Independent research for allocators and advisors. Senior macro advisory for a select group of institutions.
Joe Zidle, Founder & CIO
For eight years, I was the Chief Investment Strategist of Private Wealth Solutions at Blackstone, the world’s largest alternatives manager. I advised on macro, allocation, and alternatives strategy across private equity, private credit, real assets, and hedge funds.
Now I work for one constituency: the allocators and advisors who read this research. No institutional framework to operate within. No firm’s capital deployment cycle to consider. Just the analysis, and what I actually believe it means for your portfolio.
A select group of alternative asset managers have asked me to bring that perspective directly into their investment process. I serve as a senior macro advisor to their investment committees.
The uncompromised view.
The April PCE report confirms what the many already suspect: inflation is not retreating. Headline PCE rose to 3.8% year-over-year, the highest since May 2023. When inflation persists at these levels for half a year, it stops being transitory. But I'm optimistic that the economy keeps growing.
Read AnalysisThe market has re-found its footing, and the bulls have the ball right now. While the cyclical backdrop remains constructive, the arithmetic of valuation tells a different story for medium to long-term investors.
Read AnalysisThe last couple of weeks were a reminder of something the market learned painfully in 2022: the stock-bond relationship is not as reliable as you think. This is not a new observation. But knowing something and actually feeling it in a portfolio are two different things.
Read AnalysisIncoming Fed Chair Kevin Warsh may want to begin with patience. The harder question is whether the Federal Reserve he inherits will allow it. Sticky inflation, market repricing, and internal dissent force him to validate a hike bias even if his instinct is to hold steady.
Read AnalysisHistory has a consistent verdict on infrastructure booms: the builders create the conditions, and the adopters capture the gains. The pattern across every major infrastructure cycle is the same. We nearing the transition point between those two phases.
Read AnalysisThe April CPI confirms what forward indicators have signaled for months: inflation is re-accelerating, not fading. The oil price transmission mechanism continues to be a big inflation risk as the year unfolds. And the Fed may already be behind the curve.
Read AnalysisWhat's really happening to the generation entering the workforce for the first time? The standard narrative is straightforward: AI is displacing young workers, and that's a problem. Here's what the standard narrative misses.
Read AnalysisI started the year expecting rates to drift higher and I continue to set my true north at 4.5%. This presents fundamental challenges to the Fed’s ability cut rates. I ran two studies to answer this question of what this means for private and public markets.
Read AnalysisIt was exactly 30 years ago when then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan became convinced that the 1990s technology boom would drive inflation lower. He was wrong. Fast forward to today. Kevin Warsh has a theory. AI will turbocharge productivity and drive inflation lower. I think he's half right.
Read AnalysisNon-recessionary Federal Reserve cutting cycles are often interrupted. Something always breaks the pattern: an oil shock, an inflation scare, a geopolitical event. The market and sector implications differ materially from full hike cycles.
Read Analysis“If the change outside your business is faster than the change inside your business, you’re going out of business. You just don’t know it yet.” – Jack Welch, 2000 Welch made that observation at the height of the first internet wave. Twenty-five years later, the same clock is running.
Read AnalysisI used to manage a team of highly skilled researchers. When someone recently asked what size team I would need to rebuild that capability today, I said: none. Not a smaller team. Not a leaner one. None. Because of agentic AI. That is not creative destruction. That is creative substitution.
Read AnalysisFor nearly three decades, Joe Zidle has shaped investment strategy at the world's largest financial institutions. Most recently, he spent eight years as Chief Investment Strategist at Blackstone Private Wealth Solutions, leading thematic research, asset allocation strategy, and macro framework development.
Before that, he was Head of Investment Strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Global Wealth Management division and a portfolio strategist at Richard Bernstein Advisors, roles that built the alternatives and macro expertise now defining ZidleMSG.
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