1Q11 Intelledgement Macro Strategy Investment Portfolio Report

Summary of Intelledgement’s model macro strategy model investment portfolio performance as of 31 March 2011:

Position	Bought	Shares	Paid	Cost	Now	Value	Change	YTD	ROI	CAGR
FXI	29 Dec-06	243	37.15	9,035.45	44.91	11,555.31	3.98%	3.98%	27.89%	5.96%
IFN	29-Dec-06	196	45.90	9,004.40	32.95	10,495.80	-3.88%	-3.88%	16.56%	3.67%
DBA	13-Mar-08	235	42.50	9,995.50	34.23	8,149.80	5.73%	5.73%	-18.47%	-6.48%
EWZ	3-Aug-09	165	60.39	9,972.35	77.51	13,633.09	0.13%	0.13%	36.71%	20.78%
GLD	21-May-10	95	115.22	10,953.90	139.86	13,291.64	0.82%	0.82%	21.34%	25.23%
SLV	21-May-10	636	17.29	11,004.44	36.77	23,418.79	21.80%	21.80%	112.81%	140.73%
UDN	21-Oct-10	399	27.54	10,996.46	28.14	11,227.86	3.84%	3.84%	2.10%	4.84%
RSX	31-Dec-10	316	37.91	11,987.56	41.63	13,155.08	9.81%	9.81%	9.74%	45.82%
cash				17,049.94		29,246.10
Overall	31-Dec-06			100,000.00		134,173.47	4.78%	4.78%	34.17%	7.17%
Macro HF	31-Dec-06			100,000.00		126,147.49	-0.58%	-0.58%	26.15%	5.62%
S&P 500	31-Dec-06			1,418.30		1,325.83	5.42%	5.42%	-6.52%	-1.58%

Position = security the portfolio owns
Bought = date position acquired
Shares = number of shares the portfolio owns
Paid = price per share when purchased
Cost = total paid (price per share multiplied by # shrs plus commission)
Now = price per share as of date of report
Value = what it is worth as of the date of report (price per share multiplied by # shrs plus value of dividends)
Change = on a percentage basis, change since last report (not applicable for positions new since last report)
YTD (Year-to-Date) = on a percentage basis, change since the previous year-end price
ROI (Return-on-Investment) = on a percentage basis, the performance of this security since purchase
CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) = annualized ROI for this position since purchase (to help compare apples to apples)

Notes: The benchmark for the virtual money Intelledgement Macro Strategy Investment Portfolio (IMSIP) is the Greenwich Alternative Investments Global Macro Hedge Fund Index, which historically (1988 to 2010 inclusively) provides a CAGR of around 13.8%. For comparison’s sake, we also show the S&P 500 index, which since January 1950 has produced a CAGR of around 7.4%. Note that for our portfolio’s positions, dividends are added back into the value of the pertinent security and not included in the “cash” total (this gives a more complete picture of the ROI for dividend-paying securities). Also, the “Cost” figures include a standard $8 commission and there is a 1% rate of interest on the listed cash balance. Finally, the “cash” line for the “Cost” column is reduced each quarter by a management fee (annual rate of 1% of the principal under management). More information about how the IMSIP is managed can be found here.

Transactions: After all that action at the end of 2010, we had an extremely quiet quarter: no transactions whatsoever for the first time since 2009.

Performance Review: Yet another modest gain which—for the third consecutive quarter—failed to keep pace with the market. We were up 4.8%, which normally is good, but we still narrowly lost to the S&P 500 index (+5.4%). We did handily outdistance the macro hedge fund index (-0.6%), primarily because most macro funds have maintained more short positions than we have.

The star performer of the quarter was silver (SLV), up 22%, way outdistancing our other commodity plays, including our corn-wheat-soybeans-sugar ETF (DBA, up 6%) and gold (GLD up 1%). On a semi-related note, our one remaining short position is the U.S. dollar (UDN, +4% as the decline in the dollar of the value continued). Our BRIC funds were mixed, with Russia (RSX) up 10%, China (FXI) up 4%, Brazil (EWZ) flat, and India (IFN) down 4%.

