Tag: Inequality

June 26, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

NYT – The Profound Social Cost of American Exceptionalism – Eduardo Porter 5/29

Markets / Economy

FT – Lumber producers profit from record prices – Ben Foldy 6/25

  • “What do forest fires, wood-eating beetles and US President Donald Trump have in common? They have all helped push the price of lumber to historic heights, leading to record share prices for lumber producers and higher prices for US homebuyers.”
  • “The price of lumber has increased 57% since the start of 2017, according to the Random Lengths framing lumber composite price index, going from $356 to $571 per thousand board feet.”
  • “Analysts attribute the price spike to steadily increasing demand and a coincidence of supply shocks in British Columbia, one of the world’s largest producers of softwood lumber.”
  • “’When you have a tight supply chain, as soon as one thing goes wrong, prices skyrocket,’ said Brendan Lowney, principal and macroeconomist at Forest Economic Advisors. ‘You almost have a vertical supply curve.’”
  • “But of the factors driving current prices, duties are only ‘number three on the list,’ said Mr Lowney. More important was a historic 2017 wildfire season that was so severe the Canadian government’s senior climatologist called it the ‘summer of fire’.”
  • “Between April and November, more than 1,300 fires consumed more than 1.2m hectares of British Columbia. The fires and dry conditions forced many sawmill owners to halt operations and restricted much of the province’s logging activity.”
  • “The slowdown came at a most inopportune time thanks to another, slower moving shock to the industry: throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, British Columbia’s forests saw the largest infestation of mountain pine beetles on record, and the consequences are being felt now.”
  • “It only takes a few hundred of the hard-shell black bugs, each roughly the size of a grain of rice, to overwhelm the defenses of a healthy, towering pine. As they burrow through the tree’s bark to lay their eggs, they also introduce a fungus that changes the color of its wood.”
  • “’The tree is as good as dead within 48 hours,’ said Katherine Bleiker, a bark beetle ecologist with Natural Resources Canada.”
  • “The epidemic hit hardest in the heart of British Columbia’s logging country, affecting more than 18m hectares and killing about 54% of the province’s merchantable pine.”
  • “But despite their changed color, standing trees killed by pine beetles can still be harvested for lumber. Many are usable for up to eight years, and some last up to 12.”
  • “By the last quarter of 2017, it had looked as if prices had settled around $435 per thousand board feet. But when a harsh winter slowed down Canadian rail traffic, other commodities were prioritized and lumber orders piled up at mills, giving a new leg-up to prices.”
  • “’What’s unprecedented about this run compared to other record runs is the length of it,’ said Shawn Church, who has covered the industry for 28 years at trade publication Random Lengths.”
  • “With the spring and summer building season now under way, prices are still climbing. The US residential sector is the country’s biggest lumber consumer, and new housing starts hit a post-2007 high in May.”
  • “High prices and high demand meant massive first-quarter profits for lumber companies. Share prices for the two largest Canadian lumber corporations, Canfor Corporation and West Fraser Timber Co Ltd, and Weyerhaeuser Co, the largest US producer, have all hit record highs this month.”
  • “As lumber companies rake in profits, the costs are shifted to builders and eventually on to homebuyers.”
  • “Analysts differ in their estimates, but the increase in lumber costs alone has probably added between $3,000 and $9,000 to the cost of the median new home.”

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 6/22

WSJ – Daily Shot: DigiCor – Major Cryptocurrencies Market Performance 6/24

Tech

Bloomberg – Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More than $100 Billion – Emily McCormick 6/25

  • “Facebook Inc.’s Instagram is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, if it were a stand-alone company, marking a 100-fold return for the app was purchased in 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence.”
  • “The photo-sharing platform, which reached 1 billion monthly active users earlier this month, will likely help nudge Instagram revenue past $10 billion over the next 12 months, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jitendra Waral wrote in a report Monday. Instagram is attracting new users faster than Facebook’s main site and is on track to exceed 2 billion users within the next five years, Waral said. While the social network already has surpassed that milestone, Instagram’s audience is younger than its parent, making it more attractive to advertisers. And unlike Facebook, Instagram is still growing in the U.S.”

China

WSJ – China Eases Credit Policy as U.S. Tariffs Near – Lingling Wei and Chao Deng 6/24

  • “China’s central bank is freeing up more than $100 billion for commercial banks to boost lending and restructure debt, as the Chinese leadership tries to shore up growth amid slowing momentum for economic expansion and an intensifying trade brawl with the U.S.”
  • “In a statement Sunday, the People’s Bank of China announced that it is reducing the amount of reserves banks are required to keep with the central bank by half a percentage point starting July 5. That is the day before a U.S. deadline to slap punitive tariffs on tens of billions of dollars in Chinese goods.”
  • “Under the reserve cut, some 500 billion yuan ($76.86 billion) will be released for 17 large banks, including the Big Five state-owned banks, the central bank said. It said the banks are to use the freed-up funds by converting bad loans into equity in companies that default on their debts.”
  • “Another 200 billion yuan is being unleashed for the country’s city-level commercial banks and other smaller lenders, and those funds are to be used to expand lending to small businesses, the central bank said in the statement.”
  • “Following the reduction in banks’ reserve-requirement ratio, analysts expect more loosening, including increasing lending quotas for banks, relaxing mortgage restrictions for home buyers in some cities and easing limits on local governments to borrow.”
  • “’China is on the way toward monetary easing,’ said Zhu Chaoping, a Shanghai-based global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.”

April 24, 2018

Perspective

Business Insider – The most disproportionately popular college major in every US state – Mark Abadi and Jenny Cheng 4/16

Tax Foundation – How High are Spirits Taxes in Your State – Morgan Scarboro 3/22

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – Trading One Risk For Another – Ben Carlson 4/22

  • “In other words, investing is hard. If it was easy it would just be called earning money, not investing.“
  • “You cannot eradicate risk in a portfolio. You can only choose when and how to accept risk in different variations. Doing so will always involve balance and trade-offs.”

FT – US companies count costs and benefits of Trump tax law – Rochelle Toplensky, Patrick Mathurin, and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson 4/22

  • “A Financial Times analysis of how the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) has affected the accounts of the US’s 100 largest listed companies shows the truth of that sentiment, for Citigroup and most of its big business peers.” 
  • “In all, the FT analysis shows, 61 of the top 100 quoted companies have reported an initial net income tax expense, amounting to a combined $168bn. The remaining 39 have reported one-off net tax benefits worth a total of $150bn, meaning that the biggest overhaul of the tax code for a generation has cut $18bn from the current book value of its leading public companies.”
  • “The charges differ widely from company to company, depending on the tax provisions they had made before the reforms. The most significant adjustments reflect a revaluation of deferred tax balances under the new, lower headline rate. A company that had deferred taxes on past profits would record a gain because it will now pay the new lower rate; conversely, a group carrying forward previous losses to offset against future tax bills would book a hit to its value.” 
  • “The biggest one-off benefit of $28bn was to Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s holding company, which will pay the lower tax rate on decades of unrealized capital gains — if he ever sells his investments. While the accounting gains ‘did not come from anything we accomplished at Berkshire’, they were nonetheless real, Mr Buffett assured shareholders.” 

NYT – Public Servants Are Losing Their Foothold in the Middle Class – Patricia Cohen and Robert Gebeloff 4/22

Markets / Economy

Visual Capitalist – BoAML – Top Asset Class of 2018 So Far – Jeff Desjardins 4/23

Real Estate

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – US Home Equity Loans 4/23

WEF – Berlin has the world’s fastest rising city property prices – Rob Smith 4/16

Energy

eia – Technically Recoverable Shale Oil and Shale Gas Resources – June 2013

Forbes – Who Is Buying U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas? – Jude Clemente 4/17

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

WSJ – Daily Shot: Barchart – Bitcoin 4/23

  • “With last week’s breakout sustained, Bitcoin is approaching $9k (the blue line is the 200d moving average).”

