Tag: Negative Rates

Knock-on Effects of Negative Interest Rates

This one is in its entirety.

Economist – How rock-bottom bond yields spread from Japan to the rest of the world – Buttonwood 9/14/19

It would be hard to think of a business that is on the face of it quite as dull as Norinchukin Bank. A co-operative, it was founded almost a century ago to take deposits from and lend to Japanese farmers. Yet Norinchukin came blinking into the spotlight earlier this year when it emerged that it had been a voracious buyer of collateralized loan obligations (CLOs)—pools of risky business loans used to finance buy-outs by private-equity firms. At the last count, in June, Norinchukin owned $75bn-worth.

The escapades of Norinchukin offer a parable. One part of its lesson is that when interest rates are stuck near zero for a long time, as they have been in Japan, banks’ normal source of profits comes under pressure. The other part is the lengths to which they must go to boost those profits, in this case by buying exotic foreign securities with attractive yields. Norinchukin is not alone. Japanese banks and insurance companies have been big buyers of the triple-A-rated tranches of CLOs, as well as other sorts of investment-grade corporate debt.

For this, blame negative bond yields. When the Bank of Japan’s board meets on September 19th, it is not expected to reduce its main interest rate, currently -0.1%. But any increase in interest rates seems a long way off. And as long as rates are at rock-bottom in Japan, it is hard for them to rise in other places. Bond-buying by desperate Japanese banks and insurance companies is a big part of what keeps a lid on yields elsewhere.

Japan’s sway on global asset markets has been felt ever since it liberalized its capital account in 1980. Later that decade Japanese investors snapped up trophy properties in America, such as the Rockefeller Centre in New York and Pebble Beach golf course in California. In the 1990s they piled into American tech firms. Both forays ended badly, but Japan’s stock of foreign securities has kept growing as its surplus savings have piled up.

Japan is already the world’s biggest creditor. Its net foreign assets—what its residents (government, householders and firms) own minus what they owe to foreigners—are worth around $3trn, or 60% of its annual GDP. And that understates Japan’s influence on global asset markets. Since 2012 both sides of its national balance-sheet have grown rapidly, as Japanese investors borrowed abroad to buy yet more assets.

Japan’s impact is felt most keenly in corporate-credit markets in America and Europe. Its pension and insurance firms, which need to make regular payments to retirees, are at least as hungry for bonds with a decent yield as are their peers elsewhere. But the grasping for yield is made all the more desperate by the struggles of Japan’s banks. It is hard to make money from lending to the government when bond yields are negative. In ageing, high-saving Japan, private-sector borrowers are scarce. So bank profits have suffered. A report last year by a financial regulator found that half of Japan’s regional banks lost money on their lending businesses.

Though yields in Europe are lower than in America, they are nevertheless attractive to Japanese buyers who hedge their currency risk. Most currency hedges are for less than a year and many are for three months. The cost of such hedges is linked to the cost of short-term borrowing in the foreign currency. A rising yield curve thus gives the best currency-hedged returns: the yield is high at the long end but short rates are low. For that reason, currency-hedged Japanese investors have preferred to buy corporate bonds or other credit securities in Europe rather than in America, where short-term interest rates are relatively high.

Locals lament that high-quality European and American corporate bonds are treated as safe assets, akin to sovereign bonds. Analysts’ efforts to work out which companies are more or less likely to default, and so which bonds are more or less valuable, seem almost quaint. “The Japan bid is not driven by credit risk,” complains one analyst. “It is all about headline yield.”

Some see Japan as a template: its path of ever-lower interest rates one that other rich, debt-ridden economies have been destined to follow and will now struggle to escape. But Japan’s troubles also have a direct influence on other countries. This makes itself felt through the country’s considerable sway over global capital markets. The outworkings are strange and unpredictable. Who would have thought that the rainy-day deposits of Japan’s farmers and fishermen would be used to fuel leveraged buy-outs in America and Europe?