Overall we are now 41 points ahead of the market in terms of total return-on-investment: +34% for us and -7% for the S&P 500 in the 51 months since the inception of the IMSIP at the end of 2006. We are slightly ahead of our benchmark, the GAI Global Macro Hedge Fund Index, which is +26%. In terms of compounded annual growth rate, after four-plus years IMSIP is +7.2%, the GAI hedgies are at +5.6%, and the S&P 500 is -1.6%.

1Q11 Highlights: Here are some topical 1Q11 links reprised from our Intelledgement tweet stream, organized by subject:

BRICs

• Khodorkovsky—victim of persecution or his own megalomania? (Or both?) http://bit.ly/ejmSau
• Is Inflation About to Burst the Chinese Bubble? http://bit.ly/ejKMpU
• Don’t look back, China…India might be gaining. Anyway, they have their first $1B dot.com startup. http://aol.it/fBQQUV
• How Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs are eating America’s lunch…with U.S. connivance. http://bit.ly/fMBvai
• Edward N. Harrison: Some thoughts on Brazil’s rate hike. http://bit.ly/fuw8YB
• Strategypage: Massive Fail in the Russian Army. http://bit.ly/guSV1R
• A railway boom promises to tie South-East Asia together—and boost China’s sway. http://econ.st/fZJ0Mj
• China’s housing market nears U.S., Japan bubble levels. http://bloom.bg/dY6jrJ
• Prominent Chinese economist advises sale of their $500 billion in GSE holdings before QE2 ends. http://is.gd/KXSPLk
• Alibaba and the curse of Chinese manufacturing. http://bit.ly/e4mmpD
• A Columbia professor claims that their skewed sex ratio is what’s behind China’s current-trade imbalance. http://econ.st/hYG6gO
• Financial Times: China’s new car cult—how the car is changing China. http://on.ft.com/i65Rit
• The Economist: “Don’t worry, be happy.” The government introduces China’s new mantra. http://econ.st/ft7MtT

Deep Capture

• The proposed Bank of America settlement: another taxpayer rip-off. http://bit.ly/grWtHl
• Dylan Ratigan: “In Goldman Sachs we trust.” http://bit.ly/eCdbZo
• Will the Massachusetts Ibanez case unravel widespread residential real estate irregularities? http://dlvr.it/D62n7
• naked capitalism: Bankster-enabling Dems unveil latest scheme to fleece Main Street sheeples. http://bit.ly/fJjlGo
• “Creative accounting” makes Fed insolvency impossible. http://is.gd/4Pk3sB
• Dylan Ratigan: How Fed policies facilitated USA exports to China: exports of jobs, that is. http://bit.ly/fwgwwM
• NYT: New Keybridge report deriding derivative market regulations apparently a put-up job. http://nyti.ms/euARqZ
• Why the US government is facilitating theft instead of prosecuting it. http://bit.ly/fnUsP3
• Sleaze Watch—NY Fed Official Responsible for AIG Loans Joins AIG As AIG Pushes Sweetheart Repurchase to NY Fed. http://bit.ly/gL4pBe
• Satyajit Das: Controlling sovereign CDS trading—the dysfunctional debate. http://bit.ly/gNDyMR
• Bill Black: Why we need regulatory cops on the beat, even if they make bankers unhappy. http://bit.ly/fCg29l
• Jim Quinn: “Extend-and-pretend” is Wall Street’s friend. http://is.gd/0vZsve

Eurozone

• Is China’s European rescue just a big ”bait-and switch?” http://is.gd/j7kwHG
• Spain’s bank nationalisation and the euro zone crisis. http://bit.ly/fzVrOg
• Satyajit Das: Defaults Are Needed in Euro Zone http://bit.ly/gG4w3S
• Daniel Gros: The EU’s band-aid on a bullet hole. http://bit.ly/fdTIOK
• Bloomberg: Irish banks may need $39 billion more aid, analysts say. http://ow.ly/4maSo
• Marc Chandler: Fiddling while the periphery burns. http://bit.ly/gVUErx
• The Economist: Default looks inevitable for certain EU member states. http://econ.st/hMk2I3
• Businessweek: France’s finances are “no better” than Spain’s, O’Neill says. http://ping.fm/L0mPW

