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Macro & markets

From headline to parameter bundle: macro discipline on a desk

72 min read

Macro debate without parameters is astrology with citations. Serious desks force headlines into bundles: explicit paths for rates, FX expectations, credit spreads, inflation impulses, and fiscal deltas. ‘Hawkish’ is not a bundle—a 25 bp front-loaded path with terminal revision is. Once bundled, disagreement is negotiable; until then it is just volume. Pair bundles with logged reruns so Monday’s argument cannot pretend Friday’s definitions never happened.

Why ‘risk-off’ is not a scenario

Hand-wavy labels collapse under stress when each desk hears a different movie. Replace with named bundles tied to observable series.

Teach ICs to ban unquantified mood words in packs unless paired with a bundle id—politely, but consistently.

Building a bundle (worked example mindset)

Start from policy baseline, shock curves with dated assumptions, cross effects you will ignore explicitly, and liquidity add-ons if relevant.

For rates: specify which curve legs move, whether breakevens or reals absorb the impulse, and how you treat forward guidance vs priced path.

For credit: name index level moves versus beta to rates; say if you assume primary market open or frozen.

Governance

Macro lead owns naming; risk approves units; tech ensures replay. Three-party sign-off prevents silent drift.

Publish a quarterly ‘dead bundle cemetery’ so new hires do not resurrect deprecated narratives.

Communication to PMs

One-page ‘what moved’ with parameter diffs versus yesterday—slides optional, links mandatory.

If PMs re-ask the same clarification twice, treat as UX failure: tighten the bundle template, don’t scold readers.

Communication to clients

External macro views need toned down precision; never imply rerun fidelity you will not provide under NDA.

Separate ‘illustrative sensitivity’ from ‘house path’ language—crossing them erodes trust on both sides.

Data dependencies

If CPI prints are your spine, vendor cutoffs and revision policy belong beside every bundle.

Document handling of real-time vs final prints; mixed conventions across desks recreate ‘same number, different planets.’

Failure modes

Silent double counting of shocks; FX and rates moved independently without covariance sanity; policy lags modeled as instant.

Another classic: bundling level shocks without saying whether equities discount cash flow or liquidity channel first—spell the channel.

Metrics

Time from headline to published bundle; count of PM questions answered by link versus meeting; reuse rate in scenarios.

Track ‘bundle half-life’—how long until narrative forks; rising half-life means governance is slipping.

Public desk routes referenced above

Same URL discipline applies after you authenticate—bookmarkable paths, no tenant data on these pages.

  • Public calculator hub GET-shareable patterns you can mirror for every material desk run; use as the pattern for replay links.
  • Operating rhythm Template language for stages, owners, and completion rules in a mandatory morning loop.
  • Product atlas Route-level map so reviewers can open the exact module that produced a figure.
  • Guides Pair public guides with internal SOPs so training points at one narrative spine.
  • Guided product tour Orient sponsors and new analysts on module boundaries before you encode them in a mandatory loop.

Operator toolkits

Checklists and scripts you can lift into runbooks, vendor RFPs, or board appendices.

Illustrative macro workflow; not economic forecasting advice.

Three-minute mental model

RMFU is one surface for reading (brief + pulse), remembering (library + drills), and stress-testing (risk, macro, scenarios). Sign in to reach your tenant desk; this public site is the story, not the datastore.

Open the full guided tour → (recommended instead of this short blurb).

Use Open desk when you already have access — you will authenticate at the gate like any other protected route.

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Live calculators vs. marketing

After sign-in, /tools hosts shareable one-page calculators (NPV, payback, Kelly, and more). This public tools hub explains what exists for crawlers and prospects.

Open desk

Why drills matter

Bookmarks decay. RMFU uses short, spaced repetitions so vocabulary and frameworks stay retrievable when you are in front of a committee or a live tape — not only when you are reading alone.

Nudge inputs

Edit fields, then Apply & refresh (or use ↻ on the card). Same payload as the public demo API.

Last response JSON

app/engines/tools/service.py

Leading lines of the real module (marketing excerpt).

"""Operator pocket tools — small pure functions used by /tools.

Each function returns a dict with the inputs echoed back, the result, and a
short interpretation sentence (in casual exec tone).
"""
from __future__ import annotations

from dataclasses import dataclass
import math
from typing import Iterable


# -------- IRR / NPV ---------------------------------------------------------

def npv(rate: float, cashflows: list[float]) -> float:
    return sum(cf / ((1 + rate) ** t) for t, cf in enumerate(cashflows))


def npv_rate_sensitivity(rate: float, cashflows: list[float], bump: float = 0.01) -> dict:
    """±bump hurdle NPV and approximate $ / 1% change in NPV (last period scale)."""
    base = npv(rate, cashflows)
    up = npv(rate + bump, cashflows)