Tag: China

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the week ahead. I’m Tony Nash. Today we’re joined by Albert Marco, Vince Lancey and Blake Morrow. We’ve got a few key themes. The first one, when I went out to ask about this show, the first response I got back from Twitter was, what the hell happened in China this week? So that’s the first thing we’re going to cover. The second is, why was silver rallying? This week we’re going to talk to Vince about silver and gold. And then with Blake, we’ll talk about the Fed and the QRA. CI Markets has been recognized as one of the top stock forecasting tools for 2024 by Techopedia, a leading tech authority. Why? Because it predicts future price movements with a 94.7% accuracy rate. It covers over 1600 assets with weekly re forecasts of stocks, etfs, currencies, commodities and major equity indices. It has an easy to use interface optimized for web and mobile, and pricing plans to fit your needs, including a free option. Stop playing guessing games with your investments. Take control of your portfolio with CI markets. Learn more about CI Markets today@completeintel.com. Slash markets let’s get right into it, Albert.

[00:01:33.830] – Tony Nash

We’re playing kind of the where’s Albert this week. So I like your background. That looks really good, and I think you’re a great guy to answer the question, what the hell happened in China this week? So we had a pretty big turnaround in China in the equity markets. We’ve got a chart for Shanghai Composite on the screen. Of course, the Hong Seng did even better than the Shanghai composite. The central government just talked about putting a few hundred billion dollars into the markets. They didn’t actually do it. They greenlit corporate share buybacks to prop up markets. They reduced the Triple R, the reserve requirements so banks can push more cash out into the economy. And of course, we saw that pretty dramatic turnaround in equity markets. So all of this got markets back to where they were about two weeks ago. CNY gained a little bit. It’s off. Blake, maybe you can talk through some of those dynamics. But the question is this, what does this all mean? What did they do? Right, Albert, and what do you think they should have done that they didn’t do?

[00:02:38.850] – Albert Marko

What they should have done is a different animal altogether. But what was happening was the narrative was just becoming overwhelming for the chinese economy of systemic collapse of the chinese system from top to bottom. And they had to step in and guarantee, I know that they haven’t done it yet, but close to $300 billion is probably going to be levered up to five to ten times that to prop up the economy. And their entire gambit was to just change the narrative. They didn’t want those headlines that China was collapsing. They’re going to have to step in, for sure. They’re going to step in. There’s no question about that. And it was all to prop up the Hong Kong markets, really. They don’t really care about Shanghai, the mainland or whatnot. But this was specifically to prop up.

[00:03:30.310] – Tony Nash

The, you know, we’ve seen all these over the past probably six months. We’ve seen all these year on year comparisons. X is up triple digits in China for trade or double digits or whatever, year on year. And everyone knows the year before things were closed and these year on year things in China haven’t really matter all that much because they were closed for a year and a half or whatever. So I think what I’m seeing in things like global trade, the trade numbers actually don’t look bad, but things in China, we’re seeing deflation, we’re seeing really a lot of bad news. Politically, things are kind of sketchy. They’ve had two of their central committee members just kind of disappear over the last six months. So can money injected. I’m saying that diplomatically, Vince, can money being injected into markets solve that uncertainty? Or is this just kind of a first step? Like, have they just started and there’s a long term plan? Because we’ve been hearing about chinese stimulus for three years now and this is really the first. Aside from some kind of stupid rail investment or whatever, this is really the first tranche of cash that we’ve seen.

[00:04:43.210] – Albert Marko

Well, I mean, politically, G is taking advantage of the situation right now, getting rid of his opposition party members that are causing him issues or potentially going to cause him issues. I mean, that’s what anyone really in leadership would do to take advantage in this type of scenario. Yellen has her foot on their throats at the moment and she’s been hitting the sell button on China and keeping the dollar elevated. And rates being up close to 6% is almost the abyss for the chinese market. So they’re definitely playing the defensive. They’re trying to prop up the CNY, they’re trying to prop up the economy. Is it enough? No, absolutely it’s not enough. They’re absolutely going to have to keep going on for the next four to five years. This is not going to be a one year pop and it’s going to fix everything. This is going to be five years down the road of them doing multiple, staggered steps of stimulus to get the economy back in order.

[00:05:44.320] – Tony Nash

Yeah. I mean, if we want to make an analogy to the US, imagine if the secretary of state just literally disappeared five months ago. And imagine if the defense secretary just literally disappeared, right? And all of a sudden there’s some new junior person in their place. Right? and so the political uncertainty in China is huge. We saw massive shifts in chinese money into japanese and us etfs over the past two weeks. Right, and so the chinese investment itself is not showing support for the chinese markets. I was in China in June of 2015 when markets fell apart. And at that point, chinese mainlanders were encouraged by the government to put their money back in markets. They did it based on faith in the CCP. I don’t see that happening this time.

[00:06:35.390] – Albert Marko

No. And the outflows from China have propped up the bond market and the US equities. I mean, it’s been just absolutely staggering of how much money has left Asia and even Europe and flowed into the United States. And this was all calculated by Janet Yellen. I mean, she knows what she’s doing. She’s been the Fed chair. She’s got her fingers on all the buttons at the treasury. They know that if China starts taking off inflation, it’s going to be another problem right now. And I’m sure our guests will talk about silver and commodities, because that’s a big key part of it. If China is firing on all cylinders, commodities are going to skyrocket again. Lithium. Copper.

[00:07:14.330] – Blake Morrow

Albert, I want to jump in here just because talking about commodities for the markets that I follow, especially like the australian dollar. Copper. Unresponsive to all the actions for us traders in the currency space and the commodity space, we look at it as like a shotgun approach. Yeah, maybe this might have been more of a bigger slug, I guess, that came out of this shotgun shot. But still, you can see the muted response that we’re getting in commodities and currencies. And I think you guys draw a really strong correlation, which should definitely be noted, between the Nike, the market’s definitely shunning China in favor of the Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway trade of Japan, even Germany, and a lot of european equities. And us equities, they’re all beneficiaries. But then again, if we do see China turn the corner a little bit, which I think it’s too early to tell, maybe that takes a little bit of the air out of some of the other markets around the globe.

[00:08:26.610] – Tony Nash

Can you talk to us a little bit about CNY dynamics, it really hasn’t moved much.

[00:08:31.360] – Blake Morrow

No, it hasn’t. I don’t focus on the CNY as much as my european counterparts do because my colleagues that traded. Because as a us based trader, it’s prohibited for a lot of brokers to be involved. But it’s a lever that China uses and one of the other things that if they want to really kind of kickstart their economy a little bit, they’ll weaken the CNH a little bit more. But we are up at dire levels because as Albert pointed out, this is more of a confidence, I think, topic. So if you start to see the CNH really come under pressure because the PBOC pulls that lever, next thing you know, yeah, it might help the chinese economy a little bit, but to what extent does it hurt sentiment, equities and sentiment in general? I mean, there has not been a time, I can’t really recall a time that I’ve seen a singular market so just shunned upon right now. Like you are seeing in China, right?

[00:09:44.590] – Tony Nash

Yep.

[00:09:46.250] – Vince Lanci

Can I go ahead?

[00:09:47.560] – Blake Morrow

Yeah.

[00:09:48.990] – Vince Lanci

The two statements, blake’s comment about the muted effect on commodities as well as the emerging market. Currencies, commodity currencies, and the comment about them being too safe. I guess what I’m trying to say is in the past when they changed the reserve requirements, I had seen commodity currencies and commodities do better than chinese stocks. It’s one data point, but this time chinese stocks, as low as they are, responded very appropriately. I’m wondering if the whole lack of buying of commodities compared to stocks this time is not a comment on China saying what China’s leadership saying. We need people to buy stocks and stop buying pet rocks like gold. So anyway, I think the lack of confidence in China’s economy has been one of the reasons they’ve been buying gold at the retail level anyway, or at the individual level, and they need to change that or they’re going to have a deflationary crisis. And I just think both those things are.

[00:11:04.790] – Tony Nash

Those are all great points. I think the Hong Shang was up between four and 5% this week. It’s still down like 20% over the last six months. Shanghai composite was up two point something this week. So we’ve seen a turnaround, but we haven’t seen a dramatic turnaround. Right. We haven’t seen a 15%. It’s not as if they’ve kind of backed up the truck, put in trillions of dollars. I think they’re being very careful fiscally because they do have to balance a huge amount of government debt that China has and, well, they can, but they’re very careful not to print right away. But my worry is, and if we look at the, you know, they’ve made arrr move, is that beginning, middle, end? Where do you guys think we are on that?

[00:11:59.190] – Albert Marko

Well, I mean, going back to what Blake said, we are only in stage one of a long game here of what China has to do to get back on track. It’s going to be years on down the road until anything meaningful really happens with the chinese economy. Of course, we’re going to get stock market pops up and down because that’s just the nature of the stock market globally at the moment. I mean, normally you would see, like Vincent said, commodities would just rip on any kind of chinese news, but that’s just not the case anymore. So, I mean, it’s going to be a nuanced approach from this point on.

[00:12:32.210] – Vince Lanci

Maybe if we stop buying chinese made laundry furniture, I mean patio furniture, they’ll stop buying commodities to make them. Maybe that’s what’s going on, right?

[00:12:42.210] – Tony Nash

Could be. I think it’s really interesting this week we’ve seen so many Asia equity analysts say, hey, China is a huge value right now. You need to get in and nobody’s buying it. I don’t know if anybody’s buying it, but I don’t see.

[00:12:54.580] – Albert Marko

No, there are, Tony, there are big funds buying it clandestinely at the moment they’re starting to get in because honestly, if you look at a systemic collapse of China, they’re not going to let that happen. The US nor China will allow that to happen. So at some point it’s a decent play, long term to get into China. Long term. Long term. I’m not saying next six months, but next two, three, four years. Absolutely. You would be wise to put a position on.

[00:13:23.070] – Tony Nash

Yeah, my biggest worry here has been that $278,000,000,000. The market looks at it and shrugs. And that’s kind of what we’ve seen. Right. And the problem with filling holes in markets is that if you don’t put enough in, they just get bigger and bigger and bigger and hungrier and hungrier. So is there a danger of that, of we open next week and markets just kind of yawn at the $278,000,000,000 and all of a sudden China has to scurry to put out a bigger number sooner?

[00:13:52.410] – Albert Marko

Well, I think we have to wait until the actual mechanism of what China is going to use to do that. I know they’re going to be using offshore funds and accounts and lever it up. So we really have to wait until the data comes out because I assure you it’s not going to be just 278,000,000,000. It’ll probably in the trillion, over the trillion range.

[00:14:10.930] – Blake Morrow

I also read, and correct me if I’m wrong, if you heard something different, that there’s a lot of calls being made to institutional, chinese institutional clients that stop shorting the market. Only be on the long side kind of throwing those warnings out, which is I find really interesting. But the sentiment is interesting. I’ve always found it my quarter century of trading the markets, a very interesting dynamic in the markets because sentiment, you could almost use the analogy, it’s like inflation. It’s that genie that you can’t get back in the bottle sentiment. When it’s sour, it’s sour. It takes a lot to turn. And you could look at the polar opposite of the US economy right now and the optimism that people feel and regulators understand what that is. And I think Xi has a very good understanding of that sentiment and why he’s trying to turn it.

[00:15:10.050] – Tony Nash

Great, okay.

[00:15:11.250] – Tony Nash

Hey, I’d like to make sure you know that you can access our AI driven market forecasting tool called CI markets for free, no strings attached, and it does not require any credit card information. Go to completeintel.com slash markets to subscribe. CI Markets is the perfect addition to your analysis toolbox. This free account includes Nikki stocks, major currency pairs and global economics. Of course, we offer much more in our paid account, but this lets you experience CIA markets before making a financial commitment. CIA Markets uses the power of AI to help you make better trading investment decisions. It’s absolutely free. Again. Go to completeintel.com slash markets to subscribe to. CI Markets free. Let’s move on to precious metals. Vince, you put out a piece earlier this week on silver. Okay. On Tuesday you’re talking about why you bought silver this week. I know it’s retreated as we’ve headed into the end of the week, but I’ve got a gold silver chart on screen. A lot of this has to do with China, which is really interesting to me. Can you talk us through why you got in, what levels you looked for and what are you looking for going forward?

[00:16:19.050] – Vince Lanci

Sure, I’m happy to do that. First of all, it’s a short term trade. It’s not a macro trade. It was more like a win for one day, win for a week and then just keep running with it. If it continues to win. It stopped winning yesterday as far as I was concerned. But we’ll get to that. The thing with silver and gold is they’ve completely diverged in the public eye. Looking at the china demand for gold, looking at the BriCs demand for gold, looking at using gold as an alternative to the treasury or maybe a little bit of a hedge for the treasury as a reserve asset, that increase, well that’s kind of left silver in the dust. That’s the first leg, right? Silver is not precious enough and it takes a lot more space to store it if you are having to deal with something like that. And so that’s one leg that gets kicked out on silver and this is all going to lead to why I bought it actually. And the second leg that gets kicked out on silver is very flow oriented. The last 1015 years of behavior in precious metals have been silver isn’t good for anything.

[00:17:32.590] – Vince Lanci

As a silver bug I have to see what the enemy says. But the reality of it is if you’re pitching an investment or a trade, if you’re saying risk off, you buy gold. If you’re looking at metals, right? If you say risk on, you buy copper because it’s an economic metal, right. And this is manifested out of China as well. For years, every time they throw a little stimulus out there, it’s like buy steel, buy iron by copper, and then eventually you buy silver. So that’s the pecking order in precious metals on the economic side.

[00:18:07.690] – Tony Nash

Never heard it put that way. That’s great, thank you for that. I’ve never heard it put that way.

[00:18:12.350] – Vince Lanci

Cool, thank you. So that’s how I used to trade it because I would. Whatever, oh, copper’s up. I’ll buy silver if it’s during Asia. If copper was up during the US, I would sell silver. It’s like a time trade, but bringing it back to why I actually bought silver, the commodity trading advisors, the CTAs, they tend to move in groups like a herd, and they frequently lose money on short term moves. And when they make money, it’s on big term move, long term moves. I would call them momentum. Most of them are momentum traders and they sell weakness and they buy strength. And right about the time people started talking about recession, your commodity trading advisors in the US started putting their clients into shorting oil, shorting silver, shorting copper and shorting aluminum. Those that did trade aluminum, and they do that. It’s kind of interesting because it’s so facile, but it works. Instead of selling their stocks, they hedge the economic exposure by selling commodities. And oil trended lower. They made money, silver trended lower. Despite gold’s strength coming out of China, silver was constantly beat upon and copper trended lower despite calls for a super cycle and what have you, which will come eventually, just not when we’re looking at it.

[00:19:41.310] – Vince Lanci

So when the markets get thin or when there’s not a lot going on, now you have a big cohort of shorts and silver and oil. I’ll put silver, oil and gold in this triangle here, right? So everyone at the CTA level, whether it be small managed money or medium sized managed money, is looking at gold having been shorted twice and gotten killed in a little bit of a shortcoming rally when the Ukraine war started and then getting killed when the Hamas Israel war started. They’re staying away from it, or they’re long. That’s their hedge. Right. Meanwhile, they’re, you know, silver, I think I’ll short that. So they’ll short that as well, economically. And when there’s nothing going on and people start talking about the Fed easing, where the Fed cuts, stocks go up and silver stops going down, oil stops going down, copper stops going down, and then one day you just see all those commodities have like a little bit of a v shaped bottom. Oil, silver. Well, oil wasn’t v shaped. Oil, silver, and the grains. Gold is nowhere, right? And they start to move up. And at that moment, I know from historical perspective and from analysis that I look at that the CTAs, which are the first to move, right, they’re the first to move.

[00:21:06.820] – Vince Lanci

They’re buying silver, they’re buying oil, they’re buying copper, they’re buying grains, and they’re probably selling gold, posing the whole thing out. And for three days, that worked out very nicely. And then the market paused today. So that’s why I bought it. Right? That’s why I bought. I thought, okay, maybe the Fed’s going to ease. I’m long stocks, I’ll buy silver. I kind of the opposite of what they do. And it worked for a couple of days, and then it just kind of flatlined on the flows that I saw. And I said, okay, ctas have covered, but they don’t have any money to put into it. And we talk about markets that climb walls of worry. Gold is up, stocks up over the last three years, and there’s just no, so much money on the sidelines in stocks, and yet stocks are up. And when you look at gold, it’s like, well, the macro investor speculators, they don’t even care about gold anymore, and yet gold is up. There’s such a lack of participation in silver on the american side, except for all the lunatics that think silver is going to go to the moon tomorrow, which they’re friends of mine, so I’m going to defend them, and I’m probably one of them, but I try and keep a lid on it for times like this. Nobody buys silver on the follow through. So I got out of my lungs today and I actually shorted a little bit of gold because I think China is going to get filled on their buying underneath.

[00:22:34.410] – Vince Lanci

So that’s it. I think in the short term it could continue to go higher, but it won’t be because of what I saw. I wouldn’t know what drives it higher in the longer term, I think if stocks drop, silver gets hit more. If stocks drop, gold gets hit. If stocks drop, oil should get hit. But oil is its own animal right now. It seems it’s got its own thing going on. So longer term, I’m very constructive on silver, but that was a trade that just came and went.

[00:23:04.650] – Tony Nash

We’re just looking for the catalyst. Right, I’m sorry, catalyst. We’re looking for the long term catalyst. So, Vince, you sent me a Goldman chart. Can you walk us through this? You’ve already covered some of this, but can you walk us through this Goldman chart? And then can you walk us through what some of the catalysts might be? And I’m also curious, what happens if we don’t see a rate cut in March?

[00:23:27.970] – Vince Lanci

Yeah. Okay. The chart that you’re putting up there, I think it’s basically a graphic depiction of what I described, and it confirmed what I had thought. The chart describes several things, but it’s basically a year of performance. And the dark blue part of the body, forget the wicks above and wicks below. I forget what they’re called. But the dark blue body represents how long, if you go up on the chart and how short investors get in these assets. And if you look on the left, you see oil there. And what we’re focused on for this conversation is this green star. The green star shows you that, generally speaking, of all the money that investors, that CTA investors, these are small and medium sized at best. This is a sentiment indicator. Actually, when you think about what Blake was talking about, this is a sentiment indicator. The oil people had been extremely bearish and short out the wazoo. Conversely, if you go to the right side of the chart, you’ll see that they’re also long gold, and that’s because of the war. What have you, SVB, bank or whatever the reason. And then you look at silver and you say, look at silver.

[00:24:47.030] – Vince Lanci

Silver on the far right is they’re extremely short based on how that star is positioned. And silver is behaving in the minds of the normal person. Silver is like copper. It’s behaving like copper.

[00:25:01.020] – Tony Nash

When they diverge like that, how long do they usually diverge like that?

[00:25:05.490] – Vince Lanci

Gold and, oh, they can diverge like that for months. And that’ll happen when the market is dominated by fed behavior, right? So if we’re just talking about domestic politics and rates and fed stuff and everything is fine in neo keynesian world, well then you’re going to see buy gold, sell silver, buy gold, sell silver, and they won’t even buy that much gold. They’ll just happily sell silver because every time they’re buying stock, they’re raising capital using something else. But when there’s a global geopolitical problem, doesn’t have to be a war. You had like Brexit was an example of one, Brexit was another one more recently. The guilt when they had the problem there with that mini budget. I forget what the actual. But anyway, what ended up happening there was, what ends up happening is everyone’s long gold and short silver and they’re just happy. And then one day they wake up and silver is $0.50 higher and they say, oh, maybe we should cover that. And so then they cover it. And so basically when the market is focused on american economics, that will stay stretched for a long period of time. But when an event happens, like the Ukraine war, for example, they all bought gold and they all sold silver at that moment.

[00:26:28.830] – Vince Lanci

And then a month later, gold kept going up, so they ended up buying silver. So those are your interesting domestic versus geopolitical, that’s what changes the don’t.

[00:26:38.450] – Blake Morrow

I don’t have a mean, aside from being, I come from the camp, I don’t like shorting precious metals. I like to own precious metals like physical, right? I try not to trade them on the short side. If I’m going to trade them, I like to be on the long side. But why? Just because I have my technical views and I actually think silver is going lower. Just throwing that out there.

[00:27:03.900] – Blake Morrow

I know I might be both, but why did silver outpace gold so excessively during the COVID lockdowns?

[00:27:17.390] – Vince Lanci

Yeah, well, during the COVID lockdowns, that was a special situation. The situation.

[00:27:26.380] – Blake Morrow

You can say that again.

[00:27:27.860] – Vince Lanci

No, but actually it’s directly Covid related. I mean, you’re basically right. This is kind of bizarre. And as a physical person, I think you’d appreciate this. There was an artificial problem, and it manifested more in silver than in gold. Then here’s what happened. It’s actually nice little story. The late George Giro and I were talking about this during COVID A lot of the flows in the US are, if you want to buy metal on the Comex, let’s say you’re going to take delivery on the Comex, right? If you’re going to take delivery on the Comex, what really happens is you buy it on the Comex, the bullion bank does an ARB, an EFPR, right? And they buy it on the Comex, and they end up taking delivery in London. They send it to a refiner to change it to Comex specs, and boom, it comes over here. If you’re the US mint, that’s what you’re doing. You have to buy domestic, so you buy Comex, and the bullion banks are just like they’re doing their arb, their little EFP, and then the London bullion market gives them the metal, they refine it there, and then it comes back here.

[00:28:26.870] – Vince Lanci

I don’t know, it’s blanks or whatever, even Spider man coins, who the heck knows, right? But that’s what happens during COVID and it happened for both sides, meaning gold as well as silver during COVID And I actually watched this like I actually had it on a map of it. Most of the refiners, most of the, there’s other words, smelters or what have you, they’re in northern Italy, in Switzerland. And so during that timeframe, in the Lombardi region of Italy, Lombardi was hit ridiculously hard during COVID They shut them down. You know what it was? It was regulatory arbitrage. You can see this, right? So you had these specs, I’ll use the gold one because it’s easier to understand. The gold bar in London is 300oz. The gold bar in the US is 100oz. They were not fungible, you couldn’t take. So during that time, you take the 300 ounce bar, you take it over to northern Italy, you have it broken into 3100 ounce bars, and you send it over. They were all shut. So, for a very short time frame, and you’re a trader, so you’re going to appreciate this for a very short time frame.