Global Interest Rate Table and Human Migrations

WSJ – Daily Shot: Developed World Interest Rate by Term 9/5/19

WSJ – Daily Shot: Statista – World’s Biggest Human Migrations 9/5/19

Capital Controls in Argentina & Further Down the Negative Debt Rabbit Hole

Economist – Argentina’s beleaguered government imposes capital controls 9/2/19

When Mauricio Macri was elected president of Argentina in 2015, one of his first acts was to abolish capital controls that restricted buying and selling of the peso. The move symbolized Argentina’s pivot back to open markets and liberal economic reforms under his rule. On September 1st, after weeks of market turmoil, Mr Macri was forced to issue a decree re-imposing controls in an attempt to shore up the currency. From now on ordinary Argentines’ purchases of dollars will be capped at $10,000 a month. Companies will face restrictions on their ability to purchase dollars in the foreign-exchange market and to pay dividends to investors abroad.

FT – Argentina: how IMF’s biggest ever bailout crumbled under Macri – Michael Stott and Benedict Mander 9/1/19

Following days of market chaos in the wake of the vote (the August 11 primary vote that went to Peronist rival Alberto Fernandez (no relation to former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner)), Mr Macri’s government bowed to the inevitable last week and asked creditors for more time to pay back Argentina’s $101bn of foreign debt, including the IMF money, as Buenos Aires struggled to avoid the country’s ninth sovereign default — and the third this century. Currency controls were imposed on businesses on Sunday after it lost an estimated $3bn in reserves in just two days last week.

Bloomberg – The Unstoppable Surge in Negative Yields Reaches $17 Trillion – John Ainger 8/30/19

Thirty percent of all investment-grade securities now bear sub-zero yields, meaning that investors who acquire the debt and hold it to maturity are guaranteed to make a loss. Yet buyers are still piling in, seeking to benefit from further increases in bond prices and favorable cross-currency hedging rates—or at least to avoid greater losses elsewhere.

Hunting for Yield

FT – Negative yields force investors to plunge into riskier debt – Robin Wigglesworth 8/15/19

Two decades ago, well over half of the global bond market boasted yields of at least 5%, according to ICE Data Indices. The post-crisis splurge of central bank bond buying and rate cuts lowered this to under 16% a decade ago, but investors could still find plenty of higher yielding debt. Today, a mere 3% of the global bond market yields more than 5% — the lowest share on record.

Indeed, truly high-yielding debt is now almost an endangered species. Bonds with yields of more than 10% amount to just 0.4% of the global fixed income universe, according to ICE.

Negative interest rates in Japan and the eurozone, and mounting expectations that the US Federal Reserve will follow last month’s rate cut with several more this year, have expanded the pool of bonds with sub-zero yields to more than $16tn — or around 27% of the global bond market.

This is primarily a European phenomenon. While US bonds account for just under half the $55tn global investment-grade bond market, they pay out 88% of all yield, according to Bank of America. 

There are, broadly speaking, two main ways for investors to counteract the global yield drought: buying longer maturity or riskier debt. But hunger for long-term bonds from investors such as pension funds and insurers means that the yield pick-up one would normally expect to receive through buying bonds maturing decades into the future, has also fallen sharply.

That leaves many investors pushed towards the only other option: venturing into the riskier corners of the bond market, such as fragile countries, heavily indebted companies and exotic, financially engineered instruments. 

Negative Yielding Debt Make-up & Negative Corporate Bonds

In case you’re wondering where all this negative debt is…

WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – Distribution of Negative Yielding Debt 8/14/19

Negative yields are spreading into Corporate debt.

WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – Negative Yielding Corporate Bonds 8/14/19

WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – Percentage of Govt Bonds Trading at Negative Yields 8/14/19

What to do with all of these used cars…and more on negative government bond rates

First because we all like graphics…

Bloomberg – Negative Yields Could Be the Death of Bond Markets – Brian Chappatta 7/29/19

Bloomberg – China Will Be the World’s Used Car Salesman – Adam Minter 7/26/19

A Chinese company in Guangzhou recently exported 300 used cars to buyers in Cambodia, Nigeria, Myanmar and Russia. The shipment was a first for China, which till now had restricted large-scale exports of used cars in deference to manufacturers, who feared that poor vehicle quality could damage their reputations. There will be more such shipments — and their impact will reverberate well beyond the mainland’s used-car lots.

