After a record-breaking rally in bond markets, all of
Germany’s government debt now trades at sub-zero yields. That raises an
important question: what kind of investors are happy to hoover up bonds that
guarantee a loss if they are held to maturity?
One answer is that investors — in the sense of fund
managers seeking to generate a return on their clients’ money — do not actually
own very much of the German bond market.
An analysis by Union Investment, a Frankfurt-based
asset manager, shows that the overall value of Bunds outstanding has
been falling slightly since 2014 thanks to Germany’s aversion to
running budget deficits. But the volume of freely tradable Bunds on the market
has fallen much more sharply, and is expected to drop below €70bn by 2024 down
from more than €600bn a decade earlier.
The precipitous drop has been caused by the rise of a
class of bondholders typically indifferent to the level of yields. These
include foreign reserve managers at central banks, financial institutions that
since the crisis have had to hold ever larger piles of government bonds to meet
regulatory requirements, and the German central bank itself. The Bundesbank
holds more than €350bn of Bunds as a result of the European Central
Bank’s quantitative easing program.
Given the paucity of Bunds, it is not surprising that
Berlin is under growing pressure to borrow more, particularly with the German
economy seemingly headed for recession. But the modest scale of fiscal
loosening plans — finance minister Olaf Scholz has discussed a
€50bn stimulus package — seems unlikely to alter the dynamics of the
Bund market, for now.
When Austria sold a €3.5bn 100-year bond two years
ago at a yield of just 2.1%, a few eyebrows were raised. Today, buyers who had
handed over cash in that sale could be forgiven for feeling a bit smug.
The bond is among the best performing assets in the
world this year, notching up a total return of nearly 66% since the end of
2018. Nearly half of the gains have come since June, when Vienna raised a
further €1bn in a follow-up sale of the same bond at an even stingier
yield of 1.2%.
Debt markets around the world have rallied in 2019.
However, it is longer-dated bonds that have been the outstanding performers.
That is a function of their high duration — a measure of the sensitivity of
bond prices to moves in interest rates. For ultra-long bonds, even a small dip
in yields means massive price gains that dwarf income from coupon payments.
German 30-year bonds, which have recently seen their
yields turn negative, have returned 28% this year. Holders of UK 50-year bonds
are sitting on a 22% gain.
Not all countries issue ultra-long-dated debt. The
longest bonds sold by the US and Germany are their 30-year benchmarks. Within
the eurozone, Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy and Spain have all in
the past five years capitalized on investors’ thirst for yield by selling bonds
maturing in more than three decades.
Generally, demand for these bonds is dominated by
pension funds and insurers that need long-dated assets to match their
long-dated liabilities — and are typically less concerned with yield levels
than other investors.
But Austria’s century bond was an exception, with
asset managers accounting for nearly two-thirds of orders, suggesting that many
buyers were using the bond to take an outsize bet on lower rates.
“Petrol prices jumped at the fastest pace in 18 years in May, with an average increase of 6p per liter from the previous month, according to roadside assistance and insurance company RAC.”
“Unleaded petrol rose from 123.43p to 129.41p ($6.46 per gallon) over the month, taking the cost of filling up a 55-litre (14.53 gallon) family car to £71.18 ($93.79), an increase of £3.29 in just one month, according to RAC Fuel Watch data.”
“Price rises were driven by a jump in oil prices combined with the weakening of the pound against the dollar, said RAC.”
“Debt collectors in China are harnessing new technologies such as artificial intelligence in a bid to collect on an estimated Rmb1.3tn ($200bn) debt bubble that has formed in the country’s peer-to-peer lending industry.”
“An estimated Rmb1.3tn in outstanding P2P debt as of May, according to online lending intelligence firm Wdzj.com, and a rising number of defaults have opened the door to a wave of start-ups using new technologies to try to recover tardy loans.”
“’People’s usage of P2P debt is very high but the government only monitors the banking system closely,’ said Cherry Sheng, chief executive of Shanghai-based debt collection group Ziyitong and a former manager at Citigroup and ANZ Bank. ‘This has become an opportunity for start-ups with advanced technology to move into this market.’”
