“New York has surpassed London as the second-most luxurious major housing market in the world after Hong Kong as the effects of the UK’s vote to leave the EU chipped away at the price of top British real estate.”
“’In New York, luxury price increases and robust sales volumes, particularly at the low-end of the luxury market, bolstered the city’s index position’ last year, Christie’s International Real Estate said in a report.”
“Hong Kong, which saw two residential sales above $100m — including one at $360m — and the highest price per square foot of any city, held the top spot for the second year in a row.”
“The city rankings are based on seven factors collected by Christie’s, including record sales price, average price per square foot for homes that sold for more than $1m, the number of sales above $1m, the number of sales over $1m relative to total sales, the percentage of local and non-local buyers, and the percentage of secondary and additional homeowners.”
“Top 10 cities for luxury real estate, 2017
Hong Kong
New York
London
Singapore
San Francisco
Los Angeles
Sydney
Paris
Toronto
Vancouver”
“Christie’s said the ‘hottest’ market for new homes, based on the greatest rise in year-on-year increases in both luxury sales volumes and prices, was Victoria, British Columbia; followed by San Diego and Orange County, California; Washington DC; and Paris. The hottest markets for second homes were Santa Fe, New Mexico; Muskoka, Ontario; Sarasota, Florida; Sun Valley, Idaho; and the Bahamas.”
“JPMorgan Chase has given a big boost to the old business heart of midtown Manhattan, agreeing a deal to tear down its 60-year-old Park Avenue headquarters and replace it with one of the tallest towers in New York City.”
“The biggest US bank by assets had been considering a move from its 270 Park Avenue location to the west side of Manhattan, as an anchor tenant of a new development known as Hudson Yards. But on Wednesday the bank said that it had struck a deal with Mayor Bill de Blasio to stay put, moving staff from several buildings in the Park Avenue area into a new, 2.5m sq ft tower.”
“At 70 to 75 floors, it should be the tallest bank building in the country upon completion in 2024, topping Bank of America’s 55-floor tower a few streets away, on the north-west corner of Bryant Park. It will also surpass BofA’s 60-floor headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, which looms over the 42-floor Wells Fargo Tower.”
“Stuart Saft, head of the New York real estate practice at Holland & Knight, described the deal as a ‘fabulous’ one for midtown Manhattan, likening the threat from Hudson Yards to the development of Canary Wharf in London in the late 1980s. Already, white-shoe law firms such as Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and Boies Schiller Flexner have agreed to move to the complex emerging by the Hudson River.”
“JPMorgan will expand its floor area by buying unused development credits, known as ‘air rights’, from landmark properties in the area such as St Patrick’s Cathedral, St Bartholomew’s Church and Central Synagogue.”
“Blockchain could save asset managers $2.7bn a year if the investment industry shunned the laborious manual practices involved in buying and selling funds in favor of using online ledger technology, according to research published on Thursday.”
“Technology company Calastone said blockchain, which is a giant online ledger, could revolutionize the processes involved in buying and selling funds, generating large savings for investors in the process.”
“It estimated that based on daily trade volumes of funds in the UK, Ireland, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Australia, £1.9bn — or $2.7bn — in savings was possible.”
“Earlier this year, BNP Paribas Asset Management said it had successfully completed a full end-to-end fund transaction test using blockchain technology. The project involved a tie-up between BNP Paribas Securities Services’ blockchain program, Fund Link, and FundsDLT, a blockchain-based decentralized platform for fund transaction processing.”
“Indonesians declared more than 750tn rupiah ($52.5bn) worth of assets in Singapore during Indonesia’s tax amnesty program — which gave immunity from prosecution to those who came clean about untaxed wealth and paid a small penalty — ended last March. That is more than the combined total they declared in the next four top destinations — British Virgin Islands, Hong Kong, Cayman Islands and Australia.”
“Tencent, a Chinese technology group with an equity value greater than Facebook’s, said 768m people sent and received hongbao, the red packets stuffed with cash, over Weixin Pay, its third-party payments business, during the six-day holiday period. Typically people will hand out scores or even hundreds of hongbao: according to Tencent, one person sent 2,723 while another received 3,429.”
“The authorities call them ‘business cults’. Tens of millions of people are ensnared in these pyramid schemes that use cult-like techniques to brainwash their targets and bilk them out of their money.”
“Many countries suffer from Ponzi schemes, which typically sell financial products offering extravagant rewards. They pay old investors out of new deposits, which means their liabilities exceed their assets; when recruitment falters, the schemes collapse. China is no exception. In 2016 it closed down Ezubao, a multi-billion-dollar scam that had drawn in more than 900,000 investors. By number of victims, it was the world’s largest such fraud.”
