Tag: Brazil

June 6, 2017

Perspective

Economist – The super-rich are different: they pay less tax 6/1

Visual Capitalist – The Problem With Our Maps – Nick Routley 6/2

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – Grantham says higher valuations will persist – Robin Wigglesworth 6/1

  • “The US stock market has entered an era of higher valuations and probably has further room to rise, according to Jeremy Grantham, the founder of asset manager GMO and a known bearish spotter of financial bubbles.”
  • “Mr. Grantham, a notoriously bearish ‘value investor’ who correctly called and dodged the Japanese, dotcom and housing bubbles, sees little to worry him in the US market today. Expressing a preference for emerging market equities to US stocks, GMO’s founder points to seemingly durable pillars of healthy corporate profits, low interest rates and any lack of euphoria.”
  • “’I’ve dedicated my life to financial bubbles, and I don’t think it is a bubble,’ he told the Financial Times. ‘This is the broadest market of all time . . . That is not the nature of a bubble.’”
  • “Moreover, the normally bearish investor — who has built much of his career on the observation that market levels ultimately tend to revert to their long-term average — has even reluctantly conceded that US share prices may have shifted durably to a higher level since the late 1990s.”
  • “He laid out the case for why ‘this time seems very, very different’ in his quarterly letter to investors, pointing out that despite some wild swings in recent decades — caused by the dotcom bubble and subsequent crash, and then the global financial crisis — US price-to-earnings have averaged over 23 times since 1997, compared with nearly 14 times in the preceding decades, when he started his career.”
  • “The central reasons are globalization increasing the earning power of US multinationals, the growing political influence of American corporations and more onerous regulations stifling the growth of disruptive upstarts, in turn leading to increasingly monopolistic US companies, and above all a secular and durable decline in interest rates.”
  • “Mr. Grantham admits his new tone gets ‘groans from fellow value investors’ where it has ‘rattled a lot of cages’, but argued that previously dependable rules have to be re-examined and some even cast aside, given that the ‘world has changed’.”
  • “’You now have to treat previously cast-iron rules with suspicion. They’re more like aluminum rules now.’’’

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: John Burns Real Estate Consulting – US Investor Purchase Percentage 6/1

WSJ – Riksbank Chief Wants Swedish Government to Cool Red-Hot Property Market – Nina Adam 6/1

  • “Sweden’s central bank governor Stefan Ingves said a red-hot housing market and record-high level of household debt will put the Scandinavian country’s economy in peril unless the government cools the property sector down.”
  • “Swedish property prices have soared in recent years, fueled by low borrowing costs and strong economic growth. The Riksbank estimates that house prices have doubled and apartment prices have tripled over the past 10 years. At the same time, household debts have risen to 180% of disposable incomes, which is a record high.”
  • “Goldman Sachs earlier this month attached about a 35% chance to a housing bust in Sweden over the next five to eight quarters.”
  • “The Bank for International Settlements and others have warned that a long period of very low global interest rates could lead to a fresh cycle of boom and bust in housing markets. While that seems like a distant prospect in many parts of the world, Sweden may be an early test of how much has changed since the last financial crisis.”

Finance

NYT – In Texas, Some Rare Good News About Cities With Pension Woes – Mary Williams Walsh 6/1

  • “Detroit. Stockton. Puerto Rico. The list of places bankrupted by ballooning pension obligations and other debts is growing. But now comes some good news about two cities, Dallas and Houston, that have pulled back from the brink.”
  • “Just six months ago, the mayor of Dallas, Michael S. Rawlings, was warning that his city might need to declare bankruptcy after a panic led stampeding retirees to pull half a billion dollars out of its pension fund for police officers and firefighters.”
  • “But instead of going to bankruptcy court, Mr. Rawlings went to Austin, the state capital, to lobby for state pension laws that would stop the bleeding. So did the mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner, who faced other pension problems and had persuaded the city’s labor groups to agree to concessions worth $1.3 billion over the next 30 years.”
  • “Each city had its own bill, because each had its own unique problems. But both bills involve measured reductions in pension accruals for workers and retirees — mainly in secondary benefit categories like inflation adjustments and lump-sum payouts. In exchange, the pension funds will receive more money from the cities to protect the core benefits.”
  • “As happy as the resolution may seem, the steps that Texas took are illegal in other places where public pensions are imperiling the finances of cities and states. Illinois, California, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Kansas are among the states where, by law, public pensions cannot be reduced — not even the pensions that current workers hope to earn in the future.”
  • “That doctrine, known as the California Rule, explains why California cities like Vallejo and Stockton reduced their payments to other creditors when they went into bankruptcy but did not touch their workers’ costly pension plans.”
  • “Both cities were spurred to act by the risk of credit downgrades and by a recent accounting change that calls for cities to calculate the number of years before their pension funds will run out of money — a once-unthinkable catastrophe that has come to pass in Prichard, Ala.; Central Falls, R.I.; and now Puerto Rico.”
  • “Those developments — and Detroit’s bankruptcy — have shown that Washington will not bail out government pension funds that go bust; officials had to patch together money from other sources, and even then, the retirees of Prichard, Central Falls and Detroit had their benefits cut. Cuts are expected soon in Puerto Rico, too.”

China

WSJ – Baidu’s Turn as a Bank Is Unwelcome – Jacky Wong 6/1

  • “Everything is a bank in China these days it seems—even its biggest internet search engine.”
  • “Eager to get a bigger slice of the pie, Baidu has been aggressively selling its own wealth management products. Assets in its financial services business had more than doubled to $3.7 billion by the end of March from three months previously, according to Fitch. It has also been offering microloans, many of them unsecured, to consumers who may be unable to borrow from banks.”
  • “Fitch, rightly, is worried that Baidu is running the same risk as China’s banks: its aggressive selling of investment products and microloans could come back to bite the company if there is a wave of defaults. Baidu has around $5 billion of net cash to cover any losses. But with its core search business stagnant, investors shouldn’t welcome Baidu taking on such new risks.”

FT – Billionaire Anbang boss Wu Xiaohui barred from leaving China – Henny Sender and Lucy Hornby 6/2

Puerto Rico

Bloomberg – Puerto Rico’s Exodus Is Speeding the Island’s Economic Collapse – Jonathan Levin and Rebecca Spalding 6/2

  • “The choice is heartbreaking: stay to help other families, or leave to help your own.” 
  • “That’s the calculation thousands in Puerto Rico are making. The bankruptcy of the U.S. commonwealth, the culmination of years of decline, has accelerated an exodus that’s adding to the island’s economic misery.”
  • “The population drop is astonishing. The island has lost 2% of its people in each of the past three years. A comparable departure from the 50 states would mean 18 million people moving out since 2013. About 400,000 fewer Puerto Ricans live on an island of 3.4 million today compared with a decade ago, when its economy began contracting.” 
  • “The departures have trapped Puerto Rico in a downward spiral. A grinding recession, with joblessness at 11.5%, and $74 billion mountain of debt that pushed the island to insolvency has made collecting taxes key to an economic rebound. At the same time, more Puerto Ricans from all walks of life are moving away to better their lives, meaning government revenue is dwindling.”
  • “Puerto Rico’s bond debt has grown 87% since 2006. A simple way for individual islanders to avoid having to pay it is to move to the mainland.”
  • “The government doesn’t seem to have come to grips with the outflow. Puerto Rico’s turnaround plan — a path to sustainability approved by a U.S. oversight board — assumes the population will shrink just 0.2% each year for the next decade. It uses that number as the basis for its projections of tax receipts and economic growth.”
  • Further, “the exodus isn’t confined to professionals. Among the throngs leaving are construction workers and taxi drivers. Research by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that college graduates make up roughly the same proportion of emigres as they do in the island’s general population, suggesting that the departures have touched every corner of the commonwealth.”
  • “While migration is the main driver in population fluctuation, a declining fertility rate isn’t helping either. The natural population increase — excess births over deaths — fell to 3,000 last year from 20,000 a decade ago, as families facing poorer economic prospects and the threat of the Zika virus put off having kids. At the same time, younger generations of child-bearing age are more likely to take off for the mainland.”
  • Seems like the only way to stop this trend is to make Puerto Rico a full-fledged state. Question is whether or not all the vested parties are willing to go along with it.

South America

WSJ – Daily Shot: Brazil GDP 6/1

May 24, 2017

If you were to read only one thing…

WSJ – Why Millennials Are (Partly) to Blame for the Housing Shortage – Laura Kusisto 5/22

  • “For decades during the late-20th century, suburbs were the place to build, as urban cores suffered from high crime, poor schools and stagnant or shrinking populations.”
  • “But preferences have changed among young people, many of whom want to live closer to transit, restaurants and their workplaces. The share of young, educated people living in the urban core of Washington, D.C., for example, increased 8.6 percentage points between 2000 and 2014, according to Jed Kolko, chief economist at job-search site Indeed and senior fellow at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. Portland, Ore., and Chicago each saw increases of 6.4 percentage points.”
  • “As builders have shifted focus toward trendier urban markets and away from cheaper suburbs, they have produced less housing overall than they otherwise might have. While starter-home construction has bounced back in recent months, it remains far from reversing this long-term trend.”
  • “At the same time, high land costs in central cities have pushed developers to focus on higher-end housing geared toward high earners instead of younger people just starting out.”
  • “The shift helps explain one of the most vexing aspects of the housing recovery: New homes are getting more expensive and yet there are fewer of them being built than in past cycles.”
  • “While new home sales within 5 miles of the centers of 10 of the country’s priciest and most densely populated metropolitan areas have surpassed levels from 2000, they remain more than 50% below where they were in 2000 when you go more than 10 miles out. The year 2000 is often used as a benchmark for a normal market, before the boom and bust of the mid-2000s.”
  • “The takeaway, Mr. Romem (chief economist at BuildZoom) says, is that pricey cities need to loosen land-use restrictions in core areas where there is more demand. Allowing for more high-rise condo buildings would make it economical to produce starter homes in these areas as well.”
  • “’Do you care about preserving things the way they are, so that only wealthy people can continue buying in, or do you want to [encourage more density], so that housing is more affordable for everyone?’ he asked.”