Britain

Bloomberg – U.K. Consumers Stay Under Pressure Even as Pay Squeeze Nears End – David Goodman 4/17

Europe

NYT – Smothered by Smog, Polish Cities Rank Among Europe’s Dirtiest – Maciek Nabrdalik and Marc Santora 4/22

  • “Poland has some the most polluted air in all of the European Union, and 33 of its 50 dirtiest cities. Not even mountain retreats are immune.” 
  • “The problem is largely a result of the country’s love affair with coal… Some 19 million people rely on coal for heat in winter. In all of the European Union, 80% of private homes using coal are in Poland.” 
  • “Coal, commonly referred to as “black gold,” is seen as a patriotic alternative to Russian gas in this country, which broke away from Soviet control three decades ago and remains deeply suspicious of its neighbor to the east. Burning coal is part of daily life.” 
  • “Some 48,000 Poles are estimated to die annually from illnesses related to poor air quality. Greenpeace estimated that 62% of Poland’s kindergartens are in heavily polluted areas.” 

South America

Reuters – Under military rule, Venezuela oil workers quit in a stampede – Deisy Buitrago and Alexandra Ulmer 4/16

Other Interesting Links

Civil Beat – Hawaii Businesses Are Making Billions Off The Military – Nick Grube 4/23

March 20, 2018

Perspective

NYT – Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys – Emily Badger, Claire Cain Miller, Adam Pearce and Kevin Quealy 3/19

  • Check the link for some very insightful interactive graphics.
  • “Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, according to a sweeping new study that traced the lives of millions of children.”
  • “White boys who grow up rich are likely to remain that way. Black boys raised at the top, however, are more likely to become poor than to stay wealthy in their own adult households.”
  • “Most white boys raised in wealthy families will stay rich or upper middle class as adults, but black boys raised in similarly rich households will not.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Pew – How Millennials today compare with their grandparents 50 years ago – Richard Fry, Ruth Igielnik and Eileen Patten 3/16

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – Accidental Career Guidance – Ben Carlson 3/18

Fortune – Mapping The Best (100) Companies 3/1

  • Interactive map

FT – Italian election results expose eurozone inadequacy – Martin Wolf 3/13

  • “Until prosperity is better distributed, Europe will remain vulnerable to upheaval.”

WSJ – A Decade After Bear’s Collapse, the Seeds of Instability Are Germinating Again – Greg Ip 3/14

  • “…Hyun Song Shin, research chief at the Bank for International Settlements, warned in a 2014 speech against the tendency to ‘focus on known past weaknesses rather than asking where the new dangers are.’ Banks may be stronger than a decade ago, but the financial system hasn’t returned to its pre-1980 repressed state.”
  • “Mr. Shin pointed out that bond markets are growing at the expense of banks in supplying credit, enabling business and government debt loads in many countries to surpass their pre-crisis peaks. Emerging markets have borrowed heavily in dollars, which leaves them vulnerable should the dollar’s value rise sharply. Before the crisis, 80% of investment-grade corporate debt world-wide yielded more than 4%; as of last October, less than 5% did, according to the International Monetary Fund.“
  • “Total U.S. debt, at around 250% of GDP, still stands at crisis-era peaks while debt levels in China have caught up and passed the U.S., according to the BIS. U.S. companies’ debts had reached 34% of assets by the end of 2016, the highest at least since 2000. Debt-servicing burdens haven’t risen commensurately thanks to low inflation and low rates, but they have begun climbing. More than $1 trillion a year still flows into emerging markets each year, according to the Institute of International Finance.”
  • “This tells us little about when or where a crisis will happen or what may trigger it. Crises surprise because they usually start with an assumption so sensible that everyone acts on it, planting the seeds of its own undoing: in 1982 that countries like Mexico don’t default; in 1997 that Asia’s fixed exchange rates wouldn’t break; in 2007 that housing prices never declined nationwide; and in 2011 that euro members wouldn’t default. James Bianco, who runs his own financial research firm in Chicago, speculates that the equivalent today might be, ‘We will never see higher inflation or higher growth.’ If either in fact occurs, the low interest rates that have raised household stock and property wealth to an all-time high relative to disposable income won’t be sustainable.”
  • “Mr. Rogoff (Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University economist) concurs: ‘It’s much harder to get a crisis when you can borrow for virtually nothing and keep rolling it over.’ A 1.5 to 2 percentage point increase in real interest rates, which he isn’t forecasting, would be small by historical standards but could potentially make the debts of Italy or Portugal unsustainable.”
  • “Central banks know this, of course, which is one reason they are wary of raising interest rates too quickly—while nervous that if they raise them too slowly, the problem will get worse.”

Markets / Economy

Fortune – These Are the Countries That Have Grown the Most in the Last Year – Nicolas Rapp and Anne Vandermey 2/23

Fortune – Here Are the 26 Big U.S. Companies With the Most Cash Stashed Overseas – Nicolas Rapp and Brian O’Keefe 2/22

Wolf Street – US Gross National Debt Spikes $1.2 Trillion in 6 Months, Hits $21 Trillion – Rolf Richter 3/16

Energy

FT – Saudi Arabia’s existential crisis returns as US shale booms anew – Anjli Raval 3/18

  • “Nearly 4m barrels a day of US crude is expected to hit export markets by the mid-2020s, up from just over 1m b/d in 2017, meaning it will ship similar levels to Iraq and Canada, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie. The industry is debating whether the world will be able to absorb these volumes and how global crude flows will redirect.”
  • “China surpassed the UK and the Netherlands to become the second-largest destination for US crude oil exports in 2017, accounting for a fifth of the 527,000 b/d total year-over-year increase in foreign sales. Chinese refiners say the trend will continue as Beijing seeks to partially address US president Donald Trump’s complaints about the trade deficit between the two countries.”
  • “The International Energy Agency forecasts that the US will cover most of the world’s demand growth over the next three years. As US supply surges, the world’s need for Opec’s crude is forecast to fall below current production rates in 2019 and 2020.”

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: US 3-Month LIBOR 3/18

  • “The US 3-month LIBOR reached 2.2% for the first time in nine years.”

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

ars Technica – Ether plunges after SEC says “dozens” of ICO investigations underway – Timothy B. Lee 3/18

  • “The price of ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, has fallen below $500 for the first time this year. The decline comes days after a senior official from the Securities and Exchange Commission acknowledged that the agency had ‘dozens’ of open investigations into initial coin offerings. The price of ether has fallen 19 percent in the last 24 hours, from $580 to $470.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 3/18

Automotive

FT – Carmakers take electric fight to the factory floor – Patrick McGee 3/18

China

FT – Africa eats up lion’s share of Chinese lending – James Kynge 3/10

  • “Africa attracted more Chinese state lending for energy infrastructure than any other region last year, highlighting Beijing’s view of the continent’s growing economic and strategic importance.”
  • “A study by Boston University academics shows that nearly one-third, or $6.8bn, of the $25.6bn that China’s state-owned development banks lent last year to energy projects worldwide went to African countries. This was ahead of south Asia, with $5.84bn.”
  • “The loans bring total Chinese energy finance in Africa since 2000 to $34.8bn. While this is well behind the $69bn lent in Europe and Central Asia, the $62bn in Latin America and the $60bn in Asia over the same period, the 2017 data illustrate Africa’s growing importance.” 