[00:29:39.170] – Vince Lanci

In the US, we had a venue short squeeze, so everyone wanted Comex gold and Comex silver, preferably silver. Why would they not take London? Because of the regulatory differences. And for a time frame, you could not take delivery of London silver and London gold in the US. And they fixed that by creating a swap contract. But for a time frame, you had deep backwardation in the Comex front, months to one year out, 5% spread. And then you had spot in London trading below because there was no one working. So that’s what happened then.

[00:30:17.340] – Blake Morrow

Interesting. Yeah.

[00:30:18.490] – Vince Lanci

And of course the whole kicker about the economics, the money going into the hot, but that’s what happened. And in fact, if you look back at history, if you look back at history, it was just fascinating because I was like, oh, look at that backwardation on the Comex. Silver and gold must be in the moon in London. Where is it? Plenty of silver here. Why don’t you send it over there? Can’t do that. You guys won’t take it anyway, so that’s what happened then.

[00:30:47.150] – Blake Morrow

Oh, thanks. That’s interesting to know. I know one of my partners at Forex analytics was all over silver, around $15, just buying the living Jesus out of it. And I was like, anyway, okay, great to know.

[00:31:00.930] – Vince Lanci

Thank you. That was the kicker. He was right for a different reason. I’m sure that was the kicker. Look, the silver market is a broken market. I’m going to say this about paper, and I’m not even going to get into the paranoid conspiracy stuff. What I mean is the contract is so big that you can’t buy a fifth of a contract. There’s no one who trades the micro. And so you accumulate, and then you’ve got a problem. It’s made for producers. Speculators are hung out to drive very frequently.

[00:31:32.120] – Blake Morrow

There. Got it.

[00:31:36.270] – Tony Nash

That’s great. Okay. A lot of detail there. Watch this.

[00:31:41.310] – Vince Lanci

To digest my first time, I had to. I want to be asked back. And so you can say, vince, you’re really cool. Thanks for coming.

[00:31:49.750] – Tony Nash

Of course, of course. Speaking of being asked, doc Blake, I’m always impressed when someone as respectable as you comes back on our program. So thanks for making your performance. I really appreciate that.

[00:32:00.070] – Blake Morrow

Thanks for having me and I appreciate the comments. Thank you.

[00:32:02.890] – Tony Nash

You told me that you’re watching Fed and QRA next week, and I think we’re all watching Fed and QRA next week. We saw Christine Lagarde speak this week at the ECB. They’re holding rates. I think there’s an expected cut in April or something.

[00:32:20.340] – Blake Morrow

Right.

[00:32:20.660] – Tony Nash

So Europe is a mess. I’m not really sure I really trust what they say, but I think they’re trying to do all they can to manage their market. So Europe is Q two in terms of a cut. Are you looking for similar messaging from the Fed next week?

[00:32:39.810] – Blake Morrow

I’m not actually first of all, I have to take a step back and say, what does the Fed have to gain by doing that?

[00:32:50.500] – Tony Nash

The Fed.

[00:32:51.290] – Blake Morrow

And you take, like Chairman Powell, he’s really good at telegraphing and giving the market what it wants. That’s, that’s, that’s a whole nother animal. But I’ve talked a lot with a lot of different macro analysts about financial conditions, and financial conditions have eased quite a bit for a lot of the United States and a lot of businesses, a lot of individuals. And you could actually even see the pending home sales today was just bonkers. Right. So the problem that you’re going to have, if you’re the Fed, is that you have to make sure you cap those expectations a little bit or the function of getting inflation sustainably below their 2% target is going to be a little bit more difficult. So I think if I was the Fed chair, I’d have to push back a little bit on expectations just to keep the market from getting too frothy. A lot of people might say that stocks are frothy right now. I mean, we are at all time highs. And you can’t ignore the fact where we’re at right now. And there is a thing called trickle down effect. Yes, the top 10% or 5% of americans own the majority of the stock market.

[00:34:15.250] – Blake Morrow

But if I feel wealthier, I’m going to spend more at this restaurant and it’s going to trickle down. And there is something to that. And it does ease conditions a bit. So I think the Fed’s got to walk a fine line. I don’t think they’re going to give us a whole lot. I think the bigger deal is going to be the quarterly refinance announcement, quarterly requirement announcement, QRA, the acronyms. And it’s late in the week. For me, the QRA is going to be more of the kicker that happens, actually, the morning of the FOMC and the markets, they got a bit of a gift. I was talking to one of my, they got a bit of a gift this last quarterly announcement in November that on top of the Fed, on top of Waller, who became a little bit more dovish. Now, if you think about where we’re at right now, and I was talking to one of my colleagues, a gentleman by the name of k man, he made a great point that Janet Yellen was know on the wires yesterday, she sounded pretty upbeat. She’s the lever puller, if you, you know, she could very easily tweak the QRA a bit because she’s feeling a little bit better.

[00:35:29.660] – Blake Morrow

About where we’re at. I don’t know if that’s necessarily going to be the case, but that’s going to be something that I think is going to be closely watched from that allocation of notes and going back over to bonds. And I don’t know if there’s going to be a change there, but I think the whole market is very queued up into it. And with the Fed, there’s a lot of risk. If you own stocks at these levels, you have to be nervous about next week. And I think if you own risk in general. One other thing I want to point out is the dollar is holding up exceptionally well in this current environment. So with that being said, I think currency traders, myself included, and I happen to have both short and long dollar exposure at the moment, but more long dollar exposure at the moment. On balance, I think if you’re short dollars, you’re going into next week a little nervous. And I think that the Fed and the QRA is going to have a lot to do with what happens not only in the currency market, but what happens in yields and what happens ultimately in equities as well.

[00:36:39.870] – Tony Nash

Yeah, I want to dig into that a little bit. First, let’s step back to the Fed for a it seems to me that you think that the Fed rates are going to be pushed or the rate cuts are going to be pushed back further than people. Vince said. If you don’t have a March rate cut, it could impact markets. Seems like you’re thinking the Fed’s going to cut after the thing, but tell me where I’m wrong on that. And second, you’re not QT. Are they going to ease off QT? Are we going to see it accelerate, stay at the same rate? We’re not going to hear about it anymore. What’s going to happen there?

[00:37:15.290] – Blake Morrow

I don’t see why they would change the rate of QT right now. Why? Because the market’s not broken at the moment, so why change the pace of that? But as far as rates go, as far as expectations go, I think what we’re going to see next week is we’re going to see a little bit of a shift. The market has been pretty, it’s been the talk of the markets for the last couple of months, and about market expectations, know what the Fed thinks? I think they have to bring those expectations down a little bit. But what I have to also add is equity markets and risk in general, you can call it, has been very nonchalant about adjusting their expectations regardless of what the Fed says. Looking at the US economy. And a lot of the talk about soft landing. I mean, how is the Fed supposed to allow expectations to continue to be inflated like this for a great cut in this current environment without making financial conditions even looser and making their job a little bit more difficult?

[00:38:32.610] – Tony Nash

PCe came in above expectations, housing came in above expectations, markets are rallying. Why do you need a cut right now? I just don’t understand why we keep hearing about cuts if all of this stuff is happening.

[00:38:45.880] – Blake Morrow

Well, because people think that the trajectory is going in the direction where inflation will eventually be below 2%. I look at, they’ve taken their revolver, I use a gun analogy, they’ve taken their revolver and they expended all their bullets, you know, years ago, bringing rates down to zero. They’ve currently loaded their whole chamber up now, and they could expend a couple of bullets, maybe prematurely, preventatively, if you will, because they’re looking into what’s going to happen, what potentially could happen in 2024. 2025. That would be the argument. I don’t know if I necessarily buy that argument. That’s why I think the Fed’s going to be fairly reserved in doing know, I like to use analogies. Quite a. You’re when know, running a marathon, and I’ve used this over the last six, eight months, you’re running a marathon and you’re trying to get to the very end of the marathon. Your last mile or two is going to be the most difficult, and that’s the fight against inflation. Naturally, it was coming down. Naturally, as we approach that 2% target, it’s going to be a little bit more difficult for the Fed. They’re not going to help themselves any further by not putting a cap on interest rate cut expectations, in my opinion.

[00:40:08.350] – Tony Nash

Right. Okay. And speaking of rates, as we look at the QRA, I’ve got marketable treasury debt on the screen. What do you expect? I mean, I expect going into an election year, Yellen is just going to expand. Her comments on Thursday seem to indicate we’re going to have a lot of fiscal this year to aid the administration. How aggressive do you think the forward look is with that QRA?

[00:40:40.030] – Blake Morrow

Well, first of all, I don’t want to just give you answers, just to give you answers. I’m not one that’s going to follow all the debt issuance, but I will tell you that as far as I know, and everybody else will tell you probably in the comments down below, there’s a lot of issuance coming forward. There is now the QRA is going to be what that balance looks like.

[00:41:03.480] – Vince Lanci

I’m sorry, can I ask you a question, just to clarify so we don’t have to go back, when you say coming forward, do you mean it’s coming up or coming up forward on the yield curve? Okay.

[00:41:12.820] – Blake Morrow

No, like all the issuance that’s coming out.

[00:41:15.290] – Vince Lanci

I mean, how much new issuance, right?

[00:41:17.210] – Blake Morrow

Yeah, new issuance is coming out. So as a result, we have to keep in mind that it is coming. And you’re right, it’s going to continue to expand. What the ratio is, is what the market is going to be focused more on. So like I said, I’m not a bond expert, but I do understand the fact that the Fed continues to auction off long term maturities and the takeup has been good. Bond auctions have been pretty strong despite a lot of people thinking they won’t be.

[00:41:54.420] – Vince Lanci

I have a question about the Fed. Can we circle back to that 1 second?

[00:41:57.420] – Tony Nash

Sure. Absolutely, Tony.

[00:41:58.300] – Vince Lanci

Or should I just wait a little bit, go for know, like, I feel like the market, this is a question I don’t have an answer to. So it’s not rhetorical in any way. When he seemed to come out as very dovish that first, know, a couple months ago when stock started to take market, the market interpreted that the initial comment was, everyone’s got a narrative in the story was, he doesn’t want to be seen as impeding Biden. It’s an election year. I personally don’t think they’re easing in. So that’s, that’s, I thought QT would maybe taper off, but that’s my bias. No, easing QT might taper off. That’s what I thought. But when he did that, and the markets really rallied and they started coming out, fed speakers started coming out, talking a little bit tougher, slowed it down a little bit, I couldn’t help but wonder. Your comment was essentially, he’s walking a line. The last mile or so are hard, and I guess he’s trying to let the animal spirits out without letting them rush out too hard. But how would this be different if we didn’t have an election year, if it would be different at all?

[00:43:24.830] – Vince Lanci

I feel like. Is he doing anything to make sure he doesn’t appear biased in any way, shape or form?

[00:43:34.770] – Blake Morrow

Well, first of, is JPAL political? I’m going to tell you this much. If I was JPAL, I wouldn’t want to face who I think I’m going to be facing coming up in about nine months. So he’s dealt with President Trump before. He’s probably going to be dealing with him again. And I have to imagine that I would assume and again, assumption that the Biden administration is not as forceful with JPAL as a Trump administration would. He’s, I think he’s actually genuinely trying to do what’s best for the people.

[00:44:16.690] – Vince Lanci

I don’t mean that I wasn’t being conspiratorial at all. I think so as well. I’m just trying to figure out if there were an election, would he not have talked nice before he got tough? I mean, look, I’m kind of threading needles here. I’m just kind of feeling like the market was so adamant for mtes that if he didn’t say something like that, it would have been like he was hurting Biden. And we don’t think he wants to hurt Biden, of course. But I’m just looking at it like it just seemed like such a departure for him after having gotten through SVB, SNB, and all these other problems, for him to just say, you know what, we might ease rates when really inflation isn’t under 2% yet. The six month outlook trajectory is definitely under 2%. But why would he do that? That’s what I understand.

[00:45:02.440] – Blake Morrow

Yeah. And I don’t know when you’re talking about inflation, first of all, why he came out the way as dovish as he was. It was a bit of a head scratcher for us, trading the markets.

[00:45:17.090] – Vince Lanci

A rare tactical error, I thought.

[00:45:19.080] – Blake Morrow

Yeah. And the other thing is, I hear all these debates, especially in the mainstream financial media, if you listen to Bloomberg or CNBC and they talk about people on the street, that they don’t feel like inflation is under control either. That’s because the average person doesn’t understand inflation. People don’t understand. They, they think prices go up, they come back down, but people don’t understand that prices go up and they stay up. Inflation is the rate that prices are going higher versus everybody’s like, oh, my cost of my bread has gone up to whatever it is, $4 a loaf versus $3 a loaf. So it’s eventually going to come back down to three. And that would be inflation is coming down, but that’s actually deflation. And that’s something that’s very rarely seen. So the problem that we are dealing with at this moment with inflation is people have these unrealistic expectations as Americans, just in general, because we’ve never dealt with inflation. For the majority of Americans, you can talk to anybody who’s 65 and older and they understand what real inflation is. But for us that are under the age of 60, which I’m in my 50s, we don’t know what it’s like.

[00:46:38.450] – Blake Morrow

And most Americans don’t know what it’s like.

[00:46:42.290] – Tony Nash

I’m going to push back a little bit on that. I mean, we’ve had average 24% inflation since pre Covid. So I’m not saying you’re wrong. I really do think people do understand things hurting their pocketbook. Right.

[00:47:01.370] – Blake Morrow

No, I agree.

[00:47:02.220] – Tony Nash

Germany, 1920, of course.

[00:47:04.630] – Blake Morrow

But the disconnect is when prices don’t come down. Right. That’s going to be the disconnect. And I think that’s what’s going to eventually bite the US. Consumer sentiment in general is going to be when prices don’t come down over a long period of time. And then you have the Fed that can’t reach that 2% inflation goal and then rates aren’t coming down and then consumer sentiment starts to turn sour. That’s where it all feeds together. And I think that hits somewhere in this 2024 year.

[00:47:38.660] – Tony Nash

Actually, no, I’ve never understood about the inflation discussion is gasoline prices go up and they go down. They go up and they go down. We never really hear about deflation in gasoline prices.

[00:47:49.130] – Blake Morrow

No.

[00:47:49.700] – Tony Nash

And so I hear these deflationary arguments, and what that means to me ultimately is that corporate profits collapse. Right. And as corporate profits collapse, wages are pulled back and other things. Right. So there is that follow on effect. But we have something that all of us buy every week, unless you’re on public transport in some big city or whatever, and there’s deflation in gasoline all the time. And it’s never really, I mean, this stupid discussion about gas prices falling is like a tax cut, which is ridiculous. But we never hear people saying, oh, there’s deflation in gasoline.

[00:48:28.390] – Blake Morrow

No, they don’t, because it’s the ultimate variable that’s moving around so quickly for most people, not even Americans. This is like globally, consumers, no matter where their benchmark is for what gas prices are, it’s the one that makes you feel better. Right. If I was just spending $100 to fill my gas tank and now I’m spending 65, that’s a huge savings to me.

[00:48:54.990] – Tony Nash

It’s a tax cut.

[00:48:56.280] – Blake Morrow

Yeah, it’s a tax cut. There we go. Right. And that’s why for a lot of people to bet against prices coming down during an election year, it’s a tough bet. It’s a tough trade. Right. Because if you’re a politician and you’re the Biden administration. Yeah. You want prices to come down because you want people to say, hey, prices have come down. I feel better. I’ll vote for you again.

[00:49:24.020] – Tony Nash

Your July 4 barbecue is $0.14 cheaper.

[00:49:27.290] – Blake Morrow

Right. Exactly. It’s crazy. But what I think is going to be a big shock for not just Americans, I think the global consumer is that prices for most things, they’ve risen and then they’ll stay higher. And if you look back in history and you go back to way back in the, could buy this for five cents and now it’s eighty cents. Well, there’s a reason for that.

[00:49:57.070] – Tony Nash

A lot more money now, right?

[00:49:59.230] – Vince Lanci

You’re old. That’s the reason.

[00:50:01.710] – Blake Morrow

We’re old.

[00:50:03.070] – Tony Nash

Okay, guys. So we have a lot to look forward. I think what you’re saying with Fed and treasury, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but we’re kind of at a point of uncertainty. Right. There are a lot of expectations in the market, but it doesn’t necessarily look like there’s the catalyst to change things one way or the other. Is that in general a takeaway from.

[00:50:24.330] – Blake Morrow

What you’re just, I’ll just add this, and I’m sure Vince wants to chime in here, this is a very pivotal week for the market. And I think people underestimate the gravity of how big this next week is for the markets in general. Whether you’re talking about risk stocks, china, monetary policy expectations, the dollar, precious metals, as Vince has been alluding to, this is going to be a very pivotal week for the markets. And this is not one to sleep on. This is not one where you’re going to go rearrange your sock drawer. You want to be in front of your computers managing what you trade.

[00:51:06.680] – Tony Nash

That’s right. Exactly. Vince, any closing thoughts on the week coming up?

[00:51:10.810] – Vince Lanci

Well, I don’t have anything to add to that. That’s pretty much it. You have a lot of events converging in March, and I think Fed policy will, Fed’s in a reactive situation, I believe right now. So they may want to or not want to ease. They may want to or not want to taper QT, but they need to wait. The data has been kind of choppy. This week was strong, but the data in general has been up and down. So maybe they’re just going to stay the course until they get a distinct trend in the economy weakening with the inflation weaker.

[00:51:48.910] – Tony Nash

Yeah, and I think staying the course was going to disappoint a lot of.

[00:51:53.330] – Blake Morrow

To, I forgot to mention this and just bringing it up. One thing that we have to also keep in mind, the FOMC is an open market committee. It’s a committee where he’s looking for a know decision one way or the, you know, going back to Vince, you asked about the Fed and why the Fed chair was so dovish. A lot of that thought back then and I’m just thinking about it now, but I wanted to throw this in there is because he wanted to appease a lot of the doves that were in the FOMC. And I think he’s done that and I think the market has responded to it. Obviously, in retrospect now I think he’s going to have to rein that in a little bit and be a little bit more hard stance and maybe a little bit more hawkish.

[00:52:47.410] – Vince Lanci

I didn’t think of it that way. So it helps to think of Powell as representing the committee. Yes, he may disagree with the committee, but he’s got to represent the committee.

[00:52:55.570] – Blake Morrow

Yes.

[00:52:56.360] – Vince Lanci

Behind closed doors he’s probably saying, told you.

[00:52:59.110] – Blake Morrow

Are you freaking? You know, he’s probably doing a lot of that. And I’m sure. And remember, when we get the FOMC meeting minutes, they do give us what we want to hear or what they think the market wants to hear, not necessarily what you.

[00:53:14.220] – Tony Nash

Highly edited. Heavily edited.

[00:53:16.250] – Blake Morrow

Yeah.

[00:53:17.020] – Tony Nash

Guys, thank you so much. This has been really informative. I really appreciate your time, all your thoughts, and I just hope you have a great weekend and a great week ahead.

[00:53:25.040] – Blake Morrow

Thank you very much for having us.

[00:53:26.130] – Tony Nash

Thank you.

[00:53:26.720] – Blake Morrow

All right.

[00:53:27.810] – Vince Lanci

Thank you. Have a good weekend.

[00:53:29.430] – Tony Nash

Thank you.

Tags China, tony nash

Audio and Podcasts

Fitch Is Late To Game

Post author By admin
Post date August 20, 2023

This podcast is originally produced by BFM 89.9 and published in https://www.bfm.my/podcast/morning-run/market-watch/fed-markets-economy-interest-rates-dollar-fitch

In this podcast, the hosts discuss the performance of global markets and provide insights from Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence.

The US and Asian markets experienced declines, with concerns arising over potential downgrades of US banks. Nash believes the stock market has reached its highs for the year and advises caution in investment choices.

The conversation then shifts to the challenges facing the Chinese property sector, highlighting the impact on property developers and risks to China’s economy. The Eurozone’s GDP numbers show stagnation or decline, with Ireland’s outperformance driven by foreign companies. JPMorgan downgrades its forecast for Chinese GDP growth. The discussion also covers Target’s missed sales expectations and Cisco’s weaker outlook for its 2024 fiscal year.

The podcast also mentions the expectation of a slowdown in capital spending by cloud and telecom consumers in 2024, despite the dominance of cloud services offered by companies like Amazon and Microsoft. Stock details are provided, including the consensus target price and the number of buys, holds, and sales.

Chapters

01:21 Fed Meeting Minutes
02:11 Concerns about US Banks
03:15 Performance of Major Indices
04:45 Outlook for Market Direction
05:46 Investing in Stable Assets
06:04 China’s Property Sector Challenges
07:49 Eurozone GDP and Employment Figures
09:45 Consumer Stocks and US Retailers’ Performance
12:38 Cloud and telecom spending expectations

Transcript

Shazana

For some thoughts on what’s moving international markets, we have on the line with us, Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence. Good morning, Tony. Thanks, as always, for joining us. Let’s start off with the latest Fed meeting minutes that were just released for July. How much of Fed chairman Powell’s Davish tone was shared by the other Fed policymakers?

Tony

Yes, some, but to be honest, not a lot. The Fed officials really see no recession for the rest of 2023. They’re saying spending is strong, real activity is stronger than anticipated. They really don’t see a recession at all. There’s really no reason for dovishness there. They still see inflation risks and they still see a potential need for higher rates. They’re also saying that quantitative tightening, meaning the shrinking of the money supply, will continue once interest rates stop because they’ve got a bunch of these items on their balance sheet that they’ll continue to let expire. So that will continue to put upward pressure on the dollar as well as higher interest rates.

Mark

Now, there are mountain concerns that Fitch could continue to downgrade US banks, including tier-one names like JPMorgan. So how do we get from a stable situation for US financial institutions a year ago to this current state of affairs?

Tony

Yeah, I think for the tier ones, this is really late. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The tier ones are effectively US government institutions. And when they were buying the regional banks back in March, them taking on some extra risk probably made a lot of sense. But even those regional banks, for the most part, have gotten much stronger. Their balance sheets have gotten stronger. Their net interest margin and other things have gotten stronger over that time. This seems to be 4-5 months late. Unless these guys are expecting a massive real estate wipe out or some massive market event or something like that, this just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because it should have already been done some time ago if it were going to happen.

Wong

Okay, can we talk about markets? Because if I look at the performance of the major indices, look at NASDAQ. It’s only up 28 % on a year to date basis. S&P.

Tony

Only?

