays Capital, using my focus on macroeconomic history and theory to better inform views on the cyclical and secular business cycle trends.  The mandate was too solve for a broader range of asset classes using macroeconomic ideas including domestic and international fixed income, currencies and equities.

​

In 2017 and 2018 I returned to capital markets research at Guggenheim Securities where I was a senior managing director and head of macroeconomic and public policy research.  My return to the sell side allowed me to reintroduce my work to investing clients with a broader mandate than I had at Barclays. 

​

The next stage is Ironsides Macroeconomics LLC, an independent economic and public policy market strategy consultancy.  You should expect a unique perspective on the economic and policy outlook.  Please go to https://ironsidesmacro.substack.com for our latest research.