“Chinese pyramid schemes commonly practice ‘multi-level marketing’ (MLM), a system whereby a salesperson earns money not just by selling a company’s goods but also from commissions on sales made by others, whom the first salesperson has recruited. People often earn more by recruiting others than from their own sales. Since 1998 China has banned the use of such methods, although it does allow some, mostly foreign, MLM companies to do business in China as ‘direct sellers’. This involves recruiting people to sell products at work or at home.”
“The distinguishing feature of the Chinese scams is the way they combine pyramid-type operations with cult-like brainwashing.”
“Many perfectly legal companies try to boost morale by getting staff to sing company songs or organizing awaydays. China’s business cults, however, combine such techniques with violence.”
“Business cults seem to be growing. In the first nine months of 2017 the police brought cases against almost 6,000 of them, twice as many as in the whole of 2016 and three times the average annual number in 2005-15. This was just scratching the surface. In July 2017 the police arrested 230 leaders of Shan Xin Hui, a scheme that was launched in May 2016 and had an estimated 5m investors just 15 months later. In August 2017, after the government launched its campaign against ‘diehard scams’, police in the southern port of Beihai, Guangxi province, arrested 1,200 people for defrauding victims of 1.5bn yuan ($223m). One scheme in Guangxi, known as 1040 Project, was reckoned to have fleeced its targets of 600m yuan.”
“The scale of the scams worries the government. Their cultish features make it even more anxious. The Communist Party worries about any social organization that it does not control. Cults are especially worrisome because religious and quasi-religious activities give their followers a focus of loyalty that competes with the party.”
“The authorities will find it hard to curb the scams for three main reasons. First, in order to encourage cheap loans for industry, the central bank keeps interest rates low. For years they were negative, i.e, below inflation. That built up demand among China’s savers for better returns. With gross savings equal to just under half of GDP, it is not surprising that some of that pool of money should be attracted to schemes promising remarkable dividends.”
“Second, it is often hard for consumers to spot frauds. In 2005 China legalized direct selling, arguing that there was a distinction between that practice and the way that Ponzi schemes operate. But Qiao Xinsheng of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law argues that the difference is often ‘blurred’ in the eyes of the public. Scammers can easily pass them themselves off as legitimate. Dodgy companies exploit government propaganda in order to pretend they have official status. For example, they may claim to be ‘new era’ companies, borrowing a catchphrase of China’s president, Xi Jinping.”
“Third, argues Mr Li, business cults manipulate traditional attachments to kin. Companies in America often appeal to individual ambition, promising to show investors how to make money for themselves. Those in China offer to help the family, or a wider group. Shan Xin Hui literally means Kind Heart Exchange. It purported to be a charity, offering higher returns to poor investors than to rich ones. (In reality everyone got scammed.) Business cults rely on one family member to recruit another, and upon the obligation that relatives feel to trust each other. This helps explain why investors who have lost life savings continue to support the companies that defrauded them.”
“In a business environment that demands, and rewards, quarterly profits and short-term strategic thinking, Amazon showed extraordinary resolve in focusing on long-term goals, somehow persuading investors to go along.”
“Over its first decade in existence, including long stretches where it consistently reported losses, Amazon enjoyed a luxury afforded few companies: leeway.”
“Amazon has reported an annual profit in only 13 of the 21 years that it has operated as a publicly traded company, according to FactSet, a financial data firm.”
“And its profit margins, already low by some measures, have fluctuated from year to year — hardly moving in the straight upward line that Wall Street usually likes to see.”
“Yet investors have rewarded Amazon for plowing its profits back into growing its businesses, whether in online retail, cloud computing or, most recently, in grocery stores, with the acquisition of Whole Foods Market.”
“Twitter knew about all its fake followers, and always has – eliminating just enough bots to make it seem like they care, but not enough that it would affect the perceived number of active users on the platform.”
“Companies are paying slightly more to borrow, but higher risk-free yields haven’t fed through fully. This is significant.”
“…the ECB, is still at play. The ECB’s bond-buying actions have a twist: in the first four weeks of January, corporate purchases as a share of government purchases stood at 27%, versus 11.5% when the program was running full-tilt at €80 billion a month, according to Deutsche Bank . In other words, corporates are still getting decent support from ECB purchases.”
“One snag is that corporate-bond spreads are already so tight there is little room for error. In Europe, the investment-grade ICE BofAML corporate index yield premium over government bonds is just 0.74 percentage points, its lowest level since August 2007.”
“Investors should watch closely if spreads do widen significantly. It would mean either companies are making riskier, top-of-market types of bets or investors are getting concerned about growth and underlying cash flows. For now, the message from higher interest rates is, don’t sweat it.”
