site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I was primarily struck by how contrived all modern macro-economic models are

1000 times yes. I have a BS in economics. Macro still seems like voodoo magic to me. The only model I sort of like is the "sustainable patterns of specialization and trade" kind of model.

[discount rate]

Do you not think the discount rate stuff was sorta covered by the OG Keynesian "animal spirits"?

I get the sense that they kind of figured this out, but economists just really don't like having an unmeasurable thing in their models. Much of the modern profession is filled with math nerds who earned their PhD by doing some fancy math manipulations on theoretical and completely impractical models. The economists that prefer to actually model the real economy get paid the big bucks on wall-street.

I don’t think Wall-Street hirers those guys anymore. Maybe a Bill Gross or Gundlach but to be honest those guys spend probably more time think about small market structure edge to squeeze an extra 20 bps versus absolutely hammering the economic outlook right and getting 10 year up or down right.

The big macro funds are going to be thinking about a lot of other things too than getting the macro call right. The guys in those shops getting the economy right just isn’t that important when your levered and have risks limits on everything. Pays much better just figuring out a sentiment shift or a trigger for a price (like at etf entrance or some quant allocation that will happen).

Any macro interview is going to start with returns and Sharpe ratio stuff not whether your calls are right. Getting calls right is just too volatile.

One example I would use is when oil when -50 (and an extreme example) it only traded negative for like 90 minutes and the entire next day was positive entire day. Even if you knew the price next day and traded that you wouldn’t make money because is in between for those 90 minutes a nice security guard came to your desks and escorted you out. What happened is some Chinese banks were long some derivatives linked to that days oil close and blasted it negative (probably illegally) causing billions of losses on those banks. But if you had mapped out all the fundamentals and macro and absolutely nailed the value of a barrel of oil you would in fact not be rich.

The only place I think kind of sometimes takes a big macro swing (usually on bearish side) is Bridgewater but they overall haven’t had great performance but somehow are a marketing powerhouse.