Perspective

WSJ – Brazilian Bribery Allegations Escalate Clash Between Government, Business 5/21

WSJ – Daily Shot: JBS Payments to Government Officials in Brazil 5/22

  • Seriously?

Real Estate

WSJ – Blackstone is Taking Over Mom-and-Pop Real-Estate Investing – Peter Grant 5/23

  • “Blackstone in January launched its first nontraded real-estate investment trust, a vehicle marketed to small investors as a way to participate in the commercial real-estate industry without the volatility of a traded REIT. Such vehicles have faced mounting criticism in recent years over high fees, poor disclosure and other problems.”
  • “Yet as of April, Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust Inc. had raised $755.4 million, about 41% of all the funds the entire industry raised in 2017, far more than any competitor, according to Robert A. Stanger & Co., an investment bank that specializes in nontraded REITs.”
  • “Blackstone also has become a closely watched agent for change in an industry that is trying to move away from a past that is tangled up in scandal and regulatory criticism. Like many of the new breed of nontraded REITs, Blackstone’s vehicle is structured to align the interests of investors and management better than those of the past.”
  • “The alignment between REIT managers and investors is critical today as the eight-year bull market in the commercial real-estate industry shows signs of slowing, critics say. Mistakes on reading markets could trigger losses, especially if values start to decline.”
  • “Some traditional nontraded REITs were criticized because managers wouldn’t be penalized for making bad investment decisions. That isn’t the case with the Blackstone REIT.”
  • “’If things don’t go well, Blackstone won’t make as much,’ said Phil Owens, managing director of Green Street Advisors’ consulting unit. ‘If things go really well, they make more.'”
  • “Green Street has been a critic of nontraded REITs for their high fees, weak disclosure and lack of alignment. Mr. Owens said the Blackstone structure represents ‘a big shift’.”
  • “But Mr. Owens stopped short of backing away from Green Street’s longstanding position that investors are better off buying traded REITs, which are listed on public stock exchanges, than nontraded ones. Green Street has calculated the overhead of the Blackstone REIT will be about twice as much as a ‘large, blue-chip publicly traded REIT’ if it performs as expected.”
  • “Until recently, nontraded REITs were popular because of the high dividends they paid when interest rates were near historic lows. Mostly sold by financial advisers, the vehicles raised $19.6 billion in 2013 and $15.6 billion in 2014, according to Stanger.”
  • “But the industry drew criticism for upfront fees that could run as high as 15%.”
  • “In all, the entire nontraded REIT industry has raised only $1.8 billion in 2017 as of the end of April, about the same as the first four months of 2016, the worst fundraising year since 2002, when the industry was in its early stages, according to Stanger.”
  • “Some other nontraded REIT sponsors say they aren’t worried about the new 800-pound competitor. They acknowledge the fundraising climate is tough these days. But they blame it primarily on their sales forces reacting to Finra rules and the proposed Labor Department regulations.”
  • “’It’s not Blackstone that’s impacting it,’ said Jeff Hanson, chief executive of American Healthcare Investors, which has raised more than $6 billion in equity for four nontraded REITs. Mr. Hanson predicted that Blackstone entering the business will be ‘a good thing over time’ for the industry.”

Energy

WSJ – Daily Shot: eia – OPEC Net Oil Export Revenues 5/22

FT – Oil majors seek survival in transition to low-carbon world – Andrew Ward 5/22

  • “’In our 109-year history, it is unlikely that there has ever been as much change as there is now,’ Carl-Henric Svanberg, chairman of BP, told shareholders at the UK group’s annual meeting last week, acknowledging that over the next 20 years ‘consumption of oil will slow and eventually peak’.”
  • “For all the looming risks, fossil fuels still dominate the global energy landscape. Oil, gas and coal together account for 86% of energy used for transport, heat and power worldwide. The questions for companies and investors across the sector are how fast will this change and what should they do to prepare?”
  • “Deep disruption is already being felt in the power sector. The electricity generated from renewables, excluding hydro, doubled globally between 2010 and 2015 as political efforts to tackle climate change intensified and the cost of wind and solar plummeted. Today, renewables account for an average 23% of global power output. Denmark has breezy days when all its power comes from wind and Germany hit a record 85% share from renewables one day last month.”

Finance

WSJ – Only Robots Can Tally What The Largest U.S. Pension Fund Pays In Fees – Heather Gillers and Dawn Lim 5/22

  • “If you’re using software to deal with the complexity in your portfolio maybe you should simplify your portfolio first.” – Marc Levine, Chair – Illinois State Board of Investment

Agriculture 

WSJ – Daily Shot: Wolf Street – Delinquencies of Agricultural Loans 5/22

WSJ – Daily Shot: CBOT Wheat 5/22

China

FT – MSCI to make decision on China A-share inclusion on June 20 – Pan Kwan Yuk 5/22

  • “Mark your calendars China watchers.”
  • “MSCI will on June 20 announce whether it would finally include China’s domestic A-shares in its global indices.”
  • MSCI has declined to do so on three previous occasions. Now may be the time.

FT – China’s environmental clean-up to have big impact on industry – Alan Clark 5/22

  • “…environmental sustainability is rapidly moving up the agenda for Xi Jinping, the president, as he flexes his political muscles and consolidates his leadership of China.”
  • “The country’s moves to protect the environment and avoid pollution-related social unrest represent a radical shift in Chinese policy. Just eight years ago, China viewed climate change initiatives as a western conspiracy to limit China’s rapid growth.”
  • “In the aluminum-producing, coal-consuming provinces around Beijing, Henan, Shanxi and Shandong, around 30 per cent of aluminum smelting capacity could potentially be closed between November and March every year, in an effort to reduce thick smog like that seen in the first weeks of 2017.”
  • “There is also talk of an envisaged 30% cut to alumina production in the same provinces, reducing supply of the key raw material required to produce aluminum.”
  • “While tighter regulations governing environmental protection and energy consumption were issued two years ago by the Chinese government, this year many more smelters are being threatened with the off button. The Chinese government’s new Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan is aimed at offsetting the extra pollution created by the use of indoor heating during the winter heating months.”
  • “It should be acknowledged that China has been successful in cutting the use of coal, which currently provides around 70% of the country’s electricity. Coal consumption has dropped in each of the last three years and fell 4.7% last year alone.”

Other Links

Reuters – Uber inadvertently underpaid New York City drivers for over two years 5/23

April 16, 2017

Happy Easter!

Real Estate

FT – Chinese buyers fuel Brooklyn real estate boom – Rana Foroohar 4/16

  • “…World property markets have become totally disconnected from national economies. There has been a massive housing recovery in the US since 2008, but over half of all the gains have accrued to a handful of coastal and wealthy inland markets.”

NYT – Is American Retail at a Historic Tipping Point? – Michael Corkery 4/15

  • “Between 2010 and 2014, e-commerce grew by an average of $30 billion annually. Over the past three years, average annual growth has increased to $40 billion.”
  • “’That is the tipping point, right there,’ said Barbara Denham, a senior economist at Reis, a real estate data and analytics firm. ‘It’s like the Doppler effect. The change is coming at you so fast, it feels like it is accelerating.'”
  • “This transformation is hollowing out suburban shopping malls, bankrupting longtime brands and leading to staggering job losses.”
  • “More workers in general merchandise stores have been laid off since October, about 89,000 Americans. That is more than all of the people employed in the United States coal industry, which President Trump championed during the campaign as a prime example of the workers who have been left behind in the economic recovery.”
  • “The job losses in retail could have unexpected social and political consequences, as huge numbers of low-wage retail employees become economically unhinged, just as manufacturing workers did in recent decades. About one out of every 10 Americans works in retail.”
  • “The current torrent of closures comes as consumer confidence is strong and unemployment is low, suggesting that a permanent restructuring is underway, rather than a dip in the normal business cycle. In short, traditional retail may never recover.”
  • “There is a rolling crisis that has emerged in the last couple of years as store closings are being announced.  People are losing their jobs and have no other place to go. Theoretically this is the marketplace rationalizing itself, but in the interim how do people survive?” – Mark Cohen, Columbia University

China

FT – Detention of China regulator heralds clampdown on insurers – Emily Feng 4/14

Middle East

Reuters – Exclusive: Saudi to shelve, reform billions of dollars of unfinished projects – Marwa Rashad 4/16

South America

Reuters – Brazil’s Odebrecht paid $3.3 billion in bribes over a decade – Paulo Prada 4/15

  • “Odebrecht SA, the Brazilian engineering company at the center of a historic corruption scandal, paid out a total of about $3.3 billion in bribes in the nine years through 2014, according to testimony cited by local media on Saturday.”
  • “Through a department specifically established to pay politicians and other recipients for public works contracts, Odebrecht paid as much as $730 million annually in both 2012 and 2013, the years when bribe payments peaked, according to a spreadsheet that a former executive reportedly gave investigators as part of a plea deal.”

April 13, 2017

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Inflation Is Back, But Don’t Worry – Steven Russolillo 4/12

  • “Good news: Inflation just topped a key milestone. Even better news: It doesn’t look poised to zoom much higher from here.”

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: CME Random Length Lumber Futures 4/12

WSJ – Where High-End Renovations Cost $704,000 – Stefanos Chen 4/13

Environment

NYT – More Permafrost Than Thought May Be Lost as Planet Warms – Henry Fountain 4/11

South America

FT – Venezuela’s PDVSA makes $2.2bn bond payment – Andres Schipani 4/12

FT – Brazil makes big cut to rates as inflation falls close to target – Joe Leahy 4/12

  • “The cut, which accelerated an easing cycle that began in October, was the biggest since the global financial crisis in 2009, with the central bank reducing the benchmark Selic rate from 12.5% to 11.25%.”
  • “The fall in rates were possible because inflation had plummeted by half over the past six months to levels close to the center of the central bank’s target band of 4.5%, plus or minus 1.5% points.”

