Joe Zidle spent nearly eight years as Chief Investment Strategist at Blackstone's Private Wealth Solutions business, working alongside Byron Wien before succeeding him. Before that: Richard Bernstein Advisors, Merrill Lynch, Ned Davis Research, and a start in U.S. Army military intelligence. Now he runs Zidle Macro Strategy Group, his own independent investment strategy firm, built with a team of AI agents doing the work his old research desks used to do.
What we cover:
- His non-linear path from the Army Reserves to Blackstone's boardrooms, and the career advice he'd give anyone trying to get a seat at the table
- Why the AI buildout is proving inflationary instead of deflationary, and what that means for Fed policy in 2026
- Three left-tail risks for the AI trade: labor-intensive CapEx, the fallout from Anthropic's export restrictions, and Elon Musk's data-centers-in-space timeline
- The shift from AI "builders" to AI "adopters," and why the SaaS pullback is only getting started
- Why he thinks "this time is different" almost never holds up historically, and where AI might be the exception
- What happens to 125 million production and services workers if Optimus-style robots scale
- Private credit, the most overrated economic indicator, and his biggest market call gone wrong
Joe also breaks down the three pillars of his new firm: senior advisory for GPs, outsourced CIO work for RIAs and multifamily offices, and his subscription macro research newsletter.