New Zealand

FT – Fonterra’s second China foray comes under scrutiny – Jamie Smyth and Tom Hancock 3/7

  • “New Zealand dairy co-operative’s farmers seek answers after Beingmate tie-up sours.”

March 12, 2018

Perspective

statista – Proportion Of Female CEOs Is Hugely Overestimated – Niall McCarthy 3/7

Our World in Data – Fertility Rate – Max Roser 12/2/17

WSJ – Daily Shot: OECD – Time spent eating and drinking by Country 3/8

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – The Power of Narrative – Ben Carlson 3/8

Bloomberg Businessweek – Bitcoin Is Ridiculous. Blockchain Is Dangerous. – Paul Ford 3/9

Business Insider – Uber and Lyft drivers are selling candy and snacks in their cars – and it’s indicative of a dark truth – Aine Cain 3/9

Economist – Self-driving cars offer huge benefits-but have a dark side – Leaders 3/1

  • “Policymakers must apply the lessons of the horseless carriage to the driverless car.”

Pragmatic Capitalism – Why is the US Economy Becoming More Stable? – Cullen Roche 3/9

WSJ – Daily Shot: Trump Alienates Allies Needed for a Trade Fight With China – Greg Ip 3/7

Real Estate

WSJ – Mortgage Rates at a Four-Year High Threaten to Roil Housing – Christina Rexrode and Laura Kusisto 3/8

  • “U.S. mortgage rates have hit their highest level since 2014, a new challenge for a housing market that has been central to the economic recovery but remains vulnerable to even modest headwinds.”
  • “The rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 4.46%, the highest in more than four years and the ninth consecutive week of increases, according to data Thursday from mortgage-finance giant Freddie Mac . At the start of the year, the average rate was 3.95%.”
  • “If the trend persists, it could hamper a sector that represents about 15% of U.S. gross-domestic product. Rising mortgage rates already have crimped refinancing activity and pushed would-be home buyers who are on the margins out of the market as home prices also have risen.”
  • “While the rates remain low by historical standards, millennial buyers, who are often making their first home purchase, could suffer sticker shock. ‘They will be the preponderance of the market purchasing homes over the next 10 years,’ said Ed Robinson, head of the mortgage business at Fifth Third Bancorp. ‘And they’ve never seen 5%’.”
  • “Initially, the housing market often does well when mortgage rates rise. Potential buyers may hurry to complete purchases before rates rise further. Rising rates often signal underlying confidence in the broader economy, which could make some people more apt to buy.”
  • “Historically, there is little correlation between the level of the increases that recently have occurred with mortgage rates and declines in home prices.”
  • “’It takes a pretty big rise in mortgage rates to offset the strength in the economy that causes rates to rise,’ said David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide Insurance and a former chief economist at Fannie Mae.”
  • “Economists expect renters who want to become homeowners will still try to do so, although they may have to look for cheaper homes or make other spending changes. Economists believe mortgage rates would have to rise to roughly 6% before they start to significantly affect borrowers’ decisions about whether to buy a home or what they can afford.”
  • “However, in higher-cost markets, such as New York City and San Francisco, higher rates can have a bigger effect given that loan balances are larger. A 3.5% rate on a $500,000 loan would create a monthly payment of $2,245, according to LendingTree Inc., an online loan information site. At 4.5%, the monthly payment would be $2,533. (That excludes taxes and insurance.)”
  • “Rising rates tend to have a bigger impact on the market for refinancing existing mortgages. The Mortgage Bankers Association expects mortgage-purchase originations to increase about 7% this year. It forecasts the refinancing market, which is smaller, to plunge by nearly 28%, adding to a sharp drop in 2017.”

Finance

WSJ – Brokers to Investors: Your Cash Ain’t Nothin’ But Trash – Jason Zweig 3/9

  • “According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, free credit balances — one partial measure of uninvested cash in brokerage accounts — totaled $350.2 billion at the end of January.”
  • “Assuming the average yield of 0.12% that Crane Data estimates for brokerage sweep accounts, investors would earn an aggregate of only $420 million in income on that money over the next year.”
  • “If, instead, investors shopped around to improve their yield and earned an average of 1% on that cash, they would pocket $3.5 billion in income. Overall, then, the cost of that inertia is roughly $3.1 billion.”
  • “If you don’t shop around for better yields on your cash, you’re handing your broker another 1% a year.”

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 3/8

WSJ – Daily Shot: Ripple 3/8

Canada

Bloomberg – Toronto Home Builders Just Had Their Busiest February Since 1948 – Theophilos Argitis 3/8

Bloomberg – Loonie Slide Fails to Unsettle Forecasts for 2018 Outperformance – Anooja Debnath 3/8

WSJ – Daily Shot: Canada Housing Starts 3/8

  • “Canadian housing starts exceeded expectations and continue to trend higher.”

China

Bloomberg – China’s War on Pollution Will Change the World – Jeff Kearns, Hannah Dormido, and Alyssa McDonald 3/9

  • “China is cracking down on pollution like never before, with new green policies so hard-hitting and extensive they can be felt across the world, transforming everything from electric vehicle demand to commodities markets.”
  • “Four decades of breakneck economic growth turned China into the world’s biggest carbon emitter. But now the government is trying to change that without damaging the economy—and perhaps even use its green policies to become a leader in technological innovation.”
  • “China’s air pollution is so extreme that in 2015, independent research group Berkeley Earth estimated it contributed to 1.6 million deaths per year in the country.”
  • “The smog is heaviest in northern industrial provinces such as Shanxi, the dominant coal mining region, and steel-producing Hebei. Emissions there contribute to the planet’s largest mass of PM 2.5 air pollution—the particles which pose the greatest health risks because they can become lodged in the lungs. It can stretch from Mongolia to the Yellow Sea and often as far as South Korea.”
  • “The country had become the world’s No.1 carbon dioxide emitter as it rose to dominate global exports, a process which began several decades ago but got its biggest lift with World Trade Organization entry in 2001. Emissions have started to fall again.”
  • “The government’s war on air pollution fits neatly with another goal: domination of the global electric-vehicle industry. Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. might be the best-known name, but China has been the global leader in EV sales since 2015, and is aiming for 7 million annual sales by 2025.”
  • “To get there, it’s subsidizing manufacturers and tightening regulation around traditional fossil-fuel powered cars.”
  • “Worldwide, solar panel prices are plunging—allowing a faster shift away from carbon—thanks to the sheer scale of China’s clean-energy investment. It’s spending more than twice as much as the U.S. Two-thirds of solar panels are produced in China, BNEF (Bloomberg New Energy Finance) estimates, and it’s home to global leaders, including JinkoSolar Holding Co. and Yingli Green Energy Holding Co.”
  • “But China isn’t stopping there. As well as wind and solar, it’s exploring frontier clean energy technologies like hydrogen as an alternative to coal.”
  • “The trend towards clean energy is poised to keep gathering steam worldwide. BNEF projects global investment in new power generation capacity will exceed $10 trillion between 2017 and 2040. Of this, about 72% is projected to go toward renewable energy, roughly evenly split between wind and solar.”
  • “Five years ago, Beijing’s ‘airpocalypse’ unleashed criticism of the government so searing that even Chinese state media joined in. Last year, the capital’s average daily concentration of PM2.5 particles was almost a third lower than in 2015, compared with declines of about a tenth for some other major cities.”
  • “The turnaround isn’t just limited to improving air quality. China has stopped accepting shiploads of other countries’ plastic and paper trash, a response to public concern over pollution and a decreased need for scrap materials.”

India

Bloomberg Quint – Bond Trading Tumbles in India as Banks Stare at $3 Billion Loss – Subhadip Sircar 3/9

  • “If the RBI’s (Reserve Bank of India) reluctance to play the role of savior is any indication, it looks unlikely that Indian bond traders will see their predicament end soon.”

