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.
The midterms decide who controls Congress as well as state legislatures and governor’s offices. Rahul Tandon is joined by Dianne Brady, assistant managing editor of Forbes from New York and Tony Nash, the founder of Complete Intelligence in Texas.
Billions of US dollars are being spent on the election campaign adverts that voters will be seeing and hearing in the run-up to the elections – but is it worth the investment?
And has the economic situation in the US overshadowed the overturning of Roe v Wade?
Transcript
Rahul
Hello, and welcome to Business Matters here on the BBC World Service. I’m Rahul Tandonin-depth. On the program today, we’re taking an in depth look at the US midterms. As millions of Americans get ready to vote, we’re going to be looking at the economic factors that are going to have a huge impact on their decisions. I’ll be joined throughout the program, as always, by two guests on opposite sides of the world. We have Dianne Brady, assistant managing editor of Forbes, who’s in New York, was on the program just a couple of days ago, but she did so well, we decided to bring her back. Diane, is it exciting in New York? Are people gripped by election fever?
Dianne
Well, yes and no. Let’s just say New York is considered a flyover state by some, so I don’t think this would be considered a swing state. But yes, lots of excitement, of course, as we look around the country, and everything feels high stakes.
Rahul
It does indeed. The laugh you heard there was from Tony Nash, who is the founder of Complete Intelligence, who’s in Texas you need quite a lot of intelligence to understand the midterms. I think, Tony.
Tony
I’ve never heard of New York described as a fly overstate.
Dianne
All right, well, I’m a Canadian turned American citizen, so forgive me all listeners who think I’m being cavalier here, but I think it’s not inaccurate.
Rahul
But I don’t think there’s no need to ask for forgiveness so far in the program.
Dianne
The election is over.
Rahul
Yeah, maybe by the end of it you might need more than forgiveness, but who knows? Tony, for our listeners who will have heard of the midterms, can you try and explain what happens here? Because there’s lots of terms that we’re going to use. The Senate, the House, governors. I mean, what are people voting for?
Tony
Sure. So every four years we have a presidential election where you vote from the president on down to, say, local offices. Like in Texas, it’s people who run your waterboard and judges and your local commissioners. So it’s from the president on down. In between presidential elections, we have what are called the midterms.
Tony
So every two years so in the US. House of Representatives, those representatives have to campaign and be reelected every two years. Senators are reelected every six years. So not every senator is up for election in every election cycle. And then you have governors, and those governor’s terms change by state. They’re not always the same. In some cases, it’s four years. In some cases it’s five years. And I don’t know if there’s other places, but Americans are now voting on kind of everything except the president, and those, say, Senate seats and governorships that are not up for vote.
Rahul
Well, I tell you what. That was pretty impressive, actually. If you ever see a job as a sort of political correspondent, I think you might get one, Tony, I think we’re done here. Real quick.
Dianne
Tony, summer up beautifully.
Rahul
There we go. Should we all go? No. Oh, probably not, Dianne. And this is important, isn’t it? Because at the moment, the Democrats, which is the party of President Biden, they control the House and the Senate, there is a strong possibility that they may lose both, which will have huge implications for President Biden’s ability to pass legislation.
Rahul
I think Diane said there’s a lot to get through and we’re going to try and get through some of that. Let’s start by looking at the key economic issues.
Rahul
Cost of living, Tony, is something that people around the world want tackled. I’m sure that as people begin to cast their votes in a few hours time, when those polls do eventually open up on Tuesday for the midterms, that will be close to the top of the agenda. When we talk about the Democrats and the Republicans, the left and the right, what are the big economic differences between them and tackling this problem?
Tony
Well, I think there was a bill passed about a year ago, the Inflation Reduction Act. Diane, tell me if I’m wrong. I think it was $3 trillion in spending, and I think that was one that many Republicans didn’t want because there was a feeling that that was going to contribute to inflation. And so I think there was. The irony of it is just a year earlier, in the depths of COVID there was a massive stimulus package passed under the Republicans that everyone was happy about. So I think it’s easy to say, while the Democrats are the ones who spend and the Republicans are the ones who don’t, it’s not really the case. It really just depends on what they spend on. Republicans tend to spend on things like defense and security and law enforcement and these sorts of things. Democrats tend to spend on things like social programs. So I don’t know that one is necessarily more disciplined than the other. They just have different spending priorities.
Rahul
When we think of Texas, we think of gas, gas prices. We’ve seen President Biden releasing those strategic reserves of oil to try and bring down the price of gas. Is it that crucial a factor, do you think, in these elections? Will Americans just look at the cost of putting it in their vehicles and say, it’s too high, I don’t want to vote for this government?
Tony
Well, I think I saw a poll earlier today and I think it said that 65% of Americans believe that Biden is responsible for high gasoline prices. And I thought that was really surprising. I think it was from Pew. I can’t remember who it was from, but it was credible polling group. So Americans do see that and they do see that on Biden’s first day, he killed the pipeline, a potential pipeline from Canada, which would have brought heavy sour crude from Canada to fill US refinery.
Rahul
But these are global factors really, aren’t? I mean, of course, there are individual factors that will impact that.
Tony
No, they’re not global factors because the fact is, the sources of the crude that we need for American refineries is heavy sour. And there’s places like Venezuela or Saudi Arabia or other places where we could get it. But the most accessible is Canada. And so Americans do pay attention to that stuff, and they do pay attention to what is impacting gasoline prices because it’s such a huge portion of their budget. And so I think policy does lead to the cost of living, and I think it is a big factor. And I think people are looking at the way the different parties have reacted to this. And when that pipeline was canceled, republicans were very unhappy and voiced it. So I think that’s the case. And like I said, I think 60, 65% of Americans believe that Biden does have responsibility for the gasoline price in the US.
Rahul
Tony, one thing that often happens after midterm elections in the US is we begin to get an idea of who the presidential candidates are going to be. Do you think that we are likely to see in two years time a rerun of President Biden against Donald Trump, or do you think it will be other candidates for both parties?
Tony
To be honest, I think it’s too early to tell. I think even if Donald Trump starts campaigning Tuesday or Wednesday, I don’t necessarily think that it’s a done deal because people like Ronda Santos have taken a national profile.
Rahul
That’s the governor of Florida, isn’t it?
Tony
Governor of Florida. That’s right. And so I don’t think that Trump kind of as the Republican candidate is a done deal. I also don’t think that Biden as the Democrat candidate is a done deal. I think we’re very much things are very much in play, and really, anything could happen. I wouldn’t want to put money on, say, Trump or Biden right now because I think two years is a long time.
Rahul
Is it a bit harder for the Democrats? Because we know that with the Florida governor, there is, it seems, a candidate that the Republican Party can get behind if it isn’t President Biden, is there an obvious Democratic candidate at this moment in time? Tony.
Tony
I think there are a lot of people who believe they are, but I think maybe Gavin Newsom in California, but I think his politics are a little bit too far left for most of those independent votes that both Republicans and Democrats really try to get in order to get elected. So I think people like Gavin Newsom in terms of, like, political consultants do, because he looks good on television and all this other stuff, but I just don’t think he’s electable for a nationwide office.
Rahul
What we’re seeing here, Tony, and there’s a large Hispanic community, isn’t it, in Texas who play a significant role in elections there. Are we seeing these communities, whether it’s the Latino voter, whether it’s the black vote saying, don’t take my vote for granted, and that’s a message for all parties.
Tony
Sure, absolutely. If you look, say, on the border in the US. Part of my family lives in Del Rio, Texas, and they’ve never seen the quantity of people crossing the border that they’ve seen before, traditionally Democratic voters. And they’re really questioning their voting intentions because of the things that they’re seeing on the border. We’ve seen Texas border counties really start to swing right because of that. These communities that are small and safe and other things have really had an influx of people, and it’s really threatened, I guess, their way of life on the border. So some of these places that were very, very securely Democratic locations have started to move away from that.
Rahul
Tony, have you been flooded with lots of different political adverts as well across TV, across social media, across everything?
Tony
Yeah, I saw more during the World Series than I had seen in other places, but I just kind of ignore them, to be honest.
Tony
Yeah, I think it can I think a couple of dances on TikTok are probably worthwhile as well, but I think TV advertising is probably worth it.
Rahul
Are there any dancers of Tony Nash on TikTok, by any chance?
Tony
No, but I’ve seen some comments about different candidates kind of dancing on TikTok, and it was kind of silly. But it does get people talking about the candidate, and who knows if it works. I’m not 22 anymore, so it may work on me if I was 22.
Rahul
And when we’re looking at turnout here, we touched on it briefly before we heard John Sadworth saying to us that it was going to be a good turnout here. But the simple fact is, in the midterms, the majority of voters never vote, do they?
Dianne
That’s usually the case. I don’t think that will be the case this time. Tony, what do you think?
Tony
So I went to early vote last week, and I had to stand in line for quite a while to vote. So I think people are really, really engaged this time around, and I think it’s mostly because people’s pocketbooks are hurting and they’re just tired of it. So I think you’re hugely engaged because of the economy.
Rahul
That is interesting. Let us see what those numbers are. We will get them very, very shortly. Tony, if you believe the polls, and often that may not be a sensible thing to do nowadays when we talk about elections, they do seem to indicate that this is not going to be as important an issue. Clearly it’s a very difficult issue for many Americans, but it’s not going to sway voters as much as maybe people thought it was going to sway voters a few months ago.
Tony
It definitely won’t, I think. Look, all the Supreme Court said is that they’re leaving it up to the states, and so there’s no issue for mobility in the US. So people can go to another state to have an abortion if they want. So I think we had the initial emotion after the Supreme Court judgment, but I think when people really realized it’s a state issue and many of the things in the US. Constitution are really devolved to the states, and so this just takes that same issue and puts it up to the states unless the states decide. And so I think most adults, when they read it and they consider that if they really want to have an abortion, they can drive or get on a flight and go to another state, it’s really actually pretty simple.
Rahul
It’s a communicated economy, the US. Isn’t it? Because you look at it and we hear this talk of recession, we hear this talk about the incredible rises in inflation, cost of living, and at the same time, you sort of hear still about a very strong jobs market. Still.
