Profits Don't Know They're Old
Q2 earnings season kicks off in two weeks. Here's what's unusual: analysts have been raising estimates into quarter-end. This earnings cycle is accelerating as it ages
Read AnalysisThe Allocator’s Strategist. Uncompromised.
Institutional-grade macro and alternatives research.
Embedded inside the investment committees that act on it.
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.
Latest Research
View All →What to Expect When You Are Expecting (The Sequel)
Two years ago I published a note on interest rate cuts titled “What to Expect When You Are Expecting.” Today the script flips. The Fed is preparing to hike. What follows is a study.
Read AnalysisThe Price War Started. Good.
Last month I argued that infrastructure booms follow one pattern. The builders create the conditions. The adopters capture the gains. What triggers the handoff? Price wars begin when three conditions converge: capacity, interchangeability and buyer revolt. Own what absorbs the cheap input.
Read AnalysisForget the Wrecking Ball
Everyone is spilling ink on how Kevin Warsh just blew up thirty years of Fed communication. If I am being honest, though, the part everyone is missing is simpler: that guidance was only ever as good as the forecasts behind it, and the forecasts were not good. Its the underlying data that matters.
Read AnalysisBuilt to Burn
The AI deflation narrative may be correct. At some point. Between now and that payoff sits $1 trillion in annual spending, a set of supply bottlenecks with multi-year resolution timelines. The oil deal will take some pressure off energy costs. Two rate hikes in the next twelve months are a floor.
Read AnalysisThe Wrong Debate
After yesterday's CPI report, everyone is counting hikes. The more important calculation is what kind of cycle this becomes. Historically, the market treats insurance hikes very different from full hiking cycles. Two hikes from here is the floor, not the ceiling.
Read AnalysisThe $40 Chicken vs. the 13-Year-Old Car
Saturday's Wall Street Journal said everything we need to know: a story about how Americans are keeping their cars for nearly 13 years, at the bottom an article about restaurants charging $40 for half a rotisserie chicken. These two stories are not contradictions... its where we are.
Read AnalysisAI and the Bent Curve
I watched a lecture by Chad Jones, an economist at Stanford, on AI and long-run economic growth. He opened with a simple chart: US income per person since 1870, plotted on a log scale. A straight line. ~2 percent annual growth for 150 years. Will AI enable that to continue or will it bend the curve?
Read AnalysisCAPE 42, Sentiment 44.
Leopold Aschenbrenner, the former OpenAI researcher whose "Situational Awareness" essay became required reading across institutional finance, entered into $8.46 billion in put notional. The true believer is hedging.
Read AnalysisPersistent Inflation and the Bifurcated Economy
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 AnalysisCyclical Bull, Secular Realist
The 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 Relationship You Thought You Could Count On
The 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 AnalysisWhy Zidle Macro
Institutional-grade macro strategy. Independent voice.
For 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.
- Former Chief Investment Strategist & Partner, Blackstone Private Wealth Solutions
- Former Head of Investment Strategy, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
- Portfolio Strategist, Richard Bernstein Advisors
- Frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and major financial media
- U.S. Army Reserves, Military Intelligence Specialist (1993–2001)
- B.A. Economics & History, Emory University
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