With all the focus on electric and self-driving cars, it’s easy to overlook just how big and influential the market for old-fashioned junkers remains. In developed economies, more than twice as many used cars are sold as new ones. For example, there were 17.3 million new vehicles sold in the U.S. during 2018 — and 40.2 million used ones. The gap is forecast to widen in 2019, driven by the ever-escalating price of new cars and a flood of used vehicles coming off lease. Automakers may be forced to slash prices of new vehicles and eliminate incentives in order to prop up sales.

Rich countries from Japan to the U.S. have shipped at least some of their older vehicles to developing nations such as Mexico and Nigeria for decades now. The trade has done more than get polluting autos off the roads; it has helped boost new-car sales by reducing the supply of secondhand alternatives.

Compared to domestic sales, of course, the numbers are quite small: The U.S. exported just under 800,000 used cars last year, a number that’s remained relatively steady since 2013. Nevertheless, that accounted for nearly a third of the passenger vehicles and light trucks exported from the U.S. in 2018. Japanese exports often approach 1 million vehicles annually. Singapore, Korea, several European countries and Canada also export a significant number of used cars.

It makes sense that China would join them. For one thing, inventory is building. In 2018, China sold 28 million new cars and nearly 14 million used ones. Soon, the ratio will flip: China is home to more than 300 million registered vehicles — the largest fleet in the world — and it’s just a matter of time before more of them are resold. The quality of Chinese cars has also improved to the point where many developing-world consumers may well choose them as a cheaper alternative to used Toyotas or Fords.

At the same time, China’s automobile industry is in a slump and policymakers are keen to find ways to boost it. Used-car exports, the government says, can “stimulate the vitality of the domestic automobile consumption market.”

That spells competition and possibly trouble for the automotive sector globally. An increase in the supply of used cars will inevitably drive down prices, especially in the emerging markets such as Nigeria and Cambodia to which Chinese exporters will be marketing their vehicles.

While that’s good news for prospective car buyers in Lagos, over the long term it will impact new car sales and even manufacturing in developing countries, many of which are part of automakers’ global supply chains. Likewise, as fewer cars are exported, say, from the U.S., the competition between new and used vehicles domestically will only stiffen.

And cars are just the beginning. Just as China’s factories drove down the cost of new goods over the last three decades, the growing piles of used stuff purchased — and now unloaded — by Chinese consumers will exert downward pressure on the price of used and new products everywhere.

China’s secondhand car exports are starting modestly and the country will take time to catch up to more established players. But this isn’t semiconductor manufacturing; long-term, China will have more used cars to sell than anybody and its export business will inevitably grow into the world’s biggest. Global automakers might want to strap on their seatbelts.

April 4, 2018

Perspective

FT – Naspers trims Tencent stake with $10bn share sale – Joseph Cotterill and Louise Lucas 3/22

  • “Naspers, the South African media company that is one of the biggest shareholders in Tencent, said that it would sell down part of its stake in the Chinese technology giant for the first time in almost two decades.”
  • “In a statement on Thursday, Naspers said that it would sell stock worth more than $10bn, equivalent to 2% of the shares in Asia’s biggest company by market capitalization, to fund investments elsewhere.”
  • “The transaction would reduce Naspers’ stake in Tencent, the world’s biggest gaming company and the owner of China’s WeChat and QQ social networks, from 33% to 31%.”
  • “Naspers added that it did not plan to sell any more of its Tencent shares for at least the next three years.”
  • “But even Thursday’s limited sell down is a landmark for what has been one of the most successful venture capital investments in history, and comes as Hong Kong-listed Tencent shifts strategy after years of explosive growth.”
  • “Naspers’ investment of $32m in Tencent in 2001, now worth $175bn, powered its rise from a publisher and pay-TV operator to Africa’s biggest company by market capitalization.”
  • Approximately a 65.91% compound growth rate over 17 years. How do you like them apples?

