Michael Kao (@Urbankaoboy) joins Julia La Roche on episode 119 to discuss his macro outlook, why we haven’t seen a hard landing yet thanks to the “four horsemen of economic resilience,” and why he’s favoring shorter duration assets in this economic environment.
Mike has been in the investment business for 30 years and has experience analyzing and investing in many markets and asset classes, spanning commodities to credit to convertible/capital structure/event arbitrage to distressed debt/equity investing.
Mike began his career in the commodities unit at J. Aron/Goldman Sachs in NYC in the early 90’s and traded over 25 different commodity markets and their derivatives. Mike left Goldman to pursue an MBA in Finance at The Wharton School.
After business school, Mike joined Canyon Partners, a credit-oriented hedge fund in Los Angeles, where he went on to become partner and co-founder of the Canyon Arbitrage Fund, which focused on various strategies including convertible and capital structure arbitrage as well as event-driven/risk arbitrage.
After 5 years at Canyon, Mike decided to leave Canyon and begin his own investment firm, Akanthos Capital Management, LLC. At Akanthos, Mike ran an opportunistic, value-driven investment strategy that looked for “fulcrum securities” up and down the capital structure.
Mike stopped actively managing external capital in 2019 and now invests primarily for his family office and enjoys blogging about the markets and economy on Substack at urbankaoboy.substack.com and Twitter @UrbanKaoboy.
Mike holds a BS in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science from UC, Berkeley and an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Links:
https://www.urbankaoboy.com/
https://twitter.com/UrbanKaoboy
0:00 Welcome Michael Kao
0:51 Macro view / The Four Horsemen of economic resilience
7:43 Recessionary outlook in the “vodka-Red bull” economy
11:00 The dollar wrecking ball
15:30 The rest of the world ‘out-doving’ the Fed
19:23 Oil outlook
26:27 Portfolio construction, favoring shorter duration
33:00 Thinking about stocks and bonds
35:00 Exit strategies
41:16 Parting thoughts
#117 Ted Oakley On Staying Rich With A Balanced Portfolio
#116 Lyn Alden On Broken Money, Higher Inflation, Gold, And Bitcoin
#115 Dr. Lacy Hunt On The Impending Recession
#114 Bob Elliott On Why It's Time For A 10% Gold Allocation
#113 Jim Rickards On What The Israel-Hamas War Could Mean For The Global Economy
#112 Darius Dale: Why We Could Have A Worse Recession Than Investors Anticipate
#111 David Hay: The Odds Of A Recession Are Going Up, Not Down, With Each Passing Day
#110 Marc Chandler: The Dollar's Rally Is, If It's Not Over Yet, It's Nearly Over
#109 Danielle DiMartino Booth: 'It’s Clear That The U.S. Economy Is In A Recession If It Wasn't For Everything That Uncle Sam Is Either Spending Or Fudging'
#108 Chris Whalen On The ‘Silent Crisis’ — The Looming Commercial-Led Recession
#107 Claudia Sahm: The Economy Is At An Inflection Point
#106 Harald Malmgren & Nicholas Glinsman: The U.S. Treasury Market Is The ‘Ultimate Wrecking Ball’
#105 Sam Burns: The Economy Isn't Headed For Recession Any Time Soon
#104 Christopher Zook On Stagflation, Energy, And A 'Generational Opportunity' In Commercial Real Estate
#103 Matt Higgins: The Only Way Out Is A Reckoning
#102 Masha Bucher On The State Of Venture Capital, Investing In AI, And How To Navigate Today's Market
#101 Larry McDonald: The Probability Of Sustained Stagflation Is Rising
#100 Bill Ackman On Activist Investing, The Economy, And Learning From Mistakes
#099 Peter Cecchini: 3 Reasons Why We're Headed Toward Recession
#098 Rick Rule: 'Potent And Very Ugly Cocktail' In A Rising Interest Rate Environment
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The emPOWERed Half Hour
U.S Property Podcast
Aligned Money Show
Dubai Property Podcast
The Ramsey Show
The Clark Howard Podcast