Tony
Yes. But what we are starting to see there was an announcement yesterday, I think, that Meta, Facebook will soon be announcing major job cuts. And so job cuts are starting to hit the tech sector. Companies like Stripe laid off, I think, 18% of their workforce. Twitter had some big layoffs last week, and so tech is really starting to be hit hard with layoffs. So a lot of the discussion about job vacancies and unemployment, say, out of the Fed and the White House, that will start to even out. And the job market by the end of the year will likely be much less strong than it is right now.
Rahul
Yeah, I knew Twitter was going to make its way into the program at some particular point. Okay. Prediction diane. What is what’s going to happen?
Dianne
I think the House will go to the Republican. Senate, will hold Democrat, and Biden will have a tougher time the next two years.
Tony
Tony, Republicans get the House, they get 52 in the Senate, and they pick up a couple of governorships.
Rahul
Okay, well, thank you to both of you for your insights and thoughts on the American midterm elections. Americans will vote on Tuesday for the Senate, for the House, for governors as well. We’ll bring you all the results here on the BBC World Service. You.
Sam Rines wrote a piece on business costs and uncertainty weighing on earnings this season. He talked us through what’s happening with interesting charts on Caterpillar and Old Dominion.
We saw Facebook turn dramatically this week and we saw KWEB up over 7% on Friday. At the same time, Amazon, Pinterest, and others with disappointing earnings. Tech isn’t really a sector-wide play as it was in 2020 and 2021. Alber Marko explains what should we be looking at in tech.
We’ve had a lot of action in Europe with Russia cutting off the gas in Poland and Bulgaria and a demand that oil and gas be paid in Rubles. Tracy Shuchart explains what it means for commodity prices and the market in general.
Key themes from last week
Earnings: COGS in the Machine
Earnings: Tech
Europe-Gas-Ruble Chaos
This is the 16th episode of The Week Ahead in collaboration with Complete Intelligence and Intelligence Quarterly, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.
TN: Hi everyone. This is The Week Ahead. I’m Tony Nash. We’re joined today by Tracy Shuchart, Sam Rines, and Albert Marko. Before we get started, I’d like to ask you to like and subscribe. Also, please note this is the last weekend for our CI future promo. $50 a month for thousands of assets reforecast weekly. So please go to completeintol.com/promo. Subscribe for $50 a month and you will get global market and economic information. Thanks for that.
So, guys, this week is a little bit exciting. We have a few key themes that we’re looking at this week. Two of them are earnings-related. One is COGS in the machine, which is related to a newsletter that Sam Rines put out today. The other one is tech. And the last thing we’re looking at is the Europe-Gas-Ruble chaos.
So, Sam, you wrote a piece today on business costs and uncertainty weighing on earnings. So can you walk us through this? We’ve got a couple of slides from your newsletter up. One is Caterpillar Earnings. Maybe you could walk us through that first and then we’ll go to the Old Dominion earnings and walk through why those are so important.
SR: I think it’s really interesting to kind of at least be able to get some real-world understanding of what’s happening on the ground. Right. We all know wages are going up. We know costs are going up. We know shipping costs are going up. But how that was going to be reflected through the earnings season was somewhat of an unknown. Right. We knew it was going to affect us, but we didn’t know to what extent.
The interesting part about Caterpillar and one of the reasons I like to point it out is that they had pricing power. They pushed prices pretty heavily down the system. The problem for them was that they couldn’t push the price as much as their materials and shipping costs went up. It was simply too big of a headwind, at least for the first quarter. Their orders are fine. The business itself is okay. But generally what we saw was pricing power. Not… There were a few, but pricing power was generally unable to keep up with the cost pressures overall.
The interesting one and kind of related to Caterpillar are Polaris. Polaris is one of the most interesting companies. It’s consumer-facing yet, it’s a manufacturer. It’s something you don’t need a new side by side typically. You don’t need it. Right. These aren’t needs. These are more of discretionary spending. They had a very similar problem to Caterpillar. But the end market user for these is very similar to Harley Davidson. There was another one that had issues.
The inventories are extraordinarily low. Right. Their inventory levels at dealerships are very low. So eventually when they can pick up their production, they’re going to be able to push up their production numbers pretty significantly just to be able to refill the inventory pipeline at their dealership. So while it’s a big headwind today, it’s worth watching call it nine to 18 months down the road when you begin to see signs of these material costs abating, the supply chains getting back to normal.
Those companies are going to be able to put up some pretty interesting numbers very quickly.
TN: So, Sam, will they leak in gradual price rises? Because it doesn’t sound like they’ve been able to do it all at once. But will they continue to raise prices even as, say, the primary factors of inflation start to abate a little bit?
SR: Oh, yes. That’s been a constant theme of this earnings season has been. We will continue to either try to find ways to squeeze costs out of the supply chain, and normalize those somewhat, but almost more emphasized was there will be price increases to offset all of this.
To your point on Old Dominion, they just tossed on fuel surcharges.
TN: Yeah.
SR: If you’re going to have problems with freight, fine. But we’re going to surcharge you on fuel. And they only pushed about 50% of their overall gain. And year over year was pure surcharge. So it was an interesting one.
TN: And fuel charges are sticky, right. They don’t take those off right when fuel prices go down, they keep those for a year after the prices go down, right?
SR: Correct. Right. It’s the interesting part about all of this is these price increases are not going to be reversed. Caterpillar is not going to take off their price increases. Polaris probably isn’t going to take off some of their price increases, Old Dominion is unlikely in the near term. These are going to be fairly sticky over time.
TN: Okay. So last week when both you and Tracy weren’t here and Albert and I did the heavy lifting to keep the show going, we talked about sticky prices and we talked about how we hit new pricing levels. Even if the rate of inflation slows down, we’ve hit new pricing levels. Is that semi-permanent? Is that permanent or is that transitory?
SR: It’s a step function, right. Okay. You step up and then you’re not going to step back down. You step up the price increases and then maybe you can trickle two or 3% inflation on top of that going forward. But step-functions do not reverse. And I would say that this is much more of a step function type deal.
TN: Okay, good news, Tracy. You were going to add?
TS: I was just going to add I mean, the business survey. The Fed business survey came out small business survey came out this week and they were looking at it in four out of ten small businesses said they were looking at price increases of 10% or more. So this is across the board, not just for mega-cap companies.
TN: Right. Yeah. And even since I talk about coffee so much, even one of the small coffee roasters who I know, said his costs had risen 50% over the last year and he was only able to put in a 20 to 25% price rise. But I’m certain that he’s going to continue to gradually work price rises over the next year or two as we’ve hit this kind of plateau, or at least step function in price rises. So good news all around. Right.
So as we stay on COG, Sam, you had a portion in your newsletter talking about Meta, and we’ve got that on-screen talking about their G&A increase. Can you talk us through that?
SR: Yeah. So I thought it was pretty interesting. They increased their employee base by 28% year over year. I mean, this whole idea is that hiring is tough. It wasn’t for Meta. But the funny part is, or not funny. But G&A was up 45, so you hired 28% more people, but G&A popped 45. Again, that’s a step up that probably isn’t going to step down any time soon unless they’re going to begin laying people off. Right. Maybe it’ll roll out of earnings next year, but it’s not going well.
TN: We’ve seen some tech layoffs, right.
SR: Some.
TN: Announced over the past week. It’s not like it’s not a huge trend yet, but we’ve seen a few.
SR: Yeah. And the other important part that I think was overlooked was Snapchat, Facebook, or Meta, whatever you want to call it, when they announced earnings, they cited that, listen, when you have inflationary pressures, wage pressures and you’re a small business, guess where the discretionary spend is, that’s marketing budgets.
Marketing budgets will get cut and get cut fairly dramatically and fairly quickly if you continue to have this. And not to mention if you don’t have the stuff to sell and you continue to have supply chain issues, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to spend a lot of money on marketing. So I think those two raised some red flags, I think we’re subtly overlooked by a lot of people sitting on.
TN: We talked about this last week and how a lot of ad inventories are likely to come online soon. So there’s a supply problem and a demand problem with those companies going forward. I think the names that come to mind will probably do fine. The smaller names are probably going to suffer. So it might be tough.
Albert, on that, we saw Facebook turned dramatically this week in the last half of the week after they reported earnings. KWEB was up 7% today, a stock that we talked about here a few weeks ago. But at the same time, Amazon, Pinterest, and others are disappointed. So tech was a sector-wide play in ’20 and ’21. It’s not that anymore, is it?
AM: Yes and no. The problem with tech is that there are about a dozen names that the Fed uses to pump the market. So forget about Pinterest. That’s too small of a company. We’re looking at Google, Facebook, Meta, whatever you want to call it. Not so much Amazon, but the other ones like AMD and whatnot? So they’re going to yoyo those earnings in those pumps. So what they’ll do is they’ll wait until Netflix…
They know that Netflix will miss and they’ll pump the market to soften the blow and then they know that Apple is going to beat so they’ll let the market sell-off and use that to drive up the market. So this is just a cat and mouse game by the Fed to just manipulate the markets until what they’ve been saying is a soft landing.
The tech earnings are just playing right into that narrative of theirs. They know what the earnings are beforehand and they just play the market like that. So going on with tech earnings? Yeah, I mean they are weak. We can see that they are incredibly weak.
Will they be weak for the whole year? I don’t know. They do like the Nasdaq. So I wouldn’t want to be short tech going into the summer. But that’s just my personal opinion. But then you see KWEB surge because the Chinese start talking…
TN: Ion subsidies. Right. And government activity.
AM: It is what it is and you never know what type of government contracts Meta, Google, or whatnot will start popping into their bookkeeping. It’s a really dangerous game to short tech in my opinion.
TN: Yeah, well it’s interesting to me to see the user’s numbers like aint Netflix and I know there’s a couple of weeks old now but Netflix goes down. Pinterest goes down, Snapchat. These sorts of things. Amazon was kind of tepid but Facebook was really good. So I think we’re seeing almost some elasticity in some of these markets as we see people going back to work and we see other things happening. We’re finding out who’s going to be there no matter what and whose demand is a little bit flexible.
AM: Yeah. And then you’ll also find that some of these tech companies will look to acquisitions to boost their user numbers going into the fall. So this is why I don’t like the short tech at this level.