Worthy Insights / Opinion Pieces / Advice

Forbes – Canadian Real Estabe Bubble Blowing Up North – Bob Haber 4/2

  • “According to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver, single detached homes in Vancouver (on a local currency basis) have risen from approximately $400K CAD to $1.75 million CAD since 2002. That’s a 337% increase in 15 years. With incredibly fast rising prices, a large portion of the population is engaged in real estate brokerage, real estate development, construction, renovations, and everything that goes along with that. The echoes of Phoenix, Las Vegas, and San Diego from 2006 cannot be ignored.”
  • “…Taxation and interest rates are going higher. Cap rates on rentals or commercial properties are shockingly low (think 1% to 3% in most circumstances). In fact, Canada’s price-to-rent ratios are now well above what they were in the U.S. during the 2006 housing debacle. According to the Bank of Canada, 47% of Canada’s mortgages will reset in the next 12 months. To put that in perspective, a five-year fixed mortgage rate in Canada averages approximately 5.14%. This is 11% higher versus the 4.64% that it averaged for most of the past 2 years.”

NYT – Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky Walk Out: ‘It Really Is a Wildfire’ – Dana Goldstein 4/2

Markets / Economy

engadget – New York approves surcharge for Uber and Lyft rides in Manhattan – David Lumb 4/2

  • “As part of the budget that New York lawmakers passed last Friday, ride-hailing services and taxis face a new fee if they drive in Manhattan. These aren’t nickel-and-dime increases, either: Uber, Lyft and the like face a $2.75 charge for each ride, taxis get a $2.50 increase and group ride services like Via and uberPOOL will be charged $0.75 per customer. It’s meant to combat congestion and help fund subway repair and improvements, providing an expected $400 million per year going forward for the MTA.”
  • “Unsurprisingly, it’s already catching flak from customers and from taxi drivers, who have become far outnumbered by ride-sharing cars in the last several years. Of the 103,000 vehicles for hire in NYC, 65,000 are driven by Uber contractors alone, while taxis remain capped by law at 13,600, The New York Times reported. As a result, average traffic in Manhattan has slowed from 6.5 miles per hour to 4.7.”
  • “Other cities have enacted their own surcharges for ride-hailing services in recent years, but they are far lower than those New York just passed. Seattle instated a $0.24 charge for each trip in 2014, Portland, OR agreed to levy a $0.50 fee per customer in 2016, both of which funnel money collected toward regulating ride-sharing services. Chicago passed one in 2014 that will reach $0.65 this year and directs part of the funds raised toward public transit, much like New York’s will.”

FT – Walmart extends money transfer operation to 200 countries – Anna Nicolaou and Ben McLannahan 4/2

  • “Walmart is expanding its money transfer operation to 200 countries, the latest move in the retail giant’s slow but steady push into financial services.”
  • “Through the new scheme, people will be able to deliver money from Walmart’s nearly 5,000 US stores to locations abroad within 10 minutes, the company said.” 
  • “Arkansas-based Walmart first unveiled a money transfer service four years ago, allowing customers to send funds between its stores, and aiming to reach the “underbanked” — about 27% of Americans have limited access to traditional banking, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Walmart claims it has saved customers $700m in fees because it charges cheaper rates.” 
  • “The retailer has partnered with MoneyGram, one of the big wire transfer groups, to expand globally this month. The service will allow US residents to send money to countries such as Mexico, which received nearly $30bn in remittances last year, according to Mexico’s central bank.”
  • “Walmart’s push into money transfers comes a few months after it announced it was partnering with PayActiv and Even, two financial-technology firms, to offer its 1.4m US employees tools for money management and on-demand access to their earned wages.”
  • “The moves suggest the retailer may see itself as a partner of the big financial services companies rather than a direct rival going head to head with basic products such as checking accounts or credit cards.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Political Calculations – Why Bad News for Big Tech Is Bad for Stocks 3/29