“Ziyitong, which has sought to recover Rmb150bn since it was set up in 2016, recently launched an AI platform to help recover delinquent loans for some 600 debt collection agencies, and more than 200 lenders including Alibaba Group and Postal Savings Bank of China, Ms. Sheng said.”
“The system scrapes the internet for information on borrowers and their friends, then contacts the borrower via phone using a dialogue robot. The conversations are recorded and analyzed by an algorithm that then determines the phrasing with the highest likelihood of pressuring the person to pay back the loan. The system also calls friends of the borrower and asks them to relay the urgency of making payments.”
“In May the AI system had a recovery rate of 41% for large clients on loans delinquent for up to one week, according to Ms. Sheng, compared with a rate of as low as 20% via traditional debt collection methods for similar loans. Ziyitong plans to expand the system to loans that have been unpaid for longer periods of time.”
“Yigou, another debt collection start-up, has launched a mobile phone application that allows collection agents to search thousands of individual debt records and choose cases, streamlining connections between lenders and collectors. The company can also provide geo-locational data on some borrowers to help the agents track them down.”
“The Wu Xiaohui who appeared in a Shanghai court in late March on fraud and embezzlement charges was a far cry from the man who rapidly turned a modest provincial car insurance business into an investment conglomerate with Rmb2tn ($316bn) in assets.”
“Tie-less and wearing a rumpled suit, the founder of Anbang ‘expressed deep self-reflection, understanding of and regret for the crimes and expressed deep remorse’, according to a post on the court’s social media account. But to no avail. On Thursday, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison.”
“At the time of his detention in February, Anbang controlled 58 companies directly or indirectly. As well as New York hotels, its holdings included rescue financings of troubled European financial institutions, control of a South Korean insurer and substantial equity stakes in about 20 major listed companies in China.”
“The charges that Wu was convicted of relate to the way the finances of the group were managed, including the shifting of billions of dollars of funds between different entities that he allegedly oversaw. His sister, who was officially head of Anbang Hong Kong, has also been detained.”
“Prosecutors accused Wu of using ‘false material’ in 2011 to get regulatory approval to sell insurance products. They also said that he had oversold Rmb724bn of insurance products and had diverted Rmb65bn to another company he controlled, which he had partly used for ‘lavish personal spending’.”
“In addition, Wu was accused of using the proceeds from insurance sales to inject capital back into Anbang in order to give the impression that the company was more financially stable than it was.”
“Analysts say Anbang was bound to attract the attention of Chinese regulators because of the nature of its business model. The group relied on issuing wealth management products for its funding. These risky investments were sold to ordinary people seeking higher returns than they could get from bank deposits. Given the nature of the investors, the Chinese authorities worried that any failure to pay out on the products could lead to social friction.”
“At the same time, the group took huge risks on how it invested the funds. Two months before Wu was detained, the company had 19% of its long-term investments in stocks, presenting a high level of risk should the market be hit by a downturn. Most insurance companies in China have less than 5% of their assets invested in the stock market. Another 19% was invested in redeemable short-term loans provided through trusts, an opaque area of shadow banking in China in which risk is almost impossible to assess with available public information.”
“Some may view the US dollar’s appreciation as consistent with a long-term rebalancing of the global economy. But, as Argentina’s recent request for IMF financing starkly demonstrates, a sharp and sudden dollar appreciation risks unbalancing things elsewhere.”
“Succeed or fail, Masayoshi Son is changing the world of technology investing.”
“The fund is the result of a peculiar alliance forged in 2016 between Mr Son and Muhammad bin Salman. Saudi Arabia’s thrusting crown prince handed Mr Son $45bn as part of his attempt to diversify the kingdom’s economy. That great dollop of capital attracted more investors—from Abu Dhabi, Apple and others. Add in SoftBank’s own $28bn of equity, and Mr Son has a war chest of $100bn. That far exceeds the $64bn that all venture capital (VC) funds raised globally in 2016; it is four times the size of the biggest private-equity fund ever raised.”