TN: By the way, if anybody is looking for a tech acquisition. Right here.
AM: Yeah, cool. 46 billion. Cool 46 billion will do it.
TN: Okay. Let’s move on to commodities. Tracy, there have been a lot of issues in Europe with the ruble as we’ve seen more countries decide to pay for oil and gas in rubles. We’ve seen some interesting action with the Euro and the ruble and with gas prices. Can you talk us through what’s going on there? And really, what does it mean? Because we’ve seen the price action. But what do you see its kind of meaning going forward?
TS: I mean what it means is Europe’s not directly paying in rubles. Right. What they’re going to do is they’re going to set up an account at Gasprom Bank. They will continue to pay in Euros, dollars, and local currency. In turn, Gasprom Bank will convert that currency into a separate account. So it’s not technically against sanctions. It’s a workaround. Right.
The interesting thing is EU didn’t have a choice, to be quite honest. They’re dependent on Russia for 67% of their natural gas. They don’t have LNG storage facilities built out. Those are going to take at least two to four years. I don’t care what they say next year, it’s not going to happen. Those things take a very long time.
So right now, they’re kind of being held hostage by Russians. So they’re going to have to pay as much as they don’t want to. Now they can wean themselves off of Russian oil a lot quicker because you can have the Middle East pick up that slack and they don’t import all that much. Right. It depends on the country. But Europe is not a huge source of oil exports for Russia. So that can happen.
And so for what I foresee, they’ll probably do that just so that they say we’re getting rid of Russian energy. Right. So I think you’ll see Russian oil cuts, I think that can be done relatively quickly. But as far as nat gas, I think it’s going to take a lot longer than most think. Even though they said they wanted two-thirds off by the end of 2022 and then completely out of Russian gas by 2027.
Again, I think that’s going to take a lot longer than they anticipate.
TN: Yeah. Can you imagine the conversion fees that Russian banks are charging for Euro to ruble? We’ll never know. Right.
TS: Banks are going to make money. It’s good for Russia. Right. That keeps the currency stable and it keeps their economy stable. And so, I mean, it’s kind of a win for Russia on this because the banks are winning and their currency and economy are winning on this one.
TN: Yeah. So we also had an emergency kind of this week with Russia saying they would turn off gas to Poland. And they did. But Poland has taken other measures since the war started to get other sources of gas. So it didn’t hurt them all that much, did it?
TS: Yeah, no, not at all. I mean, it was Poland and Bulgaria. They’re very adamant from the beginning to get out of Russian gas. They also don’t rely on it as much as, say, Germany does. Poland already built out an LG storage facility tank that’s completed.
They also produce a lot of coal and they use a lot of coal. And so that was not a surprise to me, nor did it hurt those countries very much.
TN: Right. What country do you think is in the most difficult position right now? Is it Germany?
TS: Germany hands down. A lot of the reasons are because they don’t have any other pipelines into Germany except Russia. So they’re definitely in the weakest position right now.
TN: Okay. So, guys, what do we expect, like, with the ruble going forward? It’s hit its pre-war levels. Do we expect the ruble to strengthen?
TS: Right now, yes, I think that it probably will continue to strengthen just because they’re asking for payments of commodities in the ruble.
TN: They’re not asking.
TS: Well, yes, they’re holding hostage. But it’s not just in other words, it’s not just the energy complex. It’s metals, agriculture, et cetera. So I think that we’ll probably see that continue to strengthen.
TN: Okay. Hey, I also wanted to ask you about fertilizer. I saw some of the Fertilizer stocks come off a bit this week. I know that we’ve talked about fertilizer before. Is it still as urgent of an issue as it was, say, three weeks ago? And if it is, why are Fertilizer stocks coming, falling this week?
TS: Well, I think partially because we saw kind of natural gas pullback a bit. Right. That kind of alleviated the pressure. We also saw the broader market sell-off, which means sell what you have to if you get a margin call. Right. And you had something like IPI, whose earnings were not as good as they could have been. Right. Considering. So it’s kind of a combination of everything.
SR: Yeah. And you are beginning to see signs of demand destruction as well. There was an announcement by a Brazilian farming giant that they were going to cut their fertilizer usage by 25 or more percent this year. So, yeah. Yields down, fertilizer up.
AM: Not to mention the good old dollar looking like it’s going to go to 110 on the Dixie causing problem everywhere.
TN: What do you think about that, Albert? What’s the time horizon for 110?
AM: I think we get that within the next two months. Yellen is on a mission to destroy emerging markets. She’s going to do with the dollar. She did this in 2013 when she was Fed chair. So, I mean, it’s the same playbook. It’s nothing new.
TN: So if the dollar does hit 110, does it stay there for some time, or is it just kind of marking territory, saying, we can do this again if you don’t behave?
AM: I think it’s a moment in time. Keeping the dollar at 110 is going to cause really big problems across the world. So they can’t keep it there too long. But they can… Even China talking about the stimulus, 109 causes a problem for China. It’s quite an event to see that happen.
SR: Yeah. Into Albert’s point, and I think this is incredibly important, china has to buy food. Right. And they’re buying, you’ve seen the rip lower on RMB, CNY, that thing has gotten crushed over the last week. And they’re still buying corn and soybeans from the US en masse. And that’s getting much more expensive very quickly. That’s going to be a problem.
TS: The only thing that’s helping them right now is that their entire country is locked down. Right. I mean, that’s the only thing that’s helping slow the blow and kind of making these commodities pull back a bit so they’re not as expensive.
TN: But Xi has got to make some money to feed his people. Right. Otherwise, you’re going to have Mao 1961 all over again.
TS: What he’s doing is insane. Don’t starve your people. So obviously ulterior motives are going on there.
TN: Yeah. So we’ll talk more about China next week. Okay, good. Let’s have a week ahead lightning round, guys. What are you looking at? Kind of most Interestingly for the week ahead? Sam, if you can go first, what’s at the top of your mind right now for the week ahead?
SR: Top of my mind is going to be energy company earnings and what they’re saying about their production, whether they’re upping premium, where they’re getting production from, how they’re doing it if they’re doing it, whether or not Capex budgets are moving higher, how they’re moving higher and where. And then any comments on labor pipe concrete, et cetera, I think will be very interesting as we go through next week.
TN: I think you stole Tracy’s answer, though, right?
TS: Exactly what I’m looking at. I expect to look at production probably has not increased that much because I think they’re having labor issues and supply chain issues have not gotten any better, if not ten times worse. So that’s what I’m looking forward to.
Also always keep an eye on China. Beijing is just locked down or partially locked down. So how many more cities are we going to have, how many more States we’re going to have, and how many more people are going to be locked down for how long? Because that’s going to affect the commodities market in the midterm. But that said, if you look at the commodities complex, we’re still over 100, like 104.
So it’s still holding strong, even though we’ve had a lot of demand. They say about a million and a half barrels per day of China demand is kind of off the market right now.
TN: Yes. So if they come back online, it’s game on, right?
TS: Yes.
TN: All right. And Albert, what are you looking at for the weekend?
AM: Probably the most dovish sounding 50 basis point rate hike you’ll ever hear from the Fed. Like we did this and we’re sorry. If they want to break this market down sub 4000, go ahead and try to talk hawkish but I don’t think they want to do that. So Jerome will just put his foot in his mouth like usual and say something stupid but it’ll be dovish that’s what I’m watching.
TN: Sam, Fed guy? What do you think, Sam?
SR: I think the same. Listen, I think they’re going to try to avoid talking too much about another 50 basis points hike. They’re going to try to get away from providing clear forward guidance and be incredibly vague because if they’re vague about what they’re going to do then it’s going to be perceived as dovish. So agree with Albert, right? You get a 50 basis point hike and then we’re not sure what we’re going to do next, right?
TS: Somebody brought up like 75 basis point hike this week and the Fed was like, no, we’re not even considering that.
TS: Yeah, exciting. Sounds exciting. Okay guys, thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Thank you very much.
With inflation being the main concern in global markets, are central banks reacting quick enough to hike rates to contain inflation? And how will tech stocks perform amidst the volatility that we have seen year to date so far? Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence shares his insights with us.
Show Notes
KSC: Good morning. This is BFM 89, five minutes past seven in the morning on 28th April, 2022. I am Khoo Hsu Chuang with Wong Shou Ning and Tan Chen Li. In the meantime, let’s recap how global markets and the It yesterday.
WSN: US Market down 0.2%, SMP 500 up .2% Nasdaq close flat Asian Market Nikay down 1.3%, Hong Kong up .6% Shanghai Composite up 2.5%, SDI closed flat FBM KLCI down .7% pretty interesting trend over there. You can see I think the Shanghai site went up a bit because of the possibility of maybe cases eating in China.
KSC: Yes, foreclosures and more openings. So to join us on the line for some analysis on what’s moving markets, we now turn to Tony Nash, the chief executive of Complete Intelligence. Tony, good morning. Now, let’s start with tech stocks, and they’ve had a bit of a bumpy ride the first quarter and into the second quarter. What’s the situation report in terms of where that risk on asset class is concerned?
TN: Well, check so far in the earnings season hasn’t performed well except in the last few hours when Facebook announced their earnings. So Tech’s really disappointed. Up until about two or 3 hours ago, Facebook announced that ads to their users, their earnings were up and so on and so forth. So after hours, they’ve popped by $30 a share or something like that. And Qualcomm also after hours reported really good earnings. So what we saw early in the earnings season with tech down, hopefully Facebook and Qualcomm have changed things a little bit. But that’s not to say we’re out of this. Just because we’ve had a couple, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re out of the woods with tech. So Pinterest reported and they were negative. And so we’re really separating the kind of the viable tech businesses from those that really aren’t viable and who are really struggling. Part of the problem with tech also is that we have a lot of ad space coming online now with Twitter now sorting themselves out and with other tech firms having new ad space like Netflix is adding ad space and ad based subscriptions. So we’re going to see a glut of ad space going forward, which will challenge some of these technology guys in, say, two to four quarters time.
TCL: So, Tony, how do we know what is good and what is not such a good tech stock? What differentiates it? Is it going to be margins? Is it going to be market share? What is it management?