WSJ – Daily Shot: SPDR Americas – Equity Geographical Flows 4/3

WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – Drawdown Durations 4/3

Real Estate

FT – Manhattan apartment sales plunge – Lindsay Fortado 4/2

  • “The number of co-op and condominium sales in Manhattan fell nearly 25% during the first quarter compared to the same period last year, according to new research by Miller Samuel real estate appraisers and Douglas Elliman real estate brokers.”
  • “It was the largest annual decline in sales in nine years, according to the report.”
  • “The average sale price across Manhattan fell by 8.1% from the year-earlier quarter, and the average price per square foot also recorded a sharp decline, falling by 18.5% to $1,697.”
  • “Luxury apartment sales, considered the most expensive 10% of all properties, were hit particularly hard, as were new developments.”
  • “The average sales price of a luxury apartment fell 15.1%, down from $9.36m in the first quarter of 2017 to $7.94m in the first quarter of this year, and the number of sales was down 24.1%. The number of newly built apartments that went into contract fell 54%.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Black Knight – Mortgage Equity 4/3

  • “Turning to consumer credit, how much borrowing capacity do households have against their homes? The answer is $5.4 trillion. $2.8 trillion of that capacity is with borrowers who have the highest credit scores.”

WSJ – Daily Shot: Black Knight – Hurricane-related mortgage delinquencies in Florida and Puerto Rico 4/3

Finance

WSJ – Daily Shot: Deutsche Bank – Countries with Negative-Yielding Bonds 4/3

Cryptocurrency / ICOs

Bloomberg – The Crypto Hedge-Fund Bubble Is Starting to Deflate – Olga Kharif 4/2

Tech

FT – Why south-east Asia’s politics are proving  problem for Facebook – John Reed and Hannah Kuchler 4/2

  • “One of the company’s fastest-growing markets is also one of its most complex where hate speech and political manipulation are making it hard to remain neutral.”

China

FT – China moves its factories back to the countryside – Emily Feng 4/2

  • “After decades of urbanization and rural neglect, China’s Communist party is seeking to revitalize the countryside, where wages and standards of living have stagnated compared with those of big cities.”

FT – Chinese developers seek piece of booming education market – Emily Feng 4/2

  • “When China’s premier Li Keqiang recently vowed progress on a property tax intended to rein in home prices, it signaled to the country’s real estate developers that more than a decade of double-digit growth would soon end.”
  • “Facing slowing growth in their core business, top developers are betting on the education market, building and operating international schools for tens of thousands of students.”
  • “The country’s three biggest property developers — Country Garden, Evergrande and Vanke — have seen sales slow in the first quarter of this year, according to an industry ranking compiled by research agency China Real Estate Information Corp. Meanwhile, home price growth has dipped following a clampdown on lending and property speculation.”
  • “That has already made a dent in developers’ financials. Dalian Wanda reported a revenue drop of almost 11% in 2017 while other residential developers are girding for longer-term impact. JPMorgan Chase has forecast as much as a 6% decline in mainland Chinese home sales this year.“
  • “Now developers are ‘looking at other sectors in which to invest in order to get the returns that they need to continue growth’, says John Mortensen, regional director of real estate investment and management company JLL, which often works with universities.”
  • “Meanwhile, China’s education market is booming. The sector will grow from Rmb1.64tn ($261bn) in revenue in 2015 to Rmb2.9tn ($461bn) in 2020, according to Deloitte, with particularly high demand for English-language curriculums.”
  • “Amid fierce competition to get into good universities at home and overseas, proximity to a good school is often a key factor in determining Chinese property prices. A 2012 study of Shanghai housing found that prices were more than 40% higher in top-rated school districts.”
  • “That has prompted residential developers to build new complexes with schools within walking distance of apartments, hiring or building in-house education teams to recruit teachers and design bilingual curriculums.”
  • “Guangzhou-based Country Garden, China’s top residential developer by sales, is now also among the country’s biggest private education providers. Its education subsidiary, Bright Scholar, runs 52 bilingual international schools that each offer a full education from kindergarten to secondary school. Bright Scholar listed on the New York Stock Exchange last year, raising more than $150m.”
  • “Vanke Group, China’s second biggest residential developer by sales, set up its own education group in 2015 as part of a strategic shift aimed at offering a ‘full ecology’ to families.”
  • “Dalian Wanda is another property group with a growing interest in schools — its children’s education and entertainment group almost tripled its sales last year even as the group’s total revenues fell more than 10%.”