December 16 – December 22, 2016

China no longer the largest US creditor – Japan is again. China capital outflows, have you looked at the bank loans? Brazil’s Odebrecht just got served the FCPA’s largest settlement.

Happy Holidays!

Headlines

  • FT – Ferocious competition roils private equity market 12/17. Deal volume is down, acquisition multiples are up (“acquisitions made in the first half of this year required private equity managers to pay on average 10 times the cash flow of a target company, well above the previous peaks for deal valuations in 2006 and 1999”), dry powder is at a record closing in on $1tn, and future returns are looking skinny, but then again consider your options in stocks and bonds.
  • FT – Private equity: lowering the bar 12/20. Following on the previous headline, despite – or rather because of – lower projected returns, top tier private equity groups are able to dictate terms on investors. In some cases lowering the hurdle rate from 8% to 6% or in some cases just removing them altogether…
  • NYT – Calpers Cuts Investment Targets, Increasing Strain on Municipalities 12/21. Calpers is reducing benefits and lowered its return assumptions from 7.5% to 7.0% to be phased in over three years. Oh, and “shifting expectations down to 7% will force the State of California to contribute an additional $2 billion a year for state workers…”

Special Reports / Opinion Pieces

  • FT – The Opec agreement: Russia’s role adds a geopolitical twist – George Abed 12/15
    • “The three-way oil agreement involving Russia, Saudi Arabia and its GCC neighbors, and Iran, who in combination produce nearly a third of global supplies, is likely to have tamed the wild gyrations of the oil market, at least for a time. More significantly, the accord may have given rise to an uneasy alliance of convenience which may have broader implications, for the future of the Middle East as much as for the global oil markets.”

Briefs

  • Andres Schipani of the Financial Times illustrated how hyperinflation is at Venezuela’s doorstep.
    • Last week the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro “announced plans to scrap the ubiquitous 100 bolivar bill, which makes up about half the country’s banknotes but is increasingly worthless as annual inflation is forecast to top 1,600% next year.”
    • “The plan, which the government insists is necessary to fight currency hoarders and counter an ‘economic war’, is to replace the old money with new high denomination notes, including 20,000 bolivar bills.”
    • However, due to looting, riots, and protests that accompanied this initiative, the president has extended the currency’s use until sometime in the new year.  This of little comfort with monthly inflation above 50% and where it is difficult to obtain high denomination notes.
    • “Caracas-based consultancy Ecoanalitica said the range of notes reflected inflation of 17,011% since the older notes were first launched in 2008.”
  • Chris Kirkham of The Wall Street Journal highlighted that the percentage of young Americans living with their parents is at a 75-year high.
    • “Almost 40% of young Americans were living with their parents, siblings or other relatives in 2015, the largest percentage since 1940, according to an analysis of census data by real estate tracker Trulia.”
    • wsj_percentage-of-18-34-year-olds-living-at-home_12-21-16
    • “The result is that there is far less demand for housing than would be expected for the millennial generation, now the largest in U.S. history. The number of adults under age 30 has increased by 5 million over the last decade, but the number of households for that age group grew by just 200,000 over the same period, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.”
    • Why? “Analysts point to rising rents in many cities and tough mortgage-lending standards as the culprit…”
    • Well at some point this back log is likely to play out with an increase in household formation and housing starts. As it stands, “economist project the historically large millennial generation will more than double its current number of households through 2025.”
  • Rachel Sanderson, James Politi, and Martin Arnold of the Financial Times covered the Italian bail out of the world’s oldest bank – Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank.
    • “Monte dei Paschi di Siena is to be rescued by the Italian state using a new €20bn bailout package, as a last-gasp private sector rescue plan for the world’s oldest bank looked set to fail, forcing losses on bondholders.”
    • “The state funds to rescue the bank would come from a €20bn package approved by both houses of parliament on Wednesday that could be used to bail out several of Italy’s most fragile banks. Goldman Sachs estimates they need €38bn to be adequately capitalized.“
    • Granted, not everyone is pleased. “A backlash against a taxpayer-funded bailout of Italy’s weakest lenders has already begun. Codacons, a consumer lobby group, estimated €20bn ploughed into Italy’s failing lenders would cost each Italian family €833.”

Graphics

WSJ – Daily Shot: Vancouver Housing Market Correction 12/18

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WSJ – Daily Shot: Declining income mobility in US 12/18

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Visual Capitalist – 75 Years of How Americans Spend Their Money – Jeff Desjardins 12/19

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WSJ – Daily Shot: S&P vs. Treasury Spread 12/20

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FT – China’s ‘airpocalypse’ hits half a billion people – Yuan Yang 12/19

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WSJ – Daily Shot: Change in Mortgage Rates Since Election 12/21

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WSJ – Daily Shot: Percentage of Adults Without Children in House 1967 & 2016 12/21

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FT – Hedge fund fees take a trim – Lindsay Fortado 12/21

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Featured

*Note: bold emphasis is mine, italic sections are from the articles.

China cedes status as largest US creditor to Japan. Tom Mitchell, Joe Rennison, and Eric Platt. Financial Times. 16 Dec. 2016.

“Beijing’s ownership of US Treasuries fell by $41.3bn to $1.12tn in October, according to data from the US Treasury released on Thursday – the sixth straight month of decline. Japan’s holdings fell by $4.5bn to $1.13tn for the same period.”

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According to Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University and former IMF director for China, “this pattern is unlikely to be reversed in the near future, especially with US and Chinese economic fortunes and monetary policy stances continuing to diverge. The days of China providing abundant and cheap financing for US budget and current account deficits through the purchases of Treasury securities may have come to an end.”

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“China and Japan account for 37% of the total $6tn of holdings tracked by the Treasury and Federal Reserve.”

China capital outflows: bank loans dwarf foreign deals. Gabriel Wildau and Don Weinland. Financial Times. 17 Dec. 2016.

“While an overseas buying spree by Chinese companies has grabbed headlines, more mundane activity such as trade finance and corporate cash management are a much bigger strain on China’s foreign exchange reserves, analysis of official data shows.”

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“‘Several hundred billion in outflows are simply associated with repayment of existing loans,’ said Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former US Treasury official.”

“Foreign bank claims on China, a broad measure of cross-border lending, have fallen by $305bn in the 18 months through June this year, according to the most recent figures from Bank of International Settlements, showing how banks are pulling funds from the country. Claims had risen by $643bn in the previous two years.”

“Much of this lending came in the form of trade finance. When the renminbi was appreciating against the dollar, Chinese importers eagerly borrowed in dollars.”

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“‘Corporates rushed to raise funding in dollars because interest rates were very low. Now that carry trade is being unwound,’ said Harrison Hu, China economist at Royal Bank of Scotland in Singapore.”

“To be sure, the regulatory focus on corporate deals is a response to a rapid acceleration of outbound FDI. But it also reflects the lower disruption from tightening the reins on foreign acquisitions compared with forcing loan or bond defaults by blocking cross-border debt repayments.”

“‘The cross-border regulations could definitely have an impact on companies that have offshore debt,’ said Xia Le, chief Asia economist at BBVA in Hong Kong. ‘There is a concern that many will have to refinance but at a much higher cost. They will need to issue very high-yielding bonds.'”

Brazil’s gargantuan corruption scandal goes global. Economist. 22 Dec. 2016.

“On December 21st America’s Department of Justice (DoJ) reached a $3.5bn settlement with Odebrecht, Brazil’s biggest builder, and with Braskem, a petrochemical joint venture between that firm and Petrobas. The DoJ alleges that since 2001 Odebrecht and Braskem paid $788m in bribes to officials and political parties in Brazil and in 11 other countries.“

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“The payoffs brought Odebrecht and Braskem contracts for around 100 projects, many of them to build public infrastructure. Often, governments paid more for the work than they needed to. The DoJ alleges that Odebrecht set up a ‘Division of Structured Operations,’ which ‘effectively functioned as a stand-along bribe department.'”

“The settlement is the biggest yet under America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). It is more than double the previous record: $1.6bn paid by Siemens, a German engineering giant, in 2008.”

“Odebrecht has accepted that the appropriate fine for the company is $4.5bn but says it can only afford $2.6bn; the remaining $900m is owed by Braskem.”

Additionally, now the authorities in the 11 countries will have a crack at the two companies.

Either way “Odebrecht is a shadow of its former self. To survive the investigations, it has been retrenching. Over the past three years the company has reportedly laid off 100,000 of its 181,000 employees, most of them since the launch of the Petrobas investigation in March 2014…. Even Odebrecht’s stake in Braskem, which makes up half of the construction firm’s revenues, may be up for sale. That is quite a comedown for a company named in 2010 by a Swiss business school as the world’s best family-run firm.”

Other Interesting Articles

Bloomberg Businessweek

The Economist

FT – Central bank injection soothes China credit squeeze 12/15

FT – China’s exports to the US fall for first time since crisis 12/15

FT – US drugmaker charges 200 times UK price for common worm pill 12/18

FT – Vanke: to our sponsors 12/19

FT – Yield on German two-year debt falls to new low 12/19

FT – Uber racks up $800m third-quarter loss despite China exit 12/19

FT – Italy seeks up to €20bn to prop up fragile lenders 12/19

FT – China’s bull market in bonds on borrowed time 12/19

FT – Lawyers demand Chinese government action to clear smog 12/20

FT – US sues Barclays for fraud over crisis-era loans 12/22

LinkedIn – Reflections on the Trump Presidency, One Month after the Election (Ray Dalio) 12/19

Miami Herald – Miami Beach wants to know if you’re renting your condo on Airbnb 12/15

NYT – How Republics End (Krugman) 12/19

NYT – Hedge Fund Math: Heads We Win, Tails You Lose 12/22

ValueWalk – CalPERS Cuts Retiree Benefits For First Time Ever 12/20

WSJ – China Halts Trading in Key Bond Futures as Panicky Investors Sell Securities 12/15

WSJ – Surging Dollar Upends China’s Huge Bond Market 12/16

WSJ – Platinum Partners’ Executives Charged With $1 Billion Securities Fraud 12/19

 

September 16 – September 22, 2016

Chinese corporate debt…geez…Someone’s going to have to take a haircut. US pension crisis.