“Digital currency bitcoin BTC=BTSP fell more than 15% on Monday to a nearly three-month low amid a slew of concerns ranging from a global regulatory clampdown to a ban on using credit cards to buy bitcoin by British and U.S. banks.”
“On the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, bitcoin fell as low as $6,853.53 in early afternoon trading in New York. That marked a fall of more than half from a peak of almost $20,000 hit in December.”
“Bitcoin has fallen in six of the last eight trading session.”
“The currency, which surged more than 1,300% last year, has lost about half its value so far in 2018, as more governments and banks signal their intention for a regulatory crackdown. Last week bitcoin suffered its worst weekly performance since 2013.”
“Across the metropolitan area that surrounds New Delhi, a string of real-estate developers including Unitech, Jaypee Infratech Ltd. and Amrapali Group have been dragged to court by irate homeowners who shelled out payments for apartments that have yet to be completed. Many of these firms took money from a stream of buyers. As sales slumped and the once red-hot market cooled, their businesses unraveled — leaving them grappling with debt.”
“The fallouts from the shakeup in the $126 billion property market are reverberating across companies, markets and the broader economy. Unitech, once India’s largest developer, has plunged to a fraction of its previous valuation. Jaypee is in insolvency court. State-owned banks — the lifeblood of the economy — are grappling with a pile up of bad loans from the industry. Indian families, who have long poured their life savings into real estate, are now pulling back.”
“Indian real-estate businesses expanded as long as firm were able to draw new buyers for planned projects. But as the economy slowed and demand softened, many firms were left short of cash and struggling to manage their debt. The downturn only worsened last year after the government tightened regulations to protect homebuyers and separately introduced a new services tax across all industries. India’s residential sector appears to have shrunk to a fraction of its size in less than a decade, according to Shishir Baijal, managing director of Knight Frank India.”
“Prices dropped 3% on average across the top six cities, according to Knight Frank, with some declining as much as 15% after accounting for developer discounts. And in the capital region, last year’s prices were 9% below their 2015 peak. The outlook remains bleak.”
“The property developers are adding to a pile-up of bad loans in India’s banking sector, which is already struggling to manage a spike in stressed assets across several industries.”
“India’s government has stepped in to regulate the real-estate industry with new laws, including one that forces developers to use at least 70% of sale proceeds to complete residential projects, rather than funnel money to different jobs. Other measures prevent them from pre-selling apartments before all building approvals are obtained.”
“The pain hasn’t been restricted to the North. India’s financial capital, Mumbai, last year witnessed a decline in residential property prices for the first time in a decade. New residential launches across eight Indian cities dropped 41% last year and were down 78% from their peak in 2010, Knight Frank data show.”
WSJ – Daily Shot: Moody’s – Higher Ed & Not For Profit Debt Rating Changes 11/19
“College debt continues to get downgraded. Some suggest that this could become a severe problem if the economy slows (colleges are no longer able to raise tuition at the rate they used to). Will we see colleges consolidating or even going under?”
“According to Gallup, Americans’ trust in mass media peaked at 72% in 1976, the year All The President’s Men hit cinemas. By last year, that figure had plunged to 32% — just 14% among Republicans.”
“America is not unique in this, but in few countries are views of journalists more defined by party allegiance and in no other has a president so weaponized that mistrust.”
“A Politico/Morning Consult poll in October found 46% of Americans believe news organizations fabricate Trump stories, and more than three quarters of Republicans think we are making it up. Far more Americans now define ‘fake news’ as sloppy or biased reporting than White House spin.”
“Knowing the consequences my colleagues and I would face if we fabricated a story, I find such polls baffling and alarming. It is tempting to quibble with the methodology or even to despair of those who don’t understand how we work. But it feels more important to examine how we became so vulnerable to the ‘fake news’ charge.”
“The issue isn’t whether the market will crash, it is how much money investors will make, or lose, in the coming years. With cash sloshing around the global financial system, prices can go higher, but investors who buy at those prices shouldn’t expect their returns to match those earned in the past few years.”
“With retailers closing thousands of stores and malls growing emptier, it’s easy to think Americans would be less inclined to pony up for good causes at the register. But the latest Charity Checkout Champions report says that people contributed $441 million last year to some of the biggest point-of-sale campaigns, up 4.5% from 2014.”
“The biggest fund-raiser is eBay for Charity, which raised $56.6 million by allowing sellers to give a portion of sales to one of 34,000 charities. The Miracle Balloon program at Sam’s Clubs and Walmart stores came in at No. 2, raising $37 million for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals in just seven weeks. And Petco bumped the McDonald’s Coin Collection program, benefitting Ronald McDonald House, out of third place, generating $28.3 million in gifts for the Petco Foundation, which funds pet welfare and adoption groups.”
