I am going to make a bold prediction - we are on the verge of a mass extinction. And as any doomsday prophecy, it is going to be a long one, so brace yourself for a long post. Late Cretaceous I have spent most of my financial career on the buy side or, as it is formally known, in asset management. And with every passing day my conviction growth stronger that majority of the firms in the sector are dinosaurs waiting for some calamity to wipe them out. They are not your T-Rexes, those two-legged predators were more like investment banks, but rather lumbering giant sauropods. The biggest ones has grown so huge that they are confident their size alone makes them invincible. And the smaller ones think they are sufficiently different from the rest to thrive in their own niche. But they share the same environment, and as tectonic shifts reshape it, all of them are affected. Mini-Asteroids Waiting to Fall Overcrowded market and lack of genuine product differen
That Creepy Feeling About two weeks ago, as I was making myself a cup of tea at the office, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of déjà vu. August 2019 felt a lot like the August of 2008. Something in that brew was unnervingly familiar, and I don't mean Earl Grey. It was the combination of faltering economic fundamentals with stubbornly rising US equity market, mixed with the unhurried pace of the day-to-day business in the financial industry that touched a nerve in me. Come to think of it, back in 2008 everyone knew there was a lot of debt out there, even though nobody was sure how much exactly. Bear Sterns had nearly gone belly up and was acquired by J.P. Morgan earlier in spring, so the risks were hardly imaginary. Lehman was still around and its executives were criss-crossing the Pacific courting Korea to prop them up by buying a stake. Yet, economy looked good enough. The FT ran a column called Commodities Boom, emerging markets were growing like crazy. So, the ban