Headlines

Briefs

    • A recent study that was published in Environmental Research Letters, a top academic journal, indicated that the “toxic haze that spread across Southeast Asia from Indonesia forest fires last year caused the deaths of about 100,000 people across the region.”
    • “The death toll was concentrated in Indonesia, which had about 92,000 excess deaths from persistent haze that choked the region between July and October, according to researchers at Harvard and Columbia.”
    • “What the BIS (Bank for International Settlements) terms the country’s ‘credit gap’ is now three times higher than the typical danger level, the research shows.”
    • “The BIS rates a reading above 10% as cause for concern; China’s gap hit 30.1% in March.”
    • FT_China 'credit gap'_9-18-16
    • “The International Monetary Fund estimated in June that Chinese companies that had borrowed a collective $1.3tn did not have enough earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to meet interest payments.”
    • “China first breached the 10% threshold in 2009 and has not yet experienced a crisis. Many analysts believe that the country’s low level of foreign currency debt and its government-controlled banking system make crisis less likely.”
    • “China Debt Default? To alleviate its debt problem, China should adopt appropriate macro-economic policies encompassing currency depreciation and cutting interest rates to an ultra-low-level within two to three years, believe Nomura analysts. Yang Zhao and team said in their September 14 research piece titled “China: Solving the debt problem” that they believe RMB depreciation will continue and forecast USD/CNH at 7.1 at the end of 2017.”
    • ValueWalk_China Leverage Ratio_9-14-16
  • Hudson Lockett of the Financial Times illustrated the scale of potential shadow finance losses that lurk in China.
    • “Losses from bad debt in China’s shadow financing sector could amount to 3.7% of GDP, according to a new analysis of off-the-books lending and investment.”
    • “The new report from CLSA also estimates shadow financing in China grew to Rmb54tn ($8.1tn) by the end of 2015 – equivalent to 79% of gross domestic product, with 64% of the total originating at or relating to mainland banks.”
    • “The firm also reiterated its May estimate for Chinese banks’ non-performing loan ratio of 15%, or Rmb11.4tn, assuming the same recovery ratio of 40%, which would entail potential losses of 10% of GDP. The total losses when combined with those from bad debt in shadow financing would come to 13.7% of GDP.”
    • FT_China full financing_9-19-16
  • Takashi Nakamichi and Rachel Rosenthal of the Wall Street Journal discussed the Bank of Japan’s recent bond-rate target in its policy revamp.
    • “The Japanese central bank, which has struggled for nearly two decades to bring about steady inflation, said Wednesday it wants to keep the yield on 10-year Japanese government bonds at zero, and will adjust the pace of its bond buying as needed to achieve that.”
    • “The long-term-rate target, the first in the BOJ’s century long history, challenged conventional wisdom that rates in the huge government-bond market are ultimately set by market forces and can’t be fully controlled by an official entity. Central banks are usually assumed to have much more control over short-term rates, and many around the world target rates for debt with a term of less than a year.”
    • “One worry: ‘In theory, they could be forced to buy an unlimited amount of bonds,’ said Marcel Thieliant, Japan economist at research firm Capital Economics in Singapore.”
    • “Mr. Kuroda called the new policy a ‘reinforcement’ of easing. The BOJ also took the unexpected step of saying it would aim for inflation to exceed 2% instead of merely hitting it, a nod to calls from some U.S. economists for a higher target.”
  • Peter Wells of the Financial Times highlighted that the universe of negative-yielding sovereign debt just fell to $10.9tn.
    • “The universe of negative-yielding sovereign debt fell to $10.9tn as of September 12, a drop of $1tn since June 27 largely due to yields on some longer-dated maturities moving back into positive territory, according to a new report from Fitch Ratings.”
    • “Of the countries afflicted by negative yields, Switzerland has 95% of its outstanding debt trading with a yield below zero.”
    • “Fitch also calculates that as a result of low and negative yields, investment income for sovereign investors globally are ‘prospectively earning nearly $500 billion less annually in investment income than they would have earned with yields available in 2011.’ The investment-grade sovereign debt market is $38bn.”
    • FT_Negative-yielding sovereign debt_9-21-16

Special Reports / Opinion Pieces

Graphics

WSJ – Japan’s Central Bank Splits Over Easing Program – Takashi Nakamichi 9/15

wsj_japans-central-bank-running-out-of-ammo_9-15-16

Bloomberg – Money Is Pouring Into Property Deals Banks Won’t Touch – Sarah Mulholland and Heather Perlberg 9/18

Bloomberg_Nonbank RE lending_9-18-16

Economist – Chinese investment: A sponge wrung dry 9/17

Economist_China fixed asset investment_9-17-16

WSJ – China Capital Outflows Bubbles Below the Surface – Anjani Trivedi 9/20

wsj_china-capital-outflows_9-20-16

FT – Bond bubble brings with it an odor of rotting fish – Robin Wigglesworth 9/20

FT_Government bond yields_9-20-16

Bloomberg – Not for Sale: The Best Land in America 9/8

Bloomberg_Ability to buy house lots not so good_9-8-16

FT – China local governments revive off-budget fiscal stimulus – Gabriel Wildau 9/20

FT_China off-budget Local gov't debt_9-20-16

Featured

*Note: bold emphasis is mine, italic sections are from the articles.

Who’s next? The science of Chinese corporate defaults. James Kynge. Financial Times. 18 Sep. 2016.

“A total of 41 default cases have hit China’s domestic debt markets in the year to mid-September, more than the previous two years combined, according to Wind Information, a Shanghai-based financial data company. Some 70% of defaults by end-July were by state-owned enterprises, according to IHS, a consultancy.”

“The big picture behind China’s local government debt problem is stark. The liabilities of well over 100,000 companies problem is stark. The liabilities of well over 100,000 companies owned by local governments across the country grew at an average annual rate of 14.1% from 2012 to 2015 to reach Rmb35.4tn ($5.3tn), according to Moody’s research.”

FT_China locally owned SOE debts_9-18-16

“These are treated as contingent liabilities – or potential liabilities – because although local governments do not guarantee the debts of their corporate subsidiaries, they nevertheless are responsible for generating local economic growth, employment and public services so they would be loath to let an important contributor to such goals go under.”

“But in recent years, some local governments have built up such hefty debt burdens that even if they would like to bail out an important local employer, they may not be able to. Total direct local government debt, according to Moody’s, was Rmb16tn in 2015. Thus direct and contingent liabilities come to Rmb51tn – more than the GDPs of Japan and Germany combined.”

FT_China locally owned SOE debts balances_9-18-16

As to which companies to let default… “Nicholas Zhu, vice-president at Moody’s, describes a clear hierarchy of debt vulnerability. The most likely to default would be lossmaking, indebted companies owned by lower-tier governments – at the prefectural, city or county level – that have little revenue and large debts. The problem, however, with lower-tier administrations is that they often publish sparse statistics, so it is difficult to know the true state of their financial health.”

Nomura First Major Bank To Predict China Default Calculates Total debt to GDP at 309%; BIS Sounds The Alarm. Mark Melin. ValueWalk. 18 Sep. 2016.

“Nomura, which estimates China’s total debt – government and corporate debt – is Rmb211.8 trillion or 309% of GDP. The vast majority of this debt is corporate, which from a leverage perspective looks better. Non-financial sector accounted for Rmb158.5tn (231% of GDP, up by 92pp from 2007) and the financial sector for Rmb53.3tn (78% of GDP, up by 49pp).”

ValueWalk_China total debt-to-GDP_9-18-16

“The debt is up nearly 141% since 2007, which leads Nomura to conclude “a rising default rate is inevitable.”

ValueWalk_China debt-to-GDP options_9-18-16

“What this all means is that interest rates are likely to head near zero – the place at which such defaults can find their most advantageous environments. And of course, when interest rates fall, so, too, does the currency values. In the end, it is likely to become one big mess that might have global implications.”

ValueWalk_China debt warning signs_9-18-16

US building up to pension crisis. Robin Wigglesworth and Barney Jopson. Financial Times. 20 Sep. 2016.

“The number are severe. According to the National Institute on Retirement Security, nearly 40m working-age households – 45% of the total – had no retirement savings whatsoever in 2013, whether an employer-sponsored 401(k) plan or an individual retirement account (IRA).”

“If you look for the black hole in the pension system, this is it. And these are the most vulnerable people in society.” – David Hunt, chief executive of PGIM, Prudential Financial’s asset management arm.

“Indeed, while younger people are less likely to have some sort of a retirement nest egg than older Americans, the biggest factor is income. Households with a retirement account have a median income of $86,235, while those without one have a median income of $35,509, according to the NIRS.”

FT_US retirement savings by age_9-20-16

“We have a crisis unfolding here. We’re asking people to set aside precious resources they don’t have… For millions and millions of Americans, the only thing they’ll have is Social Security.” – Russ Kamp, a pensions consultant

Social Security “together with the Supplemental Security Income program account for over 90% of the income for the bottom quarter of retirees, according to the NIRS.”

FT_US household retirement savings_9-20-16

“But Social Security’s future is as uncertain as it is politically divisive. When it was set up, retirees would only have to be supported for less than 13 years on average. These days the average American can expect to draw Social Security for almost two decades, and unlike traditional public sector pension plans, it operates on a pay-as-you-go basis.”

“Citi estimated earlier this year that the unfunded liabilities were over $10tn.”