The last time this happened I covered in my 10/28/16 – 11/3/16 post. Well now the record is $664,000.
“The buyer was listed as Kwan Wai-ming, whom local news outlets identified as executive director of the Huarong Investment Stock Corporation. His company declined to comment. That price, paid for a spot in an apartment complex on Hong Kong Island, was a new local record, breaking the previous $615,000 paid for a slightly smaller spot last year.”
“For his money, Mr. Kwan may get convenience. He already owns property in the same apartment complex where the parking spot is situated, called the Upton, in the Sai Ying Pun district. He previously bought two apartments for $9.7 million and two other parking spots in the complex for $995,000, according to the Hong Kong land registry.”
“But some wealthy residents revel in the recognition that comes with a Lamborghini or even a coveted license plate. Last year, a plate carrying the number 28, which sounds like a phrase for ‘easy money’ in Cantonese, sold for a record $2.3 million at auction.”
“The Mountain View, Calif., company is finalizing an order to buy 300 apartment units from Factory OS, a modular-home startup, in a building likely to serve as short-term housing for Google employees, according to executives from both companies.”
“The global oil glut is proving immune to the limits set by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its big-producer allies like Russia, fueling the idea that output caps withholding almost 2% of world crude supply were a miscalculation.”
“In the U.S., the Energy Information Administration said Wednesday that crude stockpiles fell last week by 1.7 million barrels, less than the 2.6 million drop forecast by a Wall Street Journal survey. At the same time, gasoline inventories rose by 2.1 million barrels, compared with the survey’s expectation of a 700,000 decline, underlining worries about the oversupply extending to crude oil’s products.”
“Oil stockpiles in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—a club of 35 countries with industrialized economies—rose by 18.6 million barrels in April and were higher than they were when OPEC agreed to its cut late last year, said the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based group that advises governments on energy trends.”
“Adding to oil traders’ angst: U.S. oil production has come roaring back to life. The IEA said U.S. crude supply will grow almost 5% on average this year, and nearly 8% in 2018, potentially vaulting American producers ahead of Saudi Arabia in daily output.”
“’Such is the dynamism of this extraordinary, very diverse industry it is possible that growth will be faster,’ the IEA said.”
“Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih said this week that the production cuts would start having an impact this summer, accelerating a drop in stored oil that OPEC said began in January. He has said OPEC and Russia would do ‘whatever it takes’ to bring supply back in line with demand.”
“Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit and a long-time oil market watcher, said OPEC wouldn’t abandon its production-cut agreement, which took almost a year to put together through 2016.”
“’When OPEC and the other producers agreed to this deal, they hoped that, as the old adage says, time heals all—and time will heal the inventory problem,’ Mr. Yergin said. ‘They should now take a deep breath and realize this will take a lot more time.’”
“The cartel set a tough goal last December, when its officials said they wanted to cut oil-storage levels to the five-year average.”
“OPEC said OECD storage levels actually have been falling but by only 88 million barrels in the first four months of 2017. At that pace, it would take until March 2018 for stockpiles to fall another 250 million barrels to the five-year average.”
WSJ – Daily Shot: eia – US Wind and Solar Electricity Generation 6/15
“While Beijing is carrying out a high-profile campaign to reduce leverage in its financial markets with one hand, with the other it is encouraging more potentially reckless borrowing. This week, the regulator put pressure on the country’s big banks to lend more to small companies and farmers, while the government announced tax breaks for financial institutions that lend to rural households.”
“If the goal of lending to poorer customers sounds noble, the concern is that the execution will only worsen Chinese banks’ existing problems, namely high levels of bad loans and swaths of mispriced credit. Bank lending to small companies is already growing pretty fast, with non-trivial sums involved: It jumped 17% in the year through March to 27.8 trillion yuan ($4.084 trillion). That compares favorably with the 7% rise in loans to large- and medium-size companies over the same period.”
“But lending standards are set to get even looser. Banks have been told they should tolerate higher nonperforming loan ratios for small companies and agriculture-related lending, meaning they need to worry less about credit quality. The regulator also asked banks to keep interest rates on such loans at an ‘appropriate’ level—effectively allowing banks to ignore the proper pricing of risk.”
“This all flies in the face of efforts to cull bad credit from the economy. Chinese banks are already given plenty of leeway to classify loans how they like: The new measures may only encourage them to avoid writing off bad debt. It isn’t clear, either, how allowing small businesses and farmers to borrow even more will help China Inc. cure its addiction to debt-fueled growth.”
“A number of banks have slowed marketing of Anbang-branded investments to their customers in recent days, according to people with knowledge of the situation.”
