Chris Mackay, managing director of MFF Capital Investments and co-founder of fallen Magellan Financial with Hamish Douglass, might be the most optimistic pessimist in the Australian market.

The market veteran sees traps and snares around every corner for investors: surging government debts, rising inequality, markets riven with perverse incentives, an obsession with the short term, and the likelihood that the “everything rally” that has driven returns for the best part of two years will reverse.