“The fund has already spent $30bn, nearly as much as the $33bn raised by the entire American VC industry in 2017. And because about half of its capital is in the form of debt, it is under pressure to make interest payments. This combination of gargantuanism, grandiosity and guaranteed payouts may end up in financial disaster. Indeed, the Vision Fund could mark the giddy top of the tech boom.”
“Rapid growth in debt levels is historically the best predictor of a crisis. And this year the corporate bond market has been on a tear, with companies issuing a record $1.7tn last year, and over half a trillion already this year. Even mediocre companies have benefited from easy money. But as the rate environment changes, perhaps more quickly than is imagined, many could be vulnerable.”
“Investors who bought some of the riskiest emerging market sovereign bond sales in the past year have been left nursing paper losses as a strengthening dollar has rattled sentiment for emerging markets.”
“JPMorgan’s emerging markets bond index has lost 5.1% since the start of this year.”
WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – BOJ Assets YoY Change 5/13
“The U.S. economy is back to normal again. Unemployment is low. Business investment is up. Wages are slowly rising. The traumatic memories of the Great Recession and the global financial crisis are finally beginning to fade.”
“The absence of pressing crises means that it’s a good time to step back and take stock of deeper issues in the U.S. economic system. For several years, there has been a rising outcry over inequality… Adjusted for inflation, wages for production and nonsupervisory workers fell from their peak until the early 1990s, and haven’t yet climbed back to their former heights:”
“But the story isn’t quite true. The average American has, in fact, seen modest gains since the early 1970s; the falling wages of production workers don’t tell the whole story.”
“What explains the difference between wages and income? Two things. First, wages aren’t the only way Americans make money in the market. Income from assets, like retirement accounts and pensions, is increasingly important, as are nonwage compensation like employer contributions to retirement accounts. Second, the income numbers include government transfers, which have shifted more and more income from rich Americans to those who earn less in the market. These factors are all bigger than in the 1970s:”
“Increased redistribution has been helping the poor as well as the middle class. Recent calculations by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities show that child poverty in the U.S. has fallen to record lows once government assistance is taken into account.”
“Meanwhile, gains in income haven’t come from increased toil. Despite women’s increased labor force participation, working-age Americans in 2014 tended to labor little more than their predecessors in the late 1970s:”
“In fact, the working hours data makes the 2000s and 2010s look less awful in comparison to the ’80s and ’90s. Gains in those earlier decades came partly from women entering the workforce en masse. But those gains were preserved in recent decades despite Americans working fewer hours on average.”
“It was during the early 1970s that total factor productivity growth began to slow down. It accelerated again in the 1990s and early 2000s, only to fall back to a crawl about the middle of that decade.”
“It’s therefore possible to interpret the slower growth of Americans’ incomes as the result of slowing productivity. Inequality has certainly contributed as well, but increasing government transfers have helped cancel out some of that. But with slowing productivity growth, there’s simply less to redistribute than if productivity had maintained the torrid pace of the early and mid-20th century.”
“Capitalism may not be in crisis, but it’s troubling that a few super-rich individuals have managed to amass vast fortunes even as productivity has stagnated. That is a phenomenon whose cause must be carefully investigated. For the typical American, gains in living standards have continued at a slow, steady pace. Increasing that pace should be a top priority.”
“Germany’s Daimler and Japan’s three largest banks are set to become investors in SoftBank’s Vision Fund as the Masayoshi Son-led company looks to complete fundraising for its $100bn technology investment fund, according to people briefed on the matter.”
“The Mercedes-Benz maker along with MUFG, Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp will be among the final investors in the fund, which is the largest ever created in private equity or venture capital, these people said.”
“They added that other new investors will include Larry Ellison, the billionaire US co-founder of software group Oracle who is investing personally, and the sovereign wealth fund of Bahrain.”
“Daimler and the Japanese banks are set to be among the smaller ones in the fund, alongside earlier participants such as Apple, Qualcomm, Foxconn and Sharp. About $88bn of the fund comes from SoftBank, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.”
“Individuals close to the three Japanese banks said their decision to invest had a twin motivation: the quest for returns in Japan’s ultra low-interest environment and the desire to further strengthen their relationships with what is by far Japan’s most active corporate name.”
