The Narrative Pendulum

Fractalized sine waves are encoded into the very fabric of our reality. Like the Golden Ratio and the second law of thermodynamics, they appear throughout the universe on nearly every level of scale and function. It’s no surprise then that they underlie the structure of our market.

This makes intuitive sense because a sine wave is just a continuously swinging pendulum. And crowd dynamics naturally follow the path of a pendulum. Swinging from one local extreme to another. 

The market is in effect a large complex information transmission system. All acting participants make bets using their particular knowledge set which then in aggregate sets the market price. This, then, provides new information for the actors to incorporate into their decision-making process so they can then make new bets. Thus, creating a neverending feedback loop of information, assessment, action, new information.  

These infinite feedback loops, when combined with group psychology and crowd dynamics, necessitate the constant back and forth we see in markets.

Each rally sows the seeds for a reversal and each reversal sows the seeds for a rally. Ad infinitum. 

Michael Mauboussin discusses how this dynamic creates a neverending process of market trends and crashes in a paper titled “Who Is On the Other Side?”. In it, he shares work done by economist Blake LeBaron which animates this concept using an agent-based model (here’s a link to the original paper). 

The model is computer generated and the “agents” are imbued with decision-making rules and objectives similar to those that drive market participants (i.e., make money, try not to lose money, don’t underperform the average for long periods, etc…) 

Here’s a section from the paper (emphasis by me): 

LeBaron’s model replicates many of the empirical features of markets, including clustered volatility, variable trading volumes, and fat tails. For the purpose of this discussion, the crucial observation is that sharp rises in the asset price are preceded by a reduction in the number of rules the traders used (see exhibit 5). LeBaron describes it this way:

“During the run-up to a crash, population diversity falls. Agents begin to use very similar trading strategies as their common good performance begins to self-reinforce. This makes the population very brittle, in that a small reduction in the demand for shares could have a strong destabilizing impact on the market. The economic mechanism here is clear. Traders have a hard time finding anyone to sell to in a falling market since everyone else is following very similar strategies. In the Walrasian setup used here, this forces the price to drop by a large magnitude to clear the market. The population homogeneity translates into a reduction in market liquidity. 

“Because the traders were using the same rules, diversity dropped and they pushed the asset price into bubble territory. At the same time, the market’s fragility rose.”

 

Really grokking this concept and understanding how this plays out in markets is critical to learning to play this game at the second and third levels and beyond. It’s the fundamental difference between being a reactionary self-proclaimed contrarian that routinely gets steamrolled by price trends. And an effective contrarian, who knows how to read something I call the “Narrative Pendulum”, which allows you to get on and stay on the right side of the trend. 

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Brandon Beylo

Value Investor

Brandon has been a professional investor focusing on value for over 13 years, spending his time in small to micro-cap companies, spin-offs, SPACs, and deep value liquidation situations. Over time, he’s developed a deeper understanding for what deep-value investing actually means, and refined his philosophy to include any business trading at a wild discount to what he thinks its worth in 3-5 years.

Brandon has a tenacious passion for investing, broad-based learning, and business. He previously worked for several leading investment firms before joining the team at Macro Ops. He lives by the famous Munger mantra of trying to get a little smarter each day.

AK

Investing & Personal Finance

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He started out in corporate economics for a Fortune 50 company before moving to a long/short equity investment firm.

With Macro Ops focused primarily on institutional clients, AK moved to servicing new investors just starting their journey. He takes the professional research and education produced at Macro Ops and breaks it down for beginners. The goal is to help clients find the best solution for their investing needs through effective education.

Tyler Kling

Volatility & Options Trader

Former trade desk manager at $100+ million family office where he oversaw multiple traders and helped develop cutting edge quantitative strategies in the derivatives market.

He worked as a consultant to the family office’s in-house fund of funds in the areas of portfolio manager evaluation and capital allocation.

Certified in Quantitative Finance from the Fitch Learning Center in London, England where he studied under famous quants such as Paul Wilmott.

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Founder and head macro trader at Macro Ops. Alex joined the US Marine Corps on his 18th birthday just one month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He subsequently spent a decade in the military. Serving in various capacities from scout sniper to interrogator and counterintelligence specialist. Following his military service, he worked as a contract intelligence professional for a number of US agencies (from the DIA to FBI) with a focus on counterintelligence and terrorist financing. He also spent time consulting for a tech company that specialized in building analytic software for finance and intelligence analysis.

After leaving the field of intelligence he went to work at a global macro hedge fund. He’s been professionally involved in markets since 2005, has consulted with a number of the leading names in the hedge fund space, and now manages his own family office while running Macro Ops. He’s published over 300 white papers on complex financial and macroeconomic topics, writes regularly about investment/market trends, and frequently speaks at conferences on trading and investing.

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