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If you were to read only one thing…
WSJ – Another Bubble Bursts in Hong Kong – Jacky Wong 4/25
- This one is the article in its entirety.
- “Hong Kong’s stock market is becoming a byword for dangerous bubble-blowing.”
- “The latest stock to burst is Fullshare Holdings, a Chinese property developer valued at around $7 billion. Its stock slumped 12% on Tuesday, before the company suspended trading in its shares. The plunge came after California-based short seller Glaucus Research, which has shorted Fullshare, published a report claiming the stock is ‘one of the largest stock manipulation schemes trading on any exchange anywhere in the world.’ Fullshare declined to comment, but said it would release a statement at a later point.”
- “Glaucus’s claim, which is based on analysis of trading patterns and Chinese filings, may be hard to prove. But in truth, investors should have spotted problems at Fullshare a while back. The company, which was valued at an eye-watering ten times book value as recently as last autumn, has generated most of its profits recently from paper gains on its 8.2% stake in another developer Zall Group , whose share price tripled last year. The problem? Zall in turn earns most of its profit from a reciprocal 3.5% stake in Fullshare, whose shares doubled last year. The bubbles in both companies’ stocks have fed on each other, giving a false image of how their businesses are doing.”
- “Zall declined to comment.”
- “If that weren’t enough, trading in Fullshare has also shown some unusual patterns. Glaucus says the stock has shown abnormally high returns in the final hour of trading—a pattern that was seen in previous Hong Kong stock bubbles such as Hanergy and Tech Pro. A look at trading data from FactSet from January to April this year seems to confirm the thesis. An investor buying Fullshare’s stock one hour before the market close and selling it at close, would have made a 44% return over the period. A simple buy-and-hold strategy, however, would have lost the investor 14%.”
- “More risky still is the way both Fullshare and Zall have loaded up on debt using their overpriced stocks. As of December, Zall had pledged all its Fullshare stocks in return for a loan. Fullshare had likewise pledged a large portion of its financial assets, which are mainly Zall shares. Zall’s chairman has also pledged 8% of the company’s shares to borrow money. If lenders to the companies are worried about the value of their collateral, they could dump the shares into the market, potentially leading to a stampede—similar to the recent fate of China Huishan Dairy, whose shares dropped 85% in an hour last month.”
- “Who could suffer when the bubble finally pops? Passive funds that were forced to buy the company when MSCI added the stock to its indexes in November. Vanguard, for example, owns 1.4% while BlackRock has 0.9%, according to FactSet.“
- “Fullshare’s stock price has never been sustainable given its high valuation and lack of a strong underlying business, but the latest report could be the final straw.”
- Shenanigans…
Perspective
Economist – The tempest: Workers in southern Europe are stuck in lousy jobs 4/20
- “Dead-end, fixed-term jobs have haunted southern Europe for decades. In 2015 over half of employed 15-to-29 years olds in Spain were on temporary contracts, compared to two-fifths in Italy and just under a quarter in Greece; the average across the European Union is 14%.”
Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice
The Reformed Broker – Contra Einhorn – Joshua Brown 4/25
- “More importantly, when Einhorn asserts that ‘There was no catalyst that we know of that burst the dot-com bubble in March 2000,’ he’s not correct. There was one. It was a Barron’s article, published over the weekend leading into Monday, March 20th. That was the top for the Nasdaq Composite (the rest of the market – aka ‘Old Economy’ stocks had already begun selling off as no one wanted anything non-dot com).”
- “The article was called ‘Burning Fast‘ by Jack Willoughby and it may have been the most important piece of investment journalism ever up until that time.”
NYT – The Low-Inflation World May Be Sticking Around Longer Than Expected – Neil Irwin 4/26
Markets / Economy
FT – The five markets charts that matter for investors – FT Reporters 4/26
- “The problem the US now faces is it has to normalize interest rates, but with the smallest 50% of companies already spending 30% of profits (and at peak EBIT) on interest rate costs, any move upwards is likely to push up interest cost to dangerous levels.” – Andrew Lapthorne, Societe Generale
Real Estate
WSJ – Concern Over Manhattan’s One Vanderbilt Project Grows – Peter Grant 4/25
WSJ – Rising Home Prices Raise Concerns of Overheating – Laura Kusisto 4/26
Tech
Economist – Cloning voices: Imitating people’s speech patterns precisely could bring trouble 4/20
Asia – excluding China and Japan
- “A local election shows how the unscrupulous can manipulate religion to win office.”
Britain
FT – UK public finance: councils build a credit bubble – John Plender 4/25
- “UK local councils are engaging in what is known in the financial jargon familiar to hedge fund managers as a carry trade – a form of arbitrage whereby they borrow at rates much lower than private sector borrowers can obtain in order to invest in property that shows a much higher yield. Money borrowed at 2.5% or so is typically going into property yielding 6-8% or more.”
China
NYT – Debt Crisis Shakes Chinese Town, Pointing to Wider Problems – Keith Bradsher 4/25
- “The problem: Local companies had agreed to guarantee hundreds of millions of dollars of one another’s loans. When some of those loans went bad, the impact rippled across the city.”
- “Zouping’s plight offers a sobering example of the problems that could lurk within China’s vast and murky debt load. A nearly decade-long Chinese lending spree drove growth but burdened the economy with one of the world’s heaviest debt loads, equal to $21,600 worth of bank loans, bonds and other obligations for every man, woman and child in the country. Debt in China has expanded twice as fast as the overall economy since 2008.”
- “China, the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, has considerable firepower to address any financial crisis. But many economists worry that hidden debt bombs could expose the breadth and severity of the problem.”
- “The Chinese government has begun an urgent effort to discourage companies from guaranteeing one another’s bank debts, ordering local banking regulators across the country to file comprehensive reports by the end of the month on the problem. But sussing out the extent could be difficult.”
FT – China’s steel battles with west set to intensify – Lucy Hornby 4/25
- “China’s steel battles in Europe and North America are likely to be only a prelude of bigger future fights as softening domestic demand unleashes a flood of output on to world markets. “
- “China’s steel industry is the world’s largest, by far: at 808m tons last year it accounted for half of global production.”
- “About 90% of Chinese mill output to date has been absorbed at home — but domestic consumption peaked in 2013. As China’s economic growth slows and infrastructure and property construction hits saturation point, more steel is poised to flow to global markets.”
- “Last year China exported 109m tons, or 14% of its output — more than the total output of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker.”
- “Because China’s steel industry is so big, every increase of 1% in exports is almost the equivalent of the entire export market for American steel mills.”
- “But China is not a big source of American steel imports. ‘They are actually more worried about competition in third countries. It’s not so much about the Chinese presence in the US market,’ said Mei Xinyu, a strategist for the Chinese ministry of commerce.”
- “A pick-up in Chinese consumption this year could stave off the deluge for now. But unless there is a drastic cut in Chinese output, the prospect of a flood of Chinese steel on to global markets is not going away.”
Other Links
WSJ – Growing Homelessness Problems Spur Interest in Tiny Houses – Zusha Elinson 4/26