Wong

Only, only. Yes, I love to use the word only. And S&P 500, 14 % up. So there has been some retracement. Do you expect further retracement? Because results season pretty much over about 80 % done. Where are markets going from here?

Tony

Yeah, I think we’ve seen the highs for the year. I don’t think we’re going much higher. It’s either sideways or marginally down from here. I think you’re going to see a lot of people say, Oh, gosh, we’re just getting started. There’s a GDP now in the US right now. The estimate on this quarter’s GDP is over 5 % or something right now, and people are saying, “We haven’t even gotten started on equity markets,” that sort of thing. And there are people who still believe we’re going into a massive recession. And it’s possible that we line up somewhere in the middle, which is what the Fed’s been trying to do. And it’s possible that things are volatile, but not necessarily directionally up or directionally down. I think generally for the rest of the year, that’s probably where we’re going to be. But we’re going to have days that look really good and we’re going to have days that look really bad. And there will be commentators that will extrapolate that out to either fantastic or dire.

Wong

Okay, so while markets trade sideways, where should we park our money?

Tony

Well, I think you have to look at what’s happening with, say, interest rates. I mean, it depends on how aggressive you are, but you really have to look at what’s stable. You have to look at what’s continuing to give value. I’d be careful of things that don’t give strong signals because with interest rates staying higher for longer, valuations are likely going to be compressed a bit. I’m not saying valuations are going to crash, but there’s likely going to be some valuation compression, and margins for companies are likely to continue to be compressed. So it just makes things difficult for companies that are just doing okay. So I would be really careful and I would look for some of those characteristics.

Shazana

Let’s turn our attention over to China because we do know that China is facing mounting headwinds in the property sector. How are you viewing this? Is this a storm in a teacup? Or are there signs that it could spill over to markets outside the mainland, especially in Hong Kong? What does that mean for investability in that region?

Tony

It’s a big problem. Real estate demand in China is very poor. We just had a report, I think it was out this morning in Asia, among 70 cities in China, 49 saw new home prices fall month over month from July. That was a previous month we saw prices fall in 38 cities. Real estate prices are falling. Of course, this is a major source of wealth for people in China. Property developers don’t have money because prices are falling, and so the amount coming in is falling and the value of the houses they have are falling. They can’t service their debt, they can’t service their existing properties, and it’s just a very difficult situation. When you look at the debt from Country Garden and Evergrande, their combined liabilities are approximately the size of the PBOC’s official non-performing loans for all of China. Okay, so those two companies on their own, they’re effectively equivalent to the debt that the PBOC claims for the rest of China. So it’s pretty bad. And today or sorry, yesterday, Asia time, Country Garden is warning of onshore bond default. So it’s not just an offshore phenomenon. Early on in this, this was an offshore phenomenon.

Tony

They had taken USD debt or something like that, and they were going to default on that. And that’s fine. That’s for rent, lenders. But defaulting onshore is something that’s relatively new.

Mark

Well, obviously not very good news for China, but now let’s switch our attention to Europe, where preliminary second quarter GDP from the Eurozone came out last night along with employment figures. What do the numbers tell you about the state of play in Europe and would they dodge a hard lending?

Tony

Yeah, it’s great for Ireland, really not great for the rest of Europe. So Ireland way outperformed pretty much everywhere else underperformed economic growth. So the EU generally, again, outside of Ireland, is either stagnating or declining. And a lot of the Ireland performance is based on foreign companies that have their headquarters in Ireland. So they’re reporting in Ireland, and it counts for economic growth there. So the underlying growth was weaker, of course, well, probably weaker than the GDP growth that was stated. So it was 0.3 % quarter-on-quarter. But again, like I said, given the 3.3 % jump with Irish GDP, it doesn’t really look good for the rest of the EU. Employment was up, which is great. But things, I guess, on the top line look stable. But if you take out Ireland’s performance, things really don’t look good. We now have a few countries in recession. Estonia, Hungary, and the Netherlands are in recession, which obviously is very difficult. We have industrial production. Industrial production was up the most in Ireland, which is great, but it’s also up in Denmark and Lithuania. So this isn’t a broad based economic success story. You have places like Germany and France, huge economies that are really struggling.

Tony

And you have powerhouse economies that punch above their weight, trading economies like the Netherlands, which are in a recession. So it’s a tough place for Europe right now.

Shazana

Tony, thanks very much for speaking with us. That was Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence, giving us his take on some of the trends that he sees moving markets in the days and weeks ahead. Commenting on a range of economies there. We’ve got the US, China, and ending with the Eurozone in the mix.

Mark

And not very good news for China as well. And JPMorgan, which at one time was very bullish on the Chinese GDP growth, predicting 6.4 % this year, has actually downgraded and lowered its full year forecast down to 4.8 %. I think this is one of the first few banks that come out to say GDP is going to be below 5 %. And for next year, they’re predicting it will only be a 4.2 % growth rate for China.

Shazana

All right. Well, meanwhile, if we take a look at what’s happening over in the US, I think, as Tony mentioned, recession is less and less likely, it seems, over there. But at the same time, we are seeing consumer stocks taking a hit due to softening consumption. We see Target missed its sales expectations even as it beat estimates for earnings in the second quarter. Revenue came in at $24.8 billion. This was a 5% drop from the previous year, while net income was $835 million, up from 183 million in the same period.

Mark

Last year. The retailer also cut both its full year’s sales and profit expectations because it’s struggling to convince customers to spend more than just necessities. This merchandise mix, which includes many fun and impulse-driven items, has become a liability as consumers focus on needs rather than wants.

Tags China, tony nash

Podcasts

BFM 89.9: Early Exuberance For Markets Are Over

Post author By admin
Post date March 7, 2023

This podcast is originally published by BFM 89.9: Morning Run. Find the episode here: https://www.bfm.my/podcast/morning-run/market-watch/us-equities-dollar-house-meeting-china-trade-tensions

In this BFM 89.9 podcast, CEO of Complete Intelligence, Tony Nash, discusses the February US equities market and gives his predictions for March. Nash predicts another down month for US markets, albeit not as much as February, with China also being down markedly. He also expects Malaysia to do well and increase by about 1%. Nash also comments on US earnings season, stating that the quality of earnings reported so far is not great and that only $0.88 was matched by cash flows for every dollar of profit, with some companies passing along price hikes successfully but for how long can they keep it up. Nash also discusses interest rates and a more hawkish Fed, which could lead to the dollar rising. He also comments on a newly formed House committee aimed at examining economic competition between the US and China.

Transcript

BFM: BFM 89.9. Good morning. You’re listening to the Morning Run at 7:07 on Thursday the 2nd of March. I’m Shazana Mokhtar with Chong Tjen San and Wong Shou Ning. Now, in half an hour, we’re going to discuss Malaysia’s bilateral ties with the Philippines in light of our Prime Minister currently on a visit there. But as always, we’re going to kick-start this morning with a recap on how global markets closed.

Overnight, US markets were mixed. The Dow was up marginally by 0.2%, the S&P 500 down 0.5%, NASDAQ down 0.7%. Asian markets were also mixed. The Nikkei was up by 0.3%, Hang Seng popped it up and was up by 4.2%, Shanghai Composite up by 1%, Straits Times Index down by 0.2% and the FBMKLCI was down by 0.3%.

It’s everywhere.

That’s right. Well, we’re going to try and kind of peel some trends with Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence. Tony, good morning. Let’s review what happened back in February. It wasn’t such a great month for US equities. We did see the Dow and SP 500 both lose 4% and 2.6%, respectively. Where do you see the stock market heading in March? Is it going to be more volatility or perhaps brighter skies on the horizon?

Tony: Oh, yeah, it’s going to be pretty choppy. Generally, we expect US markets to have a down month, not down as much as it had been in Feb, but we do expect another down month. Obviously, if the Fed comes in with a very hawkish meeting, then we could see more chop there. We do expect China to be down this month as well. That kind of goes against what we’ve seen in News early this month, but we are seeing China down markedly, say more than 2% this month as well. Good news is we expect Birth of Malaysia to be up about 1%. So while we see chop in others, we may see Malaysia do squeak out a good positive month.

BFM: And Tony, as the US earnings season starts to taper off, what is your assessment of the results that have been released so far? In particular, the most cyclical consumer-facing companies?

Tony: Yes, so the quality of earnings reported so far is not great. So for every dollar of profits, only about $0.88 was matched by cash flows. That’s the largest discrepancy since at least 1990. So that means 12% are from kind of non-cash earnings. So it’s really accounting and other things. So what we’re seeing, especially on the consumer side, is some companies are passing along price hikes, and we see some of them doing that really successfully. I think we’ve talked about that here before, where they’ll hike between eight and say 15% and their sales volume will be down maybe 5%, something like that. That’s really helped the top line and margin expansion. But the real question is for how long can they keep raising those prices and kind of sacrificing transaction volume. So there’s a real question there. But many of those companies have said they’re going to continue to raise prices into later in ’23. The problem is when we run into a company like Coals, which is a retailer here in the US that reported today, and it was all bad, they’re losing customers they’re not able to keep with their costs and other things.

For those companies that cannot pass along price hikes, for whatever reason, it’s really bad news for them. The inflation they’re importing from their vendors is just squeezing their margins, and in some cases, they’re losing money. So, I don’t think the quality of earnings improves from here for at least two quarters. That’s just something to think about as we go into the next Q1 and Q2 earnings.

BFM: Okay, I want to come back to interest rates, Tony, because I’m reading Bloomberg and it seems like the Street is now expecting a terminal rate of 5.6%. Honestly, this changes every day. It was 5.4% not too long ago. But what does this mean for the US dollar? Are we back to the reign of King Dollar again?

Tony: Well, if we see a more hawkish Fed, then I would say yes, that’s probably the case. So, what we would likely see are things like 25 basis points, at least for the next three meetings, if not longer. If we continue to see hot inflation, as we have over the past couple of days, they could do a surprise 50. I don’t think that’s what they’re going to do, but we can’t rule it out. We could also see quantitative tightening, meaning the Fed could unload more mortgage-backed securities or other things, accelerating that from their balance sheet. Because housing is still pretty hot, actually. Prices aren’t moving that much, so we could see the Fed move on MBS or some other things to accelerate that off of their balance sheet. I don’t think that’s highly likely, but it’s a possibility. All of those bode well for the dollar and dollar strength. If that happens, we would definitely see the dollar rise generally.

BFM: Can we take a look at what’s happening over in the US Congress, Tony? There’s a newly formed House committee aimed at examining economic competition between the US and China. I think they held their first hearing earlier this week. What was the outcome? And do you think, as a result, we’re just going to see more trade conflicts between these two superpowers?

Tony: Yeah, so there’s a lot of focus on decoupling from China. There will never be a full decoupling from China. I don’t think we’ll even have a majority decoupling from China. But there are some key industries, like semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, some healthcare aspects that people really do want to decouple from China because we saw through the pandemic that supply chains are very, very dependent on China. Americans want many of those core things closer to home. They’re focused on decoupling. For some reason, people in Congress are just becoming aware that the CCP is in charge of everything in China. So they’ve underestimated the influence of the CCP and they’re waking up to the fact that they’re central in China. We had a couple of former national security advisors suggesting things like accelerating the arming of Taiwan and helping Chinese circumvent the Great Firewall, those sorts of things. And then, of course, human rights. They talked about CCP police outposts that are in US cities where there are actually these CCP outposts that will pursue Chinese nationals within the US, among other things. It’s taking a pretty tough stance on China. I’m not sure to what extreme that will go and what policies will be adopted yet, but I think it’s definitely trying to at least uncover some of the things that Americans haven’t been aware of.

Keep in mind, a little bit of this is theater, right? It’s people in Congress holding hearings to publicize some of their agenda. So, I think it’s a little bit of that so that they can then move into legislation and move the needle just a little bit. I don’t think we’ll see anything extreme, but you will certainly hear some extreme talk over the next couple of months.

BFM: Yeah, but does this change the way fund managers invest? You’ve got this continuing geopolitical tension between the US and China. Is it going to stop, for example, American fund managers from buying Chinese stocks?

Tony: I think it definitely puts China as a higher risk for US portfolio managers. And certainly over the past couple of years, more US portfolio managers have become aware of the risks of investing in China as supply chains close down, among other things. So, I think you will see more of a tighter risk calibration and more weighting of risk for Chinese equities. So, it could potentially not be good for American money investing in Chinese exchanges. Absolutely.

BFM: Tony, thanks very much for speaking with us. That was Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence, giving us his take on some of the trends that he sees moving markets in the days and weeks ahead. As he was talking about how March is possibly going to be down, although not as down as February, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Oh, beware the eyes of March.’ But, yes, it’s still choppy out there, especially as the FOMC will be having their meeting this month. I think everyone’s going to wait and see how much they’re going to hike those rates.

Yeah, he gave some predictions on Malaysia as well. He thinks the market will possibly be up by about 1% in March, but the market has been quite disappointing in Malaysia. And he also expects the China market to be down in March by about 2%. And we spoke about the geopolitical risk which may impact US fund managers as well.

Tags bfm 89.9, Business, China, complete intelligence, consumer-facing companies, economic competition, economy, finance, Global Markets, House committee, Inflation, Interest Rates, March predictions, podcast, tony nash, trends, US, us dollar, US earnings season

Podcasts

[BFM Market Watch] Is The Market Behaving Rationally?

Post author By admin
Post date February 3, 2023

This podcast was first and originally published on the BFM: The Business Station podcast with link here: https://www.bfm.my/podcast/morning-run/market-watch/us-markets-meta-chevron-fed-rate-hikes-equities-market-rally

The CEO of Complete Intelligence, Tony Nash, spoke about the recent financial events in the market. In regards to Meta, Tony mentioned that the worst for Meta’s share price is over, but job cuts are still to come. Although Meta beat revenue estimates, ad impressions rose by 20%, but the price per impression fell by 22%. Tony also discussed the recent Fed interest rate hike by 25 bips, which was expected and the market welcomed it. Tony says there are likely to be at least two more rate hikes before the current tightening cycle is over. He also mentions that the market is excited but will take a closer look at the statement once they have a better understanding.

Tony also mentioned that there is some irrationality in the market because corporate earnings have been disappointing, but investors are bought off by the stock buybacks. The oil companies, Chevron and Exxon, made windfall profits due to cheap oil and fat refining margins. The refineries were operating at 94% capacity and have crack spreads and refining margins way above normal. The oil and gas companies have not invested in infrastructure since 2014, due to governments and media bullying over ESG and cost. The only option for them is to return the profits to shareholders through stock buybacks.

Transcript

BFM

This is a podcast from BFM 89.9, the business station. BFM 89.9. Good morning. You are listening to the morning run. I’m Shazana Mokhtar with Wong Shou Ning and Chong Tjen San. It is 7:05 A. M. On Thursday the 2 February. We were off yesterday because of Federal Territories Day, but we are back to bring you through the rest of the week. In half an hour, we’re going to discuss the probability of a Trump 2024 presidential run. But as always, let’s kick start the morning with a recap on how global markets closed overnight.

BFM

All US markets ended higher as the market shared the Fed’s 25 basis point rate increase. The dollar was up marginally by 0.2%, S&P 500 up by 1%, and the Nasdaq was up by 2%. Asian markets, they were all in the green. The Nikkie was up by 0.1%. Hang Seng was up by 1%, Shanghai Composite up by 0.9%. The Straits Times Index, it was up by 0.4%. But the FBMKLC, it was closed for Federal Territory Day

BFM

As mentioned and for some insights into what’s moving markets this morning, we’re going to be speaking to Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence. Good morning, Tony. Thanks as always for joining us. Now, markets rallied on the back of the Fed, raising interest rates by 25 bips. But before we get into that, I would want to talk about some of the corporate earnings that we saw overnight, namely coming from Meta. The markets were also quite happy with what came up there, up 18% in after hours trading on the back of better than expected sales, do you think this is the worst over for Meta?

Tony

I do think the worst in terms of share price is over. I don’t think their job cuts are over. I think they’re learning how to operate in this environment. So the last two to three years has been pretty easy for a tech company as people were kind of trapped inside and didn’t really have a lot to do. They looked for things online and ad revenue was great for Meta and ad driven companies, but what we saw in there, although they beat revenue estimates, they beat their guide by almost 3%. They announced a $40 billion share buyback, all that’s great news. And the stocks up almost 20% after hours. But keynote in their earnings release, Ad Impressions rose by 20%. Remember, they’re an ad driven business. Ad Impressions rose by 23%, but price per Impression fell by 22%. So they’re not able to push price. They’ve had to drop their price and raise their volume, which is the opposite of what we’re seeing with a lot of retailers and other firms in the US where they can actually push price in light of and accept lower volumes at higher prices.

BFM

And Tony, as expected, the Fed raise rates by 25 bips. Was this in line with what you were expecting, and are we close to the end of the current tightening cycle?

Tony

Yeah, you know, I think pretty much everyone expected 25. There was a slight chance of 50, but everyone pretty much expected 25. The market welcomed it very happily, and they’re still thinking there’s only one rate rise left. But Chair Powell made it very clear that there are a couple of more rate hikes to get to that level we think is “appropriately restrictive.” Those are his words. So we’re looking for at least two more rate hikes before this is over. And the Fed is also going likely to accelerate their quantitative tightening. Okay? So that’s taking assets off of their balance sheet, which is basically hoovering up the money supply in the US. So the market will get tighter. And do we think we’re at the end? We don’t think we’re at the end. The interest rates aren’t the only tool they can use. So the market’s very excited right now, almost a relief. But I think as they look through his statement in detail, I think they’ll take a second look at expectations.

BFM

So let’s build on that. Tony, so you’re basically saying that because when I look at how markets have performed on a year to date basis, S&P up 7.5%, NASDAQ up 12%, this very much on the back of the Fed, going from a hawk to a dove. Do you think that there is some irrationality there?

Tony

I do, actually, because, you know, if you look at corporate earnings announced so far, they’re very disappointing. And so investors are expecting easy conditions to return so that underwhelming earnings are acceptable. So what did Facebook have to do? Their EPS underwhelmed by like 55%. Okay. They had to issue $40 billion in stock buybacks. So investors are basically bought off, and that’s why the stock is rising. But many other people reporting are not seeing the sales that they expected or didn’t see the sales they expected in Q4. And their costs, meaning the cost of employees and raw materials, these sorts of things. Cost of employees are up. Raw materials are down slightly, definitely year on year, but certainly quarter on quarter, they’re down slightly. But earnings are not what people had hoped for. And that’s the real problem we’re seeing in market. So the earnings picture is not reflecting the valuation picture.

BFM

Okay, so that may be the general picture, but if we zoom into oil companies or the two largest US oil companies, Chevron and Exxon, they made more money in 2022 than ever before, posting record earnings in their latest results. How are these windfall profits achieved? And I guess how sustainable is this going into the new year?

Tony

They were largely achieved on the back of cheap oil through the SPR releases and very fat refining margins. So we’ve had refineries in the US operating at about 94% capacity, which is way over what they’re designed for. And we have crack spreads and refining margins way above what is normal. So those refineries are booking profits at a record pace. And so what do they do? If you’re an oil and gas company and the government keeps bullying you over ESG and Cost, and media keeps bullying you over ESG and Cost, oil and gas companies have not invested in infrastructure in upstream or midstream since at least 2014. So if they invest in that, they’re going to be punished. So what do they do? They return it to shareholders. So you have a $75 billion buyback, because that’s really the only option they have. Otherwise, they’re going to get punished by governments, they’re going to get punished by media, and they’re going to get punished by investors. So they have to do this.

BFM

Okay, but let’s talk about OPEC Plus because there was a meeting, and I want to talk about oil prices, because the OPEC Plus Committee has recommended keeping crude production steady as the oil market awaits clarity. What does this then mean for prices? If I look at WTI, currently $77 a barrel, down 4.5%. What’s your view, Tony?

Tony

Well, I think OPEC is taking a lot of the excitement in markets for the past couple of months has been China opening. Ever since December, right? China is going to open and save us all. And that also hit crude markets. People looking at crude prices and going, oh, gosh, China is going to open. We’re going to see jet fuel and gasoline, petrol and other fuels consumption rise dramatically. Well, the opening has been slower than people expected in December, and it’s still not happening at the pace that many Westerners expected. And so I think OPEC is looking at crude consumption and draws from storage and saying, we just need to hold off on raising our level of production. We’re in a good zone with the price right now. We don’t see a dramatic impact. We expect recessions in the west, and we expect China to come back online slowly. So we’re not going to increase production right now. And so I think that’s the prudent thing to do. If I’m an oil producer, that’s what I’m doing, because I want demand to lead production increases. I want to see that people are going to use what I’m going to pull out of the ground, and I want to see pricing pressure before I agree to drill more.

BFM

Yeah, but, Tony, at the same time, what’s interesting to me is the US. Now, during the summer season, President Biden released its reserves, right? Because pump prices were just really very high. Doesn’t this change the equation? If I’m American now, wouldn’t I want to rebuild my reserves at this current level?

Tony

Well, yes and no. The SPR release was really done to get prices down for the US Midterm Elections. That’s really all it was about. Now the SPR is depleted dramatically, so the buying that will have to happen to refill the SPR will put upward pressure on prices. So I think we have to be really careful. If China is, let’s say in March, they start to come aggressively back online and the US starts buying to refill the SPR in Q2, then that’s an accelerator for crude prices in Q2and Q3. Right. So will Biden then beg OPEC again to raise their output? Maybe. China has already forward bought a lot of its crude supply. So if the US is going to choose to refill the SPR at elevated prices, it’s really not the brightest move.

BFM

Tony, thanks very much for speaking to us. That was Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence, giving us his take on some of the trends that he sees moving markets, commenting there on the earnings report of Apple, if not Apple, I’m sorry, Meta. That just came overnight. Apple is to come. So we’re going to be watching out for that before the week ends.

BFM

Let’s turn our attention, though, to what’s happening over in India, where the Adani saga has really taken attention by storm. Gautam, Adani’s flagship firm, called off its 2.5 billion US dollar share sale in a dramatic reversal yesterday as a route sparked by US short seller Hindenburg. Research criticism wiped out more than $80 billion off the value of the Indian tycoon stocks.

BFM

And the plunge accelerated after Bloomberg News reported credit Suisse Group AG has stopped accepting bonds of Adani’s Group of companies as collateral for margin loans. Adani Enterprises was offering shares to investors at $38 to $40 a share, but the stock closed yesterday at $26.13, which is 31% below the bottom price of the pricing range.