India

NYT – Jeweler to the Stars Flees as India Seethes Over Bank Fraud – Maria Abi-Habib 4/3

  • “About a week after Mr. Modi grinned for the cameras with the prime minister, a state-run Indian bank told regulators that it had found nearly $1.8 billion in fraudulent transactions linked to the jeweler’s account. Indian officials now accuse Mr. Modi, his family and business associates of assembling a global empire with nearly $3 billion in money obtained illegally, mostly from government-run banks. He denies wrongdoing.”
  • “For many Indians, the allegations against Mr. Modi further cement the notion that taxpayer-owned banks are footing the bill for the lavish lifestyles of a rising elite. That idea has particular resonance in a country where stark poverty — India is home to a third of the world’s poorest people — remains dire.”
  • “Just a decade ago, during the global financial crisis, Indian lenders were held up as a bastion of stability. Today, they are considered more vulnerable than those in other leading emerging markets, mostly because state-controlled lenders dominate the sector, according to the International Monetary Fund.”
  • “Of the $6.5 billion in fraudulent loans that have hit the industry over the past two years, the most egregious cases were at government-owned banks, according to figures released by Parliament. Executives at those lenders are more likely to be appointed for their political connections than for their talent, financial analysts say.”

Russia

FT – Russia plans ‘bad bank’ for $19bn in toxic assets – Max Seddon 4/2

  • “Russia’s central bank is to create a ‘bad bank’ to ringfence Rbs1.1tn ($19bn) in toxic assets from three nationalized top-10 lenders, vastly increasing the total bill for bailing them out.” 
  • “Vasily Pozdyshev, a deputy central bank governor, told Russian news agencies on Monday that the central bank would transfer assets from three collapsed banks into Trust, another failed lender.” 
  • “Taxpayers are footing the largest bank rescue bill in Russia’s history to fund the central bank’s takeover of three privately held banks last year to stave off a collapse in the sector.”
  • “The largest of them, Otkritie, was Russia’s biggest privately held bank by assets until it was nationalized in August. The central bank then nationalized B & N Bank, another top-10 lender, and Promsvyazbank to stop them from going under.” 
  • “Under Ms Nabiullina (Elvira Nabiullina, Russian central bank governor), the central bank is conducting an unprecedented clear-up of the sector under which it has wound down more than 300 banks since 2013. To rescue the three top-10 lenders, however, Ms Nabiullina had to create a separate bailout mechanism that allowed the central bank to take direct stakes in their capital.” 

FT – Russia’s $55bn pipeline gamble on China’s demand for gas – Henry Foy 4/2

  • “The pipeline is Russia’s most ambitious, costly and geopolitically critical energy project since the fall of the Soviet Union, and represents a $55bn bet on uncharted territory by the world’s biggest gas company.”
  • “Russia’s first eastern pipeline is the most striking physical manifestation of President Vladimir Putin’s diplomatic pivot towards China amid rapidly worsening relations with the west. It is the biggest and most critical element in a suite of energy deals, funding packages and asset sales that seek to warm a once frosty relationship.”
  • “For Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled gas export monopoly behind the pipeline, the mega-project is the largest and most expensive in its history. When the taps are switched on in December 2019, the world’s largest gas exporter will be connected for the first time with its largest energy importer.”