Ben Madadi nuances the advice on the dollar

Ben Madadi - an individual investor with a consistent and highly visible presence in the Romanian capital market for more than two decades - reacted to the article "Direct Advice: How to Correctly Read a Dangerous Dollar”, adding nuance based on his personal experience. Below we reproduce the opinion he shared with us (his views are always regarded by investors as benchmarks for action in the Romanian capital market):

"These rules in the financial domain become "obvious' when you look backward. The problem is that the future does not necessarily have to follow such rules that applied in the past, even for decades.

For example, until 2020 the dollar strengthened whenever risk or uncertainty increased. After 2020, this "rule' no longer held. Another eloquent example is what happened almost continuously from the 1960s until now. Until 2020, whenever the 2-year yield rose above the 10-year yield, a recession followed. After 2020, although this yield inversion occurred, no recession of any kind followed.”

Ben Madadi was the largest individual (retail) shareholder of SIF Muntenia (SIF4) during key periods (e.g., 2021, with over 3-6% of the capital), an activist for shareholder rights through AISIF, a vocal critic of SIF management and of the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF), and has demonstrated success in transactions and long positions. His practical experience (survival through multiple cycles, including crises) gives him credibility when he speaks about the limits of financial "rules.”

Summary: two perspectives, the same problem

Ben Madadi's intervention brings to the forefront a real tension in markets over recent years: to what extent historical correlations can still be used as orientation tools in an economic regime that has changed after 2020.

His intervention outlines two perspectives:

1) The perspective of "changing regimes”

The core message is that many relationships considered "textbook” can stop working, sometimes for long periods.

The examples cited - the behavior of the dollar during stress episodes and the inversion of the yield curve without an immediate recession - support the idea that the market may enter a new logic, in which traditional signals fade, are delayed, or translate into effects different from those expected.

2) The perspective of "stress signals”

From this angle, the matrix in the article "Direct Advice: How to Correctly Read a Dangerous Dollar” is not a promise of prediction, but a set of indicators that track how dollar funding and global risk appetite function.

Its usefulness lies not in "telling what comes next,” but in showing when stress is increasing and where potential breaking points may occur.

What this means for the reader

Viewed together, the two positions do not exclude each other. They describe two different levels of the same reality:

Ben Madadi warns against rigid trust in rules and emphasizes the risk that a historical correlation may be invalidated by a new regime.

"Direct Advice” proposes a working method that does not rely on a single rule, but instead tracks stress conditions through multiple indicators, precisely to avoid the trap of determinism.

In practical terms, Ben Madadi's intervention leads the reader to a simple conclusion: indicators are useful, but they are not laws; they must be read in context, not applied mechanically.