BFM

I think let’s take a bit of a step back, right, in terms of how important Adani is to the Indian economy in its way. They are like one of the major producers of energy, and then we’re talking about cement. They are such a huge conglomerate and their fortunes have been really tied to the rise of Nadira Modi. Right. Because the two, the Adani and Modi, are supposedly very close. And so when Adani came back with this 413 page objection, the allegations are all untrue. He also Adani took the step of saying that you’re attacking India as a nation. And then Hindenburg said, look, this has nothing to do with nationalism. Right. You’re just a company where we are not comfortable with your numbers. And then it’s this back and forth. And what was amazing was the share sale was almost going to happen. And the economists reported this is allegedly that the five largest and richest families in India were going to bail this company out by participating in the share sale, but now it’s not happening.

BFM

That’s right. I mean, that came as a big surprise, the fact that they managed to get buyers who were willing to buy these shares at such a high price compared to what the market was having. So, as mentioned, you said, Jensen, they would be buying it at a loss. But yeah, Adani said that the company’s board felt that going ahead with this share issue would not be morally correct because of that big gap in what the prices are being sold for now.

BFM

Yeah, but it was really amazing. You will never get a scenario similar in, let’s say, in America, where the richest families bail out another rich family. Right. So that’s what the economists point out, that doing business in India is very, very different. But the share price, of course, down 45% on a year to date basis.

BFM

I really wonder what they can do to build up to the levels that they were before. I mean, maybe it’s not going to happen again. So something to watch, for sure. This has taken everyone, really by surprise. The twists and turns in the saga at 718 in the morning. We’re going to take a quick break and we’ll come back with more top stories in the newspapers and portals this morning. Stay tuned to BFM 89.9.

BFM

You have been listening to a podcast from BFM 89.9, the business station. For more stories of the same kind, download the BFM app.

Week Ahead

2023 Supply Chain: How China’s Future & Germany’s Dependence on Russian Gas Will Impact Global Trade

Post author By admin
Post date January 14, 2023

Learn more: http://completeintel.com/futures 👈

In this episode, Ross Kennedy of Fortis Analysis, Ralph Schoellhammer of Webster Vienna Private University and Albert Marko joined Tony to discuss three main themes: supply chains in 2023, the existence of China in 10 years and Germany’s dependence on Russian gas.

Ross Kennedy led the discussion on supply chains in 2023, and he explained that although supply chain issues have appeared to normalize over the last 4 months, with trans-Pacific shipping rates falling to levels at the start of the Covid pandemic, there are still things to watch out for in the upcoming year.

Albert Marko led the discussion on the prediction that China will not exist in 10 years. This claim was made by Peter Zeihan, a geopolitical analyst, during his appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. He went on to say that some of Zeihan’s predictions sound impressive, but he and Ross Kennedy both have doubts about the validity of this claim.

Tony pointed out that similar predictions were made by George Friedman in his book “The Next 100 Years” (2009), where he said that China would split into 5 countries. However, both Albert and Ross argue that China’s economy, military, and political power are too strong for this to happen in the near future. They also highlighted the fact that China’s growth and development have been hindered by the pandemic, but the country has managed to recover quickly and is still a major player in the global economy.

Ralph Schoellhammer led the discussion on Germany’s ongoing dependence on Russian gas. He wrote about how the green push in Germany has led to a decrease in the country’s dependence on Russian gas, but there are other considerations. He explained that the Russia-Ukraine War had a major impact on Germany’s dependence on Russian gas and that when the war stops, it is likely that Germany will welcome Russian gas again. He also highlighted the fact that Germany’s dependence on Russian gas is not just a matter of energy security, but also a matter of economic and political considerations.

Key themes:
1. Supply Chains in 2023
2. Will China exist in 10 years?
3. Germany can’t quit Russian gas

This is the 49th episode of The Week Ahead, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.

Follow The Week Ahead panel on Twitter:

Tony: https://twitter.com/TonyNashNerd
Ross: https://twitter.com/maphumanintent
Albert: https://twitter.com/amlivemon
Ralph: https://twitter.com/Raphfel

You can also listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/complete-intelligence/id1651532699?i=1000594418263

Transcript

Tony

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Week Ahead. I’m Tony Nash. Today we’re joined by two new guests. We’ve got Ross Kennedy. You may know Ross as Huntsman on Twitter. He’s with Fortis Analysis. And we’ve got Ralph Schoellhammer. Ralph is at Webster Vienna Private University. And we have the honor of having Albert Marko with us again today. So there’s a lot that’s happened really over the past couple of years around supply chains. And we’re going to kick off talking about supply chains in 2023, and Ross is going to lead us on that. But next we’re going to look at China. There have been some claims made about kind of existential claims made about China over the past couple of weeks, and Albert is going to walk us through those. And then finally, Ralph is going to help us talk about Russian or sorry, German energy and German dependence on Russian gas. So let’s get into it, guys. Thanks for joining us. Ross, you know, I’ve seen a lot on Twitter. You’re you’re talking quite a lot about supply chains. And in 20 and 21, you really opened a lot of our eyes to some of those issues.

Learn more about the CI Futures app: https://www.completeintel.com/futures

Tony

So I’ve wanted to have you on the show for a long time. On the screen right now, I’ve got a chart of shipping rates, Asia to us, west coast seafood rates, and those obviously ballooned up in 21, came back down in 22. And we’re kind of now down to about where we were in Q, one of 20. So the last four months, things have really started to calm down in terms of the costs.

But I guess really what I want to get into with you is, are supply chain risks a thing of the past? You know, what should be we be looking for in 2023? I guess that’s let’s just start with that. Are they a thing of the past? And what should we be looking for in supply chains in 23?

Ross

Yeah, I think supply chains have changed in terms of the scope of risk. Certainly it shifted from one to the other. We had a short term risk that was very systemic as far as manufacturing in China being completely disrupted, the ability to ship out. And then we had the entire issue of people changing their buying habits basically by force as far as lockdowns from a lot of events, a lot of entertainment, a lot of things where their dollars are being spent on, not physical things that actually have to be chipped. And all of a sudden, everybody took that spending, they took the stimulus money, and they just began buying things that were feathering their nest or occupying their attention. And so you had the disruption not only of lockdowns, not only of that, but you had this very enormous shift in purchasing from experiences or non tangible things to physical things that have to be shipped. That’s why you saw the run up in stock for Amazon and numerous others, it was because people were doing that right. So we had this enormous crunch that was driven by that fundamentally. And now we’ve seen we have the bullet effect.

Ross

Inventories were dramatically over ordered and now we’ve got inflation happening. So inventories are full and demand is down, particularly on the transpacific trade to the West Coast, the US. China. What we have seen, though, is that there has been container volume shifted to the Gulf. It’s also shifted to the East Coast because we’ve had the risk really since July of last year of longshoreman strikes. And then you have the concurrent risk of rail strikes coming off the West Coast. So we have seen some volume that’s still in place shift. But depending on who you are as a company, we’ll determine if that has actually your supply chain problems have begin to unwind a little bit or if they have really only begun or if they’ve just changed as far as what they are. If you’re a retailer in the US, you really just started shipping over the East Coast if you’re concerned about West Coast risk and you still have to move inventory. But that’s assuming that now the lockdown, lockdown, lockdown, no lockdown, back to lockdown and now no lockdown again with people out sick right in front of the Chinese New Year, if that hasn’t dramatically impacted your business.

Ross

There are some sectors that have been heavily hit by that hard. The impact is less to China in some ways because they’re heavily subsidized in a lot of their industries. The impact is more so, I think, felt by the US. And I know Albert will talk about the China side of that factor. But what we’ve seen now is a dramatic disruption, really, to the way things are. Not in a foreseeable way, not in a way that a lot of people know how to forecast. In a very I would say very unexpected way where you’ve got this sort of well, not unexpected to this group, but unexpected through a lot of supply chain and planners and executives of. They went from huge amounts of demand to very little demand due to inflation here in the US. And then you also have the supply side disruption in Asia. So that’s sort of the twin monsters that a lot of North American companies and European companies are dealing with related to planning this.

Tony

It sounds to me like we have a couple of things in general that are helping to alleviate this. First is price, right? Things are more expensive and so that’s pushing down demand on a volume basis. But we also have China opening up and so that is alleviating supply chains on the supply side. So those two dynamics seem to be really helping us into 23. Have we also seen I know there’s been a lot of talk about this, but to what extent are we seeing rotation of manufacturing locations? Is that a major effect or are we in the early stages of that?

Ross

I think we’re in the very early stages of it. It takes multiple years if you’re going to uproot a semiconductor foundry, for example, which everybody’s made a big deal about, the chips act and all that. And I think Nancy Pelosi had a great run financially because of that for a while. But it takes three to four years, even five years, from soup to nuts, be able to get the process of moving something halfway around the world from one location to another. You have to make a lot of things before you install them and then begin making chips. Other things that are able to transition very quickly are doing so. Things that are fungible, where you’re essentially reprogramming a machine to print a T shirt in China versus Vietnam, that stuff is already shifting. You’re already seeing demand pick up for things like garments and textiles in Southeast Asia and India and Bangladesh. Pakistan also has gained a little bit on the textile side, but things that are energy intensive to manufacture, things that require critical raw materials or certain types of inputs that China does very well. We’ll probably talk a little bit about Zahance hypothesis with regards to China, but China is very dominant in a lot of raw material sectors, and assuming they continue to have the energy and labor available, it’s going to be a lot slower to ship that type of stuff away from China.

Ross

But things that can shift. Are you’re seeing more tires produced outside of China again, for example? So, again, it’s very sector dependent, and a lot of people want to make projections or economic plans or suggestions about the way things are on a macro scale without really understanding that in certain ways, china still very much holds the whip hand. And you won’t see manufacturing shift in other ways. You’re seeing it shift very rapidly away from China and that’ll have an impact on them as well.

Tony

Okay, so let’s take a step back to, say, 2019. Okay? We had Trump, who was trying to get different things out of China and bring things to the US. And reduce China’s centrality or centricity to supply chains. And then we have COVID come in, and that really disrupts supply chains. And then there’s this wake up call for people to kind of regionalize manufacturing, right? So this reminds me a lot of, say, 2007 eight, when it started with Japanese companies doing a China plus one, china plus two, China plus three strategy, right? That’s happening again. But after we got through the financial crisis, everyone just was like, China is easy. Let’s just go back and do that. Are we going to see that again? Are people just going to kind of shrug shoulders at the end of the day and go, people are inherently lazy. I don’t want to have to do the work to have three different sites to manufacture this stuff. So let’s just put it back in China. Is that likely to happen? Or was this wake up call the one that really pushes people to have resiliency in their supply chain?

Ross

I think, again, from a sector dependent standpoint, it’s yes and no. To the extent that if the stakeholder, if the primary stakeholder of a company is the US. Let’s say a Honeywell, for example, they will have to pull out US policies. We have reached a point that even if the US has a company is US based and they’re like, we’re going to still try to manufacture there for whatever reason, it is too much of a lift to pull out of there. In a lot of respects, xi Jinping has a vote on that too. If he wants a company out, or if he wants to just see that company’s manufacturing capacity or whatever, he’ll do it. Right. So the bad guy always has a vote on how the fight goes too. So that is one group of companies that very much can be expected to either leave on their own or be forced out in other sectors where a company can be co opted or the US. Isn’t really paying attention. Yeah, I think you’ll see the impetus to just kind of try to hunker down and ride out this ten year sort of economic cold war, if you will.

Ross

In their mind, they’ll do that as well. But again, so many of the unknowns that are driven here are the fact that China has a vast ability, if it chooses to, to leverage its own strategic advantages to push us around the anchor companies there if they want to, to kick them out if they choose to. And for whatever reason, really, outside of a relatively small group of Natsych types and people that do analysis really well, they’re not discussing what the calculus is on the other side. They’re just discussing what the US. May or may not be able to do through our own policy. At the end of the day, particularly when it comes to energy, anything that’s super energy intensive to manufacture, it’s not attractive to restore to the US right now because the Biden Administration, the Department of Energy, particularly FERC, they’re not going to get out of the way, and they have not proven to do that. So we’re not going to be able to make the fertilizers and fuels that we need to if we are continuing to drive them away with terrible energy policy and drive the price of energy sky high.

Tony

And as a Texan, I will tell you, we have all the raw materials here, right? There’s no reason for us not to do that. A lot of Americans may not like Texans, but generating wealth here really does help all of America, right?

Ross

So in my view, particularly when you talk about the Gulf, the raw capacity is there from a transportation side, from a labor side, from a raw material side, particularly energy, to to turn the south MidSouth all the way down to the Gulf into a manufacturing mega region. That that would be one of the great economic success stories of all time anywhere in the world. And that’s a policy issue. It’s certainly not a capability or capacity issue.

Albert

Yeah, the problem with that is the EPA makes a lot of manufacturing in the United States inefficient and uneconomical, just something yeah, we can’t get around it. It’s the problem.

Tony

Okay.

Ross

And Europe has done very well with a lot of that stuff as well, too. But again, it’s subsidized in Europe, some of those offsets, if you will, they’re heavily subsidized. And so the companies don’t bear that burden to the extent that they would in the US. Where that type of thing is just as heavily regulated and penalized with zero subsidy.

Tony

Right. So since we’re talking about supply chains mostly into the US. Since we’re often here, let’s talk a little bit about Germany. We’ve seen German politicians go to China over the past couple of months, and German heads of industry go to China and kind of almost double down on their commitment to China and double down on their dependency. And it almost feels like Germany is having the opposite conversation from a policy perspective that the US. Is in terms of the US. Is trying to reduce its dependence on China. It seems like Germany is just going all in. Is that a misread, what’s going on there?

Ralph

Well, yes and no. There have been voices in Germany getting louder, particularly when it came, for example, to the Chinese buying parts of the harbor in Hamburg or a German Chip producer. So there are some voices that are getting more critical, but overall, the Chinese market is still crucial for German exports. So kind of when the German Foreign Minister, Angelina Bieberk was in Asia a couple of months ago and she said, we will stand side by side with Taiwan in the case of a conflict. That kind of was immediately backpedaled by other German parliamentarians who said, well, the Taiwanese didn’t ask moral support, so we have no intention to give tomorrow support. So I guess it would be very similar to the Russia Ukraine thing. I mean, in a sense, I think what’s always very important when we look at particular German foreign policy, they are not really for or against someone. They primarily want to maintain the status quo. So they want to maintain as much as they can the 1990s early 2000s status quo. That is true in the Asian case. It’s also true in the case with Russia and Ukraine. Right. Because some people say, why are the Germans not more supportive of Ukraine?

Ralph

Or are they all in the pockets of the Russians? I don’t think that’s the case. I think German policy is to maintain a status quo when it comes to exports in China, when it comes to energy with Russia and everything that quote unquote disturbs the peace is seen as a nuisance, and they usually kind of bet on the party that they hope can end that nuisance as quick as possible. And then I think was a little bit the miscalculation in the Russia case that they originally believed that this is going to be a war like Georgia, like other earlier conflicts, that this is going to end very quickly.

Tony

And we can all pretend it didn’t happen, right? If it ends quick, it didn’t happen.

Ralph

Precisely.

Ross

And that didn’t happen too, that are like leading indicators of German behavior with regards to China. BASF is one of them. Not only is BASF not recognizing its potential position of dominance on the vitamin and specialty chemical side, it’s actually doubling down on China and expanding its manufacturing operations there, not retracing from it. And if you look at Mercedes, for example, I love Mercedes Benz as a company, and I think they make some of the most amazing machines in the world. But you’re not going to tell Mercedes, get the hell out of China. They’ll do, and they can.

Tony

But they have got Volkswagen cans. Mercedes can.

Ross

Volkswagen can.

Ralph

And as a quick second point of this, the German energy planet, we’re going to talk about this a little later in more detail, but they still want to double down, particularly on solar and wind. And they need China as a partner to have good relations with China because they control most of the supply chains in these areas. So as long as Germany doesn’t really have this often announced but never actually materialized u turn in their foreign and domestic policy, this is not going to change. So I think, as you guys correctly point out, whatever the headlines say, whatever the Sunday speeches by politicians are, I think the underlying indicators still strongly point towards not just Germany, I would say all of Europe kind of being at least economically very benevolent towards China. And I think sooner or later, with the exception of some Eastern and Central European countries, I think many Europeans would be more than happy to renormalize relations with Russia as much as possible.

Tony

Let’s get on that later.

Ralph

Okay.

Tony

Before we move on, what do you see in supply chains that people aren’t talking about, that we need to know about? What is a thing where you’re just like, gosh, why don’t people see this? What is that? What’s supply chains?

Ross

It’s food. Probably the biggest and most obvious one that comes to mind. Everyone’s talking about semiconductors. That’s an obvious one too. But that gets beat to death. And frankly, the US. Really holds some major strategic advantages with that as well that don’t get discussed enough when we talk about that issue. On the food side, though, particularly with regards to China and Russia, russia is an enormous manufacturer of certain fertilizers. That’s very true. Now. The US. Has tremendous optionality with Canada next door. We make a tremendous amount of nitrogen. We have the ability to make more. We do find for ourselves on phosphates. We have significant phosphate reserves on the potash side. Canada has the far and away the most reserves in the world and an untapped capacity to move more to the US. So I don’t subscribe at least as far as like Europe and the US are concerned to the macro nutrient issue of NP and K that you’ve heard recently and for a long term elsewhere, that Russia and China control the world on it. They don’t. We do find out fertilizers amino acids are an enormous issue. Vitamins and micronutrients. And those are the ones where, when you’re talking about there’s roughly ten major vitamins that go into animal and human nutrition, but particularly into animal feed to keep them alive, to help them grow faster, to help them produce higher quality meat and eggs and milk.

Ross

Almost all of those vitamins are 90% or more manufactured in China, most of them at 100%. When you talk about key minerals that needs to go into their diets, whether it’s a zinc, calcium, or you see sometimes manganese and magnesium added in as well. Other than Turkey, India and Brazil, most of that stuff comes from China, too. And then you talk about the big amino acids. The US. Is far and away the largest meat producer in the world per capita, even more so than China. But we make about 40% of the amino acids needed in the diet. So we make far and away adequate supplies of DDGs or soybean meal that we use as the crude protein and the crude fiber. But the other 20% of that is completely, almost completely controlled by China. And then BASF and one other company based in Switzerland. And so if they turned off the tap on that, I hope you got it, that she’s not watching this, they turn off the tap on that, it would be crushing for our food sector.

Tony

So is there anybody who’s talking about rotating that production elsewhere? Any company is making that?

Ross

Adm and Cargill talk about it because they’re the only ones that actually make the stuff in the US. In ADM’s case, they manufacture in house. In Cargill’s case, they’re actually the glucose or dextro stream that gets fed into that fermentation cycle to make aminos. You have Ivana and Blair, Nebraska. You’ve got two companies in Iowa, korean and Japanese. And that’s CJ and International and Naji Namoto. They are also an over the fence agreement with an extra cargo, corn mills. That’s it, really, as far as that type of product in the US. We could expand that capacity relatively rapidly. But we have seen amino acids in particular go through so many expansion contraction, volatility cycles that to an American company, particularly one that’s publicly owned, one like Adm, the juice isn’t there for them. They’re not going to take a 20 year investment risk on something that on a year to year basis could lose a lot of money.

Tony

Okay, but if they had to, how long would it take to get that up and running?

Ross

It takes less than two years to build a wet corn mill. But if you were to expand fermentation capacity at any of the already existing wet corn mills in the US that are making, let’s say, high fructose corn syrup, I think of Golden Growers, which is a 50% joint venture with Cargill up in the southeastern corner of North Dakota. All they’re making up there is high fructose corn syrup for food. They can easily convert that stream into fermentation inside twelve months or less. So we do have a dormant quick to market capacity, relatively speaking, the faster we could get that type of thing online, you could do it with subsidies, you could do it with some market protections, you can do it in the food bill and just add certain things in there that favor that type of production. So these are not unsolvable problems. Vitamins. We are, pardon the language, if China really does decide to cut us off on that, that becomes very problematic in a hurry because it’s three to five years to get vitamin production online. If you’re talking synthetic vitamin production, all of that is adjacent and utilizes coproduct from the petrochemical industry.

Tony

Okay. So when I hear this stuff, it makes me wonder, with all of the money that the federal government puked out in 20 and 21 and early 22, this seems like a relatively small investment.

Ross

And it’s very small. A couple years to build a massive vitamin plant? Yeah, you could co locate a vitamin plant right next to Port Arthur, any of the places that are along the Gulf that are very dense and natural gas, and within 24 to 36 months, depending on permitting, if you put a fast lane in place, you could do it in 24 months. And the expertise exists in the US. To build that.

Tony

Okay, thanks for that frustrating example, but it’s something we need to talk about, right? And people need to know about it.

Ross

Albert will tell you this. It’s not talked about much in DC. I’ve briefed numerous Senate committees over the last year on this. A couple of House committees, a whole lot of staff members and Congressmen to their faces. And I show them the charts, I show them the numbers. And it’s really outside of anybody who’s part of the Midwestern congressional delegations. They have no idea. It’s completely foreign to them, and it’s really one of our pacing. Strategic risk.

Albert

Yeah, there’s like deer in headlights when you start bringing up these complex issues, supply chains and asymmetrical responses that the Chinese hold against us, it’s just nothing. It just doesn’t register.

Tony

Yeah, it’s terrible. Okay. Thank you, Ross. Sober, let’s move over to you. And I want to since we are talking about China, let’s talk about, I guess, a Twitter discussion that you and Ross had last week where you invited him on the podcast to talk about some of Peter Zaan’s comments about China.

So, just so everyone knows, I tried to connect with Peter Zion on Twitter and invite him to come on, but he’s very popular and we’re really small time for him, so I don’t blame him for not coming on.

Ross

But anyway, he just doesn’t want to be challenged, maybe.

Tony

Well, possibly. Look, the guy is a great speaker. When I watch him speak, I wish I could speak that well. Right. He’s obviously very smart and he says some stuff that sounds really impressive. Big old predictions, all that stuff. So, having said all of that, he was on Joe Rogan last week and talked about China and basically said that China won’t exist in ten years. Right. Now, this, to be honest, is a derivative of George Friedman’s hypothesis in a book called The Next Hundred Years that was published in 2009, where Friedman said that China would split into, I think, five countries. You know, part of it owned by Japan, part of it, you know, whatever. It’s it’s a really interesting book where he talks about a research in Turkey, a stronger Mexico, all that stuff. I definitely recommend that to people. Some of the stuff doesn’t sound real, but directionally it’s interesting. But Albert, both you and Ross have opinions on this, and you can talk about any of the stuff that Peter Town said. But I guess, broadly, do you see China as a nation state by 2033?