March 6, 2018

Perspective

FT – Shadow banking grows to more than $45tn assets globally – Caroline Binham 3/5

  • “’Shadow banking’ grew by nearly 8% globally to more than $45tn on a conservative measure after international rule makers were able to include detailed data from China and Luxembourg for the first time.”
  • “Shadow banking — the parts of the financial system that perform bank-like functions such as lending but do not have the same safeguards — accounted for 13% of total global financial assets, according to the Financial Stability Board, the international group of policymakers and regulators that makes recommendations to the G20.”
  • “The report covers 2016 figures. But since then China has launched a continuing crackdown on its shadow-banking sector.”
  • “China contributed $7tn, or 15.5%, of the $45tn assets comprising the FSB’s conservative definition of shadow banking, while Luxembourg contributed $3.2tn, or 7.2%.”
  • “But defining shadow banking can be a slippery business. The FSB’s exercise starts with looking at the assets of anything that is not a bank, including pension funds, insurers, and ‘other financial institutions‘, or OFIs. That wider ecosystem accounts for $160tn assets worldwide, compared with $340tn total financial assets globally.”
  • “Meanwhile, OFIs grew by 8% to $99tn; a faster level than banks, insurers and pension funds. OFIs now account for 30% of the entire financial system’s assets; the highest level since 2002.”

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Wealth of Common Sense – The Winners Write the History Books – Ben Carlson 3/4

  • “Coming up with explanations for past successes is easy but figuring out who the winners will be going forward never is.”

FT – Venezuela is the one to watch on oil – Nick Butler 3/4

  • “This is Opec’s most unstable country and Maduro could escalate the dispute with Guyana.”

FT – Reports of oil demand’s death have been greatly exaggerated – Chris Midgley 3/2

MIT Technology Review – If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance. – Emerging Technology from the arXiv 3/1

  • “The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment.”

Markets / Economy

WSJ – Credit-Card Losses Surge at Small Banks – AnnaMaria Andriotis 3/4

  • “Concerns have been mounting in the broader credit-card industry about the recent trend of rising delinquencies. While overall card losses are still relatively low—below the historical average of the last 30 years, for instance—they’ve been slowly climbing in the last two years.”
  • “But they’ve especially surged at smaller banks, those outside the 100 largest by assets that have less than around $10.4 billion in assets. There, the average charge-off rate is near an eight-year high, while the 3.5% loss rate at large banks remains well below the 10.6% seen in 2010.”

Real Estate

MarketWatch – Over a million Americans may have just lost their shot at refinancing – Andrea Riquier 3/5

  • “Approximately 1.4 million Americans lost the interest rate incentive to refinance their mortgages in the first six weeks of 2018, according to an analysis from real estate data provider Black Knight.”
  • “The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.43% during the week ending March 1, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey. That was up three basis points from the prior week and leaves rates nearly half-a-percentage point higher than the level at which they started the year.”

Automotive

NYT – California Scraps Safety Driver Rules for Self-Driving Cars – Daisuke Wakabayashi 2/26

  • “The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles said Monday that it was eliminating a requirement for autonomous vehicles to have a person in the driver’s seat to take over in the event of an emergency. The new rule goes into effect on April 2.”

China

FT – China hedge funds suffer in debt crackdown – Gabriel Wildau and Yizhen Jia 3/4

Japan

FT – Yen strengthening and trade rhetoric hit Japan exporters – Leo Lewis 3/4

  • “Currency jumps after Kuroda hints BOJ may exit its massive stimulus in 2019.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: USD / JPY Inverted) 3/4

WSJ – Daily Shot: Nikkei 225 3/4

 

February 13, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Bloomberg – A Driverless Future Threatens the Laws of Real Estate – Jack Sidders and Jess Shankleman 2/5

FT – Trump’s warnings about unfair trade with China ring true – Nick Butler 2/11

  • “There is no sign that Beijing accepts the responsibilities needed to build stronger links.”

FT – Tech companies are the new investment banks – Rana Foroohar 2/11

  • “Economist Zoltan Pozsar has forensically analyzed the $1tn in corporate offshore savings parked in liquid assets, a fortune that he likens to China’s foreign exchange reserves, not only because of its market-moving size, but the idea that both fortunes were created by a macroeconomic ‘crime’ — mercantilism in the case of China, and tax arbitrage for the corporate hoard.”
  • “The largest and most intellectual-property-rich 10 per cent of companies — Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Alphabet — control 80 per cent of this hoard. Their earnings come mainly from IP that can be easily moved across borders. Their offshore savings went from around $100bn in 2008 to $700bn by 2016. And according to Mr Pozsar’s calculations, most of that money is held not in cash but in bonds. Indeed, half of it is in corporate bonds.”
  • “What does this mean? Many significant things. But let us start with the obvious, which is that bonds are not cash. If companies are to bring back those overseas earnings and invest them in growth-enhancing projects in the US, as Donald Trump keeps promising us they will, they would have to sell their bond stash.”
  • “This has serious implications for interest rates. Consider that the Federal Reserve is starting to deleverage its own balance sheet. Now, add in the corporate ‘echo-taper’, as the Credit Suisse report puts it, and you have got a heck of a lot of bonds on the market, which is bound to move the interest rate needle up, perhaps more quickly than is currently expected.”

NYT – America’s Real Digital Divide – Naomi Schaefer Riley 2/11

  • “In 2004, Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Hospital wrote in the medical journal Pediatrics that ‘early exposure to television was associated with subsequent attentional problems.’ Even when controlling for socioeconomic status, gestational age and other factors, he discovered that an increase of one standard deviation in the number of hours of television watched at age 1 ‘is associated with a 28% increase in the probability of having attentional problems at age 7’.”
  • “Every additional hour of TV increased a child’s odds of attention problems by about 10%. Kids who watched three hours a day were 30% more likely to have attention trouble than those who watched none. A 2010 article in Pediatrics confirmed that exposure to TV and video games was associated with greater attention problems in children.”
  • “Unfortunately, too often the message we send low-income and less-educated parents is that screen time is going to help their children.”
  • “Make no mistake: The real digital divide in this country is not between children who have access to the internet and those who don’t. It’s between children whose parents know that they have to restrict screen time and those whose parents have been sold a bill of goods by schools and politicians that more screens are a key to success. It’s time to let everyone in on the secret.”

Markets / Economy

FT – Bridgewater investment chief sees new era of volatility – Robin Wigglesworth 2/11

  • “Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer at Bridgewater, said last week’s market turbulence, which helped trigger record outflows from global stock funds, was set to continue.”
  • “‘There had been a lot of complacency built up in markets over a long time, so we don’t think this shakeout will be over in a matter of days,’ Mr Prince, who runs Bridgewater’s $160bn of investments alongside the fund’s founder Ray Dalio, said in an interview. ‘We’ll probably have a much bigger shakeout coming’.”
  • “Brian Levine, co-head of global equities trading at Goldman Sachs, on Friday sent out an email to the investment bank’s bigger clients that also warned that the market probably still has not hit its bottom.”
  • “’Historically shocks of this magnitude find their troughs in panicky selling,’ he said in the email, seen by the FT. ‘I’ve been amazed at how little ‘capitulation selling’ we’ve seen on the desk . . . The ‘buy on the dip’ mentality needs to be thoroughly punished before we find the bottom’.”
  • “The improving health of the global economy has sparked concerns that long-dormant inflationary pressures will finally emerge, forcing central banks to reduce bond-buying programs and raise interest rates more aggressively than expected.”
  • “While Mr Prince doubted inflation would become a real problem, he expected central banks to start draining the global economy of some of the trillions of dollars they have pumped into the financial system in recent years — further challenging the post-crisis bull market.”
  • “That meshes with the view of Mr Levine at Goldman Sachs, who said that ‘longer term, I do believe this is a genuine regime change, one where you sell-the-rallies rather than buy-the-dips’.”
  • “However, Mr Prince expects global growth will stay on track despite tighter monetary policy and more turbulent markets. ‘The real economy will outperform financial economy this year, the opposite of what we’ve seen in recent years,’ he said.”