TN: Yeah, I think people are looking at earnings. People are looking for, say, online companies. They’re looking at users. So let’s compare, say, Netflix and Facebook. Netflix had a net loss of users. Facebook had a net out of users. Netflix’s earnings went down. Facebook earnings went up. Netflix versus Facebook, their earnings went up. People are really looking at what is the core business of that tech firm. And are they succeeding at that. So you can’t necessarily make a broad sectoral play. Right now, markets are really in flux as interest rates rise and money supply is kind of reined in. So you really have to understand the companies and you have to understand what the advantages and how they’ll play, at least over the next quarter, if not more kind of medium term.
KSC: Yeah. Tony talked about earnings. Right. What’s earnings season been like so far? It appears to be a mixed bike. Bad at Boeing. Okay. At Visa. Robin Hood is laying off people. What’s your take on earning season so far?
TN: It’s very mixed. And I think you’re seeing the companies that are well run versus the companies that have been just kind of posting. So during the Pandemic, we saw the Fed buying a lot of these Fang names and Tesla and other tech names. So it was pretty easy for tech firms to just kind of move along with that wave and not really get their management in place and not actually manage the business and the operations. These ones like Qualcomm and Facebook that are reporting well, they’re getting their operations in place regardless of what’s happening in the external environment. The guys like Pinterest and some of these other guys, they’re not managing well and it’s showing in their earnings.
WSN: Let’s talk about inflation. As we know, this is the key concern of the global markets. So are central banks around the world a little too late? Too late already in trying to hike rates?
TN: Yes. Central banks are always too late because nobody he wants them to be the buzzkill on a Bull market. And so if they had come in earlier, although it would have been appropriate, they would have been blamed for killing the Bull market. So the pressure on a central banker is such that they really don’t want to be blamed for killing it. Now they have to come in for a lot of different reasons and raise rates. So I would say they’re definitely too late. They’re always too late. Is it too little? That remains to be seen. We expect a 50 basis point hike in May and another 50 basis point hike in June. That would really recalibrate some expectations. And we’ll have to see what happens in markets there. When you look at the ECB, they can’t raise at that rate. They’re stuck in a really bad place with energy and food prices. So they’ll move much more slowly.
TCL: And I guess the same for the bank of Japan that’s supposed to be meeting in the next two days. You don’t expect them to move? I mean, look at the yen. It’s like two decades low. Do you think this will continue?
TN: Yeah. BOJ and ECB have a lot of similar issues, and they’re really kind of pedging into a corner. They can either support their bond markets or they can support their currencies. They’re in that bad of a position. They can’t do both so both of them have to support their bond markets right now. They can’t mind their currencies. Now, when we look at the PBOC really has to just drop helicopter cash across China right now. They have to get incredibly aggressive to support the Chinese economy. If they don’t and if China doesn’t open soon, there are major problems in China. So the PVoC has to be very aggressive going forward.
KSC: Yeah. Just think of the PVC. Tony, do you expect that the Chinese government maintains its very strict zero covered policy, especially since in the context of a rapidly declining local economy.
TN: think China cannot stay closed. Okay. The rest of the world has come to a position where COVID is endemic. That’s the view of the governments. People realize that they have to have an active economy to feed their people. China is making these very active, say, policy changes for a number of reasons. But what’s happening is it’s starting to really bite. They’re starting to impoverish their people because of food prices, because of fuel prices, because there are no exports and so on and so forth. So the Chinese government is in a really sticky position. And if they don’t change policies soon, there will be major difficulties both politically and economically in China.
KSC: Yeah. And lastly, Tony, just want to get your view in terms of rushes and systems are being paid in rubles with its energy supplies. How do you read that move in the context of it being taken off the Swift financial system? It’s freezing of dollar assets in the context of the US dollars utility in the global economy.
TN: Yeah. I think look, Russia, this is a negotiating position for them, and it’s something that they’re insistent on. They know that countries like Germany are way too dependent on Russian oil and gas. So they know that Germany will pay in rubles if they’re pushed to do it. They don’t have a choice. So Russia is right now showing Europe who is boss, and Europe has unfortunately put themselves in this position. Poland hasn’t worked on diversifying their energy of late, and a lot of their energy mix comes from domestically mined coal. But for oil and gas, they’ve been working feverishly on getting alternate supplies, but other parts of Europe have not. And also they’re much more dependent on Russian oil and gas. So Putin is flexing. They have to kind of count out to him and they have to do what he says because he’s their main source.
KSC: Absolutely. Okay. Tony, thank you so much for your time. That was fantastic, as always. That was Tony Nash, complete intelligence chief executive, talking to us about markets. And just in the context of China’s insistence on staying closed, I think if the Chinese government doesn’t about turn even in the slightest, it might just be the biggest fill up for capital markets going forward.
TCL: Well, we’ll find out later at 730. Right. Because you’re going to be talking to Gary, he’s an economist and he’s going to be telling us what’s the situation like on the ground, whether the GDP target of 5.5% is going to be achievable at all, because it looks like the lockdown might even extend all the way to Beijing.
KSC: Yes. And of course, our Foxconn’s factory is bigger supply to Apple also is close in Kunshan, two of them. So global repercussions. Let’s turn to Facebook, now known as Meta, which did report earnings before they reported the shares actually did soon, considerably on the expectation that they would report a bad set of numbers. But actually, Facebook Meta surprised.
TCL: I think there was a lot of negative news even before this. And they were already receiving regulatory headwinds from the EU with regards to whether their dominance questions of their advertising, questions of how much are they involved in our daily lives. But I think the results were better than expected. Yeah.
WSN: So I think adding on to what Shannon was saying, there was also a concern about user base that’s not growing for the first time. The revenue that came out yesterday, it was reported their shares jumped 15% because their revenue jumped 6.6% to $27.9 billion. And this is the first time in Facebook’s ten year history as a public company that they landed in a single digit growth. And if you look at it, is that better?
TCL: Good.
WSN: Well, slower, but still growth.
KSC: Yeah. Because with this kind of platform, it’s all about Dows and Miles. Right. Daily active users and monthly active users now.
TCL: And what they found is that people have been spending a lot of time. So maybe the number of users hasn’t increased as much as they should, but the duration in which you spend on Facebook has increased. So you’re looking at maybe people spending as much as an hour versus other social media platforms where, yes, you might have an increase in users, but the duration is actually shorter. So that’s the justification as to why the share price has bounced today. And this is what Meta is telling the analyst community out there.
KSC: And we saw Snap also report a good set of numbers, surprisingly. Right. So actually doubling daily active users beat expectations, one point 96 billion versus one point 94. And Mouse monthly active use is two point 94 billion. Missed expectations of two point 95. So not a big mess. But actually they did also guide for revenue that was weak because of three things. Right. First of all, the military situation in the Ukraine. The second one, of course, the Apple Privacy changes, which made it more difficult to target ads. And of course, then the supply chain affecting advertisers now very quickly Spotify.
TCL: How many of us have subscriptions? Me, yes, me, I. But the share price fell more than 12% despite reporting first quarter earnings that beat both top and bottom line. Looks like markets still not happy with that number. I think exiting Russian market led to a loss of 1.5 million subscribers. Although monthly active users went up by 19% year on year to 422,000,000 users I think ad supported revenue did also grow 31% but I think basically ending subscriber subscriber base like Netflix seems to have come under pressure in the last few months.
KSC: Yeah sign of the Malays affecting streaming sites. Stay tuned. BFM 89 nine
Fed Chairman Powell was out this week all but assuring a 50bp hike in May, also implying we may see a burst of quick hikes. Then everyone who said “it’s all priced in” two weeks ago panicked on Thursday and Friday. Mike Green shares what’s new here and why are we seeing the reactions now?
We’ve spoken before about Q2 earnings, expecting them to generally be weaker, partly on inflation, which every company is blaming for shortfalls.
– Snapchat missed earnings but it reported 64% revenue growth, with daily active users up 20%.
– Netflix lost subscribers. They’re now the tech cautionary tale.
– FB is falling in anticipation of an earnings shortfall next week.
– Tesla reported a 42% earnings surprise and they’re about even on week
We keep hearing about commodities getting smoked this week. What happened this week and what should we be thinking about right now? We’ve got a bunch of housing metrics out on Tuesday (Case-Shiller, etc). Do the guys expect to see an impact on house prices already or will it take a couple of months/another rate rise to have a noticeable impact?
Key themes from last week:
1. Powell’s Wrecking Ball (Dollar Wrecking Ball)
2. Tech Earnings
3. Commodities getting smoked?
Key themes for the Week Ahead
1. Housing
2. France election
3. Geopolitical lightning round
This is the 15th episode of The Week Ahead in collaboration of Complete Intelligence with Intelligence Quarterly, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.
TN: Hi and welcome to The Week Ahead. My name is Tony Nash. Today we’re with Albert Marko and Mike Green. Before we get started, I’d like to ask you to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for doing that. I also want to let you know our CI Futures promo ends on April 30th. This is CI Futures, about 3000 assets forecast every month for $50 a month. That promo will end on April 30th. So if you’re interested, please go to completeintel.com/promo and check it out.
So this week we’ve got some key things from the past week. First of all, Powell’s wrecking ball and rate rises and the dollar wrecking ball that comes with that very important item. Tech earnings. We’ve seen a collapse in tech equities over the past couple of days. Not a collapse, but some really interesting activity. We’re going to talk through that. And then commodities. We’ve seen commodities, heard some people say commodities are getting smoked late this week. So let’s talk through that.
So Mike, first let’s look at Fed Chair Powell is out this week, all but assuring a 50 basis point hike in May. And a lot of people think it may be stronger for a longer period of time, maybe June and July even. I hear a lot of people saying a few weeks ago, it’s all been priced in yet we’ve seen kind of some panicking markets on Thursday and Friday. So we’ve got the 10-year on screen right now. So what is new here from your perspective and why are we seeing the reactions now?
MG: So the point that I would argue on this is that we’re in a feedback loop effectively where the market tries to price the Fed’s indications the Fed is in turn responding to the market. And so it’s leading to a dynamic where the Fed is saying, well, look how interest rates are rising, particularly at the back end. Clearly, we’re behind the curve. Therefore, we need to hike more and we need to convey to the market that we’re going to hike more. The market mechanically has to respond to that because you just can’t ignore it. Right.
