The best time to launch a company is at the bottom of a recession. Key inputs like talent and real estate are cheap, which enforces extreme financial discipline. If a business can survive this environment, it emerges as a lean, resilient "fighting machine" perfectly positioned to capture upside when the market recovers.

Keith McCullough's core process categorizes the economy into four "quads" based on the accelerating or decelerating rates of change for GDP growth and inflation. Each quad has a predictable asset allocation playbook, with Quad 2 (both accelerating) being the best and Quad 4 (both slowing) being the worst for investors.

The most profitable periods for trend following occur when market trends extend far beyond what seems rational or fundamentally justified. The strategy is designed to stay disciplined as prices move to levels few can imagine, long after others have exited.

Don't dismiss megatrends like demographics and technology as only long-term concerns. Research from Vanguard's Joe Davis shows these forces account for roughly 60% of quarter-to-quarter changes in per capita GDP growth and earnings yield, making them immediate drivers of the business cycle.

“Crisis Alpha” is not a guaranteed hedge but the result of a managed futures strategy successfully capturing extreme macroeconomic shifts. The strategy is fundamentally about following major macro themes, with a crisis simply being one of the most intense themes it can follow.

With the Federal Reserve signaling a market backstop, capital is flowing from concentrated large-cap tech winners into more cyclical, under-loved small-cap stocks (IWM). This support de-risks 'Main Street' sectors and signals a potential broadening of the market rally.

Contrary to intuition, widespread fear and discussion of a market bubble often precede a final, insane surge upward. The real crash tends to happen later, when the consensus shifts to believing in a 'new economic model.' This highlights a key psychological dynamic of market cycles where peak anxiety doesn't signal an immediate top.

Hetty Green's famous strategy to "buy when things are low" was enabled by two key factors: always having cash on hand and possessing the emotional stability to act decisively when others were panicking. Having liquidity is useless without the courage to deploy it during a crisis, a combination few possess.

Timing is more critical than talent. An investor who beat the market by 5% annually from 1960-1980 made less than an investor who underperformed by 5% from 1980-2000. This illustrates how the macro environment and the starting point of an investment journey can have a far greater impact on absolute returns than individual stock-picking skill.