Friday, November 6, 2009

Betting against recovery

On the Corner at National Review a reader writes:
And since we on Wall Street have all seen this movie before, what comes next has been highly predictable. I’m a portfolio manager at a large hedge fund so I make my living predicting results not hoping for growth. That has made Obama a boon for me personally.

As an American I’d love it if he’d embrace the free market reality and start doing things that would actually help create jobs. But the economy will recover eventually no matter what he does. In the meantime, as a professional investor I’m delighted to see him embrace the bat guano. It’s bad for America but good for me personally.
....
I have a friend who is a currency trading legend (and also a major AEI money man) whose conservative credentials are beyond doubt. He’s a little older and can remember what it was like to trade the markets during the Carter administration. When I was lamenting Obama’s impending election with him last year he said to me, in a glass half full fashion which is typical of him:

“It’s never easier to make money in the markets than when there is a Democrat in the Whitehouse who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else”.

So far he’s been dead on, but I think it would be better for all of us if he wasn’t.

How does one invest in a way that bets against the economy? What are they doing?

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