Other Interesting Articles

Bloomberg Businessweek

The Economist

Civil Beat – Kirstin Downey: Here’s What Hawaii’s Housing Crisis Looks Like 9/22

Contra Corner – Another Way of Looking at Household Income Shows Virtually No Gain 9/22

FT- Libor as a real alternative with money market rates at 2009 level 9/18

FT – China’s addiction to debt threatens the economy 9/19

FT – Monte dei Paschi shares drop below 20 cents as recapitalization stalls 9/20

InvestmentNews – Top hedge fund (Robert Citrone) forecasts biggest market correction since 2008 9/21

NYT – A Trump Empire Built on Inside Connections and $885 Million in Tax Breaks 9/17

WSJ – The Market Gets Caught in a Squeeze Play 9/18

WSJ – Why Global Rule Makers See Risks in European Banks 9/19

WSJ – The China Box-Office Boom That Wasn’t 9/20

WSJ – Bank of Japan Makes Yield Curve Maneuvers in the Dark 9/21

 

August 26 – September 1, 2016

A novel way of paying off debt – issue more of it, the savings are already accruing. It’s official, Nigeria is in a recession.

Headlines

Briefs

    • “Stock valuations rise and fall, but when an important factor driving market performance is mathematically unsustainable, it is worth a closer look.” Specifically corporate dividends.
    • “Aswath Damodaran, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, sees this as the market’s biggest risk. Mr. Damodaran, who is considered an authority on valuation, says S&P 500 companies through the first two quarters of the year collectively returned 112% of their earnings through buybacks and dividends. That is the highest since 2008 and well above the 82% average over the past 15 years, he said in a blog post last week.”
    • “Mr. Damodaran, who likes to be provocative, says with rates this low, traditional valuation metrics are distorted. Instead, the inability of companies to keep paying off their investors will cause the next downturn. ‘This is the weakest link in this market,’ Mr. Damodaran said in an interview. ‘We know cash flows will go down. What we don’t know is what the market is pricing in.'”
    • WSJ_S&P 500 corporate dividends_8-28-16
    • “The rise of third-party mobile payments in China at the expense of credit and debit cards is threatening commercial banks’ access to the customer data viewed as crucial to newly emerging financial and consumer business models.”
    • Further UnionPay, the state-owned settlement network, and other rank and file banks are missing out on the merchant fees that these third-party platforms are redirecting.
    • “The move by more Chinese consumers to switch from swiping plastic cards to scanning QR codes with mobile wallet apps knocked $20bn from banks’ fee income in 2015, according to Kapronasia, a Shanghai-based fintech consultancy.”
    • While the fees hurt, the key is that third-party payment providers are “depriving lenders of valuable data on consumption patterns.”
    • FT_China payments moving online_8-28-16
    • China’s big-state lenders are making a shift in their lending portfolios from commercial loans to property.  “China Construction Bank (CCB) this week reported residential mortgage lending rose almost 30% in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year. Meanwhile corporate lending fell 2%. At Bank of China, mortgages rose by more than a quarter.”
    • “On the face of it, banks are moving away from risky lending. That helps their capital cushions because for every loan extended to a company, banks assign a 100% risk-weight. For residential mortgages, banks only have to set aside half that.”
    • Of course, it helps that residential prices are rising; however, “lending into the property market would make more sense if the mortgage loans weren’t going bad so fast. At CCB, while mortgage nonperforming loans accounted for only 6% of total NPLs, they rose 67% on the year compared with 26% for all loans. And that’s with prices rising nationally, and rising sharply in the biggest cities.”
  • Leo Lewis and Lucy Colback of the Financial Times covered an interesting development in how the Bank of Japan is distorting the Japanese stock indices through their massive fund flows.
    • “From July 29, when the Bank of Japan said it would nearly double its annual purchases of exchange traded funds from ¥3.3tn ($32bn) to ¥6tn, brokers in Tokyo have been selling stocks with a simple, unsettling message.”
    • “In an equity market where the central bank is the biggest whale, and where the government in various forms has become the biggest shareholder in a quarter of First Section Tokyo stocks, it’s time to buy the fund flows, not the fundamentals.”
    • FT_Stocks with highest indirect ownership by BoJ_8-30-16
    • “Goldman Sachs estimates that the doubling in BoJ buying coupled with the skew towards Nikkei weighting means that the central bank will own at least one-tenth of the equity in 32 companies by this time next year, up from five currently.”
    • “The BoJ, according to its current schedule, must buy an average of ¥70bn worth of ETFs every three trading days throughout the year.”
    • Helicopter money…

Special Reports / Opinion Pieces

Graphics

FT – Puerto Rico: An island’s exodus –  Eric Platt 8/25

FT_Puerto Rico's exodus_8-25-16

Visual Capitalist – Which Countries Are Damaged Most by Low Oil Prices? – Jeff Desjardins 8/26

Visual Capitalist_Which countries hurt the most by low oil prices_8-26-16

WSJ – Food Price Deflation Cheers Consumers, Hurts Farmers, Grocers and Restaurants 8/29

WSJ_Food price deflation_8-29-16

WSJ – China’s Private Investment Crash May Be Mirage, but Pain Is Still Real 8/28

WSJ_China fixed-asset investment_8-28-16

Visual Capitalist – Do Newly Built Skyscrapers Signal The Top of the Stock Market? – Jeff Desjardins 8/29

Visual Capitalist_Skyscraper curse_8-29-16

Featured

*Note: bold emphasis is mine, italic sections are from the articles.

Falling bond yields save taxpayers $500bn. Eric Platt. Financial Times. 31 Aug. 2016.

“The collapse in sovereign bond yields has saved taxpayers more than $500bn in annual interest expenses, allowing countries to rein in budget deficits and continue government-backed programs that would have otherwise been shelved, according to a new report.”

As of the end of last week there was $13.2tn of debt with negative yields.

“Japan, France, Germany and Switzerland are now paid to issue short-dated sovereign bonds.”

“Benefits have effectively been transferred from global investors to sovereign issuers, as sovereign borrowing costs have dropped. Should rates remain low for an extended period, it would likely erode earnings power for many large investment institutions and pension funds.” – Robert Grossman, analyst with Fitch, a rating agency

“The median 10-year government bond now yields 1.17%, down from 3.87% five years ago. Japan has saved more than $95bn a year as a result of the decline in rates, while the US, UK and Germany collectively pay $104bn less annually, the study estimates.”

“Central banks have cut interest rates more than 670 times since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008, or roughly one reduction every three trading days of the year, according to JPMorgan.”

FT_Central bank stimulus weighs on sovereign bond yields_8-31-16

Nigeria falls into recession as economy shrinks in second quarter. Maggie Fick. Financial Times. 31 Aug. 2016.

“Nigeria has slipped into recession for the first time in more than two decades as growth in Africa’s top oil producer shrank for the second consecutive quarter.”

“The economy contracted 2.1% in the three months to the end of June, worse than analysts expected, while inflation hit a 11-year high of 17.1%, underlining the depth of the west African nation’s crisis.”

“Nigeria, which depends on petrodollars for 70% of state revenues and 90% of export earnings, has been battered by the slump in oil prices. The economy shrank 0.4% in the first three months of the year and the International Monetary Fund is forecasting that growth in 2016 will contract 1.8%.”

“The central bank increased the main interest rate by 200 basis points last month in an attempt to combat inflation, but it rose for the ninth consecutive month in July.”

“The continent’s most populous nation was one of the world’s fastest growing economies during the oil boom, but Mr. Buhari (President Muhammadu Buhari) said this month that Nigeria ‘suddenly appears to be a poor country.'”

FT_Nigeria GDP growth_8-31-16

It’s currency is having difficulties as well, “in the official market, the naira is trading below N300 to the dollar, having lost more than 40% of its value since its peg was lifted in June (to ease the country’s quickly depleting reserves of hard currency), but on the black market the currency is far weaker – it has been trading at below N400 to the dollar this week.”

FT_Nigerian Naira currency to the USD_8-31-16

Other Interesting Articles

Bloomberg Businessweek

The Economist

Bloomberg – J.C. Penny Aims to Be King of the Mall as Rivals Retreat 8/25

CoStar – Disparity in Mall Values Driven by Powerful Combination of Forces 8/31

Economist – Grim employment prospects for young people around the world 8/26

FT – How the super-rich are making their homes ‘invisible’ 8/24

FT – Chinese banks braced over industrial restructuring 8/28

FT – Mexico spends $1bn to lock in oil export prices for 2017 8/29

FT – Apple’s EU tax dispute explained 8/29

FT – DBS sells $750m in cocos at record-low yield 8/30

FT – Chinese future looms for Hong Kong’s real estate sector 8/30

FT – China turns away from the market 8/31

Inhabitat – The world’s tallest timber building was just topped off ahead of schedule 8/26

National Real Estate Investor – 2016 Could Signal a Cyclical Peak in Commercial Construction 8/25

NYT – Today’s Inequality Could Easily Become Tomorrow’s Catastrophe 8/26

NYT – Crackdown on For-Profit Colleges May Free Students and Trap Taxpayers 8/28

Zero Hedge – “I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before” – The Housing Markets In The Hamptons, Aspen And Miami Are All Crashing 8/28

WSJ – Which State Is a Big Renewable Energy Pioneer? Texas 8/29

WSJ – Housing Market: Why Millennials Are Getting Priced Out 8/29

WSJ – What Happens When a Central Bank Buys Property Stocks 8/30

WSJ – Shopping Malls’ New Product: Fun 8/30

WSJ – Chinese Cash Pours Into U.S. Real Estate 8/30

WSJ – Emerging Markets: Catch the Yield Where You Can 8/31

WSJ – Birth of the Index Mutual Fund: ‘Bogle’s Folly’ Turns 40 8/31

 

June 24 – June 30, 2016

Japanese banks wary of property risks. Negative-yielding sovereign debt jumps to $11.7tn.