Ross

Of course I do.

Albert

It’s an absurd comment to say that it’s going to break apart within ten years. I mean, you’d have to have something cataclysmic to break up some major industrial nation into ceasing to exist. I don’t understand how that could possibly even come to come to fruition. I mean, China has a strong economic growth. They’ve brought up a middle class, they have a CCP that’s a centralized government that can initiate policies and stimulate the economy at will. They have a grasp on the country, they have a good grasp on the population. Everything that you see that comes out of these protests or whatnot, that’s something that the politicians in China allow you to see. And it’s a messaging thing. I was on here what is it, like, a month ago with Atlantic Council guys, and they’re about the COVID lockdowns and whatnot, and I said, this is your signal that China is opening. And literally, I think it was like a week later, they opened. The thing is, people look at China and they take things at face value with politicians and with data that comes out of China at face value, and you simply cannot do that.

Albert

As much as we blast the Chinese for their belt and road initiative, the key component of that is they have food security coming through that. They have farmlands in Africa, they have meat coming through the South American border. And even if we were to cut off their meat supply, by some measure or another, they still can fish the Sea of Japan, that has 5% of the world’s fish. So they have options for feeding their population in a pinch, and they have the stability and the military and the police force to keep people aligned. So I don’t see how, barring a meteor hitting the place or barring some kind of like, supercharged COVID starting to kill millions and millions of Chinese people, I don’t see how it’s even possible, even logical, to say that it can end up ceasing to exist in ten years. Just the asymmetrical challenges that the world would have to bring China down if they tried to would be devastating for the global economy.

Tony

Yeah. Ross, what do you think there?

Ross

Yeah, I think almost every discussion about the demise of China ignores one simple thing, and that’s not unique to Communists. Will to power is certainly very baked into the cake when you’re talking about communism. But in terms of strategic optionality, china has done a better job than any communist country ever at reinforcing their flanks strategically in a lot of different ways. And so you have to account for that. You have to account for the agency, again, of the adversary, which I think a lot of the discussions about the decline of China do not account for. It at least makes it incredibly complex and certainly is by no means is anything certain one way or the other. On the demographic time bomb issue. I have a very cold hearted way to say this. I don’t think they care. I don’t think they care. When you look at an enormous number of people that are, on the one hand, potentially would die off in some sort of food shortage, certainly with the reopening the percentage of people that at least from the people I talk to and deal with in China on a daily basis. It’s not a lot of young people, it’s not a lot of the productive workforce.

Ross

Again, just like in the US. It’s a lot of people that are unhealthy or older or both. And so you’re talking about people that already have significant respiratory issues in the cities, then getting hit with any sort of cold that’s beyond a basic cold, it’s going to be a problem for them. Right. So even if they survive, you’re still talking about a percentage of the population that in the communist mentality are viewed as less productive or drains on the state’s resources. They don’t really care if a lot of these people die. They truly don’t. And some level of very minor famine where they have the ability to begin to marshal resources and shepherd them a certain way where they can even target who wins and who dies, that type of thing, we will see in that sort of scenario. And they will be able to almost indefinitely put on not indefinitely, but for a much longer. Period of time be able to put off the more severe impacts of a demographic time bomb. And the other issue is, of course, too, they’re atheistic, right? They don’t recognize Christianity or a Jewish god or an Islamic god or whatever.

Ross

So they’re really unbound by any sort of traditional moral or ethical constraints that we have in the west. And so who knows what sorts of technology, what sorts of medical procedures and things they’re pursuing that will in addition to things like automation, they’re now one of the top 15 most automated manufacturing economies. A lot of the robots in the world have shifted production to China from Europe. So they’re dealing with things in a way that all these other models talk about the demographic time bomb don’t account for. They’re going to be a smaller population, but I think long term that also may be baked into their calculus or even serve the interests of what they’re looking towards. Absolutely.

Albert

Yeah, I could have said it better myself for us, I mean, the Chinese are pragmatic. They don’t make foolish mistakes when it comes to their existence. They went out and bought grains for a year and a half. They went out and secured meat for a year and a half. They took advantage of the Ukraine war and secured energy supplies for a year and a half. I mean, they’re not some kind of blind entity that’s going to be taken by surprise. They know their challenges. They understand these problems. There’s something that it’s not as simple. The population goes down, they’re in trouble, they cease to exist. Those dots I just can’t connect.

Tony

Sorry, Ralph, you had some comments.

Ralph

Yeah, just that I fully agree with Albert and Ross said, and I think the demographic part what is often overlooked. I mean, imagine you as a dictator, right? What kind of population would you like to have? One that is on average in the early 20s, or one that’s, on average in the late 30s or early forty s? I think an older population is easier to control because we see this in the Middle East and in Palestine. In these areas, it’s young men who are the biggest problem for social stability. If you can find this golden middle ground of late 30s, early forty s, I think that actually could be to the advantage of the stability of the political system. The only thing because Ross, you mentioned the religion part. I mean, I don’t know if this is still true. It was definitely true a couple of years ago, right, that China had the fastest growing Christian minority in the world. So that doesn’t matter if it doesn’t penetrate the political system or the political leadership. I’d be curious. That’s kind of the only scenario where I would see major changes if all of a sudden kind of these ideas, for whatever reason, start to penetrate the inner circle of Chinese leadership in a kind of ancient Roman scenario.

Ralph

Where all of a sudden the Roman Empire became Christian in an exaggerated fashion. But otherwise, I think you guys are completely right. The I think the the rumors of China’s immediate demise are strongly, strongly exaggerated.

Tony

Yeah. Let me let me add a couple things here. I think when when people make comments about the demise of China, I don’t think they understand modern Chinese history. If you look from, say, the mid 50s until today, certainly well, I guess the 19 teens until today, right. The the volatility that you’ve seen in China’s social structures, the conflict you’ve seen, the famines you’ve seen, the deaths you’ve seen. And certainly in the CCP area, the tolerance that the population has had for leadership, whether that’s coercive tolerance or whether that’s genuine tolerance, they have tolerated a lot. Okay? Now, when we look at, I think, part of the pressure on the CCP, maybe not China as a nation state, but the CCP as a ruling party is through much of the CCP’s existence. The population was very poor and not very educated. And this was Deng Xiaoping was really the one to say, hey, we need an educated leadership. Because until then, most of the people kind of dumb and not really well educated. And a lot of the universities were closed down in the 60s. Right. And so they really started having this educated leadership in the an educated business class starting in the 90s.

Tony

Right. And so you now have a very widespread level of education, and you have a pretty widespread communications platform where people can understand what life is like in other parts of the world. And so I do think that there will be more pressure put onto the CCP to open up and to do things like respect individual rights, whether that’s Christian or not. It’s something that with wealth comes an expectation that individual rights are respected. Right? And so if somehow there was some sort of economic regression where people were poor again, fine, but that would make people really angry. But as people get more wealthy and as they get more educated, I think that does put more pressure on the CCP to be more responsive to the population. Because in the past, people would go into their government guy or woman and they didn’t really have any ability to push back, say, intellectually necessarily. Right now they can go into their government representative and go, oh, that person’s stupid. They don’t know what they’re talking about. And we do that in the US. And we do that in Europe, and we go, our politicians are stupid.

Tony

Right. And so that’s happening more and more in China. And so I don’t think that it leads to the demise of China as a nation state. I think it leads to heavy pressure to the CCP to evolve into something different. And I’m not sure what that is, but I think the pressure on the CCP to evolve will become immense over the next five to six years. And maybe that’s what Dion meant and he just kind of simplified language.

Albert

I don’t know. The CCP morphing into something slightly more liberal is obviously going to happen. I mean, they’ve used actually done quite a good job of promoting national unity. If you want to give them any sort of praise, you know, national unity within China has risen over the past five to ten years. The CCP, like I said, they’ve been around for 70 years. Tony, you said that they’ve got a grip on the country, and I just don’t see it releasing anytime soon under any circumstances.

Tony

Let me just go back and say one thing. We’re all disagree with you. It’s a rare moment of disagreement, Albert, but I actually think the CCP are terrible planners. They’re terrible, yes, they bought things for a year and a half at a time, but they’re just terrible planners. And because they have such a heavy current account surplus, they have the money to make up for their mistakes. And that’s been their situation for the past 30 years. But I think in general, central planning is horrific, and I think Chinese central planners are incredibly awful. So the belief and I’m not accusing you of having this belief, but I think there is among kind of Western intellectuals, there is a belief that Chinese are amazing planners. And central planners, they’re really thoughtful, and I think that’s garbage because it’s just not true. They make a lot of mistakes.

Albert

Oh, no question about that. When you start talking about, like, central piloting and strategic moves, the Chinese have not been historically not been good. You’re right. But those are like 2030 years out, right? I’m talking about four or five years out. They usually don’t make mistakes when it comes to their own domestic politics within the country itself. I mean, they’re they’re still around 70 years. Nothing’s, you know, nothing’s changed, really, in 70 years. So in that respect, I would give them credit to, hey, for national unity’s sake, if they keep themselves in power, they’re done a good job for everything else.

Tony

They do a terrible job. Yeah.

Ross

Again, the dog not barking so much for China when they talk about this stuff. This is the first time we’ve ever seen any sort of synergy between the PLA and the CPC leadership. There has historically been a significant externally, people don’t realize it, but if you’re in the game, you give it. There has always been a historical significant antagonism in a lot of ways between PLA senior leadership and the CPC, the civilian Mandarins, if you will. And this is the first time that we’ve ever seen. And going all the way back to Mao and before him, any sort of cohesion, whether it’s enforced at the barrel of a gun or not, but cohesion because of all these corruption purges that she’s been on since he took power in 2012, going all the way now to today. We’re seeing for the first time, really, the output of a unified PLA CPC kind of mega deep state, if you will. And that gives for the first time, the civilian side a lot more control over what has historically been a multi trillion dollar dark economy and revenue engine of China. And that’s that massive network of shell companies and enterprises that the PLA owns through everything that they’ve got.

Ross

And I’m not saying necessarily we can predict yet what this means, but if that cohesion, if that’s some sort of maybe for the first time unity, if you will, from a political side and from a commercial side, the more that’s.

Tony

Going to look like, the more that happens, the more fragile that whole infrastructure becomes. It becomes so inflexible. And I think for the adversaries of China, that’s a great thing. So go down that path as fast as they can because it creates a very fragile infrastructure within the Chinese government.

Albert

I’m glad that Ross brought that up because I actually had a Tweet thread today about something similar where Xi has been messing with the CMC, which is the PLA Navy’s group that kind of operated away from the CCP and was instrumental in dialogue with the US navy. He’s like, pretty much eliminated those leadership and starting to put his own people in there. So there’s room for error. When you put civilians inside of a military complex.

Ross

That’s a path that I would say if we see a decline of China as an actual aspiring global head of mine, if you will, I think it’s more likely to come from that vector than it would be any sort of demographic time bomb considerations.

Tony

Yeah, I don’t disagree with you. Okay, guys, let’s move on to Germany. Ralph, you had sent a Tweet earlier, I think you sent it a couple of days ago talking about the German energy mix and the push for clean energy in Germany and how ultimately that will lead to more demand for Russian gas.

Can you talk us through that hypothesis? I know you wrote a detailed thought piece about it. Can you talk us through that and then help us understand when the Russia Ukraine war stops, how long before Germany goes kind of rushing into Russian gas again?

Ralph

Yeah, I think the first and most important takeaway is that the underlying German energy strategy has not changed despite the war in Ukraine. And maybe just to sum it up a little bit, in 2021, where we have the most recent numbers, right, about 40% of German electricity production came from coal and nuclear, all kinds of coal. So lignite and black coal. And they want to phase that out in the next ten years. Actually coal, they want to phase out now faster than originally planned. So that means they have to replace 40% of their electricity production. But at the same time, until 2030, the expectation is by German industry that they will have an increase in 20% of demand. And what is the German plan to kind of meet replacing the lost coal and nuclear and meeting this new demand of 20%? The plan was always gas fired power plants and that plan is still in place. So they still want to double their gas fired power plants. And of course the question is where’s the gas going to come from? Now, the quick answer is always it’s going to be US LNG, but I think this is just going to be an affordability problem at some point.

Ralph

The Germans spent $440,000,000,000 only for energy related matters this year, just to give you a comparison, the entire EU spent $700 billion as the so called relief package for COVID. So just to give you a dimension, we are just talking about Germany here, so this is not sustainable. That’s 12% of their domestic industrial output, so they cannot do this forever. And secondly, kind of the more geopolitical thing, I think they prefer close cooperation with Russia than being dependent either on the US or being dependent on Italy or Spain and these areas where LNG would also come through. So I think that on the medium to long run, if there isn’t a window of opportunity to reopen the gas flow from Russia, which is of course still going on, to other pipelines, I think they will jump on it. And the last point, which I find quite intriguing, because everybody says Nordstream Two, Nordstream One, that was sabotaged by the Americans, but apparently, if you look at it, one pipeline of the Nord Stream Two net is still operational. So to me this looks more if I would speculate, but of course I’m speculating here is that the Russians say, no, we cannot destroy Nordstream One.

Ralph

We leave a bit of Nordstream Two in place because then we have to start at some point Nordstream Two and then kind of when this is already happening, we just also start Nordstream One again once it’s repetitive because that was always in place. So I think the underlying energy outlook is still the same and I think as soon as there is a ceasefire or something, this is going to happen. At the very last point, we talk a lot about gas, but of course there’s still the unanswered diesel question when it comes to energy between Russia and Europe. So, as I said, I think if there is a chance to re engage in the energy market with the Russians, I think Germany primarily, but I think other Europeans as well would be very happy if they could re engage in this area with Russia.

Tony

Perfect. I’m going to stop you real quick and I know Ross has to jump in a couple of minutes. Ross, what thoughts do you have on that, on Germany’s dependence on Russian gas?

Ross

I think it’s obvious if you work in the commercial world, if you deal with German companies, whether it’s a buyer or a seller or supplier, whatever it may be. I do think you’re seeing a play out the clock scenario here. There is obviously positive alignment at a global scale between Russia and China. And there’s disagreements or things where maybe one surprises the other with some of their behaviors, but in general they’re positively aligned. Major German manufacturers doubling down in China is actually an adjacent indicator. Russia is still the cheapest source of natural gas that Germany itself can get its hands on. And it’s not I say this somewhat facetiously, but also sincerely, it’s not like the Germans and the Russians don’t have a history of secret relationships or conflict benefit maybe them or conflict. So I do think that as long as there is a strategic alignment on a long term basis of Germany and through infrastructure and through relationships that have really been built deeply since the end of the cold war connection to Russia, I think it would take a lot to really completely sever that completely. Because on a long term basis, if they don’t have replacement energy capacity, which they don’t not at this point, germany would stand to be tremendously disrupted by that.

Ross

I don’t think they’re going to let it happen, not for NATO, not for the EU.

Ralph

And maybe to add something, since Ross is still here as a supply guy, the other thing is even the idea they would have to double their renewables, including wind and solar. And the problem is, wherever they can build those wind turbines, they cannot get those transmission lines built basically from the north to the industrial heart or in Bavaria, for example. On one hand is because the lines are too expensive and too long at the moment. And the other thing is nobody wants them in their neighborhood, right? Nobody talks about this. So on paper it’s easy to build them, but every little municipality, every local politician says, sure, you can make those transition lines, but not here. And then this has basically been on ice for a long time now. So as Ross also says, I think at some point it’s either continue spending oodles of money, which at some point I think will just get too expensive, or find ways either openly or secretly, to increase imports in the energy sector from Russia.

Tony

Ross, I know you have to jump. I just want to thank you for your time. We’re going to continue the conversation, but I look forward to having you on again. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Ross

Thanks gentlemen.

Ralph

Thanks Ross.

Tony

Ross, one of the things you said was that Germany would rather source gas from Russia than from southern Europe. Can you help us understand why that’s the case?

Ralph

Yeah, because I think this is one thing that has been overlooked in the entire debate when it comes to the Russian position. Let’s also Twitter a little bit for the French position that a shift towards the east in focus both economically and politically is not in Germany’s interest. So as many I say now fantasizing. But I don’t mean it in a disrespectful way of a new kind of Baltic Polish Ukrainian alliance under the military protection, let’s say your military cooperation with the UK and the US. That is not something that Germany is particularly interested in because they want to remain the major power in Central and Eastern Europe and a new formed bloc with 44 million Ukrainians is not something that they are particularly interested in. And the same is true with kind of shifting the energy focus, let’s say towards Italy or towards southern Europe. It’s the same thing. I think this is not the kind of power shift that they want to see. And just as a quick add on to this is often forgotten, germany together with the Czech Republic as a smaller player, particularly France, they have been the major electricity exporter in Europe.

Ralph

They in some cases quite literally had the hand on the light switch and I think this is also something that Germany doesn’t want to lose. Now, I don’t know to what extent they are aware of this themselves, but I think if you look at German behavior towards Ukraine, towards Russia in this entire conflict, even now, at the moment, right, where they say, yeah. We might deliver Main Battle tanks if the US delivers them first. And if the Polish deliver them first, then maybe we’ll do it as well. I think this hesitancy is not just facetiousness on part of the Germans. I think it is kind of being concerned that the power could shift further towards the east into this kind of Polish Baltic Ukrainian new power center and it would be economically weaker but it’s already militarily potentially significantly stronger. So I think Germany is playing a kind of geopolitical game here that is not we can have a moral debate whether we agree or disagree but I think from what they are trying to accomplish it’s at least partially understandable and it’s a truly last point. There was a moment if they would have really kind of switched entirely their energy policy in February continuing the nuclear power plants and shifting other areas, I think then it would have been credible that they say they want to kind of emancipate from Russian energy, from Russian gas but they didn’t do anything of that kind.

Ralph

So this is why I think that on the long run, on the medium to long run relations between Russia and Germany will improve, whatever that means for other players.

Tony

I think it’s so interesting that the Polish Baltic Ukrainian that is such an ancient political entity from centuries ago, right? And so it’s just interesting that these things are coming back. But I want to push a little bit harder on that. As much as you say they would rather source from Russia than from southern Europe, why are they so hesitant to source gas from southern Europe? Because it’s a part of the EU, it wouldn’t be a political kind of lever that the south would pull.

Albert

It would be Tony. It would be because the Germans have Spain, and Italy is indebted to Germany a significant amount of money. Right. So that upsets the political dynamic from the Germans being able to counter the French and what are they doing within the EU? So you have a political economic dynamic here where Germany just does not want to give money back to the Italians in the space.

Tony

Okay, so what you’re saying is Germany would rather empower a hostile Russia. I would rather enrich a hostile Russia than give up the political power that they have over the south by giving them money. They would rather have the thumb on southern Europe and control them politically than actually help enrich their fellow Europeans. I wasn’t aware of this.

Ralph

I used to do this 20 years ago.

Tony

I don’t as much anymore.

Albert

I would do the same thing because Russia is not in my political sphere, and there is little to zero chance that the Russians are going to attack NATO lands. So from the German perspective, I get cheap power from Party A, and I still control Party B and C over here under my thumb. Why would I change that dynamic? I would never do that.

Ralph

The German area or the German sphere of interest that they are interested in is central. It’s Europe. Whether it’s the European Union, they don’t really care what’s going on in further to the east or, for example, between Russia and Ukraine, which they have shown quite openly up until February. I think Albert is precisely on the money here. So this was a very good deal for Germany.

Tony

Wow. Just another reason for me to think that the EU, as I’ve thought for the last 30 years, is just a cynical political grouping rather than a functional union.

Albert

It’s very nation states have their own interests at heart. Always first and foremost, before you want to talk about globalist or community.

Tony

Sure, yeah, absolutely. Okay, guys, this has been great. Can you just before we kind of end this, can you guys help us think? What are you looking at, let’s say for the rest of January, kind of the week ahead, the next couple of weeks ahead? What are you guys looking at with, say, ECB or Fed or markets? What are the things that are on your mind right now that you’re looking at for the next week?

Albert

I don’t know about the next week. I think Opex is next week, so it’ll probably be pretty muted before the Fed in February. But honestly, I’m looking at Russia whether or not they desire to have a new surge into Ukraine, albeit a smaller one, more tactical. But they need a win for the PR before they actually try to come into actual peace negotiations, because it’s just not sustainable, what they’re doing right there right now.

Tony

So do you think there will be peace negotiations, say, in March, April, something.

Albert

Like that, as plausible at least June, July, maybe?

Ralph

June, July.

Tony

Okay, ross?

Ralph

I’m kind of looking at the German economic numbers at the moment because they have all been very celebratory, because in the fourth quarter, apparently it grew by 1.9%. My suspicion is that these numbers were particularly pushed because Germany was simply pumping so much money into the economy. This is something oliver, you mentioned this a couple of times on your Twitter feed as well. This is something I don’t think enough people talk about that whatever the ECB does, a lot of this is going to be offset by European programs of pumping money into the system via alternative means. So kind of the celebratory mood that now it’s, I think, just 7.7% inflation and not 10% inflation, I think that’s just going to be temporary. And the same is about economic growth. So this idea that there will not be, as I think Goldman Sachs said, and a couple of other economists as well, that there will not be a recession in Europe next year, I’ll be very surprised. I prefer not to be that one, but at some point I know Albert has said something similar ones, but I’m growing increasingly suspicious of these numbers because they don’t add up with anything.

Ralph

When you talk to people in the industry, when you talk to the banking sector, they tell you it’s not all doom and gloom, but it’s definitely not. That all. Next year we’re going to grow beyond our expectations.

Albert

The celebratory chance for the Europeans right now completely missed the fact that they are dormant. They’re in a zombie state. There’s nothing going on in Europe at the moment. So once they start kicking things back up and manufacturing and demand inflation is going to go right back up to where it was a year ago.

Tony

I never trust a preliminary economic data release. Never. Always wait for the second or third revision. So when markets move on a preliminary release, it’s moving on the belief that other people have expectations around it. Right? And so it’s just this reflective, expectations based move rather than based on the numbers themselves. And I always will often say this on my Twitter feed wait for the revision. Don’t trust the initial preliminary data release because it is PR. It’s nothing more than PR. Maybe it’s directionally correct, maybe, but those preliminary releases are PR. So on that optimistic note, guys, I want to thank you for your time. This has been fantastic. We’ve had such a great, deep discussion. So thanks very much. Have a great weekend and have a great week ahead. Thank you.