Macro Analysis

• TMF: For market volatility, no news is good news. http://bit.ly/gNCP2z
• The rise of the consumer in Africa…some interesting data from WSJ. http://fb.me/OQX30gLx
• Macro hedge funds: A lack of clear long-term investment trends may lead managers to stomach more risk. http://econ.st/fkE6yc
• Energy consumption per unit of GDP across the globe varies widely but likely to converge by 2030. http://econ.st/gWg55W
• Bundeswehr draft study evaluates peak oil scenarios: warns of potential for chaos, need to cozy up to energy producers. http://bit.ly/bPaxp3
• The Economist: The rise and fall of the dollar—lessons of history. http://econ.st/dQrANr
• The Atlantic: Economic underpinnings of the uprising in Egypt. http://yhoo.it/gDrDF8
• Rick Backstaber: Why are we “irrational”—the path from Neoclassical to Behavioral Economics 2.0. http://bit.ly/exaORJ
• Mike Grieger: The death of globalization, the death of currency, and the death spiral. http://is.gd/fZ6Sx1
• Is the current rise in commodity prices part of a long-term trend caused by rising demand in emerging markets? http://econ.st/fkAJgK
• Peak Oil, the Saudis and the Middle East protests. http://bit.ly/giMsSb
• Egypt: population and food import needs growing while arable land is maxed out and oil exports in decline…uh oh. http://bit.ly/h8Uvfm
• Urban life: Are cities “our species’ greatest invention”? Do they make us more inventive and more productive? http://econ.st/i16jEV
• oftwominds.com: The deflationary depression scenario is still in play here. http://goo.gl/XN8ss
• Marc Chandler: “March Madness”—policy risks for global investors. http://bit.ly/h7sS8T
• The Economist: Plagued by Politics—feeding the world…biofuels are an example of what not to do. http://econ.st/hOWOPL
• The Big Picture: The coming war between generations. http://dlvr.it/HyHWv
• Mideast revolution—people lose, Oil wins. http://shar.es/3iIzd
• The Economist: The nuclear family—the world’s largest nuclear-energy producers. http://econ.st/h1gIKJ
• In 2000, every $1 of state/local revs supported $1.07 of muni debt…today it’s between $1.70 and $2.85. http://bit.ly/eU5D47
• The Economist: How will the disaster affect Japan economically? http://econ.st/f35Kdr
• The Economist: What is behind the decline in living standards? http://econ.st/gmVayI
• The Economist: An encouraging model suggests urban Asia’s water problems could be easily fixed. http://econ.st/eLIk1P

Monetary and Fiscal Policy

• Annaly Salvos: Deficit Attention Disorder. http://bit.ly/dKpWvf
• PIMCO’s central bank expert says $1T in excess bank reserves like nuclear waste dump—no danger unless container cracks. http://bit.ly/gv21pP
• William Black: Why our fundamental approach to banking regulation is inherently unsound. http://bit.ly/fc3pgk
• Why the Fed’s funding of US Treasury debt is not just failing to stimulate but counter-productive. http://bit.ly/h9daHQ
• Simon Johnson: The ruinous fiscal impact of big banks. http://snipurl.com/1yjq9o
• How the Fed’s reckless excess liquidity hurts folks outside the USA, too: via destabilizing inflation. http://bit.ly/eaQyuu
• Why the central banks’ zero interest rate policy not only fails to cure us but actually makes us sicker. http://scribd.com/doc/48887451
• Other central banks try to fight the Fed http://dlvr.it/GwgQ2
• Ken Rogoff: Excessive debt concentrations, rather than hot capital inflows, are causing global economic imbalances. http://aje.me/gpfYSi
• China’s Dagong sees no threat of Fed monetization ending; believes “World Credit War” is about to escalate. http://is.gd/7T5s47

Analysis: Well, unsurprisingly given that we had no transactions changing any of our positions, the portfolio’s composition—36% emerging markets, 33% commodities, 8% short the dollar, and 22% cash—is not much changed from last quarter…we have proportionately less cash and more invested in commodities, but that is mostly attributable to the +22% burst in silver prices.