This week all the media outlets were blanketed with coverage on the Brexit and of course the synopsis varied from catastrophe (a lot of money was lost in the equity markets around the world immediately – which have already made up a lot of lost ground), to concern over the survival of the European Union, to a general ‘meh.’  Remember, the world moves on.  Importantly, Britain is still part of the EU. No one has triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty yet and even when Britain does trigger the article, there is a two-year exit process with the EU.  As such, some even think that Britain may not eventually leave.  So for now as the Brits like to say, keep calm and carry on.

Headlines

Briefs

    • “Moody’s Investors Service is predicting that China’s property markets are facing a double-whammy of growing margin pressures for developers and tapering growth in home sales nationwide.”
    • “The rapid growth in land costs will raise the developers’ capital requirements and will also likely add margin pressure in the next 12-24 months. Furthermore, developers that acquired land with high unit costs in major cities will face increased business risks, given our expectation that price growth in these cities will moderate.” – Dylan Yeo, Moody’s analyst
    • “The report from Moody’s follows a note from S&P Global Ratings last week reiterating expectations for growing bond defaults onshore in China, with those for property developers forecast to have the biggest potential impact.”
    • “Between 2005 and 2015 the world’s cities swelled by about 750m people, according to the UN. More than four-fifths of that growth was in Africa and Asia; specifically, on the fringes of African and Asian cities. With few exceptions, cities are growing faster in size than in population. Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, is typical: it doubled in population between 1990 and 2010 but tripled in area. In short, almost all urban growth is sprawl.”
    • “London took two millennia to grow from fewer than 30,000 people to almost 10m; Shenzhen in China managed that within three decades. And most African and Asian cities are growing more chaotically.”
    • “Like it or not, this is how the great cities of the 21st century are taking shape.”
    • “Shlomo Angel of New York University has studied seven African cities in detail: Accra, Addis Ababa, Arusha, Ibadan, Johannesburg, Lagos, and Luanda. He calculates that only 16% of the land in new residential areas developed since 1990 has been set aside for roads – about half as much as planners think necessary. And 44% of those roads are less than four meters wide.”
  • Laura Kusisto of the Wall Street Journal highlighted that yes, today’s renters really are worse off than their parents.
    • “Inflation-adjusted rents have risen by 64% since 1960, but real household incomes only increased by 18% during that same time period, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data released by Apartment List, a rental listing website.”
    • “Renters fared the worst during the decade between 2000 and 2010, when inflation-adjusted household incomes fell by 9%, while rents rose by 18%, according to Apartment List.”
    • In regard to inflation “…housing still largely relies on U.S. labor and materials (and zoning restrictions), making it one of the few essentials that haven’t become cheaper with globalization.”
  • Claire Jones and James Shotter of the Financial Times reported on the IMF’s recent opinion that Germany do more to reform its banks.
    • “The International Monetary Fund has warned that ultra-low interest rates pose a threat to the profitability of Germany’s €13tn financial sector, as it steps up its call for the country’s banks and insurance groups to restructure.”
    • “The IMF has supported the ECB’s aggressive monetary easing and indicated that the onus was on German banks and their regulators and supervisors to reform.”
    • “Given its high share of savings and co-operative banks – whose business revolves around taking deposits from and making loans to local communities – the German banking system is highly dependent on interest rates.”
    • “A study by BaFin, the German financial watchdog, and the Bundesbank last year found that Germany’s 1,500 small and midsized banks expected profits to fall by an aggregate of 25% by 2019, mainly owing to the collapse in net interest income. The study projected that if rates fell a further 100 basis points, lenders’ profits would plunge at least 60% by the same date.”

Special Reports

Graphics

FT – Fed on alert for US economic recoil – Sam Fleming 6/24

FT_Fed funds futures curve_6-24-16

FT – Unicorns: Between myth and reality – Richard Waters and Leslie Hook 6/27

FT_Venture capital invested in US_6-27-16

Bloomberg – San Francisco Landlords Gird for Slowdown as Startup Frenzy Ebbs – Alison Vekshin 6/28

Bloomberg_San Francisco Office Vacancies rise_6-28-16

Economist – Foreign direct investment 6/25

Economist_Foreign direct investment_6-25-16

WSJ – Today’s Renters Really Are Worse Off Than Their Parents – Laura Kusisto 6/29

WSJ_Today’s Renters Really Are Worse Off Than Their Parents_6-29-16

Featured

*Note: bold emphasis is mine, italic sections are from the articles.

Overheating Risk Makes Japanese Banks Wary of Property Lending. Tesun Oh Katsuyo Kuwako. Bloomberg. 27 Jun. 2016.

“Japanese banks are reining in their exposure to the property market on concern the central bank’s negative-rate policy is fueling overheating.”

“We’re watching the market carefully because we get a strong sense that the market is being pushed up mainly by a lot of lending.” – Michiya Fujii, head of the real estate finance department, Tokyo Star Bank, Ltd.

“Lending to the real estate sector rose to a record high in March, exceeding levels during Japan’s asset bubble in the late-1980s, according to Bank of Japan data.”

Bloomberg_Japanese real estate bank loans_6-27-16

When you look at the options for income investors you can understand why. “While the average expected yield for central Tokyo office property fell to 3.7% in the first quarter, its lowest since at least mid-2007, that is still 82 times the 0.045% yield an investor can earn from buying 20-year government debt. Ten-year yields have dropped 10 basis points this month to minus 0.22%.”

“Considering the downside risks, this is not a time when we can aggressively lend. What’s important is, when the time comes and the market turns, how much durability we’ve built into the portfolio.” – Katsumi Taniguchi, head of the planning team of the real estate finance department at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust

Additionally, while rates are low real estate investment trusts and large developers are taking advantage of the opportunity to lower their borrowing costs.  “Nippon Building Fund Inc., Japan’s largest REIT, sold 30-year debt this month at a coupon of 1%, while the largest developer Mitsubishi Estate Co. issued 40-year bonds at 0.789%.”

Negative-yield government debt surges $1.3tn to $11.7tn Adam Samson. Financial Times. 30 Jun. 2016.

“The universe of negative-yielding government debt has increased by more than $1tn in the last month to reach a high of almost $12tn in one of the most tangible results of Britain’s decision to leave the EU.”

“Low sovereign bond yields reflect gloomy economic outlooks and expectations of central bank stimulus. In turn a record $11.7tn of global sovereign debt has now entered sub-zero territory – an increase of $1.3tn since the end of May, according to data released by Fitch Ratings.”

FT_Gobal negative yielding sovereign debt rises to $11.7tn_6-30-16

“You have to look at the response by central banks after the Brexit shock. You’re seeing a ubiquitous tilt toward easing among G4 central banks (Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England).” – Ben Mandel, a global strategist at JPMorgan Chase

Because of this, “futures markets suggest investors saw a roughly 75% chance that the Federal Reserve will not raise interest rates over the next 12 months.”

FT_Government debt yields under pressure_6-30-16

Other Interesting Articles

The Economist

Bloomberg – China’s Idled Wind Farms May Spell Trouble for Renewable Energy 6/28

Economist – Why Brexit is grim news for the world economy 6/24

FT – The perfect financial crime 6/25

FT – South Korea plans stimulus boost in wake of Brexit 6/27

FT – Broad, deep and brutal – Asia’s Brexit reaction 6/29

FT – Brazilian bankruptcies create opportunities for debt investors 6/29

Project Syndicate – Brexit and the Future of Europe (George Soros) 6/25

Reuters – Post-Brexit global equity loss of over $2 trillion worst ever: S&P 6/26

The New Yorker – Why Brexit Might Not Happen at All 6/27

WSJ – Shareholder Fight Puts China’s Market Resolve on the Line 6/28

 

June 17 – June 23, 2016

Eight massive shifts underway in energy. U.S. men of prime working age are dropping out of the labor force. Venezuela on the brink of social and economic collapse.

Headlines

Briefs

    • “Prices for land, the main ingredient of the property world, have hit record highs in auctions this year in many Chinese cities. The average land price per square meter for the top 100 cities in the first five months of this year jumped nearly 50% from same period last year, according to Wind Information. Some land prices are even higher than housing prices nearby.”
    • Interestingly, “most of the buyers of the most expensive parcels are state-owned enterprises. A property subsidiary of China Gezhouba Group, a state-owned builder of power plants and dams, spent 3.3 billion yuan last month to buy the most expensive land, in terms of price per square meter, in Nanjing. Another state dam construction company, Power Construction Corp. of China, snapped up a piece of land in China’s bubbliest property market, the southern metropolis of Shenzhen, for 8.3 billion yuan.”
    • “The domestic bond market and growth in asset-backed securities have made financing easier for developers, causing companies to chase whatever assets they can. Continuing reforms of state-owned enterprises could also be a trigger, as these firms have incentives to inflate their balance sheets to gain clout in consolidation talks. For some which have already invested heavily in real estate, keeping land prices high makes sense.”
    • In 2015 a record 960m cubic meters of cargo passed through the canal, starting June 26 the canal will have capacity of 1.7 billion cubic meters of cargo annually.  “The biggest container ships that could use the old canal, known as Panamaxes, can carry around 5,000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units, or a standard shipping container). Neo-Panamaxes that will squeeze through the new locks can carry around 13,000 TEUs. Although the world’s largest ships have space for nearly 20,000 TEUs, the majority of the global fleet will now fit through the canal.”
    • “America’s east-coast ports should get busier… And vessels carrying liquefied natural gas from America’s shale beds will be able to pass through the locks for the first time, heading to Asia. They are expected to account for 20% of cargo by volume by 2020.”
  • Anjani Trivedi of the Wall Street Journal drew attention to the potential credit black hole brewing in China.
    • “China’s M1 money supply, a measure of the most liquid assets in the banking system as cash and certain types of demand deposits, is growing at its fastest pace in six years. Meanwhile, M2 money supply, a broader gauge of liquidity including longer-term deposits, expanded at the slowest rate in a year. The ratio of these two rose to its highest since the data has been tracked.”
    • “One of the main sources of the rapid M1 growth is troubling: short-term, higher-yielding investments such as wealth-management products in the form of current deposits that now account for 95% of the growth of M1.”
  • Yukako Ono and Lucinda Elliott of the Financial Times reported on Nigeria’s recent decision to float its currency on Monday (June 20).
    • “Nigeria’s long-awaited flexible foreign exchange rate regime got off to an explosive start on Monday as the naira slid by as much as 27% to N254 to the US dollar.”
    • “The currency had been pegged at about N197 per dollar since March 2015. Nigeria, Africa’s biggest economy – where oil exports account for more than 90% of foreign revenue – did not follow other large oil exporting nations which began devaluing their currencies in 2014 as crude prices fell by more than half.”
    • “But short-term public finances are still in crisis. ‘Serious domestic reforms are needed that won’t be fixed by the exchange rate normalization,’ Mr. (John) Ashbourne (of Capital Economics) said. As a result of sabotage by resurgent militants in the oil-producing Niger delta, Nigeria has been losing about 700,000 barrels of oil a day. This, and the fall in oil prices since 2014, mean that the state is receiving a quarter or less of what it earned two years ago.”
    • As a follow up as of Thursday (6/23), the exchange rate was 283.50 Naira to $1 USD.
  • Patrick Jenkins of the Financial Times highlighted the slow moving financial crisis that is underfunded pensions.
    • “A recent report by Citigroup shone a light on just how big a nightmare is looming. It found most pension plans in the US and UK are underfunded, with an aggregate 18% deficit.”
    • “Government pension schemes are in an even worse state. Citi found the value of unfunded or underfunded liabilities for 20 OECD countries is $78tn – nearly double the $44tn published national debt number.”