Albert

Thank you, Tony. Thanks, Tony.

Ross

Thank you.

Week Ahead

Fed “moderation”, windfall OAG taxes in UK, and building an exchange: The Week Ahead – 5 Dec 2022

Post author By admin
Post date December 3, 2022

Explore your CI Futures options: http://completeintel.com/inflationbuster

On Wednesday, Jay Powell talked and said “The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting.” The JOLTs data that came from Wednesday showed a slowing in job openings and the employment data from Friday was still strong but moderated a bit. With China announcing some changes to lockdowns, how worried should we be about commodity prices, given the “moderating” Fed? Albert Marko leads the discussion on this.

We also saw the UK announce windfall oil & gas taxes last week. We’ve seen a slew of announcements to halt investment. This is something that Tracy called out well before the windfall tax was announced. What will the impact be and how did the UK government think this would go over? Tracy explains this in more detail.

Given the LME nickel issues, FTX, etc., credibility is a concern at times. Why do these systems fail? What should people who trade know about exchanges that nobody tells them? Josh shares his expertise on what it’s like to build an exchange.

Key themes:
1. Fed “moderating the pace…”
2. Windfall oil and gas taxes in the UK
3. What’s it like to build an exchange?

This is the 44th episode of The Week Ahead, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.

Follow The Week Ahead panel on Twitter:
Tony: https://twitter.com/TonyNashNerd
Albert: https://twitter.com/amlivemon
Josh: https://twitter.com/JoshCrumb
Tracy: https://twitter.com/chigrl

Transcript

Tony

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Week ahead. My name is Tony Nash. Today we are joined by Josh Crumb. Josh is the CEO of Abaxx Technologies, a former Goldman Sachs, and just a really smart guy who I’ve watched on Twitter for probably eight years. We’re also joined by Tracy Shuchart, of course, and Albert Marko. So thank you guys so much for joining. I really appreciate your time this week.

We’ve got a few key themes to go through. The first is the Fed talking about, “moderating the pace.” We’ll get into that a little bit. Albert will lead on that. Then we’ll get into windfall taxes, windfall oil and gas taxes in the UK. And finally, we’ll look at exchanges. Josh’s started an exchange. I’m interested in that, but I’m also interested in that within the context of, say, the LME and other things that have happened.

So, again, really looking forward to this discussion, guys.

Albert, this week on Wednesday, Chair Powell spoke and he talked about moderating, the pace of rate rises. He said the time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting. Of course, it’s a conditional statement, right?

But with China announcing some of the changes and lockdowns with things like the jobs number out today, I’m really curious about your thoughts on that moderation. So if we look at the Jolts numbers, the job openings numbers from Wednesday we showed that really come off the highs, which is good. It’s moving in the direction the Fed wants.

If we look at the employment data out today, again, it shows a little bit of moderation, but it’s still relatively strong.

So what does all of this mean in the context of what Chair Powell was talking about Wednesday?

Albert

Well, I mean, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have been really precise in the wording of using soft landing over and over and over again. And let’s make no, let’s not have some kind of like, a fantasy where they don’t see the data a week ahead of time. And all the words and all the phrases and whatever they leak out to the media, like the Wall Street Journal are tailored to try to get a soft landing.

Powell knew what these job numbers were. So for him to come out uber hawkish, which he has to do because the economy is still red hot at the moment, if he came out uber hawkish Wednesday and knowing what these job numbers are and knowing what the CPI is possibly going to be next week, we’d be sitting there at 3800 or 3700. And they don’t want a catastrophic crash, specifically before Christmas. And also the mutual funds and ETFs and rebalancing of this past week.

So from my perspective, they’re going to keep the soft landing ideology. The only thing that could throw in a wrench to this whole thing is retail sales. And if I think the retail sales start becoming hotter than they really want to see then obviously 75 basis points and maybe even 100 is on the docket for the next two months.

Tony

For the next two months? So 50 December, 50 Jan?

Albert

That’s the game plan at the moment, 50-50. If CPI or retail sales start getting a little bit out of hand, they might have to do 75 and 50 or 75 and 25. But again, this is all like all these leaks to the media about softening or slowing down the pace. It’s just another way for them to “do the pivot talk” and try to rally the markets again. So that’s all it is.

Tony

Okay, Josh, what are you seeing? What’s your point of view on this?

Josh

Yeah, so I’m probably not in the market day to day the same as the rest of you from a trading perspective. We’re obviously looking very closely at commodity markets and the interplay between particularly what’s going on in Europe and how that affects energy markets, which I know Tracy and yourself have spoken a lot about.

Yeah, look, I think the last OPEC meeting, I think the Saudis in particular caught a lot of flack for the supply cuts. But now, looking in hindsight, I think they were exactly right. And so I think there really is a softness, particularly that part of the crude markets and of course, in a very different situation downstream in refining. I think that it would be consistent with a softening economy. But I agree with Albert that the Fed, I think, can’t really afford to change their stance, even though even today’s employment report was a very, very sort of lagging indicator, late-cycle indicator.

So I feel, personally, particularly just coming back from Europe, that we’re really already in recession and I think that’s going to be more obvious next year. But I don’t think they can really change their tune for the reasons that Albert laid out.

Tony

Tracy, we had a revision to Q3 GDP this week, and I was looking at those numbers, and exports were a big contributor to that. And crude was a huge portion of those exports in a revision of Q3 to GDP, it was revised up slightly, I think, to 2.9% or something. Now, a large portion of those exports are SPR, and that SPR release is contributing to, say, lower oil prices and lower gasoline prices here in the US, right?

So SPR release theoretically stops this month in December, right? So it tells me that we’re not going to be able to have crude exports that are that large of a contributor to GDP expansion. First. It also tells me that we’ll likely see crude and gasoline prices rise on the back of that if OPEC holds their output or even slightly tightens it. Is that fair to say?

Tracy

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that everybody’s pretty much looking at they’re going to hold a stance. I mean, they’ve already said this over and over again over the last month. After that Wall Street Journal article came out and said they were thinking about increasing production for the bank. You had all of them come back and say, “no, we’ve had, this is what we have in play to the end of 2023. We can change this, obviously, with an emergency meeting, et cetera, et cetera.” But I think at this meeting, I think they’re probably going to be on a wait and see, or, again, like you said, slight and tightening. Maybe $500.

Tony

I stole that idea from you, by the way.

Tracy

Maybe $500,000. It really depends on what they’re looking forward to, is what they have to contend with right now is the oil embargo in Russia on December 5, and then the product embargo comes in on February 2023. For the EU, also, everything is a lot. It’s predicated on China coming back because that’s another 700 to 800,000 barrels per day in demand that could possibly come back. But I think we all agree, as we’ve talked about many times before, that’s probably not until after Chinese New Year, which would be, you know, March, April.

But those are all the things, along with the slowdown, with all the yield curve inversions, not only here, but also in Europe, everybody’s expecting this huge recession coming on. And so that also has a lot to do with sort of sentiment in the crude market. And we’ve seen this in open interest because what we’ve seen in looking at COT (Commitment of Traders), CFTC data, is that we’ve had a lot of longs liquidating, but we haven’t really seen shorts initiating. It’s really just trying to get out of this market. And so that’s what the current futures market is kind of struggling with right now.

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Okay, so you mentioned the China issue, and earlier this week we did a special kind of show on what will likely happen in China. Albert was a part of that. We had two journalists as a part of that, long-standing China journalist as a part of that. So we’ll put a link to that in this show. But if China opens at an accelerated pace, Albert, we all expect that to impact inflation, right? And we all expect that to impact crude prices.

Tracy

Not any prices across the board, actually, you’re going to be in especially industrial metal.

Tony

Exactly. So how much of Powell’s kind of “moderation” is predicated upon China staying closed through, say, Feb-March?

Albert

Oh, it’s all of it right now. All of its predicated on it. I mean, right now they’re under the impression that China won’t open until April. But I push back on that, and I think at this point, they might even announce an opening in February. Once they announce it, the market looks ahead for three to six months. So things will start taking off at that point.

I do have a question for Tracy, though, for the Russian price cap, right? I know you know the answer, Tracy, but a lot of followers of mine have always asked me about this in DMs is like, why does it make the price of oil go up? Because from my understanding, is because it limits the supply globally. And then as demand comes back, the supply sector actually shrinks. And I wonder what your opinion was on that.

Tracy

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think what you’re going to see with the price cap is that people are going to in Russia already said we’re not going to sell to people that adhere to the oil price cap. Now, again, if it ends up being $60, that’s not really under what they’re selling it for currently at the current discount to Brent. So that’s not that big of a deal. If it’s lower than that, then obviously, yes, that will make a big deal. But they also said that if we have an oil price cap, then we’re going to stop producing, right? Not entirely, but they’ll curb back production, which will in turn make oil prices higher globally, even if that price cap in place. And so that’s kind of their hit back.

But that said, again, I don’t think as much oil is going to be taken off the market with a price cap, particularly at $60. And Russia has already figured out a way around secondary sanctions, obviously, in June as far as shipping, insurance, and certification is concerned. And you have to think, realistically speaking, you’re going to have a lot of shippers, especially Greek shippers, that this is their major business that is going to say, yes, we’re shipping this oil at the “price cap.”

Right. So you just have to keep in mind the games that are played in the industry. But, yeah, some oil will definitely be taken off the market. And Russia also could decide to pull back on production in order to hurt the west to make oil prices rise in the west.

Tony

Europeans love to violate their own sanctions anyway, right? They’ll just buy through India or something, right? And they’ll know full well that it’s coming forward.

Tracy

They’re buying Russian LNG. It’s not piped in right now. Right, but they’re still buying LNG. They’re having it shifting, and they’re paying massively.

Tony

Let’s turn off the pipeline and raise prices on ourselves. Okay.

Albert

They learned from Bible in the keystone, right?

Josh

Maybe I’ll add one more perspective here. You have to remember that oil is Russia’s economic lever and gas is their political lever. And so I actually believe that Russia is actually trying to maximize, we haven’t lost a lot of Russian barrels since the beginning in March, but I think they’re actually trying to maximize revenues right now because not that I want this to happen, but I could see much more extreme gas measures coming from Russia through perhaps some of the gas that’s still coming through the Ukraine as soon as January. You know they want to maximize those political levers, and they’ve already been sort of playing every game they can to contractually even break contracts and minimize gas even since end of last year. So, again, oil is the… They’re always going to want to maximize their oil exports for revenue and maximize their political power with gas.

Albert

Yeah, they do that often, especially in North Africa, where they try to limit the gas that comes in there using Wagner and whatever little pressure they can to stop it. They’ve done that so many times.

Tony

Great. Okay, let’s move on from this and let’s move on to the windfall oil and gas taxes in the UK, Tracy. We saw the UK announced this last week or two weeks ago.

Tracy

November 17, they announced the increase. Yeah.

Tony

Okay, so we’ve seen a slew of announcements, and I’ve got on screen one of your Tweet threads about Shell pulling out their energy investment and Ecuador doing the same and Total doing the same.

So can you talk us through kind of your current thinking on this and what the impact will be? And how on earth did the UK think this would go over well?

Tracy

Well, I mean, that is a very good question. How did they think this would possibly go? I mean, we know that if you’re going to place the windfall tax, they raised it from 25% to 35%, which is very large. And that’s in addition to the taxes that companies are already paying, which in that particular country is some of the highest in the world. Right. And so this is just an added on. So, of course, you have Shell and Ecuador now rethinking what they’re going to do with huge projects going on there. And Total literally just said, we’re cutting investment by 25% entirely in that country.

And so what happens is what’s interesting is that this whole thing occurred after COP27. And what we saw is kind of a change in the language at COP27, where countries were more interested in energy security rather than green energy. Of course, that was part of the discussion, but we did see sort of a language change and people start worrying about countries start worrying about energy security, which makes sense after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and everything that has happened.

So for the UK to kind of do this on the back of that without realizing the implications of what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is that they’re going to see less investment. Obviously, we already have majors coming out saying we’re just not going to invest here. Right. And that’s going to raise prices in particular for electricity in that country. We’re not just talking about oil and gas, but everything attached to oil and gas, you know, the secondary and tertiary things that are attached to oil prices and gas prices within that country. And so that, you know, that’s going to keep inflation high in their country and, you know, and it’s a very dangerous territory if you’re talking about energy security. Right.

Because UK is an island and they have assets right there. So everything else that they cannot produce there, they have to import. And that’s not cheap either. So you have to think about that. And this all comes at a time where Capex is already dangerously low since 2014 in this particular industry. So it seems like it’s self inflicted harm not only on the citizens that are going to have to pay for this via inflation higher, right. But also their energy security is compromised. Yeah.

Tony

I love the irony of a French company telling the British that they’re taxed are too high.

Albert

Yeah, it’s actually amazing because, like, the Swiss today has stalled all electric vehicles from being registered or imported to secure their grid from blackouts.

Tony

Wow.

Albert

Yeah, that was just maybe like an hour or two ago.

Tracy

And they said that they’re prepared to have like a four tier energy system and basically if you have on your third tier, they’re cutting you off of like you can’t charge a car in third tier.

Albert

Like Tracy was saying, nobody thinks about the second and third order of things, like the electrical grid going out and industrial sector having to buy diesel generators so the power doesn’t fluctuate and ruin their machinery. Nobody thinks about these things, they only think about the marketing material out of Tesla.

Tracy

Right.

Josh

Probably maybe add one more lens to look at this through. And that’s the geopolitical and political lens. I think we’ve had enough three decades of sort of Laissez-faire economics that any politician knows the effects of announcement like that. So I don’t think this was a naive approach, particularly as Tracy mentioned, that this was coming on the back of COP.

I think this was something to sort of give to a sort of a populist base around inflation and we’re going to go after big energy. But at the end of the day, I totally agree with Tracy that everything’s pivoted to energy security and almost wartime footing. And so I think we’re not used to looking at policy announcements or sort of economic policy announcements in that lens the last 30 years. But increasingly we’re going to have to look at all of this through almost a wartime footing way of thinking. So what are they likely doing there? In my view, again, I think they’re kind of giving a, you know, buying some goodwill on the populist front and maybe environmental front while at the same time realizing that they’re going to start having to maneuver all they can to secure hydrocarbon supply. So that’s the way I might read something like that.

Albert

Yeah, I could have said it better myself. Josh I mean, the thing I try to stress to people when you’re looking at foreign affairs and foreign politics is you need to see what’s happening domestically in the country first because that’s what writes the script for what their international needs are.

Tony

And it’s interesting that you both say that populism drove this, it seems in the UK, although it’s impacting the electricity prices, we see populist movements in China, we see it in Pakistan, here in the US. I think a lot of people thought populism died when Trump lost in 2020 and it’s just not true. There is just so much of a populist drive globally. People are tired of the current structures and they want more. So it’s interesting to see and it will be interesting to see the fallout. Tracy do you see other companies moving in that direction of a windfall tax?

Tracy

We did see India, they enacted a windfall tax as well. They’re kind of pulling back on that right now. We have Germany talking about a windfall tax, but at the same time they’re giving subsidies out like candy. But then again, that country is like an enigma right, as far as energy policy is concerned. But I think that’s… What’s interesting about the UK is now they’re also talking about a windfall tax on green energy.

Tony

Oh, good. Interesting.

Tracy

So they are talking about that too, and they’re talking about almost a 90% tax because of all the subsidies they’ve been receiving that will be end up. So we’ll see if that comes to fruition or not. But that would really I mean…

Albert

They going to have to give them loopholes because everyone is going to look at what’s going on in Germany and then spending tens of billions of dollars to bail out the energy company that supplies all their consumers. It’s just silliness. They’re just playing through the populous voice at the moment.

Tracy

The US talked about a windfall tax too, over the last year, but it has just not found footing yet.

Tony

Don’t do it.

Tracy

I don’t think it’ll pass. I didn’t even think it’ll pass with if you had even with like a Democrat-controlled Senate, I still don’t think that’s going to pass because you have too many of those senators in Hydrocarbon that represent Hydrocarbons states.

Tony

Okay, great. Let’s move on to the last segment, which is really looking at exchanges. And Josh, your company has built an exchange, continues to build an exchange. We’ve seen some real issues around exchanges. Well, for a long time, but really most recently with say, the LME and the Nickel issue. And we’ve seen FTX kind of called an exchange and we’ve seen FTX fall apart. I’m really curious first of all, can you help us define what is an exchange and then why do these problems emerge?

Josh

It’s a great question and thanks for that. So I think maybe I’ll step back and just mention kind of how Abaxx have been thinking about because we went out and set off to build a regulated exchange and the first physical commodity focused clearinghouse in Asia about four years ago. And for us, we looked at an upcoming commodity cycle. I had a view that we really bottomed in the energy cycle around 2015, 2016, but we still had to wear off a lot of excess inventories. And probably ten years ago, the market was spending almost $2 trillion a year in energy infrastructure. That number has fallen down to something like one and a half trillion a year. So even though population is increasing and wealth is increasing, we’re actually spending less and less on our infrastructure. So it was only a matter of time until we kind of wore off any excess capacity from the last commodity cycle. So for me, I looked back at you go through these cycles, but the market inevitably is always changing.

Josh

So if you think back to, you think back to sort of 2007, 2008, and that part of the commodity cycle. We were still mostly focused on WTI. Brent wasn’t even a huge price marker. It was really only 2010, 2011, 2012, when you started increasingly see the markets changing. So our view is that this commodity cycle, for all of the reasons and the green energy transition, the focus on net zero, we thought a whole new set of commodity benchmarks was going to be needed because different commodities were going to be featured more prominently this cycle. So that’s why we set out to build the exchange. And I will answer your question. I just wanted to kind of walk through this history.

The other thing that I think happened over the last two decades is with the digitization of the trading space. Again, remember, it wasn’t that long ago that commodity trading was floor trading and people yelling and pushing each other in a pit, right? And so you always have to look at the evolution of markets that kind of evolved with the evolution of communication technology and software and really what’s happened since everything went electronic is we had a massive consolidation of the exchanges and the exchange groups across the world. There used to be like the Nymex itself, which is obviously the core of the Chicago Mercantile Exchanges energy business that had something like five contracts for like 100 years and now there’s thousands of contracts.

Right? So there’s always this evolution of markets. There was this consolidation in markets, but in our view, the exchanges themselves got away from specializing in the industry or the product they serve. And so we think it’s a little bit of a mistake of history that the two biggest energy markets in the world were acquired markets. They see me buying the Nymex and Ice buying the IPE, which was the Brent markets. And so in our view, we actually don’t think the physical market builders really exist in the big exchange groups anymore.

So we saw this sort of classic opportunity. This economy of scale or whatever to actually hyper focus on physical commodities and the physical commodity benchmarks that are going to be needed for the next commodity cycle.

So getting back to your question. So what is an exchange? Again, this problem of the digitization of everything, we end up creating a lot of conflicts between what is a broker, what is an exchange, what is a clearing house, you know, different entities playing on both sides of the trade. And of course, I have my Goldman Sachs background, so that was always the big debate about Goldman in the 2000s. They’re on every part of the trade.

And really we used to be in this market infrastructure where you really separated all the conflicts in exchange itself for a long, long time as a nonprofit organization, almost like a utility. And you bought seats again to push each other in the pit. That’s where the private entities were, were in the exchange memberships.

So now what we have today is we have broker dealers like Coinbase calling themselves an exchange, even though they’re applying for an FCM license, a Futures Commission license, which again, it shows that they’re a broker, they’re not an exchange. So I think there’s a lot of confusion on what an exchange is. And what you really want to do is separate those conflicts of interest.

An exchange should never have a house position. Exchange is really just the place that matches trades. And a broker dealer is the one that’s someone that nets two clients and then puts that trade onto an exchange. So there’s been a lot of regulation, particularly after DoddFrank and after a lot of the problems in the financial system in 2008, to try to separate these conflicts out. But unfortunately, with crypto and other things, we’ve been starting to consolidate everything again into a conflicted model. So we’re trying to get away from that and focus very much on physical commodities and an unconflicted model.

Tony

Is it possible to separate those things out? I know it’s conceptually possible. But since we’ve gone beyond that separation, I know that’s what you’re trying to do as a company, but how hard is it to convince people that these aren’t the same things? Because obviously there’s conflicts if they’re combined. Right. There’s margin, I guess, in those conflicts, right?

Josh

Exactly. So we wrote a risk net article on this because FTX actually came to the CFTC proposing that they bring their highly centralized conflicted model into the CFTC. And to their credit, the CFTC and the Futures Industry Association, I think they recognized this problematic approach, that they wanted the exchange in the clearinghouse to be separated from the Futures Commission merchants. And at the end of the day, you know, the FCM’s, which is really the prime broker that connects to the clearing house, they do more than just handle administrative work and collect margin.

At the end of the day, they’re the ones really looking and really knowing their customers’ overall position. So if you look at something like the LME problem, what it really was is you had this big OTC position in one of the brokers that was sort of Texas hedged or had a bad hedge into what was actually so it was a Ferro nickel. It looks like it was a Ferro nickel and sort of integrated stainless steel producer that was hedging against the deliverable contract in an LME nickel that they actually couldn’t deliver into. And there’s actually nothing new about that.

That’s actually how the Nymex really came to be the top energy market. You had the Idaho Potato King, hedging into a main potato that he couldn’t deliver into and cause an epic short squeeze. So this stuff is not, there’s nothing new in these markets. And the main thing is we want to maximize decentralization. We want to maximize the amount of FCMs involved in managing that delivery risk and knowing what their clients’ positions are, and the exchange having enough knowledge to know where the risk sits as well.

So it’s that check and balance. If you leave all of the risk to one entity or to one regulator, it becomes very problematic. That’s why we have the separation of all these pieces of market infrastructure, so that everybody is looking at the risk from their perspective, so that overall we can try to minimize the risk in a more resilient system.

Tony

Okay, Josh, I’m just curious, what should people know about exchanges that nobody tells them? I know that’s a really broad question, but it seems extraordinarily simple. But there’s got to be something that people should know that nobody ever tells them about what an exchange is.

Josh

Yeah, I think that an exchange should never have… We like to say that the exchange should be the scoreboard, not the referee. The exchange should really only be transparently, showing a price, showing that data, executing the price, but it should never have a position and it never should be telling the market what to do. The exchange is the scoreboard, not the referee.