You have to effectively think of it in a binomial tree type framework. The Fed has told you they’re going to hike more aggressively. Therefore, you need to shift the whole system up. Right. And that feedback loop, I would argue, is what we’re kind of captured in right now. And it’s part of the reason why the market is forced to respond to it in a risk off fashion, et cetera. We just don’t know if the Fed really actually knows what the underlying signal is and how much of it is us and how much of it is their insights onto the economy.
The second thing that I would just highlight is that the Fed has put themselves into the very uncomfortable position of last year, arguing that inflation was transitory. And this has been one of these really frustrating things for those of us that actually agreed with them that it is largely transitory in inflation rate. Right. So the rate of inflation is transitory, but the price level, I don’t expect oil to go back to negative $37 a barrel. That would be absurd. Right, right. So when you talk about the transitory dynamic, it’s typically thought of as the rate. But I think the perception had broadly been the prices themselves were going to somehow come back down and not adjust to the realities of accommodating the difference.
So I think that is sitting at kind of the core of the issue is that the Fed is now in the same way they were trapped in that transitory framework that people began to increasingly malign and make fun of. Now they feel this overwhelming need to come out and tighten and show that they’re actually serious about inflation and reestablish credibility, even as it’s very clear that the economy is starting to slow. And they’re then forced into the mantra of now saying, well, we see no signs of the economy slowing. And so they’re going to have to maintain that for a period of time or they sound like fickle policymakers.
TN: Right.
MG: I think the market is understandably concerned and scared at how far they’re going to have to go to prove to us that they’re really serious.
TN: Right. And Yellen was out saying there will be no recession this year, which I mean, I hope she’s right.
MG: There’s a recession. Yeah.
TN: Exactly. So I was roasting coffee yesterday, and my coffee guy was telling me that coffee prices will stay elevated because of the buying cycle from the farms and so up and down the commodity supply chain, across, it seems, across metals, across crude, across ags. That timing has a real impact on the change in levels. The rate may not change much from here, but it seems like the level will remain elevated, as you’re saying.
MG: I think that’s right. And again, that’s why the transitory, I think, was so toxic and confusing to people because they were thinking, oh, we’re going back to $1.75 gasoline as compared to the $6 in chains that we’re currently paying in California. Right?
TN: Right.
MG: That’s very hard to accomplish under the current framework. And the coffee example is a really good one. It’s not so much the level. The adjustment to the level is painful. Once that level has been reached, all sorts of changes in relative purchasing activity can occur. Right. You can decide you’re going to roast your own beans because it’s cheaper than somebody else’s beans. You can decide that you’re not going to go to Starbucks, you’re going to do your coffee at home and put it into a travel mug to save money.
Whereas the Wall Street Journal highlighted you can reduce your consumption of beef and chicken and increase your consumption of lentils. And yet another example that just pisses people off because it feels completely disconnected from the reality that they’re in. But those are all true statements, right. Those are adjustments that people make once the level settles down. Where the real problem occurs is the uncertainty about the level.
Is it going to be 20% higher next year? Is going to be 20% lower next year? That makes it very hard for me to plan. And that’s really what we’ve experienced. And now what your feedback, what your contacts are telling you is no, prices are going to stabilize at a higher level because that’s what’s required to induce the supply response.
TN: Right.
MG: Okay. It sucks. Coffee is more expensive now, but at least it will be in the stores.
TN: Right. So going down the path of, say, your Wall Street Journal saying you need to eat lentils instead of beef. With interest rates rising, it seems like consumers would utilize more credit during that adjustment period. With rates rising, it seems like it would make things much more difficult. So there’s a double whammy on consumers. Are we seeing that impact right now?
MG: I don’t think we’re yet at the point that the higher interest rates are feeding through in a way that matters. Right. So the vast majority, something like 95% of outstanding mortgages are no longer adjustable rate. They’re fixed rate. And so that is going to be very slow to adjust. We’ll see that the marginal purchasing behavior. And we are absolutely seeing that. We’ve seen a dramatic reduction in refinancing and purchase applications. We’re starting to see traffic deteriorate. We’re starting to see new orders roll over. We’re starting to see consumer spending intentions begin to plummet.
And there’s two reasons why people can use credit cards. Right. You can use credit cards to smooth over effectively saying, hey, guess what? I’m getting paid my bonus next week. Therefore, I’m going to make the purchase now and I’m going to repay it. Or you can see people start to tap credit because they are so strained that they can’t do anything else.
And unfortunately, the evidence that I’m seeing suggests it’s the latter, that it’s the lower income households who are now taking advantage of high cost financing choices in order to sustain a level of consumption that they’re having difficulty retreating from.
If your rent goes up and you don’t want to be homeless and their coffee prices have gone up, at some point, you need to expand your purchasing capacity. And that means using credit.
TN: In basic terms, what we’ve been talking about on this show is demand destruction. The Fed is aimed at demand destruction. And that means that demand curve actually moves in, right?
MG: Yeah.
TN: So people are going to have to rein in their behaviors because we’re likely at new pricing levels for many things. And so that consumption is going to have to decline a bit to adjust to the new environment. Albert, you had a comment?
AM: Yeah, two comments, actually. The thing about the demand destruction and the supply, from the Fed’s point of view, they think that getting rid of demand involves eliminating supply. Right. So that a little bit has to do with the rates, but also what Mike said about doom loop. I mean, that’s very interesting because that’s exactly what we were talking about in multiple areas, not just for bonds, but Yellen herself, she’s had her minions go out in the bond market and just straight up lie to bondholders, saying, oh, they’ll recover, they’ll recover while everyone keeps buying, and they just keep butchering the long bond.
The 30 years just been 3.1 today or 3.5. It’s crazy. She did this in 2013 where she had this little ploy where she has preventing capital flight, leaving the United States in order to prop up the US equity markets. And that’s what we’re seeing today. And this doom loop between the Fed and the treasury, because they’re not on the same page. They’ve got different policies, different ideas of how to keep the market, and it’s causing problems.
MG: I would actually add to that and just highlight that this is, of course, the downside to not having people who actually have ever traded or negotiated a swap or done anything else along those lines in positions of decision making. You don’t want to put a fox in charge of the hen house. But the reality is it is somewhat useful in terms of understanding what’s actually transpiring. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Janet Yellen says something along the lines of, well, there’s no sign of a recession because they’re working very first order, first derivative type dynamics. It’s that second and even potentially third derivative that ultimately conveys the dynamics of what’s really happening.
And the second part is that the Fed operates under a model in which negative real interest rates, which is basically a function of inflation expectations and the current level of yield. Some people roughly approximate it with trailing inflation and current yield, which is completely insane. But at least if you’re doing it in a structural fashion, they tend to presume that the only reason why markets move is due to information.
The market has some insight, and this has been one of the huge policy innovations. And I use “innovations” over the last 20 years has been this dynamic of, okay, well, if we’re trying to figure out market expectations, let’s use market inputs. But those market inputs in turn respond to the policy makers. Right?
TN: Right.
MG: And there’s all sorts of structural features to markets. If I happen to short a pay or swap shop, for example, and my risk manager is forcing me to cover that risk, it has no economic signal to it. It’s simply a market feature that they are then trying to interpret as indicative of underlying demand. That’s just wrong.
TN: Right.
AM: On top of that, you have a political component where Yellen tied to a certain party or not just Yellen but others tied to a certain party are going to do things beneficial to that party.
I know economists and financial guys don’t like to hear that, but that’s just the reality of it.
TN: That’s the reality of national accounts. We also mentioned the dollar wrecking ball. We’ve seen over the past week, Yen devaluation or Yen depreciation. We’ve seen CNY devaluation. CNY has gone from, I think, 6.34 to 6.49, which is a dramatic deval of CNY. How much of an impact does the dollar have on those markets, particularly because we’ve heard about the dollar losing influence for the past, I don’t know, 50 years. But talk to us, Albert, what’s going on there?
AM: Like I said, Yellen wants to restrict capital flight, and a strong dollar does that. It’s killing the emerging markets. They gave Japan the go ahead to devalue the yen in order to offset anything that China does asymmetrically against the United States, because they have been. They’ve been in a little bit of a tit for tat for quite some time now.
So the dollar at 110 just absolutely annihilates emerging markets, except for the markets that are commodity based, like Canada. I’ve been in Canada. I love the Canadian economy right now. It’s strong oil based, gold based. So that’s where I’m coming from on the dollar right now.
TN: Great. Okay.
MG: I would just broadly highlight but by the way, I don’t know if you saw the CNY today, but it moved huge again today. So it’s actually now 6.50. Well, fantastic in the same way that like a root canal is fantastic. Right. But yes, it’s a wonderful technology. Nobody wants to experience it.
But just to put this in context, this is a move now that is equivalent in terms of devaluation of what we saw in August of 2015, in terms of the much-heralded… Right. And I would just highlight that I think this is an important move. I think it’s telling you that there’s all sorts of stuff that’s going on. I tend to fall into the category of terms of trade dynamics, more so than interest rates or even anything, those dynamics.
Japan allowing its currency depreciate, leading to depreciation for the Chinese currency or contributing to depreciation for the Chinese currency. They want a competitive in global export markets. Right. So there’s an element of China needing to respond and maintaining competitiveness versus a significant devaluation that’s occurred in the Japanese yen, which is basically, if you think about it from an American perspective, means I can buy 30% more of what a Japanese worker produces today than I could a year ago. Not quite exactly. Right. But somewhere in that range.
The second part of it, though, is that the terms of trade have just turned so ugly for these countries where the things that they need to import, they have incredible food insecurity, they have incredible energy insecurity, and those are the things that are rising in price. And we’re seeing no signs that those are going to retreat, whether it’s LNG that Japan now has to compete with China in Europe or from the United States and elsewhere or whether it’s wheat or rice or corn.