“All the new investors will be participating under the terms of the fund’s unusual structure, which sees them receive 62% in preferred units paying out an annual coupon of 7% over the fund’s 12-year life cycle, and the rest with equity.”
“SoftBank itself is the only investor that has full equity exposure, giving it the most upside to the fund’s investments in addition to the management and performance fees.”
“SoftBank outlined on Wednesday in a presentation that it had spent $29.7bn of the Vision Fund since inception. It has placed bets on more than 30 companies including ride-hailing group Uber, shared-office provider WeWork and chipmaker Nvidia.”
“Pipeline constraints mean shale cannot come to rescue as sanctions push up prices.”
“Inadequate transport capacity in the region is reflected in the soaring discount for oil in Midland, west Texas, compared with US benchmark crude. That discount hit $13 a barrel this week, meaning that while the easier-to-trade West Texas Intermediate was selling for about $70 a barrel, oil in Midland was just $57 a barrel.”
“The oil headlines this week have all been about Iran, but the slowly unfolding disaster in Venezuela may be even more significant.”
“Venezuela faces two risks that, if both come to pass, could cut its oil output by more than the biggest estimates of what could happen to Iran if sanctions were reimposed. The risks stem from Venezuela’s dependence on importing lighter varieties of crude to mix with the heavy oil it produces, and its need for products imported from the U.S. to enable its thick oil to be transported.”
“The first situation is playing out in the Dutch-administered islands of Curaçao and Bonaire, where Venezuela’s state oil company owns refining and storage facilities. U.S. producer ConocoPhillips is attempting to take physical control of those facilities after winning an arbitration award against Venezuela for seizing its assets in 2007. Venezuela appears to be telling its suppliers not to ship oil to these facilities for fear ConocoPhillips will seize that too, potentially shutting down refining.”
“The second situation would play out if the U.S. halts exports to Venezuela of a product called diluent, which allows the thick oil to be transported. Such a move would imperil half or more of the country’s remaining production. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence has already called the presidential election a sham.”
“Elections in Malaysia are normally predictable. In fact, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and various allies had won all of them since 1955, until this week. Over the years UMNO has resorted to every conceivable trick to remain in power: stirring communal tensions among Malaysia’s ethnic groups, locking up critics, rigging the electoral system in its favor, bribing voters with populist handouts and threatening chaos if it lost. In the run-up to the election on May 9th it did all of that. It was testimony to the awfulness of the government of Najib Razak that the opposition was even in contention. And it is testimony to the good sense of Malaysian voters that the opposition won, convincingly, paving the way for Malaysia’s first ever change of government.”
“For a country where politics has always been run along communal lines, the shocking upset holds out the prospect of a more meritocratic form of government. For the region, where rulers with authoritarian instincts have been steadily curbing political freedoms, it is a heartening victory for democracy. And for Mr Najib, who was accused by America’s Department of Justice of personally pocketing $681m looted from a Malaysian government agency, it is a welcome comeuppance.”
“Sceptics note that it is led by Mahathir Mohamad, a former five-term UMNO prime minister who pioneered many of the underhand tactics to which Mr Najib resorted in his failed bid to remain in power. Dr Mahathir was also a champion of Malaysia’s odious system of racial preferences, which he expanded to keep Malay voters loyal to UMNO.”
“Perhaps the new government will succumb to infighting and fail to get much done. But its very existence is a potent reminder to Malaysians and their neighbors that governments can and should, from time to time, change peacefully. With luck, Cambodians, Singaporeans, Thais and Vietnamese, among others, will begin to wonder if something similar might one day happen to them.”
“China credit spreads hit their widest level in nearly two years this week following new regulations that undermined long-held assumptions about implicit guarantees on debt linked to local governments.”
“The analysis of Census Bureau data tracks the differences in annual income between household income groups. The rich versus poor gap compared households in the top 20% to those in the bottom 20% by metropolitan area.”
“At No. 1 is San Jose, California, the Silicon Valley city where the rich versus poor gap widened by $73,600 to $339,000. At No. 100, with the smallest change among 100 largest metro areas, is the border city of El Paso, Texas, where the gap widened by $2,600 to $131,200.”