Tony

That’s a great statement. Albert, what questions do you have?

Albert

As soon as he said that I was in absolute agreement. Everyone that knows me knows that I abhor crypto. Right. And what they’ve done. That’s an understatement, I know. But I’ve always said, if you want to do something with blockchain digitalization, you have contracts, whether it be real estate, whether it be commodities, something like that, to create transparency and trust in the system.

Exactly what Josh is talking about, because I’ve seen and personally heard of manipulation in the oil futures and commodities market that is just outrageous. Absolutely outrageous. And it’s not fair to people like me that trade futures where for some reason I can’t buy a contract because the prices, like the price discrepancies, are just outrageous at the moment. And everyone knows the brokers are intermixed with the exchanges and so on and so forth. But something like this, where it’s digitalized and you’re just a scoreboard, is a great idea.

Josh

Yeah. And I think the other big problem is we look at every price for different assets and think all prices are fair. And if there’s anything the last two years has taught us, that efficient market hypothesis is not right. And so, you know, we look at these prices like they’re all the same. You see a WTI price, you see a nickel price, you see the price of Google, you see the price of a ten year, you see the price of a real estate bond. At the end of the day, it’s the market structure, and you can’t fundamentally change the liquidity or lack of liquidity in a market. Right? And so one of the other problems that we saw, again, this is why we exist, is we think that the commodity markets have gotten hyper financialised and digitized, where people have gotten away from what is the actual underlying price.

So LNG is where we’re focused. We think LNG is the most and this has been our view for five years before, most people didn’t know what LNG was before it was front page news, is that LNG was the most important commodity for probably two decades. And at the end of the day, what is the price of LNG? There is not a clean, transparent price of LNG. LNG is not the Dutch title transfer facility. LNG is not the five people that report on a voluntary basis to the JKM. Right. There really isn’t a price for LNG. And more importantly, right now, there’s not a buyer and seller of last resort market. You can’t go in and buy futures and go to delivery in LNG. That doesn’t exist.

And next year, I think it’s going to be absolutely critical because there’s going to be an all out bidding war for probably the next 30 months between Asia and Europe for that marginal cargo of LNG. We haven’t seen anything yet this year. Next year, and the summer of 2024 is when it gets really bad.

And we need a market that actually, as one of my former colleagues used to say it needs to be a knife fight in a phone booth. Right. You need absolute market discovery. And that physical price has to converge with that futures price. That’s the only fair price. It’s the only fair benchmark. And that’s what we’re doing is doing the hard, hard work to figure out what is a physical long form contract look like to go into delivery of these hard commodities like LNG.

Tracy

And I just want to add on that because everybody’s talking about how European storage is full right now. This year was never going to be a problem. It’s next year there’s going to be a problem. Because you have to realize that they were 50% full. Russia got them 50% full on piped natural gas really cheap. Now that’s gone, right? And so they were paying higher spot prices just to get LNG shipped in. Right. Those cargoes are going to be, next year is where you’re going to see a real problem because a lot of other countries already have long term contracts. And as Qatar said, we have to service the people that we have long term contracts with first. You’re secondary sorry, Europe. Right?

Josh

In Europe, I think, also loses something like 8 million tons per annum capacity up from longterm contracts next year as well that roll off. So there’s actually more spot market bidding. And then on top of that, China is likely to be back in the market. And China last year became the largest LNG importer and they really weren’t even in the market this year. But the one thing that they did do is they’ve been buying all the long term contracts. So even though they’re not buying the spot cargoes this year, they’ve been the biggest player in buying new long term contracts so that they have the optionality. Look, at the end of the day, you know, heating is always going to demand, particularly residential heating in the winter is always going to demand the highest premium because there’s just no elasticity there. You can cut industrial demand. You can probably substitute and power substitution. But if I’m China, I really want the optionality of having that long term agreement. And if prices are high in Europe, I’ll just divert the cargo into Europe or I’ll divert for political reasons diverted to Pakistan or India.

So they’re buying all the optionality, whereas Europe is not buying the long-term offtake. And in fact, they’re buying very short term infrastructure because they’re very focused on, oh, it’s going to be a stranded asset under 2030. So we needed to convert it into hydrogen or something else, right. So there’s a lot they’re really handcuffing themselves, which is going to be again, we need better market infrastructure so the market can sort this stuff out.

Tony

It’s great. Guys, you never disappoint. Thank you so much for this. This has been fantastic. Josh, thanks for coming on. I know you’re a super busy guy. I really appreciate it. And thanks, Tracy and Albert really appreciate this. Have a great weekend. Have a great week ahead. Thank you very much.

Week Ahead

China Protest context, changes, and market risks: Week Ahead Special Episode

Post author By admin
Post date November 30, 2022

Explore your CI Futures options: http://completeintel.com/inflationbuster

The last couple of weeks has seen rising levels of unrest in China. This seemingly started in a Zhengzhou iPhone factory after the deaths of seven workers and has rapidly spread after Covid lockdowns contributed to the deaths of a family of 12 in Urumqi. Some are even saying the World Cup contributed to domestic unrest. But there’s no getting around the fact that people are just tired of lockdowns.

There’s an old Chinese saying – often attributed to Mao Zedong: “A single spark can start a prairie fire.”

What started this prairie fire and what does it mean for China and the world? We discuss that in this special episode with Dexter Roberts, Isaac Stone Fish, and Albert Marko.

Dexter talks about his retweet of a note from Lingling Wei.

Isaac talks more about this unrest potentially leading to the downfall of Xi Jinping. That seems optimistic, especially for the West. What are some of the probable outcomes?

And on the ongoing risks and market impact, Albert shares his knowledge on the issue. We’ve talked a lot about Chinese markets and the CNY. How will the markets react in the coming weeks? And how Western companies will respond to these protests and the aftermath?

Key themes:
1. Protest Context – Spark and prairie fire
2. Will anything change? “
3. Risks and market impact

This is the 43rd episode of The Week Ahead, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.

Follow The Week Ahead panel on Twitter:
Tony: https://twitter.com/TonyNashNerd
Dexter: https://twitter.com/dtiffroberts
Albert: https://twitter.com/amlivemon
Isaac: https://twitter.com/isaacstonefish

Transcript

Tony

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Week Ahead. This Special Week Ahead, talking about China protests.

I’m Tony Nash, and today we’re joined by Dexter Roberts. Dexter is an author. He’s member of the Atlantic Council, the Mansfield Center. He’s a former Bloomberg Business Week China bureau chief, among many, many other things. Dexter, this is your first time. We really appreciate that you joined us. Isaac Stone Fish is also joining us again. Isaac is a CEO of strategy risks. He’s also Atlanta council member. He’s a China-based journalist for Newsweek and has was there for a lot of years. And we’re also joined by Albert Marco, who is a geopolitical maven and knower of all things. So guys, thanks for joining us today.

The key themes today is really what’s the context of the protest? There’s the old saying of a “spark and a prairie fire,” which we’ll go into. Really want to understand that context. Want to understand will anything change? And also what will be the impact on markets? That’s kind of hard to tell, but we’ll walk through that the last couple of weeks.

Obviously, we’ve seen rising levels of unrest in China, particularly over the weekend we started seeing quite a lot more. This seemingly started in a Zhengzhou iPhone factory after the deaths of seven workers. There’s a long story. There are a lot of videos on the internet about that, and you can do a little background on that if you want. And it spread rapidly about a week ago after there were deaths of a family of twelve in Ürümqi in an apartment fire. Again, there’s a lot of background on the internet that I’m sure you guys have seen. Some people are even saying that the World Cup contributed to the domestic unrest as Chinese families saw other people in other parts of the world out celebrating.

But there’s no getting around the fact that people are just tired of Covid lockdowns. There’s an old Chinese saying, it’s often attributed to Mao because it was a title of one of his essays called a Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire. And we’re trying to figure out what started the prairie fire and what does it mean to China and the world. I want to look at that with some experts, which is why we have this amazing panel today.

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So, Dexter, welcome. I really appreciate that you joined us. Thank you. You’ve retweeted quite a bit this week about the protests, and you retweeted this one from Ling Ling Wei, talking about kind of some of the origins of the protests.

Can you talk to us a little bit about kind of what are the sparks? Are there things that we’re not seeing on this side of the world that have led to this in China?

Dexter

Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me and really appreciate it. Great to be in such a great company here.

So, obviously, we all know that there’s tremendous frustration about Covid Zero, the intermittent lockdowns, the unpredictability of life for so many people in China today. And that’s very real, and it’s a huge part of the spark, if you will, that caused the protests. I do think that less remarked upon is the very, very deep economic malaise, which is also a really important cause of this.

In particular, we’re seeing for young people a far less rosy future, if you will, and they are starting to realize that. So we’ve got the obvious economic indicators that are very bad, like the 18% plus youth unemployment rate. And then you look further than that, and I think there’s this sense, particularly amongst young people, probably amongst everyone but the young people that have taken to the streets protesting that the future is simply just not going to be what they had expected it to be.

I’d actually go one step further and say that for them, they feel like the social contract that they grew up under that really has been in place since Dung Xiaoping launched reform and opening in the late 70s.

This idea that your life will always get better, your children’s life will be better than yours, you’ll make money, you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps and do better in China if you work hard. I don’t think people feel that’s necessarily the equation anymore.

Some of the things if you just look at what’s happened in the property sector, that people have become very used to rising values in the property sector, going up and up and up, making a good career, including in the private sector, in the big tech companies, all these things are really in question in Xi’s China.

Xi has shown an attitude that is very, very different from his predecessors about the private economy. And I think this is sort of starting to become something that young people are very aware about. Then you have, of course, you have the isolation of the country, which I think is deeply distressing to a lot of young people as well. It’s a much, much different social contract that they’re being told that they need to be part of if they want to be important in the future of China.

Tony

It’s interesting you mentioned the social contract under Dong. I think it was in 1980. He talked about unifying China because there were all the fractions after the Cultural Revolution. Do you feel like Xi Jinping has continued to unify China? Has he done things to really break that up?

Dexter

I think his idea of how to unify China, he has a very ambitious idea of how to do that. It has a lot to do with nationalism. It has to do with taking pride in the ancient traditions of China. It has to do with taking pride in the earlier communist, the Mao era as well. Look where Xi Jinping took his new standing committee of the Polit Bureau right after the 20th party Congress. He took them out to Yenan, which is all about emphasizing frugality and sacrifice, self-reliance, as Xi Jinping likes to say, the old Mao expression.

So I think he believes that those can be unifying in some way. I don’t think the young people of China feel that that’s very unifying at all. It’s much more collectivist. Anti-individualistic has an almost negative attitude towards making money towards the private sector. And these are all, I think, a bit of a shock for young people in China today.

Albert

Tony, it’s interesting because trying to unify a billion people is not going to be an easy task under any system, whether it’s socialist, communist, capitalist, whatever you want to throw out there. But Xi moving into a more nationalistic arena, specifically with the private sector, has just taken the Western companies out of the equation. They’re all leaving out of China. And what Dexter is saying, what future did they possibly see with everyone leaving, especially the tech sector and the manufacturing sector? They’re just leaving. This is something Isaac can talk about, because I believe this is…

Tony

Yeah, Isaac, what are you saying about that? Are you seeing young Chinese kind of giving up on their careers? Are they frustrated by that?

Isaac

There’s such a wide range of views. And I think one of the things these protests are showing is that you can’t, nor should you try to unify any large population, because then you just squelch out the diversity of opinions. I think the protests are a real sign that a lot of people have been a lot more frustrated with communism in the Communist Party and China’s economic situation and COVID than we had thought. There’s no good polling on any of these issues. There never will be until the party relinquishes. The question of foreign businesses. It’s definitely a trend moving in the direction of reducing exposure to China. However, your average Fortune 500 company is still incredibly exposed to China and to the Chinese market.

Tony

And dependent, right?

Isaac

Yes. Especially dependent both on a revenue perspective, but also a supply chain perspective or regulatory perspective for some of the investors.

And one of the things companies are very slowly waking up to is that, on the one hand, China is not Russia. There’s so many differences between the two countries. On the other hand, there’s a lot of things that have happened in Russia that could be templates for how the future unfolds with China. Most noticeably, the situation in Taiwan.

So, three years ago, US traded 25 times more with China than we did with Russia. The numbers are starker today, but if China invades Taiwan and the US gets involved militarily, companies better have a plan for what they’re going to do with the immediate cessation of their business or the nationalization of their assets, and frankly, how they’re going to protect their Chinese and American staff.

Tony

Yeah, I’m curious about with protests like this, could it become nationalistic like it was against Japanese companies in 2012? Could we see the central government try to pivot to that type of venting?

Isaac

It’s tough to say because the party wants things to be at lower levels where you can be very nationalist because you’re cleaning up the party. And probably the most worrying thing are the calls for the downfall of the party and the calls, the rare for the downfall of Xi. And the strategy seems to be, hey, the center, Beijing is taking care of you. It’s just some local officials or some local jurisdictions are having the problem. So you can be pro-China, but anticorruption or anti what’s happening in HubeiNanchang or nonchang or wherever they decide.

Tony

Right. So let’s go to the next section, which is really looking at what are likely impacts. You talked about people calling for the downfall of Xi Jinping. I think Westerners are making a lot more of that than is on the ground. Is that what you’re seeing as well?

Isaac

I think and I’m really curious to your thoughts on this too. It’s so hard to know fully what’s happening on the ground. There’s so many fewer journalists. Even with the videos that we’re seeing on the Internet, it’s hard to know always how accurate those are and what we’re missing. And it does feel like a small, small number of people calling for the downfall of Xi Jinping is incredibly significant. And at the same time, it doesn’t mean that there’s going to be any sort of downfall of said man.

Dexter

Yeah, no, I think you’re absolutely right. It is very significant that right there in the heart of Beijing, right next to where I used to live, actually in the Taiyuan diplomatic compound, you had those protests. I guess the calls for Xi to step down were down in Shanghai. But having those kinds of very angry people and in some cases saying something from the Chinese Communist Party perspective as extreme as the leader should step down. I think is very notable.

Yeah, I don’t think that’s a widespread sentiment. I think it more has to do with a sense amongst young people that the party and Beijing is less fallible. It’s not infallible that they’re not quite as competent as people thought. And I think Covid Zero has really demonstrated that to people that the economy is a mess. The IMF is now saying, I guess, 3.2% growth for the year. It’s just almost as bad as we saw in 2020.

The script, they’ve gone badly off script. There was this great stirring narrative of how China survived the initial COVID outbreak, struggled when the rest of the world was still doing okay, and then emerged victorious and kept society, the economy recovered.

Only major economy to see, significant growth, I think a year later. Well, everything’s gone wrong now. So I think this sense amongst and again, it’s so hard, as Isaac says, to know actually what people are thinking. But from what I hear and from some conversations I’ve had, it seems as if there’s this feeling that the Party has really badly screwed up and they need to take some responsibility for it.

I think also it’s notable that they’re saying Beijing because as we were saying earlier, for years the party has got by on the argument that we’re good here in Beijing. There’s all these evil local officials, they’re abusing workers, they’re creating polluting factories. All we got to do is appeal to the right people in Beijing and they’ll solve our problems because ultimately the party has our interests in hand.

Now, if we are starting to see, and I think we are, this feeling that the Party, even at the center, has screwed up badly. And of course, the gentleman who’s in charge of everything but the chairman of everything, Xi Jinping, then that is very notable.

Tony

Yeah. So first of all, I don’t believe it’s possible for one guy to control all that stuff. So in the west, people way oversimplify and act like China is a monolithic government and there’s one guy at the center, it’s just not possible for one guy to control all that stuff. Do you guys think he really is the only guy making decisions, the only guy making policy?

Albert

No. I have a contrarian point, though. For my take of this, the question has to be why is China even allowing these videos to leak? Why are they even allowing these protests to get this big? In my opinion is they want to show the world that they are done with this COVID they need a reason to be done with COVID Zero. It’s been hampering their economy and they need to move on. They’re done working with the United States on combating inflation and this is their signal to the rest of the world saying, look, we can’t do this anymore.

Tony

So when you say “they,” who is they?

Albert

When you say they and his cohorts on the CCP, they’re done with this, they’re done with helping the Fed and Yellen combat inflation globally.

Dexter

I have to just push back a little bit. I think they are aware, and I think it’s the reality that if they do, they’re in a really difficult spot, because if they were to actually pull away and all controls, they’re just not prepared, I think, for the outbreak of the pandemic that China would see. They have very little herd immunity. They’re victims of their own success to a degree there. As we all know, and we’ve heard a lot about the there’s low levels of vaccination for the elderly. They have a very fragmented healthcare system. I think ending COVID Zero with one stroke is a recipe for huge problems in China and I think that the leadership knows that, or at least they fear that. I think they’re in a very difficult spot. They do want to move beyond it. I agree. It’s not easy.

Albert

Yeah, I don’t think they’re going to move as the one full stroke and just open up everything. I do think it’s going to be a staged open, but from what I heard, my contacts there said March was the date that they’re going to end COVID Zero, whether it be stages or one full stroke as a debatable thing. But at this point, I don’t think they can last that long. I think now it’s looking more like end of January, early February.

Dexter

I’m going to say really quickly, I mean, the other huge issue is Xi Jinping has associated himself so much with what he sees as a successful, I mean, what had been until not too long ago, it seemed like a successful COVID Zero policy. It turned out it wasn’t successful at all. We know in hindsight, but they have really defined themselves in opposition or in contrast to the rest of the world. So if you watch the Chinese media, the staterun media, every time we’ve reached a new level of mortality, more than a million people have died. These things are top of the news in China and I think the party has tried to tell the Chinese people, you’re safe here, in contrast to the chaotic rest of the world and particularly chaotic America. This is their argument. And if they lift Covid Zero now and they do have the pandemic rips through the population and they do have high mortality, there goes out the window Xi Jinping’s narrative of the grand success of the CCP with COVID Zero.

Isaac

The Spring festival in January, February, where hundreds of millions of people normally travel, would be a super spreader event, like nothing we’ve ever seen before. So one imagines if they do loosen, it’ll be after that. And the record, I do want them to loosen up, and the draconian and arbitrary lockdowns have such a massive toll, but I think Spring Festival will be a big piece of their consideration.

Tony

Okay, that’s a great point. I think you and Albert kind of agree on that generally, in terms of the time frame. So let me ask you, what else will change? Will we see, say, some local leaders go down saying they overly aggressively enforced it or something like that? There is typically some sort of accountability, whether it’s well placed or misplaced in China. So will we see somebody or a group of people or many, many people go down? And I’ll tell you why I asked that.

I referred to this on social media. This reminds me of the April 5 incident in 1976, when Zhou Enlai died and Mao didn’t attend a funeral and didn’t want people to recognize that Zhou Enlai died. So people started protesting and expressing their, you know, their sadness that Zhou Enlai died. Thousands of people went to jail. Right. And somebody had to pay. It was an outburst like we’re seeing now across China, and it really took two or three years for those people to be let out of jail. Right. So it seems to me a discreet event like that, and it seems to me that the response back then was thousands of people going to jail, and then a few years later, under new leadership, saying, “oops, that was a mistake, let everyone out.” Will it be something like that?

Isaac

I don’t think so. I’d say the base case is quiet arrests and harassment where people disappear or people aren’t seen for a brief period of time, and there’s not enough that people can hang their hat on. I think one of the easiest ways to make this into a movement is to create martyrs. So if a local policeman screws up and shoots into a crowd of protesters, this could really, really spiral. It’s so hard to know. I mean, it’s impossible to predict whether or not that’s going to happen. That could be a history changing moment. I think right now we are before the tipping point, and I think the most likely outcome is these protests subside. We see some more of them this weekend, but they’re not as well attended. And this is basically the high point of that. And there’s probably a couple hundred arrests, but we don’t really know. There’s no good statistics on it. And COVID slowly opens up, and several provincial level officials lose their job in ways that people loosely tied to this event.

Tony

Yeah, I think that’s fair. Dexter, does that make sense to you generally?

Dexter

Yeah, it does. It reminds me of I covered the labor movement before Xi Jinping ultimately destroyed it around 2013, and going back to even the first big labor protest in the northeast of China in places like Dai Qing and Lio Yang. And back then, what they would always do is they would arrest or maybe they would create the ringleaders of the protests. So they put a couple of highprofile people in jail as a warning to the others and then they would do a lot to try to meet the frustrations of the protesters. So then it was about local corrupt officials or corrupt factory managers stealing the pensions or whatever it might have been, and they would announce that. I see sort of yeah, something like, as Isaac was saying, well, they’ll do more. They will loosen on COVID Zero when they can. You already had a statement. I’m trying to remember if it was the Health Ministry or something that seemed to be sort of it didn’t go very far, but it seemed to be sort of saying, we understand the frustrations of the people just in the last day or so. I think they’ll do that.

Dexter

The arrests, of course, they’ve already started talking about the hostile foreign forces that are involved, which is not a surprise. They’ll probably heat that up a bit and blame. They’ll try to make the argument that the young people have been misled by bad people overseas, which they always do. And they did that in Hong Kong and they’ve done that in Xinjiang and so on. But, yeah, I think I do agree with Isaac. I think that’s probably most likely. They definitely don’t want to make martyrs.

Tony

Great. Okay, then let’s move on to kind of the markets impact. So it sounds to me like the general consensus is not a lot. This is not a revolutionary event. We’re not going to see the deposing of Chinese leadership, despite the kind of Western sharing, all that sort of thing. So in terms of the risks and the market impact, Albert, can you just start us on that? Do you see markets impact? Do you see Chinese markets rallying or falling? Do you see CNY devaluing or appreciating? What do you generally expect?

Albert

Well, as I said before, I think this is a signal to say that China is definitely going to be moving beyond COVID Zero. Data is debatable, but they have just an enormous amount of stimulus to unleash. They just did a little bit overnight talking about helping out the property sector and KWEB and Baba and everything is up 7%. It’s uncanny. So, yeah, this is definitely a signal to the US or Europe and say, hey, we’re almost about to open for business. Get your stuff in gear, because when it does, it’ll be a tsunami of money coming in and the markets will rally on it, for sure it will.

Tony

So this is generally could be good for Western markets and Asian markets because China’s lockdown is really I mean, I don’t I don’t mean to be overly simplistic, but I’m going to do it. Ending China’s lockdown is really the most important issue in Asia right now, I think. And it’s the most important issue in markets right now.

