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Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice
FT – Trump’s warnings about unfair trade with China ring true – Nick Butler 2/11
- “There is no sign that Beijing accepts the responsibilities needed to build stronger links.”
FT – Tech companies are the new investment banks – Rana Foroohar 2/11
- “Economist Zoltan Pozsar has forensically analyzed the $1tn in corporate offshore savings parked in liquid assets, a fortune that he likens to China’s foreign exchange reserves, not only because of its market-moving size, but the idea that both fortunes were created by a macroeconomic ‘crime’ — mercantilism in the case of China, and tax arbitrage for the corporate hoard.”
- “The largest and most intellectual-property-rich 10 per cent of companies — Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Alphabet — control 80 per cent of this hoard. Their earnings come mainly from IP that can be easily moved across borders. Their offshore savings went from around $100bn in 2008 to $700bn by 2016. And according to Mr Pozsar’s calculations, most of that money is held not in cash but in bonds. Indeed, half of it is in corporate bonds.”
- “What does this mean? Many significant things. But let us start with the obvious, which is that bonds are not cash. If companies are to bring back those overseas earnings and invest them in growth-enhancing projects in the US, as Donald Trump keeps promising us they will, they would have to sell their bond stash.”
- “This has serious implications for interest rates. Consider that the Federal Reserve is starting to deleverage its own balance sheet. Now, add in the corporate ‘echo-taper’, as the Credit Suisse report puts it, and you have got a heck of a lot of bonds on the market, which is bound to move the interest rate needle up, perhaps more quickly than is currently expected.”
NYT – America’s Real Digital Divide – Naomi Schaefer Riley 2/11
- “In 2004, Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Hospital wrote in the medical journal Pediatrics that ‘early exposure to television was associated with subsequent attentional problems.’ Even when controlling for socioeconomic status, gestational age and other factors, he discovered that an increase of one standard deviation in the number of hours of television watched at age 1 ‘is associated with a 28% increase in the probability of having attentional problems at age 7’.”
- “Every additional hour of TV increased a child’s odds of attention problems by about 10%. Kids who watched three hours a day were 30% more likely to have attention trouble than those who watched none. A 2010 article in Pediatrics confirmed that exposure to TV and video games was associated with greater attention problems in children.”
- “Unfortunately, too often the message we send low-income and less-educated parents is that screen time is going to help their children.”
- “Make no mistake: The real digital divide in this country is not between children who have access to the internet and those who don’t. It’s between children whose parents know that they have to restrict screen time and those whose parents have been sold a bill of goods by schools and politicians that more screens are a key to success. It’s time to let everyone in on the secret.”
Markets / Economy
FT – Bridgewater investment chief sees new era of volatility – Robin Wigglesworth 2/11
- “Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer at Bridgewater, said last week’s market turbulence, which helped trigger record outflows from global stock funds, was set to continue.”
- “‘There had been a lot of complacency built up in markets over a long time, so we don’t think this shakeout will be over in a matter of days,’ Mr Prince, who runs Bridgewater’s $160bn of investments alongside the fund’s founder Ray Dalio, said in an interview. ‘We’ll probably have a much bigger shakeout coming’.”
- “Brian Levine, co-head of global equities trading at Goldman Sachs, on Friday sent out an email to the investment bank’s bigger clients that also warned that the market probably still has not hit its bottom.”
- “’Historically shocks of this magnitude find their troughs in panicky selling,’ he said in the email, seen by the FT. ‘I’ve been amazed at how little ‘capitulation selling’ we’ve seen on the desk . . . The ‘buy on the dip’ mentality needs to be thoroughly punished before we find the bottom’.”
- “The improving health of the global economy has sparked concerns that long-dormant inflationary pressures will finally emerge, forcing central banks to reduce bond-buying programs and raise interest rates more aggressively than expected.”
- “While Mr Prince doubted inflation would become a real problem, he expected central banks to start draining the global economy of some of the trillions of dollars they have pumped into the financial system in recent years — further challenging the post-crisis bull market.”
- “That meshes with the view of Mr Levine at Goldman Sachs, who said that ‘longer term, I do believe this is a genuine regime change, one where you sell-the-rallies rather than buy-the-dips’.”