Real Estate

Bloomberg – Blackstone Weighs Bidding for Assets It Sold to Anbang – Jun Luo, Dingmin Zhang, Cathy Chan, and Ben Scent – 2/12

  • “Blackstone Group LP, which scored big four years ago when a company it owned sold New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel for a record-setting price to a little-known Chinese insurer, may soon get a chance to own the iconic landmark again.”
  • “The U.S. private equity firm has held initial discussions about bidding for Anbang Insurance Group Co. assets in a sale overseen by the Chinese government, people with knowledge of the matter said. The assets include the Waldorf as well as Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc., which Blackstone sold to Anbang in 2016, said the people.”
  • “Anbang is among a crop of Chinese serial acquirers that spent tens of billions of dollars snapping up trophy assets over the past few years, only to lurch into turmoil once their strategies backfired. Blackstone was one of the biggest beneficiaries of Anbang’s largesse, selling at least a combined $9.5 billion of assets to the insurer, data compiled by Bloomberg show.”

Finance

Bloomberg Businessweek – What Big Hedge Fund Fees Pay For – Neil Weinberg 2/9

  • “One corner of the investing world that’s been more resistant to these trends is ‘alternative’ investments, including private equity and hedge funds, which are sold to institutions and affluent individuals. The fees charged—traditionally 2% of assets plus 20% of any profits—can be hundreds of times higher than those of the lowest-cost mutual funds. The industry frames the fees as the price investors must pay to tap into top money managers.”
  • “A close look at where the money flows suggests a more complicated story. Alt funds regularly share major chunks of their fees with the bankers, brokers, and other salesmen who steer clients their way. The payments come in a number of forms and go by different names: placement fees, payment for shelf space, and retrocessions, among them.”
  • “Placement agents, who get paid by fund managers for lining up investors, have been such a big source of corruption that New York and Pennsylvania have banned their public pension funds from using them. The European Union in January banned many advisers from receiving inducements to sell investments to individuals.”
  • “’Contrary to what the clients generally believe, half the fees they’re paying are going not to investment geniuses but to marketing,’ says Edward Siedle, an attorney who represented a whistleblower in the JPMorgan settlement. ‘The marketing payments explain why hedge funds have persisted, despite ample evidence that they underperform.’ Hedge funds that invest in stocks returned 7.2% annually from 2009 to 2017, which was less than half the S&P 500’s return, according to data from Hedge Fund Research.”

Cryptocurrency

How Much.net – Cryptocurrency Transaction Speed per second – Raul 1/10

China

Bloomberg – Wall Street Bank That Fed on HNA’s Rise Now Get to Dismantle It – Ben Scent 2/11

  • “Wall Street bankers gorged on fees from HNA Group Co. as they helped the debt-laden Chinese conglomerate clinch $55 billion of acquisitions around the world. They’re set for another bonanza as the company offloads some of those same purchases to stave off a liquidity crisis.”
  • “HNA doled out as much as $200 million in advisory fees during a three-year investment spree, according to Freeman & Co. Now strapped for cash and facing pressure from creditors, the Chinese company is planning to sell about $16 billion of assets in the first half, people familiar with the matter said last month.”

FT – Xi takes aim at military in anti-graft drive – Charles Clover 2/11

India

Bloomberg Quint – $3.6 Billion in Hidden Bad Loans Spotlight India Bank Stress – Anto Antony 2/12

  • “India’s regulator unearthed about $3.6 billion of bad loans in the books of the country’s biggest bank, amplifying questions about distress in the financial sector given underreporting by some rivals as well.”
  • “State Bank of India on Friday said an audit by the central bank showed soured debt was about 232 billion rupees ($3.6 billion) higher than what the state-run lender reported for the end of March 2017.”
  • “State Bank of India’s admission is particularly striking because the lender is often seen as a proxy for the nation’s economy, where the ratio of bad loans has surged to be among the highest in the world.”

Japan

WSJ – Daily Shot: Nikkei 225 2/9

  • US markets were not the only ones with a sell off last week.

February 12, 2018

Perspective

WSJ – Tech Wealth Turns Attention to Affordable Housing in Seattle – Nour Malas 2/7

WSJ – Why Even ‘Ordinary’ Homes Sell for $500,000 Over the List Price – Nancy Keates 2/8

  • “Nowhere is demand more pent up than in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the past four months, 39 homes in Silicon Valley have sold for $500,000 or more over the listing price, says Mark Wong, a real-estate broker with Alain Pinel Realtors, based in Saratoga, Calif..”
  • “That figure includes a ‘lovingly cared for and well maintained home’ (read: not updated). The 53-year-old, three-bedroom, one-story house on 0.197 acre in West San Jose got 15 offers and sold to an all-cash buyer for $2.5 million—$815,000 over asking. A three-bedroom, 2,040-square-foot house in the Glen Park neighborhood sold in October for $2.6 million—nearly $1 million over its listing price of $1.675 million.”
  • “Seattle is another hot spot. Over the past year, the city has seen the greatest increase in the country in the share of sales above the asking price, surging to 52% of home sales in 2017 from 20% of sales in 2012, according to Zillow.”

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

NYT – One Cause of Market Turbulence: Computer-Driven Index Funds – Landon Thomas Jr. 2/9

WSJ – BlackRock’s New Ambition Is a Sign of Froth – Aaron Back 2/8

  • “One can’t begrudge BlackRock for putting out its hand for a small slice of the money on offer. Even if the experiment somehow goes awry, it won’t make much of a dent in a company with $6.3 trillion of assets under management.”
  • “But the sheer imbalance between the supply of investable funds and suitable outlets for investment that gave rise to this move should ring some alarm bells for investors generally. At market tops when money is desperate to find a home, it often winds up in places it shouldn’t.”

WSJ – When Investing in Stock Makes You Feel Like Throwing Up and You Do It Anyway – Jason Zweig 2/9

Markets / Economy

Bloomberg Businessweek – The Breakneck Rise of China’s Colossus of Electric-Car Batteries – Jie Ma, David Stringer, Yan Zhang, and Sohee Kim 1/31

Real Estate

WSJ – Gig Economy Grows Up as Lenders Allow Airbnb Income on Mortgage Applications – Laura Kusisto 2/8

  • “Homeowners soon will be able to count income they earn from Airbnb Inc. rentals on applications for refinance loans.”
  • “A new program—expected to be announced on Thursday by Airbnb, mortgage giant Fannie Mae and three big lenders—will allow anyone who has rented out property on Airbnb for a year or longer to count some or all of that money as income.”
  • “The mortgages will be backed by Fannie Mae, an acknowledgment that Americans today increasingly are earning money through the ‘gig economy,’ such as renting out rooms or ride-sharing.”
  • “Initially, three lenders, Quicken Loans, Citizens Bank and Better Mortgage, will participate in the program. Fannie will evaluate the initiative and could decide over time to back mortgages from any lender that chooses to count Airbnb income in a refinancing, as long as the short-term rentals aren’t against local laws.”
  • “Still, the move raises worries about encouraging homeowners to borrow more based on the unpredictable tourism industry.”
  • “Executives at the three lenders said one crucial difference between the housing bubble and today is technology, which makes it easy to keep track of how much income homeowners are earning from Airbnb.”