“Nationally, the rich versus poor gap expanded by $31,000 to just over $197,000. Last year’s measure, using data from 2010 to 2015, showed an increase of $29,500 to $189,600.”
“The Bloomberg ranking also shows the change in the gap between the super-rich to middle class which widened in 98 of 100 metropolitan areas, led by Bridgeport, Connecticut, which overlaps entirely with Fairfield County. The gap narrowed in Ogden, Utah and Colorado Springs, Colorado. The super-rich to middle class gap is defined by those in the top five percent of income vs households in the middle 20%.”
“A third take of data shows the middle class income span — defined as the gap between those within 30 and 80% of an areas income. The middle class span grew the most in San Francisco where it rose to $140,800 in 2016 from $108,300 five years earlier.”
“A new report by the Brewers Association — a trade association representing small and independent American craft brewers — showed that craft brewers saw a 5% rise in production volume in 2017. Yet with that growth comes an increasingly crowded playing field, leading to more closures of small craft breweries. In 2017, there were nearly 1,000 new brewery openings nationwide and 165 closures — a closing rate of 2.6%. That’s a 42% jump from 2016, when 116 craft breweries closed.”
“WeWork, the lossmaking provider of shared office space, will seek to raise money from debt investors for the first time in a sale that will provide a stern test of sentiment in the junk bond market.”
“The $20bn US company has hired more than a dozen banks to pitch a bond sale to US money managers this week, according to five people with knowledge of the planned sale.”
“Sales at the company more than doubled to $886m in 2017 from the year before, although its loss also widened to $884m, according to bond documents reviewed by the Financial Times. WeWork said sales had continued to quicken and by last month had reached an annualised pace of between $1.4bn and $1.5bn.”
“WeWork has raised nearly $7bn through equity investments over the past seven years. Its ambitions received a big boost in the middle of last year with a $4.4bn injection of cash from SoftBank and the Japanese conglomerate’s Saudi-backed technology fund, laying the ground for more rapid expansion around the world.”
“The move by WeWork to tap the $8.8tn US corporate debt market, a vital source of funding for companies, will bring new investor scrutiny to the company at a time when corporate borrowing costs are on the rise.”
“The bond offering drew junk labels from the leading US credit rating agencies, underlining the risk of investing in the debt. One person briefed on the sale added that the seven-year bond could price with a yield as low as 7%, although a second added that the final price WeWork pays could be higher.”
Real Estate
WSJ – Daily Shot: US Existing Home Sales 4/24
WSJ – Daily Shot: NAR – US Existing Homes Months Supply 4/24
WSJ – Daily Shot: NY Fed – US Households average probability of moving 4/24
“Since the shale oil boom began a decade ago, exploration and production companies have needed a steady inflow of capital to pay for drilling and completing new wells but thanks to the rise in crude prices, many can now finance themselves.”
“From the time the first shale oil test wells were drilled in the US in 2008-09, the industry’s capital expenditure has exceeded its cash from operations, with producers only able to stay in business by attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in financing from bond and share sales and bank loans. From 2008 to 2017, US exploration and production companies raised $293bn from bond sales, according to Dealogic.”
“Another factor that has helped producers turn the corner is the continued improvement in the techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, which have brought costs down sharply.”
“Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oilfield services groups, wrote off its remaining investment in Venezuela at a cost of $312m on Monday, highlighting the decline of the crisis-hit nation’s oil industry.”
“Halliburton said it would continue to operate in the country ‘at a reduced level’, but would be careful about its future exposure. It last year wrote down $647m for late payment by PDVSA, Venezuela’s national oil company, and the fall in the value of a promissory note intended to cover some of those bills.”
“Venezuela’s crude production has dropped 30% from 2.15m barrels a day in 2016 to 1.5m b/d last month. It is less than half its level when Hugo Chávez, the former president, was elected in 1998.”
“Schlumberger, the world’s largest listed oilfield services group, similarly wrote off its investment in Venezuela at the end of last year, taking a pre-tax write down of $938m. It continues to operate a cash business in the country, but that has continued to decline into this year.”
“Paal Kibsgaard, Schlumberger’s chief executive, said Venezuela’s oil production was in ‘free fall’.”
