Reading Minds and Markets: Minimizing Risk and Maximizing Returns in a Volatile Global Marketplace

2. The World of Global Macro

Once every 4 months or so, an invitation arrives in the mail and I find myself on a plane to one warm and sunny destination or another to deliver a speech at one of the country’s biggest investment extravaganzas, the Money Show. These presentations tend to follow a pattern. I’ll tell a roomful of eager-to-learn investors what broad trends I see taking shape. Every year, the specific questions change—as 2008 dawned, for instance, they revolved around the real estate crisis and the looming credit crunch—but inevitably someone will ask me the secret of picking those investments that are about to outperform the rest. In other words, they’re searching for the investment equivalent of the Holy Grail.

I sympathize with ...