WSJ – eBay Finds Unlikely Fans in Luxury-Home Sellers – Leigh Kamping-Carder 2/8

Energy

WSJ – Venezuela’s Pain is OPEC’s Gain – Spencer Jakab 2/9

  • “The cut in oil production engineered by OPEC and Russia is now in its second year, defying skeptics and helping to boost crude prices. But the cartel’s compliance owes a big debt these days to a single member: Venezuela.”
  • “A founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Venezuela pumped only 1.64 million barrels a day last month, well below its 1.97 million barrel a day allocation, according to estimates by S&P Global Platts. That gap of 330,000 barrels a day is marginally more than the amount that the entire cartel is undershooting its 32.73 million barrel-a-day target.”
  • “Calling even the decline so far in Venezuela’s petroleum industry historic is almost an understatement. Just last year, output was down by almost 30%. In percentage terms, that is worse than in major producing countries that broke apart and saw their economies collapse, such as the former Soviet Union, and Iraq in 2003.”

Finance

FT – Investors resume their bets against market volatility – Robin Wigglesworth and Joe Rennison 2/8

Cryptocurrency

WSJ – Bitcoin’s Plunge Weighs on Coin Offerings – Paul Vigna 2/7

Construction

Economist – Wooden skyscrapers could be the future for cities – 2/1

  • Video

China

Bloomberg Businessweek – For China’s Wealthy, Singapore Is the New Hong Kong – Chanyaporn Chanjaroen, Keith Zhai, and Cathy Chan 2/6

  • “Hong Kong is starting to be eclipsed by Singapore as the favorite destination for the wealth of China’s rich.”
  • “At stake for banks in both cities is a huge pile of money. China’s high-net-worth individuals control an estimated $5.8 trillion—almost half of it already offshore, according to consulting firm Capgemini SE. For some, the city-state of Singapore is preferable because it’s at a safer distance from any potential scrutiny from authorities in Beijing, according to interviews with several wealth managers. Multiple private banking sources in Singapore, who would not comment on the record because of the sensitivity of the subject, report seeing increased flows at the expense of Hong Kong.”
  • “The rich may be feeling exposed by changing banking practices. Hong Kong has signed tax transparency agreements that for the first time last year required all banks to report their account holders’ information to Hong Kong tax officials, in preparation for giving that information to 75 jurisdictions, including mainland China. Singapore will have similar agreements with 61 jurisdictions. But they don’t include either Hong Kong or Beijing, meaning its accounts and account holders aren’t visible to the Chinese government.”
  • “Overall, Hong Kong remains the primary destination for China’s offshore money, according to a Capgemini survey, followed by Singapore and New York. Yet the number of Chinese high-net-worth individuals who view Hong Kong as their preferred overseas place of investment is down to 53%, from 71% two years ago, according to a survey in July by Bain & Co. More than 20% favor Singapore, up from 15% two years ago.”
  • “‘We see Singapore, not Hong Kong, as the bridgehead of China’s investment overseas,’ says Li Qinghao, co-founder of NewBanker Tech Consulting, which organized the Sentosa conference last year. About 78% of S$2.7 trillion ($1.9 trillion) in assets under management in Singapore comes from overseas sources.”

FT – Wealthy Chinese push racing pigeon prices skywards – Tom Hancock 2/8

  • “An elite group of Chinese pigeon fanciers have pushed the prices of racing birds to record highs, reflecting a mood of exuberance among China’s wealthy following a pick-up in economic growth and asset prices that has buoyed luxury spending.”
  • “Xing Wei, a property tycoon, paid €400,000 ($490,000) to purchase a Belgian pigeon called Nadine, in what is thought to be the largest deal on record. He followed that with a Rmb3m ($475,000) purchase of a champion bird called Extreme Speed Goddess at a Beijing auction in December.”
  • “Soaring pigeon prices are matched by bigger prizes for pigeon-racing competitions. China’s premier 500km ‘Iron Eagle’ race series held by the Pioneer International club in Beijing boasts a prize pot of Rmb450m ($71.2m).” 
  • “Higher property and equities prices helped the wealth of China’s 2,000 richest people increase nearly 13% last year, according the country’s top rich list. The number of people known to possess assets above $300m grew faster last year than any other in the previous decade, said Rupert Hoogewerf, the compiler of the list.”
  • “After years of declines following the anti-corruption campaign launched by President Xi Jinping in 2012, sales of luxury goods in China grew 20% last year, according to business consultancy Bain. Art auction sales in Shanghai saw 42% growth last year, according to consultancy ArtTactic.”
  • “Pigeon industry insiders say just half a dozen enthusiasts are responsible for largest sales. ‘Five years ago Rmb300-Rmb400 ($47 – $63) was a very high price for a pigeon,’ said Zhang Wangbin, who runs a club in the central city of Wuhan whose auctions this winter saw several birds sell for 10 times that amount. ‘It’s the result of economic development,’ he added.”
  • “Pigeons are not the only animals to catch the eye of China’s business elite, with Japanese Koi carp prices also seeing a China effect. Kentaro Sakai, president of the Sakai Fish Farm, Japan’s biggest Koi breeder, said a single fish could sell for up to ¥42m ($380,000).”

India

Bloomberg Quint – SBI Posts Surprise Loss A Provisions Surge, Treasury Income Falls – Vishwanath Nair and Azman Usmani 2/9

  • “State Bank of India Ltd. reported a quarterly loss for the first time in at least 17 years as its treasury operations turned unprofitable and provisions for bad loans increased. The public lender reported a significant divergence in bad loans from RBI’s assessment which weighed on the bottom line.”

Other Interesting Links

WSJ – Daily Shot: Number of Times a State has Hosted a Super Bowl 2/8

WSJ – CMO Today: Super Bowl Ratings Slump – Lara O’Reilly 2/6

February 9, 2018

Perspective

Economist – When the prices are too damn high – Daily Chart 2/5

WSJ – Hard Lessons From the Federal Student-Loan Program’s Coming $36 Billion Shortfall – Josh Mitchell 2/4

  • “U.S. officials have long maintained the federal government would make a profit on its $1.4 trillion student loan portfolio or at least break even, but two recent reports suggest just the opposite will be the case. Government lending to college and graduate students could soon become an immense drain on federal coffers, worsening an already deteriorating U.S. budget picture.”
  • “The Education Department’s inspector general, an agency watchdog, in a report released last week said the profitability of the U.S. federal student-lending program is being squeezed because millions of Americans who borrowed heavily in recent years—including many graduate students—are flocking into a program to have substantial portions of their debts forgiven.”
  • “Students who borrowed in the fiscal year ended Sep. 30, 2015, and enrolled in such ‘income-driven repayment’ plans, for example, are expected to pay back $11.5 billion less than they took to pay tuition and other schooling costs.”
  • “The government still earns billions of dollars every year in interest on the loans it has made to 43 million American undergraduates, graduate students and parents of undergrads. But the losses from those not repaying are now projected to mount and could eat up all of the gains. It is hard to get precise estimates, but the Education Department’s annual financial report, released in November, offered a clue. A footnote in the report projected that money coming in for government student loan and guarantee programs will be $36 billion short of what’s needed to cover outstanding debt and accrued interest.”
  • “A year earlier, the department projected the shortfall at $8.4 billion, while in prior years it projected the program would generate billions of dollars in taxpayer surpluses. The latest report explained that one reason for the sharp switch was the rise of income-driven repayment plans. These plans set monthly payments as a share of a borrower’s income and then forgive any balance that remains after 10, 20 or 25 years, depending on the borrower’s work status and loan size.”
  • “While that $36 billion projection doesn’t quite compare to the $4 trillion federal budget, it’s still an immense sum. To put it in perspective, the government ultimately paid $33 billion in its response to the financial crisis through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to the Congressional Budget Office.”