“Although the rise in oil prices since last year has offered some help to Venezuela, the benefit has been muted because most of the oil PDVSA produces does not generate cash, according to Francisco Monaldi of the Baker Institute at Rice University.”
“He argued in a recent report that of the roughly 1.8m b/d that PDVSA produced last November, 400,000-450,000 b/d were used in the domestic market at a huge loss, while about 500,000-600,000 b/d were committed to repaying loans from China and Russia and owed to joint venture partners.”
“While the eyes of the world have been on the Syrian refugee crisis and the exodus of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar, Venezuela’s humanitarian disaster has gone relatively unnoticed.”
“But the sheer number of people now fleeing the country is changing that. The UNHCR says 5,000 migrants are leaving every day: at that rate, 1.8m people, more than 5% of Venezuela’s population, will depart this year.“
“It was not always like this. For decades, Venezuela was a net importer of people, luring Europeans with lucrative oil jobs. A generation ago, it was the wealthiest country in Latin America.”
“’We are potentially facing the biggest refugee crisis in our hemisphere in modern history’ says Shannon O’Neil, senior fellow for Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.”
“Many are heading west to Colombia which, emerging from a long civil conflict of its own, is ill-equipped to receive them. There are now more than 600,000 Venezuelans in Colombia, twice as many as a year ago. Thousands have poured over the footbridge that separates the Venezuelan town of San Antonio from the Colombian city of Cúcuta. Walk the streets of Cúcuta and you find Venezuelans everywhere, selling cigarettes at the traffic lights, working as prostitutes, sleeping rough.”
“The collapse of the Venezuelan health system has prompted a resurgence of long-vanquished diseases. The government no longer provides reliable medical data and when the health minister revealed last year that the number of malaria cases had jumped 76% in a year, pregnancy-related deaths had risen 66% and infant mortality had climbed 30%, she was promptly sacked. A recent opposition-led survey suggested 79% of Venezuelan hospitals have little or no running water. The days when the Chávez government prided itself on decent medical care for the poor are long gone.”
“Measles, eradicated in much of Latin America, has returned. Of the 730 confirmed cases in the region last year, all but three were in Venezuela. As people flee, they are taking the disease with them. In the first months of this year, there were 14 confirmed cases in Brazil and one in Colombia. All 15 victims were Venezuelan migrants.”
“’The infant mortality rate is on a par with Pakistan and the poverty rate of 85% in on a par with Haiti and sub-Saharan Africa,’ says Dany Bahar of the Brookings Institution in Washington. ‘People are fleeing because if they stay, they die. They die because they don’t get enough food to eat, they die because they get malaria and can’t get treatment, they die because they need dialysis and can’t get it’.”
“Some 22 states and the District of Columbia have built too little housing to keep up with economic growth in the 15 years since 2000, resulting in a total shortage of 7.3 million units, according to research to be released Monday by an advocacy group for loosening building regulations.”
“California bears half of the blame for the shortage: The state built 3.4 million too few units to keep up with job, population and income growth.”
“There is growing awareness that the housing shortage is widespread and it affects states not often thought of as being especially anti-development. Home prices nationally rose 6.2% in the year that ended in January, roughly twice the rate of incomes and three times the rate of inflation, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index.”
“Arizona and Utah are among the states that have built too little housing in the 15-year period, according to the report. The shortage in these places likely reflects strong demand as they become top destinations for retirees and people priced out of the Northeast and California.”
“At the same time, it is becoming more difficult to build all across America due to shortages of land, labor and materials.”
“Economists who have reviewed the report caution that measuring the present need for housing by extrapolating from past production is imperfect. Western states that were sparsely populated 60 years ago and experienced huge building booms in the latter half of the 20th century may not need to build at such a rapid clip today.”
“Housing shortages also are difficult to measure because most people will find somewhere to live by doubling up with family or roommates or moving to areas where homes are abundant but jobs may be scarce.”
“Nonetheless, the data underscore what economists say is a clear trend. ‘We have a housing deficit,’ said Chris Herbert, managing director at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. ‘I think we can all agree we should be building more.’”