Graphics

WSJ – Why China’s Developers Can’t Stop Overpaying for Property – Jacky Wong 6/19

WSJ_Why China’s Developers Can’t Stop Overpaying for Property_6-19-16

WSJ – Credit Black Hole – Anjani Trivedi 6/20

WSJ_Chinese Cash Disappearing Down Credit Black Hole_6-20-16

FT – Nigeria’s currency tanks against dollar on float – Yukako Ono and Lucinda Elliott 6/20

FT_Nigerian naira falls_6-20-16

Featured

*Note: bold emphasis is mine, italic sections are from the articles.

The World Nears Peak Fossil Fuels for Electricity. Tom Randall. Bloomberg. 12 Jun. 2016.

“The way we get electricity is about to change dramatically, as the era of ever-expanding demand for fossil fuels comes to an end – in less than a decade. That’s according to a new forecast by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) that plots out the global power markets for the next 25 years.”

“Call it peak fossil fuels, a turnabout that’s happening not because we’re running out of coal and gas, but because we’re finding cheaper alternatives. Demand is peaking ahead of schedule because electric cars and affordable battery storage for renewable power are arriving faster than expected, as are changes in China’s energy mix.”

The eight massive shifts underway:

  1. There Will Be No Golden Age of Gas
    • “The cost of wind and solar power are falling too quickly for gas ever to dominate on a global scale, according to BNEF.”
    • “The peak year for coal, gas, and oil: 2025.“

Bloomberg_Peak fossil fuels_6-12-16

  1. Renewables Attract $7.8 Trillion
    • “Humanity’s demand for electricity is still rising, and investments in fossil fuels will add up to $2.1 trillion through 2040. But that will be dwarfed by $7.8 trillion invested in renewables, including $3.4 trillion for solar, $3.1 trillion for wind, and $911 billion for hydro power.”
    • “But by 2027, something remarkable happens. At that point, building new wind farms and solar fields will often be cheaper than running the existing coal and gas generators.”
    • “By 2028, batteries will be as ubiquitous as rooftop solar is today.”

Bloomberg_Solar on the upswing_6-12-16

  1. Electric Cars Rescue Power Markets
    • “The adoption of electric cars will vary by country and continent, but overall they’ll add 8% to humanity’s total electricity use by 2040, BNEF found.”

Bloomberg_Electric cars go mainstream_6-12-16

  1. Batteries Join the Grid
    • “The scale-up of electric cars increases demand for renewable energy and drives down the cost of batteries. And as those costs fall, batteries can increasingly be used to store solar power.”

Bloomberg_Here come the batteries_6-12-16

  1. Solar and Wind Prices Plummet
    • “For every doubling in the world’s solar panels, costs fall by 26%, a number known as solar’s ‘learning rate.’ Solar is a technology, not a fuel, and as such it gets cheaper and more efficient over time. This is the formula that’s driving the energy revolution.”
    • “Wind-power prices are also falling fast – 19% for every doubling. Wind and solar will be the cheapest forms of producing electricity in most of the world by the 2030s, according to BNEF.”

Bloomberg_Beautiful math of solar power_6-12-16

  1. Capacity Factors Go Wild
    • The capacity factor (essentially the efficiency ratio) for renewable energy technologies is getting much better.
    • “Once a solar or wind project is built, the marginal cost of the electricity it produces is pretty much zero–free electricity–while coal and gas plants require more fuel for every new watt produced. If you’re a power company with a choice, you choose the free stuff every time.”

Bloomberg_Capacity factors getting better_6-12-16

  1. A New Polluter to Worry About
    • “China’s evolving economy and its massive shift from coal to renewables mean it will have the greatest reduction in carbon emissions of any country in the next 25 years, according to BNEF.”
    • But, “India’s electricity demand is expected to increase fourfold by 2040” and they have tons of coal which they intend to use.

Bloomberg_India the fastest-growing polluter_6-12-16

  1. The Transformation Continues
    • Unfortunately, the shift to renewables is not happening fast enough…

Bloomberg_Climate is still in trouble_6-12-16

US low-skill males drop out of jobs market. Sam Fleming. Financial Times. 20 Jun. 2016.

“Labor-force participation among men of prime working age has dropped by more in the US than in any other OECD country apart from Italy in the past quarter century.”

A recent report from the Council of Economic Advisers “shed light on one of the major concerns about America’s recovery: while unemployment has been falling, a large number of people have also been dropping out of the jobs market altogether.”

“Among so-called prime-aged men between the ages of 25 and 54, the participation rate fell more steeply than in all but one other country in the OECD from 1990 to 2014, the report found. It is now the third-lowest among 34 OECD nations.”

The report found that “this fall in the prime-age male labor force participation rate, from a peak of 98% in 1954 to 88% today, is particularly troubling since workers at this age are at their most productive.”

“The analysis shows that participation rates have diverged sharply between people who have a college degree or more, and those who do not. In 1964, some 98% of prime-age, college-educated men participated in the workforce, compared with 97% of those with a high-school degree or less. By 2015, the rate for college-educated men had slipped to 94%, while that for those with a high-school degree or less had plunged to 83%.”

FT_Prime-age male labor force participation_6-20-16

Further, “more than a third of those prime-aged men who are outside the workforce are living in poverty, suggesting their decision to drop out is not a choice they made because they had other sources of income.”

Is Venezuela close to boiling point? Pan Kwan Yuk. Financial Times. 21 Jun. 2016.

You’ll note this week that there is a lot of coverage on this topic from the NYT piece about Venezuelans ransacking stores for basic goods, to the Bloomberg Businessweek article on how weak government structures fall apart when climate stresses get added to the mix, to the Financial Times article on how Chinese government officials have been meeting with the opposition politicians in Caracas to ensure that their loans will eventually be paid.  Bottom line, things are coming apart at the seams.

“Venezuela is on the brink of economic and social collapse. There is a high chance of a sovereign default and a removal of the president over the next eighteen months.” – Capital Economics

“The worst part of this story is that Venezuela hasn’t hit bottom yet – the only light at the end of this tunnel seems to be from another of a series of oncoming locomotives.” – Russ Dallen, managing partner at Caracas Capital Markets

“The violent food riots that have swept the country are but the latest sign that things in Venezuela might have reached a boiling point. The collapse in the bolivar “fuerte” – or strong bolivar – which is trading close to 1,100 per dollar in the black market – is another. To put this in perspective, the country’s biggest banknote – the 100 bolivar – is now worth just a mere 9 US cents.”

FT_Collapse of the bolivar_6-21-16

Other Interesting Articles

Bloomberg Businessweek

The Economist

FT – Nigeria changes course with painful devaluation 6/16

FT – Whatever happened to the China crisis? 6/19

FT – Perverse incentives lie behind Microsoft’s LinkedIn purchase 6/19

FT – Egyptians rush to invest in property to counter the pound’s slide 6/19

FT – Hedge funds seek long term money for distressed debt wagers 6/20

FT – Central banks’ front-loading leaves modest pickings for investors 6/20

FT- Chinese banks brace for storm in face of shadow finance calm 6/20

FT – The corn shortage that Brazil really can’t afford 6/21

FT – China bankruptcies surge as government targets zombie enterprises 6/22

Investment News – Allianz’ Mohamed El-Erian sees ‘common element’ between Brexit vote, negative rates, strange politics and Fed policy 6/20

MarketWatch – A storm is brewing in the real-estate market, Pimco warns 6/20

Vanity Fair – Leaked Documents Reveal How Much Uber Drivers Really Make 6/23

WSJ – Apartment Boom Needs Cooling-Off Period 6/16

WSJ – China’s Short-Term Lending Boom Won’t End Well 6/16

WSJ – Losers Abound in $7 Billion Chinese Takeover Scuffle 6/20

WSJ – Rents Are Booming, But for How Long? 6/21

Yahoo Finance – Jim Chanos shreds ‘shameful’ Tesla-SolarCity deal 6/22

 

May 27 – June 2, 2016

Loans taken out by commodity rich countries in the good old days to be paid back in oil have become a major liability. The financial outlook for Chinese firms isn’t looking so good. Negative yields on corporate bonds – hey, it’s better than what you can get for the government stuff.