I believe, Albert you may know this better than I do but I believe Malaysia just announced export restrictions on palm oil, worried about their own food security. This is the way the system breaks down. And the irony of course is the US, are we going to get unlimited palm oil imports? Of course not. But can we use soybean oil or canola oil in lieu of palm oil for frying our Twinkies and our food? Of course. Right. We can do that. The US can survive almost anything from a food or energy shortage standpoint. It’s the rest of the world.
Albert referenced the emerging markets. I mean man, if you are a cash crop producing emerging market that is now struggling with issues around food and energy security, this is going to get bad. It’s really bad.
AM: It’s really bad. It’s causing political uncertainty in many regions of the world. And again use the phrase doom loop because politicians over Covid policies have created a doom loop in trade.
TN: But let me ask you and we need to wrap up this topic but I want to take this full circle because it’s fascinating. With the currency devaluation depreciation in China, Japan and the food issues could that potentially push, say, North Asia to put more pressure on Russia to wrap up the conflict so that the commodities out of Russia and Ukraine can alleviate some of this price pressure on emerging markets. Is that a possibility?
AM: It’s a possibility, but I think it’s a small possibility. Things have changed because of the Ukrainians sinking that battleship. They got bears at that point.
But Interestingly though, now that you mentioned, I just thought of it. Japan and China have always competed for the fishing rights and then sea Japan. So you could see a future. Want to say naval skirmish but a couple of boats taking some live firearounds.
TN: Sure. Yeah. Or a mistake. Right. You could have a mistake that results in something like that. Okay, let’s move on to tech. I think we can talk about this issue for hours.
AM: Yeah.
TN: Let’s move on to tech. Robert, we’ve spoken about key to earnings for a while, expecting them generally weaker, partly on inflation and other pressures. But this week we saw Snapchat miss earnings, but they reported 64% revenue growth and their active users were up 20%. So their business seems to be going well. Netflix lost subscribers and we saw them kind of as the tech cautionary tale. Facebook is falling in anticipation of their earnings for next week. On the bright side, Tesla saw a 42% earnings surprise, but their stock, after moving up a bit, really hasn’t moved much.
So on screen, we’ve got Facebook and Snapchat kind of showing their downward trajectory over the past month. So can you talk us through kind of what’s happening with tech earnings? Is that a rotation? Is tech really out of gas? What’s going on there?
AM: I believe tech is out of gas. A lot of it has to do with inflation and rates and whatnot. But I think tech earnings had gone into the stratosphere when Covid was just blazing because of the lockdown. People stayed at home, got on Snapchat, got on Facebook, got on Google and whatnot. Right.
The Tesla earnings. Those are a joke. It sounded like Tesla is the most efficient automaker in the world, which is absolutely a joke when they’re making cars intense. And it took the market up like 70 points. And then as soon as some of the better analysts started digging through the information, immediately sold off again. And then that actually triggered, I think that triggered the market to sell-off a little bit because people are worried about tech earning. I think Google’s going to miss big because their brick and mortar advertising scheme is hurting. Last month and this month it doesn’t look pretty.
But I want to take some caution here because everyone’s going to get beared up on these tech earnings as everyone’s seen the Huawei, big puts coming out there and whatnot. But we’ve seen time and again these tech earnings missed on revenue. And then the guidance is fantastic and the market rips 200 points in a week. I don’t want to be short tech at this level right now.
TN: Right. Mike, what are your thoughts?
MG: The obvious component is that we’ve got extraordinarily difficult compares for most of the tech companies. Right. So you go into a pandemic and every kid needs a computer, every kid needs a cell phone, every kid needs that. And I’m speaking to you over a microphone that was purchased during the pandemic and a computer that was purchased during the pandemic and a video camera that was purchased during the pandemic. Right. And I upgraded my software and my kids got new phones and all this sort of stuff that all occurred. Well, guess what? It’s not happening now. That’s harder.
And when I think about the reinvestment that needs to occur as we talk about going back into the office and into work, et cetera, it’s much less on the soft side. It’s much more on the simple dynamics of how do we restock a pantry at a company cafeteria. Right. Which hasn’t had to happen for a while.
TN: Right.
MG: So I am generally skeptical of it. I’m particularly concerned about the consumer side of it. One of my friends many years ago had highlighted that the emergence of cell phones as a consumer good had by and large, replace lots of other types of spending. So it reduced clothes, reduced spending on everything else. People are now tapped out on buying those phones. Right? They’re out of money and they’re using their credit in one form or another. So I’m skeptical on particularly Apple.
I agree with Albert, by the way, on Google. I think people are underestimating the importance of the bricks and mortar, and they’re also underestimating. I think this is one of the challenges for the Netflix. I’ll be 100% straight with you in terms of my household’s reaction to it. I mentioned it to my wife. She’s like, well, we’re obviously switching to the advertising supported model as soon as that becomes available because, candidly, I don’t even like watching Netflix to begin with. I could care less. If I have to watch ads and get it for $10 as compared to $20, then I would argue that this is happening broadly.
As we move back to an advertising supported model, the inventory of advertising space is about to explode at the exact same time that demand is relatively weak. So who thinks we’re going to get premium prices for advertising anymore? These models are screwy in terms of how badly they could deteriorate. If you simultaneously have a boom in advertising space at the exact same time that demand is relatively short.
TN: But lucky us, we get more campaign ads until November.
Okay, great, guys. Moving on to commodities. We saw commodities pretty much get smoked in the last half of this week. We’ve got one month history of WTI and copper up on the screen. So what happened this week, and what should we be thinking about right now with respect to commodities?
AM: I think that in terms of commodities, I think the biggest component right now is to see what happens in the Ukraine war, whether Russia stops because the Europeans and the Biden administration is using that as like the Putin price hike and whatever. But that’s what they’re blaming it all on. And a lot of people are worried about this being an extended war. I don’t think it’s going to last more than another month or two.
But for commodities, especially wheat and fertilizer, the moment that Ukraine comes back online, those things are just nosedived. And the Fed wants that to nose dive because they’re trying to kill supply in order to tackle inflation. So that’s from my perspective, there.
TN: So a lot of this at this point, you think depends on Russia, Ukraine.
AM: Yeah. That and the dollar. That and the dollar. So the dollar goes up, prices will come down.
TN: Okay. So appreciated dollar, did that hurt commodity prices this week?
AM: I think so. Go ahead, Michael.
MG: Yeah. So they’re not quite inverse. But remember, when we see prices, we’re seeing our prices, we’re not seeing the rest of the world’s prices. And exactly to the point that we were raising before with Japan and everything else on a year to day basis, as much as you may think, oil prices are up in the United States, they’re up maybe 50% in the United States. They’re up 100% if you’re in Japan. Oil prices 100% on a year to day basis.
AM: Wow. Right.
MG: I mean, that’s just an extraordinary outcome. You’re looking at these kind of underlying characteristics, and you have to say to yourself, the rest of the world is going to start to experience significant declines in aggregate demand.
Forget the supply component that Albert is highlighting. Focus much more on the demand. And when we think about commodities, developed world demand is extraordinarily efficient. We don’t throw copper on the ground. We don’t discard it into landfills. We recycle copper. Right. We recycle aluminum. We clean up the sludge off of our factory floors. That doesn’t happen in most places around the world. Right. Scrap found out in the open is still a significant fraction of aggregate supply. So we just use it more efficiently.
As things shift back here, we’re going to become more efficient at it. And I got a lot of heat earlier this week for posting a chart that said, look, I’m not seeing this commodity super cycle. I’ll say I’m not seeing this commodity super cycle. I don’t see the underlying outward shift in aggregate demand in almost any commodity that says we’re going to have truly sustained high levels of inflation and need for significant additional production other than effectively the disaggregating of supply chains. And you’ll hear things like huge copper demand because of electric vehicles. Right. That is selling human innovation so short, it’s just ridiculous.
If copper prices go higher, we’ll figure out how to use less copper wiring. That’s the history of the world.
TN: Right.
AM: That’s absolutely correct. That’s when they started using, like, gold flakes and sprays and different types of adhesive made out of whatever.
TN: But it generally takes a big demographic change to enter a commodity super-cycle or some sort of supply cut-off, right?
AM: Yeah. I can see a super-cycle within one or two commodities peaking and then coming back down and another one peaking and coming back down. But this insane super cycle that people were expecting, I don’t think it can happen. I agree with Mike.
TN: Okay, great. Let’s switch gears and look at the week ahead. Guys, we talked a little bit about housing, but we’ve got a bunch of housing metrics coming out next week with Case Shiller and a few other things. Because of rate rises, do you guys expect to see a near term impact on house prices? Are we kind of in a wait and see mode? What do you think is happening there.
AM: Politically? The Democrats want housing to come down. Right. And I think some of this bond action is meant to do that to be honest with you. I think they want houses down in the 30 year up. These prices, these housing prices are insane. It just stuns me to see some of these homes going for 150% of what they were two years ago.
And at some point the buyers are going to dry up. I mean, these cash buyers are going to dry up. And the credit now, I think in Tampa, it’s like over 6% for a 30-year mortgage. It’s going to make it even more unaffordable.
TN: But how much does that have to do with housing supply? Are we seeing more supplies coming on the market?
MG: Well, we are seeing more supply of new homes because the delays in completion means that homes that were ordered 18 months ago are finally starting to show up on the market. And that’s been one of the challenges. Unlike what we saw in 2005, 2006. This is not a function of massive amounts of new housing being built in areas that previously did not have housing.
So the character of 2004, 5, 6 was effectively converting farms and semi rural environments into subdivisions of endless numbers of homes that look identical so that people could have a home and then drive an hour to their work or an hour and a half. I mean, that was just crazy.And that was killed by the spike in oil prices that occurred with Hurricane Katrina and Ivan.
This time around, you just have a shortage of supply in terms of people willing to move. And unfortunately, the increase in interest rates, paradoxically, can exacerbate that. Right. Because I don’t want to leave my house and buy a new house because I have to enter into a new mortgage. Right. Of the mortgage. So, perversely, this could end up preventing supply from coming onto the market because when I go to look to replace my home, I can’t do it. And so it’s not clear to me that prices are going to take the hit that people are looking for.
I think at the low end, you’ll see certainly some pressure on new homes. You’ll see some pressure. But perversely, that just exacerbates the problem. Right. If new homes get hit more than existing homes, guess what? We’ll get less new homes.