“The federal government’s annual budget deficit is set to widen significantly in the next few years, topping $1 trillion in 2020 despite healthy economic growth, according to new projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released Monday.”
“The national debt, which has topped $21 trillion, is expected to soar to more than $33 trillion in 2028. By then, debt held by the public will almost match the size of the nation’s economy, reaching 96% of gross domestic product, a higher level than any point since just after World War II and well past the level that economists say could court a crisis.”
“Celebrity endorsers of cryptocurrency fundraisers are at risk of legal action from regulators and investors, legal experts have warned, following a US case that highlighted the involvement of famous promoters in a so-called initial coin offering that collapsed.”
“The Securities and Exchange Commission last week charged two men with taking $32m from thousands of investors via an ICO, a crowdfunding mechanism used to raise money for digital currency ventures. The co-founders allegedly raised the funds for a ‘fraudulent’ start-up called Centra Tech, with the scheme touted on social media by champion boxer Floyd Mayweather and musician DJ Khaled.”
“While the SEC stopped short of naming the celebrity promoters in their statement, it noted their involvement — an unusual move because they are not defendants in the case. Experts said celebrities who have endorsed ICOs could now face legal action from regulators, as well as investors who believe they have been scammed.”
“Charles Whitehead, a professor at Cornell Law School, warned that even if an ICO was not a scam, promoters could face legal action. In most cases, someone who promoted an ICO that was not registered with the regulator could have violated market rules, he said, noting that US laws tightly regulate publicity around the sale of new securities.”
“China will provide the ‘single largest growth opportunity’ for global investment managers, with the country’s mutual fund assets forecast to multiply fivefold to reach $7.5tn (Rmb47tn) by 2025.”
“This expansion could create a fee pool for running mutual funds worth $42bn a year, a lucrative new stream of profits for international managers with an established Asian presence, according to UBS, the Swiss bank.”
“China is on course to become the world’s second biggest fund market, behind the US.”
“Beijing unveiled far-reaching reforms in November intended to accelerate the growth of China’s under-developed investment industry with less than 5% of Chinese household assets held in mutual funds.”
“It plans to relax or eliminate foreign ownership limits on Chinese financial services groups, including asset managers, a change that is designed to attract greater involvement by large international players.”
“Stewart Aldcroft, Asia chief executive of CitiTrust, the securities and fund services arm of US bank Citigroup, said Beijing’s decision to allow foreigners to own 100% of mainland fund management companies as early as 2020 had provided a ‘huge opportunity’ for international players.”
“He noted that about $17tn in assets is held in unregulated wealth management products.”
“’Chinese regulators want a large proportion of those assets to move to the regulated areas so they are making it easier for fund management companies to operate,’ said Mr Aldcroft.”
“From the outside, the Korean economy appears to be flourishing: the country is home to major industry leaders such as Samsung, Hyundai, and Kia. It’s the 11th-largest economy in the world, with semiconductors, car LCDs, and other high-tech products dominating its exports. The overall unemployment rate is just 4.6%.”
“Still, young people can’t find jobs. Youth unemployment has hovered around 10% in Korea for the past five years. The underemployment rate — defined by those involuntarily working jobs they’re overqualified for or are part-time — is even higher as of this year: it hovered at 38% in 2016, according to Dongseo University professor Justin Fendos.”
“In this highly educated economy, it can be hard for young Koreans to distinguish themselves from their peers. Nearly 70% of all Koreans ages 25–34 have a post-secondary degree, the highest of all Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, and a high school degree is nearly universal. Entire neighborhoods in Seoul are full of college graduates studying to pass hiring exams in order to get in at Korea’s biggest companies or the enviable public sector.”
“’The design of Korean society is a big reason why the cryptocurrency became so popular,’ says Yohan Yun, a 25-year-old assistant reporter in Seoul who invested around $400 in Ethereum. ‘People here are generally unhappy with their current status in society.’”
“Even employed young people are pessimistic about their economic prospects: a survey conducted in 2015 showed that half of young Koreans don’t believe that they will do better than their parents’ generation, compared to 29% in 2006.”