Headlines

Briefs

    • “A third of the units in some newly built high-rises are back on the market, though most are listed for more than their owners paid in the pre-construction phase. At the current sales pace, it would take 29 months to sell the 3,397 condominiums available in the downtown area, according to South Florida development tracker CraneSpotters.com.”
    • “8,000 units are under construction and nine towers were completed since the end of 2013.”
    • “Condo purchases from January through April slid 25% from a year earlier, while the average price fell 6% on a per-square-foot basis, CraneSpotters data show.”
    • “The concern is we’re in a price-discovery phase, and the prices people are trying to get for their condos is a lot higher than the market will bear. That may signal a coming price correction.” – Andrew Stearns, founder of StatFunding.com, a provider of residential mortgages for foreign nationals.
  • So what do you do if you’re a pension fund (or an individual investor for that matter) that ‘needs’ to achieve a certain rate of return (if you don’t want to save more or increase your unfunded liabilities)… as Timothy Martin in the Wall Street Journal points out, you pile on the risk and cross your fingers.
    • “What it means to be a successful investor in 2016 can be summed up in four words: bigger gambles, lower returns.”
    • “In 1995, a portfolio made up wholly of bonds would return 7.5% a year with a likelihood that returns could vary by about 6%, according to research by Callan Associates Inc., which advises large investors. To make a 7.5% return in 2015, Callan found, investors needed to spread money across risky assets, shrinking bonds to just 12% of the portfolio. Private equity and stocks needed to take up some three-quarters of the entire investment pool. But with the added risk, returns could vary by more than 17%.”
    • Brazil’s economy contracted 5.4% year-over-year leading economists to “say the once high-flying emerging market is suffering a deep recession that is starting to show characteristics of a depression.”
    • “GDP contracted for the fifth straight quarter in the three months to March and has declined or been virtually flat in eight of the past 10 quarters.”
    • “Goldman Sachs economist Alberto Ramos said a depression was defined as a recession that lasts eight or more straight quarters in which there is a decline in real GDP of 10% or more.”  Well, according to Ramos, “Brazil’s recession has been running for two years and has reduced the size of the economy to the level of late 2010 with a decline in real per capita GDP of 9%.”
    • Thing is it won’t be easy to turn this ship around.  “Marcos Casarin of Oxford Economics predicted it would take 10 years for Brazil to recover the level of per capita GDP of 2013.”  That’s even taking into consideration the government’s new economic team that has decent credibility.
    • Hopefully the Summer Olympics help… ole, ole, ole, ole…

Special Reports

Graphics

Bloomberg – Miami’s Condo Frenzy Ends With Inventory Piling Up in New Towers – Prashant Gopal 5/26

Bloomberg_Downtown Miami Condo Boom cooled_5-26-16

FT – Big oil groups raise net debt by a third to cope with low prices – Ed Crooks 5/29

FT_Big oil, bigger borrowing_5-29-16

FT_Net debts of largest US and Euro oil cos_5-29-16

WSJ – Pension Funds Pile on Risk Just to Get a Reasonable Return – Timothy Martin 5/31

WSJ_Rolling the dice on investment returns_5-31-16

FT – China – FTCR Underground Lending Index falls after credit boom 5/31

FT_China Underground Lending Index_5-31-16

FT – Earnings fall betrays shaky state of China’s economy – Yusho Cho and Kenji Kawase 5/31

FT_Chinese profits down_5-31-16

FT – Brazil’s GDP reveals depths of recession – Joe Leahy and Samantha Pearson 6/1

FT_Brazil's economy in crisis mode_6-1-16

Featured

*Note: bold emphasis is mine, italic sections are from the articles.

Debt repayments in crude cripple poorer oil producers. Libby George and Dmitry Zhdannikov. Reuters. 24 May 2016.

“Poorer oil-producing countries which took out loans to be repaid in oil when the price was higher are having to send three times as much to respect repayment schedules now prices have fallen.”

“Angola, Africa’s largest oil producer has borrowed as much as $25 billion from China since 2010, including about $5 billion last December, forcing its state oil firm to channel almost is entire oil output toward debt repayments this year.”

“This year Angola, Nigeria, Iraq, Venezuela and Kurdistan are due to repay a total of between $30 billion and $50 billion with oil…”

“Repaying $50 billion required only slightly over 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil exports when it was trading at $120 per barrel but with prices of around $40, the same repayment would require exports of over 3 million bpd.”

“All of those oil nations – Angola, Nigeria, Venezuela – have taken money for survival but haven’t got any money left for investments. That is very damaging to their long-term growth prospects. People tend to look at current production volumes but if you have committed your entire production to China or other buyers under loans – then you cannot invest to keep growing and won’t benefit from higher prices in the future.” – Amrita Sen from Energy Aspects, a think-tank.

“China has also become Venezuela’s top financier via an oil-for-loans program which since 2007 has funneled $50 billion into Venezuelan coffers in exchange for repayment in crude and fuel, including a $5 billion deal last September.”

“While details of the loans have not been made public, analysts from Barclays estimate Caracas owes $7 billion to Beijing this year and needs nearly 800,000 bpd to meet payments, up from 230,000 bpd when oil traded at $100 per barrel.”

“Iraq is trying to renegotiate contracts for investment and development of new oil fields that it has with companies including Exxon, Shell and Lukoil. It was supposed to repay the companies $23 billion this year with oil but is now arguing that it will only have enough crude to repay $9 billion.”

“In contrast, OPEC’s Gulf Arab members – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar – have very few joint ventures with oil companies, do not have pre-payment deals with China and do not need to borrow from trading houses.”

“It may ultimately be mounting supply disruptions in stressed states, rather than collective cartel action, that causes an accelerated market rebalancing.” – Helima Croft, head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital

Chinese firms’ financial outlook worsens at record rate. James Kynge. Financial Times. 26 May 2016.

“The share of rated issuers in China with a negative outlook bias…has increased to a record high of 69%,” according to a Moody’s report authored by Michael Taylor, Moody’s chief credit officer for the Asia Pacific region, and colleagues. This proportion was up from 15.7% at the end of last year and 33.3% at the end of March this year.”

“The previous peak proportion of rated Chinese debt issuers with a “negative outlook bias” was 45.5%, a level hit in May 2009 as the Chinese economy suffered in the aftermath of the financial crisis.”

FT_Negative ratings basis for Chinese issuers_5-26-16

“But, in spite of the growing worries, Moody’s said in its report that China had the capacity to avoid a financial unravelling.”

As to the reasons for the spike in the negative outlook, 1) the amount of capital now required to generate growth, 2) increasing debt levels, and 3) returns on assets are on the decline.

“In 2014, 6.3 units of capital investment were required to generate a unit of growth, the highest level since the 2008 crisis and far above the pre-crisis 2.9 times seen in 2007.”

FT_Declining productivity for capital investment in China_5-26-16

In regard to debt, “the rising interest burden from elevated debt levels could eventually crowd out productive investment, reducing the economy’s long-run growth potential” according to the Moody’s report.

As to returns on assets, “overall state-owned enterprises (SoE) returns on assets slipped to 2.9% in 2015 from a post-crisis high of 5.9% hit in 2010.”

FT_Declining profit margins for Chines cos_5-26-16

Corporate bonds join negative yield club. Eric Platt and Gavin Jackson. Financial Times. 2 Jun. 2016.

“More than $36bn of corporate bonds with a short-term maturity currently trade with a sub-zero yield…”

“The yield on a host of short-term paper sold by groups including Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Philip Morris now trade below zero in the secondary market. While no corporate bond has yet been sold with a negative yield, recent debt offerings from French pharmaceuticals market Sanofi and consumer goods conglomerate Unilever were issued as zero coupon securities.”

“Separate data tracked by Tradeweb put the value of negative yielding corporate bonds at $380bn – a figure that includes euro denominated bonds maturing in the next year that are not captured by some of the main index providers. The total sum could be greater when counting bonds issued in Swiss franc or Japanese yen, data provider Markit noted.”

As Iain Stealey, a portfolio manager with JPMorgan Asset Management so aptly put it “as bonds get to a shorter and shorter maturity, you’ll see more trade with a negative yield. Everything is relative and zero is not the lower bound anymore.”

“As a dealer, you are happy to bid through zero because you know the ECB (European Central Bank) will keep buying.” – Barnaby Martin, head of European credit strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Bottom line, “the central bank has said it will be permissible for it to purchase investment grade corporate bonds so long as they yield more than the ECB’s deposit rate of minus 0.4%.”

“Companies have sought to take advantage of the drop in borrowing costs. More than $1tn of corporate debt has been issued globally since the year began, the fourth consecutive year bond sales crossed that threshold by the start of June, according to Dealogic.”

“Maybe a highly-rated company can issue a two or three year bond with a zero coupon, but if they can issue a 10-year bond with a 1% coupon, that might be a better long-term relative value.” – Marc Fratepietro, head of Americas investment grade debt capital markets at Deutsche Bank

Other Interesting Articles

The Economist

Bloomberg – Apartment Owners Fall as NYC, San Francisco Rents Seen Soft 6/1

Bloomberg – Hilton Property Spinoff to Create Park Hotels & Resorts REIT 6/2

FT – Malaysia letters deepen mystery over fate of 1MDB cash 5/27

FT – Age survey underlines pressures on Japan 5/28

FT – Collusion keeps debt problems at bay in China’s private sector heartland 5/29

FT – Abe rolls dice on delay to Japan sales tax rise 5/30

FT – US peer-to-peer lending model has parallels with subprime crisis 5/30

FT – Russian and Saudi investors cut US assets 5/31

FT – Chinese students ‘brainwashed by western theories’, say scholars 6/1

InvestmentNews – Report says REIT changes proposed by AR Global would remove investor protections 5/31

NYT – In China, Homeowners Find Themselves in a Land of Doubt 5/31

WSJ – U.S. Home Prices Jump as Supply Pinch Plays Out 5/31

WSJ – China’s Real-Estate Firms Rush to Tap Capital Markets 5/31