The Market Huddle · Patrick Ceresna & Kevin Muir

The Market Huddle Live With Rupert Mitchell & Paul Krake

·58 min·5 clips

Paul Krake declares tariffs will spike inflation, defying market complacency about Trump's trade policies.

1. The Market Huddle Live Christmas edition (December 18, 2024) brings together Patrick Ceresna, Rupert Mitchell of Blind Squirrel Macro, and Paul Krake of View from the Peak for a live audience Q&A recorded as the Fed released its December decision. 2. Rupert Mitchell joins from Australia at 7am local time; Paul Krake is the primary guest, praised by Ceresna for being one of the only Market Huddle guests to correctly call the Mag-7 trade in 2024. 3. The episode's core tension is Krake's pivot from 2024 bull to cautious 2025 bear: his top-20-influential-companies framework produced a winning Mag-7 call, but he now thinks tariffs are the dominant 2025 risk. 4. Krake states flatly that 'tariffs won't increase inflation is bullshit' and argues any 20% tariff on imports raises consumer prices, with only the magnitude and Fed response left to debate. 5. Krake frames tariff-driven derisking as a Mag-7 problem: because institutional portfolios are overweight mega-cap tech, any forced derisking sells those names first — regardless of whether tech companies themselves face direct tariff exposure. 6. Krake argues the Trump trade rotation is '6 months too early': tariff implementation, inflation pass-through, Fed response, and the resulting earnings hit are all second-half 2025 events, so the premature sector rotation away from Mag-7 into financials and energy may reverse. 7. Mitchell and Ceresna discuss the trade deficit fix: Europe's $130-131 billion deficit with the U.S. could theoretically be zeroed out if European countries agreed to buy $10 billion per month in U.S. LNG. 8. The on-shoring debate covers AI-enhanced robotics as a potential bull case: Krake argues the factory of tomorrow — highly automated, less labor-intensive — might produce goods at comparable cost to China when transportation is included. 9. Krake and Mitchell disagree sharply on China: Krake sees a Japan-style balance-sheet recession trap because Xi Jinping lacks the political profile of Koizumi or Abe, while Mitchell notes the value factor in MSCI China is outperforming and argues authorities have written investors an implicit equity put. 10. Krake, after 30 years covering China, admits he still cannot determine whether Chinese policymakers are 'the smartest guys in the room or the dumbest guys in the room' — citing their consistent pattern of incremental policy steps that repeatedly fell short of what Western economists expected. 11. On private credit, Mitchell argues the market 'can remain as private as GPs and LPs want it to be' and that SME loan stress at high single digit to double-digit rates would expose cracks in a recession; Krake says money will continue flowing to private credit over private equity because an IPO boom in 2025 is 'complete rubbish.' 12. CNY forecasts diverge: Mitchell bets on a six-handle (renminbi strengthening from 7.25), while Krake predicts 7.35 on dollar strength, citing Trump's stated preference for a weaker dollar as incompatible with tariffs. 13. Krake introduces the Mar-a-Lago Accord concept — the idea that Trump may negotiate a Plaza Accord-style deal to depreciate the dollar — arguing Lighthizer's trade lawyer ally has a strong chance of being 'the last guy in the room' with Trump, which matters most with this president. 14. Krake discloses that Scott Besant threatened to sue him after hiring a contracted employee, offering this as a data point on Besant's character; he then argues that regardless of Besant's own views, all serious advisers in Trump's first term — including Gary Cohn and Rex Tillerson — eventually fell by the wayside. 15. On copper, both guests are broadly bullish long-term on supply-demand grounds tied to electrification and grid transformation, though Krake notes this requires copper prices to remain high enough to incentivize new mine development. 16. On EVs, Mitchell calls the hockey-stick adoption projections 'a bit mad' and sees hybrids winning the near term; Krake describes EVs as a 'rich inner-city whole-foods product' rather than a mass-market item in the near term. 17. The live format generates some audience questions read by Daniel, but the conversation is primarily host-driven and runs faster than a standard interview, covering roughly 15 topics in under an hour. 18. Tone is collegial and at times very candid — Krake's 'bullshit' comment on tariff-inflation denialism and his Besant anecdote stand out as unusually direct moments for a financial podcast. 19. Macro investors, multi-asset allocators, and anyone tracking 2025 positioning in equities, currencies, and commodities will find this episode directly actionable. 20. Listeners seeking deep dives on any single topic will find the rapid-fire format leaves most subjects under-developed.

As heard by us

Holiday market talk that turns macro headlines into practical trading questions.

This Christmas edition stays close to Powell and the market's first reaction, then keeps circling back to the practical stuff. Rupert Mitchell and Paul Craig move from private credit and the odd chance of an IPO boom to copper, electrification, and the gap between EV enthusiasm…

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Why you'd press play

For Powell watchers who want holiday banter that still behaves like a trading desk on air.

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