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – The discreet terror of the American bourgeoisie – Edward Luce 2/7

  • “Elites thought they could have it both ways: capital gains and moral certainty.”

Mauldin Economics – Kill the Quants – John Mauldin 2/7: Once Again – “Kill the Quants (and the Levered ETFs and ETNs) Before They Kill Our Markets” – Douglas A. Kass 2/6

Project Syndicate – Justice Without Borders for Venezuela – Ricardo Hausmann 2/7

  • “According to estimates from MIT’s Billion Prices Project, month-on-month food inflation in Venezuela reached 117.6% in January, or the equivalent of 1,130,000% a year. At the same time, the exchange rate depreciated at an annual rate of more than 700,000%, while the real purchasing power of wages – which barely represented 1,400 calories a day in December – was decimated further. A survey published in early January estimated recent out-migration at four million people, nearly as many as from Syria.”

Markets / Economy

Bloomberg – World’s Largest ETF Hit by Biggest Four-Day Outflow on Record – Sid Verma and Dani Burger 2/7

  • “The global market maelstrom spurred money managers to yank a record $17.4 billion from the mighty SPDR S&P 500 ETF over the past four trading sessions. The $8 billion removed on Tuesday alone was the third-largest daily withdrawal in the post-crisis era.”

Real Estate

Bloomberg – HNA Group Puts $4 Billion of U.S. Properties on Market – Sarah Mulholland 2/8

  • “Among the properties on the block is 245 Park Ave., according to a marketing document seen by Bloomberg. HNA bought that skyscraper less than a year ago for $2.21 billion, one of the highest prices ever paid for a New York office building.”

Health / Medicine

NYT – In Sweeping War on Obesity, Chile Slays Tony the Tiger – Andrew Jacobs 2/7

  • “New regulations, which corporate interests delayed for almost a decade, require explicit labeling and limit the marketing of sugary foods to children.”

Canada

FT – Canada’s housing market flirts with disaster – Ben McLannahan 2/7

  • “Canada is in the grip of a housing crisis more severe, by some measures, than anywhere else in the world. Household debt now amounts to more than 100% of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements, one of the highest of any developed nation. House prices have raced ahead of wages for years, boosted by loose lending, low interest rates and lax controls on foreign money.”
  • “For now, the number of home loans in arrears across Canada is still very low, suggesting that people are finding ways to cope with ever-larger debts. But rising interest rates are beginning to bite, while a new stress test for mortgages issued by regulated banks has tightened the supply of credit. This week the Toronto Real Estate board said that sales in Canada’s biggest city dropped 22% in January, the weakest for that month since 2009.”
  • “Bullish observers say fears of a meltdown are overblown. Canada can sustain high house prices, they argue, because they reflect the country’s high levels of net migration, restrictive zoning laws and low unemployment.”
  • “Henry Lotin, a retired diplomat and principal at research group Integrative Trade and Economics, says the same forces that have pushed up prices in global hubs such as New York are now doing the same to the most attractive parts of Canada. ‘Torontonians should be thankful and we should manage it as best we can. We really have to be prepared that demand is going to exceed supply for the foreseeable future’.”
  • “Many also note that mortgage books at the big banks look rock-solid. Royal Bank of Canada, for example, which recently joined the club of the world’s most systemically important banks thanks to years of rapid asset growth, had a Canadian residential mortgage portfolio of an average C$231bn in the year to October. Defined as estimates of losses on impaired loans and losses incurred but not yet identified, provisions for credit losses were just C$33m — or one one-hundredth of 1%.”
  • “Others say pristine loan books are not a good indicator of the stress lurking in the system. For one thing, every homebuyer with a down payment of less than 20% of the purchase price (if less than C$1m) has to buy insurance against default. That has the effect of flattering the banks’ books but shifts the risk of default to insurers such as the state-backed Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.”
  • “CMHC was set up after the second world war to help returning veterans find housing. These days it insures about C$480bn of residential mortgages, or almost one-third of the outstanding stock in Canada, using an automated system to process about two-thirds of applications.”
  • “Meanwhile, the uninsured segment is growing. As the market has barreled upwards in recent years, borrowers have been able to convert insured mortgages into uninsured mortgages simply by buying a property, waiting for the price to rise, then refinancing.”
  • “Uninsured buyers made up about three-quarters of new loans at federally regulated banks in 2017, up from two-thirds in 2014, according to the Bank of Canada. In Vancouver, where the average sales price of condos hit a record of C$1.1m in January, more than double the level a decade earlier, about 90% of new mortgages are uninsured.”
  • “Laurentian Bank, Canada’s seventh-biggest by assets, said in December that it would have to buy back about C$300m of mortgages it had sold to third parties, having found that borrowers had ’embellished’ income and assets. Last month, the Montreal-based bank said the buyback obligations had increased to about C$400m, and it would have to raise more capital.”
  • “That kind of disclosure — in dribs and drabs, each more alarming than the last — has echoes of the beginning of the US mortgage crisis, when terms such as ‘liar loan’ began to enter the vernacular. ‘Trends are developing . . . that we took for granted were not an issue in Canada,’ says Gabriel Dechaine, an analyst at National Bank of Canada. ‘There are puffs of smoke, but I don’t want to yell fire in a crowded theater’.”
  • “More strains could emerge. With interest rates rising — three increases in the central bank’s policy rate since July has left it at 1.25% — many borrowers may be facing a struggle to refinance in a market where almost all mortgages are renewed every five years or less.”
  • “Anecdotal evidence suggests tougher rules on underwriting are also beginning to curb lending. On January 1 the federal banking regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, introduced a rule requiring all new mortgage applicants to show they could cope with interest rates substantially higher than their contracted rate. Previously, stress tests applied only to insured mortgages.”

China

Bloomberg – Frenzy of Fines for China’s Bank Is Only Just Getting Started – Jun Luo and Alfred Liu 2/5

  • “China’s banking regulator is increasingly showing its teeth, slapping a record amount of fines on financial institutions in the past several months for transgressions such as lax lending procedures and manipulating bad-loan data. Expect the unprecedented frenzy to continue.”
  • “The China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) announced 3,452 penalties and confiscations of funds involving 1,877 financial institutions and totaling 2.93 billion yuan ($465 million) in 2017, a 10-fold surge from the previous year, according to official data. Some 270 banking executives were punished, including being banned from the industry for life, according to a CBRC official speaking on CCTV.”
  • “The frenzy continues this year, with an average 16 fines imposed every day of January.”
  • “The biggest of 2018 so far was levied against Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co., fined 462 million yuan for what the CBRC termed ‘a well-organized fraud.’ Last Friday, the CBRC fined Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and 18 other banks’ branches in central China 52.5 million yuan for accepting low-quality gold as collateral for 19 billion yuan worth of loans, resulting in the banks being defrauded.”
  • “After his appointment last year as CBRC chairman, Guo Shuqing embarked on a campaign to root out malpractice in the $39 trillion banking industry, improve implementation of lending policies and curb cross-holdings of financial products.”

 

January 16, 2018

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

FT – Why are so many Americans crowdfunding their healthcare? – Barney Jopson 1/10

FT – A power shift in the Middle East – Nick Butler 1/14

  • “The opening of the Zohr gasfield is a big opportunity for Egypt’s energy ambitions.”

NYT – Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone? – Nellie Bowles 1/12

The New Yorker – The Psychology of Inequality – Elizabeth Kolbert 1/15

  • “Researchers find that much of the damage done by being poor comes from feeling poor.”