“For young Koreans, cryptocurrency seems like a rare shot at prosperity. Months after last year’s bubble started to implode in February, the Korean won remains the third most traded currency for Bitcoin. The country of 52 million comprises 17% of all Ethereum trading, and it was the location of two-thirds of world’s biggest exchanges this winter, Korea Expose reported in February.”
“An estimated three in 10 salaried workers in Korea had invested in e-currencies by December 2017, according to a survey by Korean recruiting firm Saramin. Eighty percent of those people were in their 20s and 30s.”
“But now that the prices of cryptocurrency coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple have tanked, many Korean youths are dealing with the mental and financial aftermath of their losses. Korean psychologists have reported an uptick of patients from the so-called ‘Bitcoin blues,’ divorce counselors say marriages are splitting from failed investments, and even the country’s prime minister said that virtual currencies are on track to cause ‘serious distortion or pathological social phenomena’ among Korea’s young population.”
“Real estate used to be the traditional way to grow one’s fortune in Korea, but prices have become exceedingly expensive for even upper-middle-class people. And interest rates for savings accounts are rarely more than a few percentage points a year.”
“Koreans’ hyperconnectivity helped spur Bitcoin’s popularity. Teens and young adults spend around four hours a day using mobile phones in Korea. Nearly every Korean home has internet access, and 88% have smartphones, the highest percentage globally. Such an abundance of connectivity allowed potential traders of all ages to learn about the craze and hear about the insane amounts of money one could make on trading. Cryptotrading clubs, where people can meet like-minded traders and share tips, popped up at many Korean universities.”
“Thanks in part to the frenzy, some coins cost up to 51% more in Korean markets than anywhere else. Bitcoin’s price was up nearly $8,000 in January, Bloomberg reported. The ‘kimchi premium’ drew foreign traders to buy their coins abroad and trade them in the Korean market.”
“But then came the crash. From January 6th to January 16th, 2018 the price of Bitcoin to Korean won tumbled from a high of a US-equivalent $25,065 to $13,503, according to Korbit. It continued to fall to $7,410 by February 5th, and as of April 2nd, the price of a bitcoin sits at $7,241.”
“In total, the Bitcoin crash wiped out $44 billion of value in January, or more than Ford’s entire market capitalization, according to Bloomberg. New regulations against cryptocurrency trading, particularly ones from a worried South Korean government, helped usher the fall.”
“The mobile-home market is showing signs of stress.”
“The delinquency rate on mobile-home loans has increased by 200 basis points, or 2 percentage points, over the past year, according to research cited by UBS. The 30-day-plus delinquency level is now about 5%, the highest level since 2005.”
“The increase in the number of struggling mobile-home borrowers suggests that a large chunk of these people haven’t benefitted from the economic growth of the past few years, despite the low unemployment level.”
“This data represents a piece of a jigsaw puzzle of the condition of consumer finances in the US. And the picture that’s emerging, according to UBS, is of a two-speed economy, with lower-income consumers and younger borrowers with substantial student debt moving at a slower pace than more affluent and established participants.”
“‘We believe weakness in these two groups (lower-income consumers and younger borrowers) will drive higher credit losses at some stage over the next few years — particularly in credit card, installment, and student loans — with macroeconomic inflection from job growth to job loss as a likely catalyst,’ UBS said.”
John Burns RE Consulting – California Has Density Solutions, but Not Enough New Housing – Pete Reeb 4/3
Finance
WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – European Bond Issuance v ECB Purchases 4/4
WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – Emerging Market USD & EUR Debt Issuance 4/4
China
WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – Credit Expansion in BRIC Countries 4/4
WSJ – Daily Shot: Hong Kong Retail Sales 4/4
“Hong Kong’s retail sales jumped by most in eight years as wealthy shoppers from the mainland return.”
Japan
WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – Declining Service Quality in Japan 4/4
“Instead of inflation, Japan’s extremely tight labor markets are translating into reduced-quality services for consumers. The US is starting to experience this trend as well.”
“Not only are Puerto Rico’s bonds the top performer in the $3.9 trillion municipal market, they’ve gained more than any other dollar-denominated debt in the world, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.”
WSJ – Daily Shot: Puerto Rico General Obligation Bonds 4/4