TN: Okay, great. So far, it’s a very positive show, which is fantastic. End of a rough week into a rough show.
Let’s talk a minute about the French election, guys. It’s next week, what do you expect to happen in markets, say, with the Euro and French equities.
AM: Yeah, actually, we ended up buying the Euro today, looking for Macron to win reelection. Everyone that sees my Twitter feed knows I’m a conservative. Le Pen is a disaster for France, for Europe, transatlantic relations with the United States. She just can’t win and she won’t win. But the thing is, a lot of people think that she’s going to win.
So I think the Euro is going to probably pop half percent, maybe even percent, come Sunday into Monday. And then the dollar might actually come down and the market might actually rally a little bit crazy.
MG: I’m certainly sympathetic to that. I mean, the degree of sell off that we have seen, everything ranging from the yen to the Euro, et cetera, it’s hard to sustain this type of momentum. Ultimately, I’m exceptionally bearish on Europe. I’m exceptionally bearish on Japan for reasons that are largely unrelated to the immediacy of it.
I agree with Albert, and I actually would highlight something that he said that is really important for people to understand. When you describe yourself as a conservative, most people would say, okay, Marine Le Pen is a conservative. Right. Because she represents anti immigration and she represents behave more like French people. Right. But the reality is conservatism is all about let’s not break the system and try to replace it with some utopian vision. Right. Let’s try to work within the existing system to make it better.
When you enter into periods of uncertainty like what we’re experiencing, there’s a reason why the incumbent almost always wins, because people don’t want radical change in their lives. It makes it far more difficult. And so I just am not seeing any evidence that Le Pen has the chance that she’s claimed to and not that I want to join Albert on the potential tinfoil hat conspiracy standpoint, but I agree with them. I don’t think she’d be allowed to win.
TN: Okay, interesting. So a little bit of stability in Europe, which is great.
Guys, let’s have a quick geopolitical lightning round. I know there’s a lot going on in Russia, China, Ukraine, elsewhere. What’s on your mind, Albert, when you talk to your politics, what are you talking about the most?
AM: Honestly, China. The civil unrest in Shanghai, that’s actually looking like it’s spreading is kind of really concerning. For years, Xi’s been holed up in bunkers and can’t go.
You know, China, Tony. I mean, you have 1.3 billion people mad at you. You just don’t go out. Xi has this problem at the moment. So for me, it’s the civil unrest in Shanghai spreading to Guangdong and even outwards.
MG: Wait a second. So XI has 1.3 billion people mad at him? Did he say something against Bitcoin? Sorry.
AM: That would be 2.3 billion people because all of India is there too.
MG: 1.4 billion people. But yeah, exactly. You get really mad about that, as I’ve discovered.
Now, listen, I completely agree with Albert that, and this is again, part of the great irony of everything that’s been going on and I’m somewhat guilty of this myself looking at the dynamics of Russia and the moves that they were making and I think both Albert and I would still come to the conclusion says they’re going to take Ukraine and they’re going to take it in a much more violent fashion because now they’re really pissed.
TN: Yes.
MG: But the simple reality is that I think most people had described a degree of competence to Putin and Russia that has now become very clear that the authoritarian and central planning tendencies associated with that style of governance has its flaws. People are slowly waking up to this.
They’re now beginning to see this in China where it’s like well, wait a second. Maybe Xi’s not planning for the next 100 years. Maybe XI’s planning for the next two days to figure out where… without getting killed.
TN: That’s exactly it, Mike and I’ve been saying that to people for years. China does not think in centuries these guys are making it up as they go along. I’ve been inside the bureaucracy. I know it. They’re making it up as they go along.
So you hit it right on the head. They’re planning for the next two days or two months. They’re not planning for the next 200 years.
AM: Yeah. And the Chinese, they’re quite practical but it’s just too big of a country. I mean, there’s so many different regions and dialect. How do you keep something that big cohesive manner? You don’t.
TN: It’s hard. It’s a collection. It’s like the EU or four of the EU. But it’s very complex for one guy to manage. So guys, thanks very much for that. I really appreciate it and have a great weekend. Thank you very much.
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Yield curve inversion is on everybody’s mind and it only seems to be intensifying. It’s happened 4 times over the last 22 years. What does it mean, how does it impact Fed policy and how will it impact markets more broadly?
Energy prices are still a big problem and the Biden administration this week announced a very large release from the strategic petroleum reserve. Will this really bring down prices on a sustained basis? And what are some of the unintended consequences of the SPR release?
We’ve seen tech names rally pretty hard since mid-March like Alphabet and Meta. What’s happening and how long will the tech rally last?
Key themes from last week
Inverted yield curve and Fed policy
SPR release and crude market impacts
Tech’s comeback?
Key themes for the Week Ahead
Rubles for O&G. When will Europe give in?
Housing stocks and the housing market
Mixed messages of simultaneous stimulus and tightening (rate hikes with energy stimulus)
This is the 13th episode of The Week Ahead in collaboration of Complete Intelligence with Intelligence Quarterly, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.
0:00 Start 1:00 Key themes of last week 1:29 What the yield curve means and how it impacts the Fed policy 4:50 The Fed has to break something? 6:33 Large release from SPR, will this bring down the crude prices? 8:30 Viewer question: Will Biden’s threat to US drillers produce the desired results? 12:19 Tech rally? 14:16 Key themes for the week ahead. 14:44 How long before Europe pays ruble for oil and gas? 18:52 Home builders VS real estate 21:00 What do people read from tightening, easing, and all the stimulus?
TN: Hi and welcome to The Week Ahead. I’m Tony Nash. I’m joined by Albert Marko, Sam Rines and Tracy Shuchart. Thanks for joining us. Before we get started, I’d like to ask you to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Also, want to let you know about CI Futures, our subscription product. We cover thousands of assets and economic concepts on CI Futures. Our forecasts are refreshed every weekend. You come in Monday morning and have a brand new forecast each week. Right now we’re offering a special subscription price of $50 a month. Please go to completeintel.com/promo and find out more.
So this week we had a few key themes. First is the inverted yield curve curve and Fed policy. Second is the SPR release and crude market. And the third is around tech. Is there a comeback in tech?
Sam, you’re up first. Let’s talk about the yield curve. It’s on everyone’s mind and it only seems to be intensifying. It’s happened four times over the last 22 years. So Albert and Sam, can you help us understand what does it mean? How does it impact Fed policy? Are they going to be more cautious going forward and how will it import markets more broadly?
AM: Well, Tony, concerning the inverting the yield curve, Jerome Powell doesn’t really want to do that. However, Janet Yellen does want to invert the yield curve. This is the divide that’s been throwing off the market analyst for quite a long time, quite a while now, actually, myself and I just found out and realized where the divide was. And normally in a deep quad for to take something from hedgeeye’s commentary, the only things that you can buy are Treasuries and gold. And right now Powell will be fighting a tide because of the long dated treasure is the number one thing to own in that scenario. So trying to protect stocks while hurting housing, and then you have Yellen that’s trying to protect housing. It’s quite a mess. And it’s probably something like Sam can actually detail the inverted yield curve on.
TN: So why are there are two camps just to go into that down that trail for a second?
AM: Well, it’s a policy, it’s ideology, basically. Yellen did this before in 2013, 2014, I believe. And Powell is not really an economist. He’s a lawyer. So he’s probably hearing it from his little circle of miscreants. So that’s where that’s coming from.
TN: People, whoever is listening.
AM: I’m sure they’re fine people. I’m sure they are. I think Yellen is probably correct in this instance, but we’ll see how that plays out.
TN: Okay, Sam, what do you think?
SR: Yeah, in inverted yield curve, generally, everybody’s like, hey, recession on the horizon. In reality, yeah. I mean, there’s always a recession at some point on the horizon. And what the yield curve tells you is that there’s one coming in the future. No kidding. But it’s not good for one timing, a recession period.
TN: So we’ve got the 2/10 spread on the screen right now. So can you tell us what does that mean and how much importance does that hold with that two and ten yield spread going negative?
SR: I mean, it’s something to pay attention to. I mean, the market is telling you something with that. There is some signal, even if there’s noise in there as well, that the Fed is going to go very, very quickly and is likely to break housing or break something else or break housing and something else. And that’s going to probably cause inflation to come back down. Right.
The market does not believe that or at least fixed income market does not believe that inflation is going to be a problem in ten years, does not believe that the Fed is going to be able to hold interest rates very high for very long. And that’s why you get the 2/10s inverted. Right. The Fed is going to go above what the “natural rate or the stall rate” is for the US economy.
TN: Right. So we’ve been saying for several weeks the demand destruction is the only way that the Fed is going to solve supply side inflation. And the last couple of weeks you’ve talked about the Fed breaking something at this point, the Fed almost has to break something. Right? I mean, Volker broke something in the early 80s. Right. Something has to be broken.
SR: Yes. Something has to be broken or you’re not going to solve the inflation issue. And you have to do it. You have to do it in a pretty rapid manner of tightening in order to get the inflation levels that we have now back to something somewhat reasonable in a time frame that is adequate. But again, it doesn’t tell you what’s going to break. We talked about it last week. Housing looks sick. Housing equities look sick. It does not look great, but it doesn’t tell you much about the broader market. Right. It’s a lot of noise. You can say that it’s bad for equities, but generally it takes a while for it to be bad for equities.
TN: Okay, great. Now, JPMorgan put out a note this week. Everyone’s putting out notes about when rates are going to rise. They said 50 in May 50 in June. Are you thinking that or is that kind of on the edge of aggressive?
SR: I mean, it’s aggressive, but the Fed has very little choice but to be aggressive in this instance or it’s going to lose credibility further. And that’s an issue for it. Right. It doesn’t want to lose that little bit of credibility it has left to raising rates too slowly in an environment where it’s getting the green light to do so from markets. Markets have it priced in. Why not do it?
TN: Yeah. If someone said in January that we’d be raising 50 in May, 50 in June, I think you’d be laughed at. But now it’s taken seriously. So it’s just really interesting to see the iteration of that expectations.