Albert

But it’s not good for the west. It’s not good for the United States specifically because it’s going to take inflation back up to where was six months to eight months ago. When China starts moving, commodities start rallying.

Tony

Which is at 78 right now, or something up to?

Albert

110 or 120 easy. That point. On top of that, money from the United States will end up flowing out back into China, in Asia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea. Name your manufacturing sector, but that’s the reality of it. The Fed right now has 60 days to get things sorted out with two Fed meetings coming up.

Tony

Okay, Isaac, what do you see on the risk side as this plays out? Is it just going back to business as usual, no problem, everything’s great, or do you see are there some risks that we’re not kind of aware of?

Isaac

Geopolitical tensions are so much higher than they were preCovid lockdowns in China, and the looming specter of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan still not the base case, but still very likely increased tensions with Japan or India or in the South Sea or the East Sea. These protests, I think really the right assumption is that they don’t lead to further instability, but they certainly could, or certain other areas of disturbance or frustration with the leadership could really bubble up, and that could have very severe economic consequences.

I think there’s also the really important point of the strong leftward turn that China’s economy is taking. It’s becoming a lot more statist and with more investments, more JVs, a flowing of capital into China. This is going to be done under different rules than it was under Hu Jintao or under early Xi Jinping. It’s going to be with a much heavier state footprint, and that’s going to make things a lot more complicated. It’s going to be a different set of rules, even for companies that have been doing this for a very long time.

Tony

So what you’re saying is we are who they thought we were a few weeks ago in the part of Congress, right? There was this ominous feeling coming out of that. And then there was this event, I think, last week in ASEAN where it felt like there was some shine put back on Xi Jinping. And now it feels like that it’s coming back to be kind of who we thought they were.

Isaac

And the narratives keep shifting so rapidly, and they’re going to continue to shift and evolve. I think people need to understand. There’s an old saying, if you’re going to have to remind me how this went, but it’s something that in China, the only thing you know about the impossible is that it happens all the time, and it’s very difficult to know what we’re going to see. But we do have I think Taiwan is the best example of that. We do have a very clear possibility that China invades Taiwan, and that may start World War Three. And we can predict that now, so people can plan not, hey, this is definitely going to happen, but, hey, this is a very real risk, so how do I plan accordingly?

Tony

Okay, so protest not a big deal, but World War Three possible? That’s kind of what

Isaac

That’s the summary. Yeah, put that on my tombstones.

Tony

Very good. Any other thoughts?

Dexter

Yeah, well, Isaac just brought up a big one, which is this increasing status nature of the economy. I think as multinationals going forward, they’re going to do business in a very different environment. We heard that, of course, with Xi Jinping’s 20th Party Congress speech, which, as we all know, mentioned security, whatever it was, 91 times, and market a small fraction of that. There’s a new emphasis. Xi Jinping has made it very clear that he’s willing to make economic sacrifices, productivity growth sacrifices, in order to make sure that the party is secure and China is secure and is on a path that he thinks is correct. He’s got that whole line about that. He’s been saying for years about how we can’t use the second 30 years of China’s history to negate the first 30 years. Meaning we moved too far in saying that reform and opening was the end all to be all and negating the earlier the historical neolism that Y’all talks about, which is negating the Mao era. He thinks there’s important lessons for the Mao era. He’s not a Maoist at all, and he certainly doesn’t believe in bottom up revolution. He’s a very top down sort of guy.

But I do think he has a very different vision for the economy. I do think he’s willing. We saw with the private education sector, he seemingly didn’t lose much sleep over completely wiping out a major industry, forcing markets around the world to shed tens of billions of dollars and sending huge numbers of young Chinese into unemployment with this crackdown on private education and tech. And I think ultimately that’s cheap. I don’t believe I think he’s a very different breed. When I showed up in China, it was Zhang Zumin and obviously Jung Zumin and Zhu Rong Xi.

Very different than Hujing Tao and Win jabao. And then today, and I myself was astonished by who Xi Jinping is. I think he’s deeply ambitious and has very different ideas about where China will go, how it will get there, and those have very big economic implications.

Tony

Wow. I’d love to have a two hour conversation with you guys. Let’s just keep it quick. Thank you so much for this time. I think we can maybe do, if things take a different turn, let’s do another conversation in a couple of weeks or something. But I really appreciate your time and thanks, guys. Really. Thank you very much.

Podcasts

The Federal Reserve Was Slow To React But Inflation Is Real This Time

Post author By admin
Post date October 19, 2022

This podcast was originally published at https://www.bfm.my/podcast/morning-run/market-watch/us-fed-reserve-inflation-rate-down-slowing-car-homes-sales

All eyes will be on the US CPI data as it gives us an indication of the quantum and pace of rate hikes. But is the Federal Reserve too slow to see if inflation is coming down when there is anecdotal evidence of slowing car and home sales? Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence tells us.

Transcript

BFM

This is a podcast from BFM 89.9. The Business Station BFM 89 Nine. Good morning. You are listening to the Morning Run. I’m Shazana Mokhtar with Wong Shou Ning and Chong Tjen San. 07:00 a.m on Thursday the 13 October. Let’s kickstart the morning with a recap on how global markets closed yesterday.

BFM

Looking at US markets, all three key indices close in the red S&P 500, down zero 3%. The Dow and Nasdaq down zero 0.1%. And I think that the S&P has been down for six consecutive days already. Moving to Asian markets, and the Nikkei down marginally 0.02%. Hang Seng down 0.8%. The Shanghai Composite Index back the trend. It’s up 1.5%. Straights Times Index down 0.7%. And our very own FBM KLCI is down 0.5%.

BFM

So for some thoughts on where international markets are heading, we have on the line with us Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence. Tony, good morning. Thanks as always for joining us. Now, US CPI data is due out on Friday. What are your expectations for that figure? And how much of this do you think will determine the quantum of the next Fed rate hike?

Everything rests on CPI right now. So I think if it comes in line or higher than expected, it’s just bad news for markets for the next few days. So people are hoping for a lower number because it would provide some relief and some proof that inflation has maybe peaked or is at least slowing down. I think it’s possible that we have it come in slightly under, but given the PPI reading that came today, it’s not a good a sign. So we may see CPI continue to rise in tomorrow’s trading day in the US.

BFM

Okay, Tony, we have a history of the Fed being late to the game, right, when it came to inflation. They kept saying “transitory, transitory,” and we know it wasn’t transitory at all. Do you think that they are also late to the game in recognizing that inflation has been brought under control? Because when I look at some of the data points, one of which is used car sales, that’s dropping. New car sales are also dropping. House sales, home sales are also dropping. Is it possible that inflation is being overstated?

Well, you’re 100% right on the Fed being late to the game, both to recognize inflation and to impact it. The problem that we’re seeing with, say, used cars is, although the unit volume is slowing, the unit price is still rising for, say, used cars, for eating out, for these sorts of things. There’s still been upward pressure on these because of the factor input costs and supply chains and labor and others. So it does feel in the US like things have not that prices have gone back down, but that the rate of rise has slowed. That’s what it feels like at the consumer level, except for petrol, gasoline, which has started to rise again over the past week.

BFM

Let’s take a look over at the UK, where George Bailey, the Bank of England Governor, said that the BoE would end support for UK Gilts by the end of this week. What does this mean for the Pound specifically and other sterling-denominated UK assets like equities?

Oh gosh, we’re likely to see more devaluation of the Pound. There’ll be pressure on the Pound. Well, maybe not devaluation, but depreciation of the Pound. UK pension funds and other guiltholders will likely have to sell assets if the BoE is stopping their intervention in that market. They’re likely to likely to see downward pressure on those prices. So holders of those assets, like big pension funds, will have to use other assets to pay for their collateral for those investments. So it’s going to be ugly all around once the BoE stops because the market for guilt is so weak.

And we’ve seen for the Bank of Japan, we’ve seen for the Fed, for different auctions, different government debt auctions, there have been zero takers for government debt auction. And that tells me they’re not paying enough. The interest rates for that debt has to rise because people feel like inflation and interest rates are going to rise. So these governments need to offer their debt out at a higher rate so that people can make a profit with it, given the inflation environment.

BFM

And Tony moving on to China with a Party Congress meeting happening very soon, and with Xi Jinping set to win an unpresented term, what economic implications would that have for China? And with growth slowing down across the world, how will they aim to achieve the goal of common prosperity?

Yeah, Common Prosperity as a definition can be really taken as raising people up, or it can be taken as pushing kind of those achievers down. Okay. And if you look at China’s history in the late 50’s and the 60’s, as you know, Mao Zedong really pushed those achievers down through the great famine and all this other stuff. So my fear is that as Xi Jinping has consolidated his power, he’s going to start well, he’s already started a couple of years ago, pushing some of those economic overachievers down like Jack Ma and other people.

So I really do worry coming out of this Party Congress that we get a much more restrictive Chinese economy. We’ve already seen foreign investor sentiment sour on China, and we’ve already seen with code lockdowns, with supply chain lockdowns and other things, there has been a functionally more restrictive environment and with sentiment souring as well.

I’m not optimistic, at least in the short term. The Chinese government, whether it’s Xi Jinping or other elements of the Chinese government, they’re going to have to do something to reassure the world that they are a good faith partner in global supply chains and for manufacturing. It’s not going to make them happy to do that. But if they want to continue growing at the rates they have grown, they’re going to have to do that.

So when I say I’m not optimistic about China, I’m not saying China is going to crash. I’m saying I think they’re going to have some pretty mediocre growth rates in the coming years because of the economic environment, regulatory environment and market environment that they’ve cultivated of late.

BFM

OK, Tony, I want to stay in Asia and I want to look specifically at Japan because the Yen weakened to a fresh two-decade low, hitting 146 to the US dollar. What do we make of this? Is this really on the back of Corona vowing to maintain its very accommodative monetary policy?

Well, they have a choice. They can either support the yen or they can buy government bonds. And they’ve continued buying their bonds. So I think they’ve made a choice not to support the currency. And with the strong US dollar position and Janet Yellen made some comments today saying, again, saying that it’s really not the US’s responsibility to maintain the currencies, economies of other parts of the world. It wasn’t those exact words, but it was similar. That will likely push the dollar even stronger and we’re likely to see even more depreciation of the Japanese yen.

So there is a lot of pressure on Japan right now, and the Bank of Japan really has some decisions to make about how they’re going to approach that. Maybe they’re okay with depreciating their currency, but it will fundamentally change things like their imports of energy. They’re very dependent on imported energy. They’re very dependent on imported, say, raw materials like metals for their manufacturing. So this really changes their approach to managing those imports.

BFM

Tony, thanks very much for speaking to us this morning. That was Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence, giving us his take on some of the trends that he sees moving markets in the days and weeks ahead.

BFM

Yeah, I like his comments on the yen. Right. At what point does it then become really painful for the Japanese economy? Net energy imported, clearly LNG from Malaysia is one of the key imports. What does this then mean for inflation? But it’s one country where inflation has been ultra low, almost as low as ours, I think barely 2-3% for them. But for them it’s a bit of a shocker because they’ve been in a deflationary period for more than ten years.

BFM

Yeah, and his comments on China, I think he said that growth would likely be slow over the next couple of years, and I guess Xi Jinping and China will unlikely dial back on its Zero Covid policy next week. It looks very unlikely at this point.

BFM

I mean, everyone’s hoping to see some kind of announcement to that vein. But again, lots of things to look out for in the weeks ahead.

BFM

We just heard headlines coming out Shanghai, parts of it under even more lockdown.

BFM

Well, very quickly, let’s take a look at some good news. I guess that’s coming out of Australia. We have contest airways. They said their first half year profit will jump to as much as 1.3 billion Australian dollars as travel demand accelerates and the airline stabilizes operations after a prolonged and bruising period of cancelations and delays. This ends a streak of five consecutive half yearly losses totalling 7 billion Australian dollars.

BFM

It said that the frequency of scrap flights, late departures and loss backs are all improving. CEO Alan Joyce said it’s been really challenging time for the national carrier, but the announcement shows that how far the airline has actually improved, and they’ve seen big improvements in their operational performance and acceleration in financial performance as well. And this takes some pressure off Joyce.

BFM

Well, if I look at the street, they like this stock. Twelve buys, three holes. One sell. Contest at close was $5 and 17 Australian cents. Tucker price, 653.

BFM

All right, 718 in the morning. We’re heading into some messages. Stay tuned. BFM 89 Nine you have been listening.

BFM

To a podcast from BFM 89 Nine, the business station. For more stories of the same kind, download the VSM app.

Podcasts

Tech giants reveal algorithm secrets to Beijing

Post author By admin
Post date August 22, 2022

This podcast is originally published in BBC Business Matters with the link here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172ydpzfk05ps8

Roger Hearing is joined by writer and journalist Karen Percy in Melbourne, and the Founder of AI firm Complete Intelligence, Tony Nash, in Houston.

They discuss the tech giants in China that have shared details of their algorithms with Beijing for the first time.

The first day of campaigning is getting under way in Brazil’s presidential elections, due to take place on the Second of October. What is the impact on the economy?

The Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, has confirmed his predecessor secretly held five parliamentary roles undertaken in the two years before losing power in May earlier this year. Meanwhile, in the US voters in Wyoming are expected to oust Liz Cheney from her seat in Congress in Republican primary elections taking place on Tuesday.

Transcript

BBC: Also say hello to Tony Nash, founder of AI firm Complete Intelligence, who’s joining us from Houston. So, Tony, very good evening to you.

TN: Hi, Roger. Good evening.

BBC: Good to have you with us. And we’re going to talk let me come to you coming. You’re involved in the AI world, which I guess is in that zone, too. I mean, our algorithms really the great bugbear that we think they are, as Ken was saying, leading us in places we perhaps don’t want to go but are unable to resist, or is it just a very simple way of selling us stuff?

TN: Sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not. These things are trade secrets, whether or not they are, say, patents or excuse me or something like that, these are trade secrets. And companies have spent a lot of time and a lot of money developing them. And so in China, you can expect to have these things demanded to be revealed because there really isn’t personal property in China as much as we think there is, there isn’t in the west and the US. We like to think that we have personal property and company owned property. And so if a government were to command a company to release an algorithm or a trade secret or a business process, then that would effectively be nationalization of property, and it’s just not right.

BBC: Yeah. Some members of Congress certainly want that, as we heard from Facebook and others.

TN: All they do is talk for a living. They’ve never built a business. They don’t know what it’s like to actually value something. And so if something were commanded to be opened, unless it was for a national security reason, which everyone understands, but if things were commanded to be opened, it would be a long fight. But property rights, intellectual property rights are a really big deal, especially over the last 30, 40 years, as we’ve had a software led world. So, again, you can get this in China, where there really are not individual property rights. And for one to expect to have individual property rights in China is silly. But in the west, one would hope that we would have property rights, especially intellectual property rights, and this would not be something that would happen.

BBC: Yeah, but I suppose there’s always compromise in that. That’s a fair point, Tony, in the sense that these are mega companies with enormous power and they are trading in our data. So it isn’t a normal commercial relationship, is it?

TN: No, Roger. What governments have to do and what citizens have to do, if there is objectionable behavior, then they have to legislate and regulate that objectionable behavior. If people are being discriminated against, if people are being threatened, if one political party or another is being favored, those things need to be regulated and legislated. But seizing intellectual property is not the way to do it because the precedent there is devastating. And in the US. Where you have an IP based economy, it would take down valuations of massive companies very quickly.

BBC: But we’ve heard, Tony, that Twitter has effectively open source on this. I mean, maybe they’re not doing brilliantly, but they’re doing okay.

TN: That Twitter API.

TN: Has been available for years, and it kind of tells you what’s going on, but it really doesn’t. And so it’s not a credible example, really, because they kind of let you know a little bit of things. And sure, you can download the data, and that’s a business that Twitter has had for a long, long time, where you can download the data to detect patterns and these sorts of things, but it’s not really letting go of their trade secrets, and that’s where the value is.

KP: That one of the concerns I would have is that politicians, though, rarely want to regulate or legislate. There’s this whole kind of mantra like, oh, no, we’ll let you do your thing, whether it’s the market or whatever. Politicians don’t like to regulate, they don’t like to legislate, and they’re in the rub for me.

BBC: Well, I think there are politicians and politicians, if I can anticipate what I.

TN: Mean, I live in America. Politicians here love to regulate.

BBC: Maybe economics. Tell me there’s a funny aspect of this that Brazil almost seems to be shadowing the US. In a funny sort of way. A similar kind of president, perhaps, in Bolsonaro to what we saw with Trump and some of the same economic issues.

TN: Yeah, I really don’t follow Bolsonaro all that closely, although I know he’s populist and he’s had some new economic measures go out recently that were very populous. So from that respect, you may be right. I think Brazilians have seen Lula before, and they’ve seen Bolsonaro before, so they know what to expect from each president. So at least they’re voting with their eyes open because they know how each performed in previous administrations.

BBC: Yeah, which may of course, be what’s informing the polling, if we believe the polling at the moment. Exactly. And tell you, one of the aspects always seems to me is this is the classic sleeping giant. I mean, it’s an enormous country with enormous resources, and one always bumps into Brazilians. Almost everyone goes, you still about China in a way. It’s a sleeping giant of this. It’s odd that a country like this hasn’t risen to its proper position in the global economy.

TN: Well, but it’s getting there. If you look at, for example, the AG exports that Brazil provides to China, it is a major supplier of the Chinese economy with AG and metals. So Brazil is getting there, and it’s gradually building up. Of course, there’s still a lot of poverty there, and I don’t know of administration in Brazil, and maybe I’m overstepping here, but I don’t know of an administration in Brazil that hasn’t been accused of corruption. Lula was, Temerer was.

BBC: They all are. I think it seems to be a regular thing. True or not, it seems to be there.

TN: Right the time I was absolved. So I just want to make that clear. But they were accused of that coming out of office.

BBC: Of course, one of her key issues is what happened on January 6. She’s on the Congressional committee investigating that at the moment. So meanwhile, Mr. Trump has backed a candidate rivaling her, Harriet Huggerman, who opinion polls suggests will easily win the Republican nomination for the seat. Miss Cheney earlier urged Democrats to register as Republicans in order to boost her slim prospect. I mean, Tony, this is an extraordinary sort of development in a way, because this change is close. It comes really to Republican royalty, isn’t she?

TN: Unfortunately, yes. So we don’t really like royalty in American politics. And so I think part of the problem here is that Lynn Cheney is in the House of Representatives and she represents a state that, whether she likes it or not, is very pro Trump. And so she is not representing her constituents. And at the end of the day, that’s really what this story comes down to, is when a representative is elected by a state, the people expect that representative to actually represent their views in Washington, DC. That’s how the US legislature works. And what’s happened is Liz Cheney has decided that she doesn’t want to represent the people of Wyoming and she wants to have her own views and do things that they don’t want her to do. And that’s really what this comes down to.

BBC: Isn’t there an issue here, though, to do with you delegate and representative? I mean, many people who represent an area in the legislature aren’t necessarily going to transmit the views of the people who elected them because they were elected to have their views heard in the parliament or wherever it is.

TN: In the US Congress. In the House of Representatives. They have two year tenure and they have to be elected every two years. And that’s to ensure that we have a diversity of opinion in Washington, DC. Whether or not one likes Trump or doesn’t like Trump doesn’t matter. I think the issue here is that Liz Cheney is not representing the views of her constituents and they have every prerogative to vote her out. And that’s really what this is about. The people of Wyoming, I haven’t seen the results. I don’t think polls are closed yet.

BBC: But no, I think they’re still open. This Cheney represents the people of Wyoming, not just it is predominantly a Republican, as you say, but not just the Republican Party. She represents the people who voted for it.

TN: But there is one representative from Wyoming. And so, yes, she represents the people of Wyoming. But if she’s a representative of a political party and she’s elected by that political party and the voters in that, so the Republican Party of Wyoming has actually censored her. So they’ve told her that the actions she’s taking are not endorsed by the republican Party of Wyoming. She’s known for over a year. So shortly after the 2020 election, they censored her. And so she’s been way out of bounds for almost two years because it’s the party, she has to go through the party system at the state level to get on the ballot for the primary, so she can win the primary to win the election. And so she really does report to the people and to the party in Wyoming. So it’s kind of the ugly side of democracy, but there is accountability in representation.

BBC: Well, clearly, but I suppose the other thing is that I’ve heard reported is that Liz Cheney, in terms of her views, apart from on the subject of Donald Trump, her views aligned pretty perfectly with most of the Republican voters of Wyoming. Very conservative on most issues. It does seem to be Trump. That’s the issue. Which seems strange to hear that this man still has so much influence over almost everything that happens in US politics.

TN: I don’t know that that’s the case. I think, to be very honest, I think Trump is good for US media and I think US media love covering Trump. Trump has very little to do with a lot that goes on. But if you watch US media, every day has a story about Trump and that story gets the most clicks and the most views. So whether or not Trump has something to do with the story, us media love to make the story about Trump because they know they will get traffic on that story.

BBC: But the reason they get traffic on the story is because people are interested in them. It’s a circle, isn’t it?

TN: Well, I don’t know. I think most people would like to understand what the actual issues are exclusive of Trump, but with the obsession that US media have on Trump, people just can’t get away from it because you have a kind of a splintered media environment in the US. And a lot of that is partisan to the left and to the right. So people can get partisan news really anywhere. But it’s the main US media that really seemed to have this obsession with Trump that they just can’t quit because he gets views and he gets airtime and people watch their shows when he’s on it.

BBC: That would be true in Texas as well as Wyoming, where you are.

TN: Anywhere in the US.

If a story is about Trump, some people intensively hate him, some people intensively love him, and people are in the middle and you just cannot avoid it. You just can’t avoid it.

BBC: Penny I mean, your neck of the woods, I guess that might be where the William Mammoth ends up if colossal get their way. How do you feel about all this, Penny?

TN: Well, it’s a Texas company that did it exactly. Maybe they just wanted more things to hunt, right? We like to hunt in Texas.

BBC: Everything is big. Of course, in Texas. So that makes some sense.

TN: Yeah. So if we do make woolly mammoths, great. And I think I’m kidding about the hunting, but I think it’s really interesting as different species are, say, overhunted or whatever, I’m curious how they’ll be accepted once they’re reintroduced. So let’s say someone is the first farmer to find this to be a pest and shoots it. So how will that person be treated if this marsupial is reintroduced?

BBC: That’s a really key question.

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