So, what’s going on with silver? Well, back when silver and gold were commonly used as money, the ratio of their values tended to be about 15:1 (that is, the value of 15 ounces of silver was equivalent to the value of one ounce of gold). But as fiat money became predominant in the 19th and especially the 20th centuries, the ratio has widened and the average in the 1900s was closer to 50:1, and for most of the first ten years of this century, 60:1. Essentially, silver—which, of course, is much more common than gold—lost currency (if you will pardon the expression) as a store of value, and was priced based on demand for industrial use (which has declined in recent decades with the near-death of analog photography as mucho silver was consumed in the development process). But with the financial crisis that started with banks in 2008 morphing to sovereign debt in 2010, fiat currencies are looking shaky, and silver is making a strong comeback, spurred on by the existence—or, at least, rumors of the existence—of a large short position which presumably will have to be covered if prices continue to rise. Check out this chart of the silver:gold ratio since the inception of the IMSIP:

Overall, the market continued bullish in 1Q10. We remain concerned about the overall risk of systemic failure, for which we feel the market has not adequately accounted. We got into this situation by overspending, borrowing beyond our means, and speculating on bubble-valued assets. And the policies the Bush administration implemented—and the Obama administration has continued—of attempting to paper over the cracks in the system with bailouts of bad banks, bad real estate loans, bad credit default swaps, and bad industrial companies are neither the morally correct thing to do nor in our own long-term self interest. While these actions can be effective in postponing our day of reckoning—indeed, the “QE2” $600B round of quantitative easing by the Fed has clearly succeeding in kicking the can further down the road—they ultimately result primarily in digging us into a deeper hole. For now, massive injections of liquidity and restrictive interest rate policies that artificially deflate the return on investment of “safe” savings accounts and short-term bonds have pushed investment funds into the stock market, floating it higher, but we do not expect the “good news” concerning economic recovery to survive the pending reduction in government stimulus when the QE2 program ends in June and remain prepared to move to a short bias when that happens to preserve capital. And it could happen sooner if the wheels come off with respect to the European sovereign debt crisis, the continuing unrest in the Arab world, serious municipal bond defaults or a defaults-driven residential real estate crisis in the USA, a slowdown in China, or any number of other potential “black swans.” In the meantime, however, we are swimming with the tide and remain long.

Conclusion: We remain in the eye of the storm with most everyone  sipping the QE2 Kool-Aid and singing Kum-Ba-Ya. Accordingly, it is time to make love, not war…but we remain prepared for both.

We hold long emerging market ETFs for all four BRIC nations in the portfolio: Brasil (EWX), Russia (RSX), India (IFN), and China (FXI). We believe that in a deleveraging environment, the economies that are still growing strongly will fare better than those that are not and we expect non-dollar-denominated assets to do better than those tied to the greenback. Never-the-less, when things get really dicey, those nations’ economies will suffer also—the Russian RSX ETF declined 70% in the wake of the 2008 crisis and we will not want to be long any of these when the winds of chaos pick up again.

We also still have three long commodity plays: the agriculture ETF (DBA) and precious metals ETFs for gold (GLD) and silver (SLV). With the dollar, the Euro, and the Yen all under pressure here for various and sundry reasons, any currency is risky at best, and thus commodities are relatively more attractive stores of value. And we are actually short the dollar (UDN), although it has held up remarkably well in the face of the USA’s deteriorating monetary and fiscal situation, thanks presumably to the relative unattractiveness of the other major currencies…except the Yuan, but the Chinese government restricts it’s appreciation.

Although we are mostly long now in congruence with the prevailing love fest, we remain vigilant as to a potential turning of the tide. In times of heightened uncertainty, valuations can fluctuate wildly and the preservation of capital takes precedence over meeting any target ROI. To that end, when the phantasmic prospect of sustained economic growth sans serious deleveraging fades—that is, when the Kool-Aid runs out—we will be prepared to unload our long positions, possibly excepting the commodities, and short the indices again. However, we also cognizant of the prospect that, with another election cycle approaching, the U.S. government is likely to attempt to maintain low interest rates and resume big-time quantitative easing at the first unconcealable sign of a “downturn.” So long as that combination of policies conspires to weaken the dollar and push up nominal equity valuations, it will be too early to go short. Stay tuned.