SI360: The Fed, the Fiction, and the Fight for Control ft. Alan Dunne

Top Traders Unplugged

Niels Kaastrup-Larsen

Business, Business News, Investing, News

4.8 • 670 Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When official data starts serving politics, markets lose their anchor. Alan Dunne and Niels examine the quiet shift unfolding as the U.S. edges closer to emerging market behavior - firing statisticians, sidelining inconvenient numbers, and pressuring the Fed ahead of a consequential leadership reshuffle. With labor supply falling, growth stalling, and tariffs acting as stealth taxes, the Fed’s playbook no longer fits the moment. Behind the scenes, hedge fund power brokers position themselves to shape what comes next. Plus, an unvarnished look at trend following’s drawdown, the lazy critiques making the rounds, and why so many allocators still miss the point.

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Episode TimeStamps:

01:32 - What has caught our attention recently?

08:53 - Dunne's global macro overview

13:31 - Is our understanding of growth and GDP outdated?

17:52 - The Fed is under threat from multiple angles

21:38 - Dunne's impression of Kevin Warsh as a candidate for Fed chairman

26:43 - An odd juxtaposition with hedge fund titans' influences on the Fed

32:35 - Industry performance update

37:30 - Our takeaways from The Wall Street Journal's article on Trend Following

43:35 - Why should investors even consider managed futures in the first place?

45:40 - Has Dunne ever been on the verge of cutting trend?

52:08 - Do long term investors really need diversifiers?

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to join Neil's Kostrup Larson on a raw and honest journey into the world of systematic investing
0:07.2	and learn about the most dependable and consistent yet often overlooked investment strategy.
0:13.2	Welcome to the Systematic Investor Series.
0:26.4	Welcome all welcome back to this week's edition of the Systematic Investor Series with Alan Don and I, Niels Castro Blasen, where each week we take the polls of the global markets
0:30.8	through the lens of a rules-based investor. Alan, wonderful to be back with you this week.
0:36.4	How are things in Dublin?
0:43.3	All good here. Thanks. Yeah, enjoying the summer, a bit of sunshine today. So yeah, all good.
0:47.9	Has your summer, just our curiosity, been as wet as it has on mainland Europe?
0:49.5	Because it really has been wet.
0:57.2	Not unusually. No, I mean, July has been a bit dreary, but no, not terribly wet, but it hasn't been a bad summer.
0:59.0	Okay, pretty good.
1:06.5	We've got some really good topics, as usual, dare I say.
1:12.4	And, of course, they're going to be related to some of the latest papers,
1:17.0	but also some articles that's been featured, including one of your own, by the way,
1:23.6	regarding the environment for CTAs and trend predominantly today.
1:28.7	I'm sure we'll weave in some other stuff because we're also going to do some macro stuff initially. But before we get into that, and I will say I struggled a little bit this week,
1:34.6	so I hope you got something good. And that is what's been on your radar for the last,
1:39.5	you know, recent time. Anything exciting that you've focused on? Well, the one thing I picked out was not,
1:46.2	it's not out of left field, a lot of people have been talking about it, but it is quite
1:49.9	dramatic in some sense. Obviously, Trump fired the head of the, the BLS last week in the aftermath
1:57.7	of the weak payroll numbers, which, you know, it's funny, having
2:02.3	done that, I heard a bunch of people on CNBC defending it saying, well, actually, maybe
	...

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