Markets / Economy

FT – Bond markets: Is the bull run over? – Robin Wigglesworth 1/12

  • “This year will probably mark the first since the financial crisis where major central banks start shrinking their market footprint, reawakening concerns over the $50tn global bond market where governments, companies and banks raise vital funding.”
  • “The end of the bond bull market has been called before. Last year, many analysts predicted a gloomy outlook. Instead, global fixed income enjoyed its best year in a decade, returning 7.4% to investors in the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate bond index. Few believe bonds will replicate those gains in 2018. But many investors say it is far too early to read the market’s last rites, given some of the long-term global forces — such as the inflation-subduing forces of demographics and technology — that keep yields suppressed.”
  • “But investors now face a shift in central bank policy.”
  • “The Fed started cautiously shrinking its balance sheet last year. This month the ECB’s bond-buying fell by half to €30bn a month, and analysts expect the program to end this year. For the first time in a decade, central banks will probably be withdrawing money from markets by the end of 2018.”
  • “The primary cause for this week’s bond ructions — which saw the 10-year Treasury yield rise to a nine-month high of nearly 2.6% — was data that showed the BoJ’s purchases of long-dated bonds had slowed, with the sell-off then exacerbated by reports, later denied, that China was considering reducing its Treasury purchases.”
  • “While the Japanese central bank will still buy as many bonds as needed to keep the 10-year government yield pinned at zero, the deceleration was enough to cause the global debt market to shiver. ‘The market reaction shows just how sensitive it is to any whiff of the central banks being less aggressive,’ Mr Peters (Gregory Peters, a senior portfolio manager at PGIM Fixed Income) says.”
  • “At the same time, supply of freshly-issued government debt is expected to rise. In 2017, the central banks of the US, Europe, Japan and the UK bought about $170bn more government bonds than were issued, meaning the net supply actually contracted. But BNP Paribas estimates that markets will have to absorb $600bn of debt in 2018.”
  • “Another potential risk for investors is whether 2018 is the year when inflation finally emerges from its slumber.”
  • “Ageing demographics is pushing a global savings glut into safer fixed income and helping keep inflationary forces at bay, aided by technology that is proving to be a deflationary force across a range of global industries. Jim Reid, a Deutsche Bank strategist, says that bond market squalls might become more frequent as central banks tighten their monetary spigot, but argues that it would take accelerating inflation ‘to really turbo charge any bond sell-off’.”
  • “Derivatives contracts indicate that investors believe the 10-year Treasury yield will be below the 3% mark in two, five and even 10 years’ time. Equivalent German and Japanese bond futures show that investors think their benchmark bond yields will stay below 2% and 1% respectively over the same timeframes.”
  • “Highlighting the ravenous demand for safe fixed income returns, droves of buyers were attracted this week to the auctions of 10 and 30-year US government debt, helping quell the turbulence.”

Real Estate

AZ Republic – Home buyers with popular millennial names buying more Arizona homes, analysis says – Catherine Reagor 1/14

FT – Chill winds in Swedish housing market – Katie Martin 1/15

Finance

NYT – What’s $27 Billion to Wall Street? An Alarming Drop in Revenue – Emily Flitter and Kate Kelly 1/11

  • “For more than a decade, the world’s top investment banks practically minted money from the buying and selling of bonds, currencies and other complex securities. For many banks, the business became their lifeblood.”
  • “Now, a combination of tough regulations, new technologies, calm markets and changing customer behavior has left that type of trading a shadow of its former self — and much of Wall Street trying to redefine itself.”
  • “Five years ago, fixed-income trading — so called because its keystone product, bonds, typically provides a fixed payout — generated nearly $103 billion in income for the top 12 investment banks, according to Coalition, a London research firm.”
  • “By 2016, that had fallen to less than $76 billion — down $27 billion from the peak.”

FT – Bitcoin investors struggle to cash out new fortunes – Kate Beioley and James Pickford 1/12

  • “UK mortgage lenders refuse to accept deposits because of money laundering fears.”

 

January 10, 2018

Perspective

Howmuch.net – Credit Scores & Household Incomes in America – Raul 1/8

Pew – Most dads say they spend too little time with their children; about a quarter live apart from them – Gretchen Livingston 1/8

WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – Road Quality by US State 2016 1/9

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

A Teachable Moment – Will Wealth Inequality Slay the Bull Market? – Anthony Isola 1/8

  • “Revolution is the ultimate Black Swan.”
  • “Thirty percent of U.S. households have zero or negative non-home wealth. One thing is certain; this is not the location of the ‘cash on the sidelines’.” 
  • “Unfortunately, wealth inequality is a feature, not a bug, of democracy and capitalism.”
  • “’According to research from the New York University economist Edward Wolff, the top 10 percent of American households now own 84% of all stocks. That’s up from 77% ownership in 2001′.”
  • “90% of America barely participated in the massive bull market the last several years.”
  • “’The majority of middle-class wealth is tied to homes, as more than 60% of investible assets are in a primary residence. Stock ownership makes up less than 10% of total assets for the middle class’.” 
  • But do you have the fortitude to suffer the draw-downs…
  • “The men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.” – Will and Ariel Durant

Bloomberg View – Stock Investors Will Benefit Most From Corporate Tax Overhaul – Ben Carlson 1/5

NYT – Amway Made China a Billion-Dollar Market. Now It Faces a Crackdown. – Ryan McMorrow and Steven Lee Myers 1/8

WSJ – China’s Strategy to Psych Out the West Is Paying Off – Andrew Browne 1/9

  • “The China scholar Perry Link once called the party ‘the anaconda in the chandelier’.”
  • “Just by hovering, it induces self-censorship and subtle behavioral changes.”
  • “‘Normally the great snake doesn’t move. It doesn’t have to,’ Mr. Perry wrote in a 2002 essay in the New York Review of Books.”
  • “‘Its constant silent message is ‘You yourself decide.””

Markets / Economy

WSJ – The Price Gap That’s Squeezing the Auto Market – Stephen Wilmot 1/8

WSJ – Daily Shot: US Consumer Credit Net Change 1/8

  • “Consumer credit balances saw the greatest monthly increase in 16 years.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – Total US Consumer Credit Relative to Disposable Personal Income 1/8

WSJ – Daily Shot: Piper Jaffray – US Consumers living beyond their means 1/8

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – Total Consumer Loans by Credit Unions 1/8

WSJ – Daily Shot: FRED – Total US Student Loan Balance 1/8

WSJ – Daily Shot: US Financial Accounts Q3 2017 1/8

WSJ – Daily Shot: Piper Jaffray – Consumer Confidence & Savings Rate Gap 1/8

  • “There is a widening gap between consumer sentiment and the savings rate. In the past, this divergence was a precursor to the end of the economic cycle.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Market Ethos – US Output Gap 1/8

  • “The disappearance of the output gap also indicates that we are in the late stage of the cycle.”

Economist – Daily Chart: The fastest-growing and shrinking economies in 2018 1/5

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bitcoin 1/8

  • “Bitcoin appears to be range-bound, unable to breach the $17k level again.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Investing.com – Ripple 1/8

  • “Ripple took a massive hit on Monday before recovering partially.”

Environment / Science

NYT – These Billion-Dollar Natural Disasters Set a U.S. Record in 2017 – Kendra Pierre-Louis 1/8

South America

FT – Smuggled cattle and petrol join exodus from Venezuela – Gideon Long 1/8

  • “Criminal gangs seize opportunity posed by hyperinflation and a plunging bolivar.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Bloomberg – Venezuela 10yr USD Bond Price 1/8