Become a Macro Strategist in Five Easy Steps!

Look at me!  I’m a Global Macro Strategist!  You can be one too – all you need is a Macro Strategy Newsletter!  It’s simple, here are five easy steps:

Step 1: The Title!

Well you’re gonna want a literary allusion here for sure.  Biblical, Shakespearean, medieval…doesn’t matter. Fables work well, parables, epic poetry, operatic motifs, mythology also.  Here are some tried-and-true macro strategist newsletter titles to get you in the right frame of mind:

A Rose by Any Other Name, David and Goliath, The Taming of the blank, Paradise Lost, Exodus, Judgment Day, Winter of Our Discontent, The blank Cometh, Fire in the Sky, the Four Horsemen of the blank Apocalypse, Midnight in the Garden of blank and blank…

The more ominously evocative the better!  There should be crouching gargoyles and gathering storm clouds hovering over your headlines in the mind of the reader.

Step 2: The Metaphor!

The old men who are going to be your primary readers are really, really into war imagery – all the talk of age-old conflict reinvigorates their spirits, like peppermint candies!  Historical battle stuff is always a good frame around your whining and castigating:

Crossing the Rate Rubicon, The Gates of Entitlement Fire, Storming the Currency Castle, the Battle of Madison Wisconsin, Clash of the Taxation Titans, Barbarians at the Bank, Behind Enemy Lines, Running the Gauntlet, Casualties of whatever…

You get the idea.  I want to see words like Punishment, Triumph, Retribution, Vengeance, Massacre, Defeat, Comeuppance, and junk like that.

Goofy old men in plaid shirts absolutely lap that stuff up.  It’s why Tom Clancy is a best-selling author (no one can seriously read that stuff).  Make the most trivial, trite and oft-repeated ideas of yours sound positively EPIC!

Step 3: Theme!

You guys, this is super-important…

Something has to be either Rising or Falling (preferably Falling) at all times.  It’s really important to keep in mind that you’re writing for an audience that is terrified of their diminished role in the world.  No one is listening to them anymore and they simply cannot grasp the new ideas and technologies that have usurped the things that once were the very firmament of their lives.  They need to be assured that it’s not that their time has passed, it’s really that everything has indeed gone to hell and it’s all over now.  “Those bastards are ruining the world and things will never be the same again” – that’s the motif we’re going for here.

Like this:

Rise of the blank, Fall of the blank, Birth of the blank, Death of the blank, The blank Era, End of the blank, The New blank, The blank Revolution, The blank Age, etc.

Remember, your take on some stupid country’s debt situation isn’t the point here, you’re selling nostalgia.  Sell it, Daddy!

Step 4: Add Urgency!

If it can sound like time is running out, that would be totally awesome.  Use words and phrases like:

Countdown to the blank, at the gates of blank, the final blank, on the threshold of blank, at the brink of blank, the race to blank…

That’ll get their hearts beating for sure, honest!

Step 5:  The Payoff!

Well, so you’re writing the newsletters and people are reading them!  Cool!  Now what?

Well, what are you selling?  Is it books?  Or how about financial management?  Or speaking engagements?  Well you’ll want to set something up to reap all the rewards of being a big shot Global Macro Strategist.  Call your shop something Monitor or something Risk Analytics or Strategic Research whatever.  No one cares, just keep warning us that someday, something will go wrong…then when it does, Jackpot!

Good luck and don’t forget to add me to the mailing list.  I eat this stuff up!

You’re Welcome,

Downtown Josh Brown

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