- “However, Mr Prince expects global growth will stay on track despite tighter monetary policy and more turbulent markets. ‘The real economy will outperform financial economy this year, the opposite of what we’ve seen in recent years,’ he said.”
Real Estate
- “Blackstone Group LP, which scored big four years ago when a company it owned sold New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel for a record-setting price to a little-known Chinese insurer, may soon get a chance to own the iconic landmark again.”
- “The U.S. private equity firm has held initial discussions about bidding for Anbang Insurance Group Co. assets in a sale overseen by the Chinese government, people with knowledge of the matter said. The assets include the Waldorf as well as Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc., which Blackstone sold to Anbang in 2016, said the people.”
- “Anbang is among a crop of Chinese serial acquirers that spent tens of billions of dollars snapping up trophy assets over the past few years, only to lurch into turmoil once their strategies backfired. Blackstone was one of the biggest beneficiaries of Anbang’s largesse, selling at least a combined $9.5 billion of assets to the insurer, data compiled by Bloomberg show.”
Finance
Bloomberg Businessweek – What Big Hedge Fund Fees Pay For – Neil Weinberg 2/9
- “One corner of the investing world that’s been more resistant to these trends is ‘alternative’ investments, including private equity and hedge funds, which are sold to institutions and affluent individuals. The fees charged—traditionally 2% of assets plus 20% of any profits—can be hundreds of times higher than those of the lowest-cost mutual funds. The industry frames the fees as the price investors must pay to tap into top money managers.”
- “A close look at where the money flows suggests a more complicated story. Alt funds regularly share major chunks of their fees with the bankers, brokers, and other salesmen who steer clients their way. The payments come in a number of forms and go by different names: placement fees, payment for shelf space, and retrocessions, among them.”
- “Placement agents, who get paid by fund managers for lining up investors, have been such a big source of corruption that New York and Pennsylvania have banned their public pension funds from using them. The European Union in January banned many advisers from receiving inducements to sell investments to individuals.”
- “’Contrary to what the clients generally believe, half the fees they’re paying are going not to investment geniuses but to marketing,’ says Edward Siedle, an attorney who represented a whistleblower in the JPMorgan settlement. ‘The marketing payments explain why hedge funds have persisted, despite ample evidence that they underperform.’ Hedge funds that invest in stocks returned 7.2% annually from 2009 to 2017, which was less than half the S&P 500’s return, according to data from Hedge Fund Research.”
Cryptocurrency
How Much.net – Cryptocurrency Transaction Speed per second – Raul 1/10
China
Bloomberg – Wall Street Bank That Fed on HNA’s Rise Now Get to Dismantle It – Ben Scent 2/11
- “Wall Street bankers gorged on fees from HNA Group Co. as they helped the debt-laden Chinese conglomerate clinch $55 billion of acquisitions around the world. They’re set for another bonanza as the company offloads some of those same purchases to stave off a liquidity crisis.”
- “HNA doled out as much as $200 million in advisory fees during a three-year investment spree, according to Freeman & Co. Now strapped for cash and facing pressure from creditors, the Chinese company is planning to sell about $16 billion of assets in the first half, people familiar with the matter said last month.”
FT – Xi takes aim at military in anti-graft drive – Charles Clover 2/11
India
Bloomberg Quint – $3.6 Billion in Hidden Bad Loans Spotlight India Bank Stress – Anto Antony 2/12
- “India’s regulator unearthed about $3.6 billion of bad loans in the books of the country’s biggest bank, amplifying questions about distress in the financial sector given underreporting by some rivals as well.”
- “State Bank of India on Friday said an audit by the central bank showed soured debt was about 232 billion rupees ($3.6 billion) higher than what the state-run lender reported for the end of March 2017.”
- “State Bank of India’s admission is particularly striking because the lender is often seen as a proxy for the nation’s economy, where the ratio of bad loans has surged to be among the highest in the world.”
Japan
WSJ – Daily Shot: Nikkei 225 2/9
- US markets were not the only ones with a sell off last week.