Okay. Speaking of inflation, let’s move on to energy prices. Tracy, obviously, there’s still a big problem. And this week, the Biden administration announced a very large release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. You’ve been all over this, including the Tweet you sent out on Thursday, which is on our screen talking about logistical issues.
So the main question I think for most people is will this bring down oil prices on a sustainable basis? So can you talk to us about that and some of the unintended consequences of the SPR release?
TS: Yeah, absolutely. It’s not enough to keep oil prices sustainably lower. Right. It doesn’t fix the structural supply deficit that we have years to come. Also, this slows shale growth because it disincentivizes shale producers from drilling more, which actually needs to be done and also creates potential logistical bottlenecks because we’ve never released this much before. That could cause congestion on the Gulf Coast. And that Tweet is up I think, talking about the bottlenecks there.
And then there’s another issue that has not been discussed yet broadly. And that’s because the SPR is aging. Right. And so we’ve had releases before where we’ve seen degradation in oil. And in 2015, they approved the $2 billion upgrade to the SPR, which is not going to be done until 2025. That said, what they did is they did everything except for the distribution centers. So what will happen is we need to see if we can actually get a million barrels per day pushed through. So there’s a lot of obstacles here.
TN: So it’s a sentimental kind of downside for oil right now. Nothing’s really released yet. And it doesn’t seem all that feasible that it’ll come out soon. Right. So supply chain issues like we’re seeing everywhere else.
So we had a viewer question from @VandanaHari_SG. It says, to what extent will Biden’s threat to us drillers to drill or get off the lease, produce desired results? You mentioned Frackers earlier. Will we see much movement there?
TS: No. Biden did call for Congress to make this decision. Personally, I do not believe that this will actually get passed by Congress. That said, again, this disincentivizes oil companies from producing more because it’s not that easy to just turn on wells. They’re facing labor shortages. They’re facing supply chain shortages. It’s not that easy to do that.
So if you tell them we’re going to tax you on this, then if they abandon those wells, then it’s going to take that much longer to get them back online when they are ready to. So all in all, it’s a horrible idea. Again, I do not see Congress passing this whatsoever.
TN: It’s complicated. And I think that’s the thing that we live in a world that likes to simplify things a lot. Right. And we like to say we’re going to do X, we’re going to do Y, we’re going to do Z. And the implementation of this stuff seems to be a lot more complicated Than we hear from, say, these non experts that talk to us all day long on TV or social media.
TS: Exactly. I mean…
TN: We can’t just wave a wand fixed supply.
TS: And turn on oil wells. I mean, regardless, we run through our DUC supply. Right. And that’s why we’re seeing slower oil production. The monthly EIA monthly just came out yesterday. It was 11.37 million barrels instead of 11.6 million that they were estimating in the weekly. And so what happens is that you’re pulling down DUC wells, which are the ones that you can get up easily, and then you’re putting all these restraints on oil companies and threatening them with taxes and things of that nature.
To get a well online from start to finish is six to twelve months. People don’t realize it’s not let’s snap our fingers and tomorrow we’re spreading oil.
TN: It’s not exactly a nudge. Right? Remember, under the Obama administration, they really focused on condomin and the nudge and all that stuff. This is kind of the opposite of that. It’s like the bludgeon.
TN: Yeah, exactly.
TS: Doing what they want. Right. Sorry. Go ahead.
AM: No, this is just political rhetoric. I mean, they’re better off just jumping into the oil futures market and trying to drive it down. This is just talk by the Biden administration. There’s really no substance to it.
TN: Can they jump into the futures market and short it and drive the price down?
AM: Who says they haven’t? Okay. You’re looking at 127 price and all of a sudden it’s down in the 90s. Is this crypto crude? What are we doing here?
TN: Okay, that’s a good point. All right.
SR: Just one last point to that. I know Tracy actually think Tracy tweeted this out a couple of weeks ago. The latest Dallas Fed survey of oil companies made it pretty clear that a lot of them at no, they don’t care where the prices. They’re not increasing their output. They put that on paper and put that in the survey. I think that’s worth remembering is that this is a less price sensitive reaction than people are going to give credit for.
TS: 100%.
AM: Yes.
TN: Okay, great, guys. That’s fantastic. Let’s move on to equities. Albert, we’ve seen tech stocks rallied pretty hard for the last couple of weeks since about March 14th. We’ve got chart for Alphabet and Facebook on the screen right now. Sorry. Meta on the screen right now. What’s happening to tech? What’s happened over the last couple of weeks and how long do you expect them to rally?
AM: Well, they’ve used tech, maybe a dozen names to rally the market. This is well known. I mean, if you look at those names that you have listed along with AMD, Nvidia and Adobe, they can be up to 30, 40% of the call action on a given day. It’s kind of silly, but honestly, it’s like this is a zero rate economy at the moment. So as our rates go up. Yeah. So as our rates go up, I don’t see how tech is going to rally much further.
TN: Okay, Go ahead.
TS: I’ll just throw in that just because BAMO came out with their weekly flows that we’ve had, tech market was $3.1 billion, which is the highest in two months.
TN: Okay. Interesting. All right. So if we go with the note that came out that in May and June will see 50 basis point rises, and you’re saying tech can’t continue to rally into higher interest rates, are you saying we’re looking at that type of horizon for tech to not be as attractive?
AM: Yeah, unless they reverse course come June or July. I don’t see how tech can really rally to what their all time highs were a couple of months. I don’t see it.
TN: Sam, does that make sense to you?
SR: It does make sense to me. I think the only saving grace for tech thus far has been that the long end of the curve hasn’t done much, and it actually looks a little sick at the moment in terms of yield. And that’s been a little bit of a semi tailwind, at least prop them up.
TN: Great. Okay, perfect. Let’s look at the week ahead. Some things we have for the week ahead are rubles for oil and gas. When will Europe give in? Housing stocks and the housing market? Sam mentioned that earlier. We’ll dive a little deeper into that and then the mixed messages around simultaneous stimulus and tightening, which I think is confusing some people.
So first, let’s dive into rubles for oil and gas. I did a quick Twitter survey earlier, which is up on your screen asking people how long before Europe caves and pays for oil and gas and rubles. Something like 70% of people think they’ll do that within two weeks. It’s just a Twitter survey. Some of those guys are experts. Some of those aren’t. Tracy, what do you think? Is that realistic?
TS: Putin actually came out today and said this is the plan. There is no backing out. However, it doesn’t include what you pretty much already bought. That means. So deliveries until most delivery until April 15, and then really in May 1 is where that really starts, where Europe will really have to start paying in rubles.
TN: So May 1 is when you think the rubles?
TS: May 1 is really when the bulk of this situation will come in hand because it’s not for what has already been ordered. Right.
TN: Okay.
TS: Does that make sense?
TN: You think we could see a trickle in mid April?
TS: Yeah, exactly. But I think that they’re going to have to do that. They really have no other choice unless they kind of want to plunge into the dark ages. Right there’s just not the backup plan is forming, but it’s just not there yet. So I think that they will concede even though they have a little bit of a time. They have 15 to 30 days to really. But you can’t move that fast. It’s not that easy to change suppliers that quickly.
TN: But we’ve talked about this a little bit. But what happens to say industrial output? German manufacturing if they decide not to do this? To be honest, it sounds like a pretty trivial thing to me to pay in another currency. There is a transaction cost to it. But if you’ve got a major economy, it doesn’t sound like something that you can really stand by insisting to pay in dollars. So what happens to German manufacturing? What happens to industrial cost Europe.
TS: It’ll actually plummet. I mean, BASF already came out and said we’re going to have to cut production if this happens. The German plan is basically to shut down manufacturing and to give residential the leeway if they have to start rationing. So that means if manufacturing starts shutting down in Europe, you’re in recession territory immediately.
AM: Yeah. They’ll find a way. They’ll find some special vehicle to sort this out. They got a little bit of time, like Tracy said, they got about two months really to sort this out. And anyways, the weather is starting to get warmer, so the less gas will be used. Anyway, I don’t see this to be really of a big problem. It’s just a lot of noise and a little bit of leverage from Russia on the sanctions that they are getting hit by well.
TN: But conceivably because of the embargoes on some of the banks in Russia, it could be a real issue with having funds rubles in Russian banks. No?
AM: I don’t think so. They can go between the Swiss, London will do it. It’s the same thing as the Yuan, renminbi, it’s like when they trade it for oil, the Saudis sell it in renminbi and goes to London, gets converted instantly and it’s dollars almost immediately to the seller. So I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.
TS: I 100% agree that the currency doesn’t really matter because it’s still factored into what is the dollar value. Right. It doesn’t really matter or any in Europe’s case, what is Euro per megawatt hour?
Regardless, it’s not really the currency that matters so much. The fact is the currency is helping. What Russia is trying to do is that if you have to sell euros to buy rubles, that keeps the currency afloat.
TN: Right. Which we’ve seen it surge back this week to pre war levels. Okay, great. Let’s move on to homes and home builders. Sam, you mentioned the housing market and housing stocks earlier, and we’ve got on the screen a chart about US real estate and home builders and the divergence between those. And they’re usually pretty correlated. Can you talk us through your expectations for real estate relative to where homebuilders are trading right now?
SR: They’ll look like homebuilders pretty quickly here. It’s what the Fed is basically able to do in terms of the economy quickly. Right. If you’re going to tighten rates by two and a half percent in a year, plus quantitative tightening, that’s what you’re going to hit. You’re going to hit home builders and real estate. That’s generally what you’re going to hit and you’re going to hit it fast.
In particular, the shorter duration type real estate that’s benefited the most from zero rates. If the long end of the curve stays somewhat subdued, you’re probably fine if you have longer duration type retail or that type of lease. But the shorter term duration real estate type plays are going to be in some trouble here.
TN: Okay. And so you say it’s going to happen pretty quickly. Last week you said it’s going to happen in Q2. When I first heard that, I was a little bit surprised. But just seeing what’s happened over the past week, it’s been really surprising to me that things have moved so quickly. So I think you’re right. I’m really interested to see that happen.
Now. You also mentioned QT. So let’s talk a little bit about kind of the tightening and easing, the simultaneous tightening and easing that we have going on. And how do we expect that to move over the next week? So, Sam, you’ve been pretty insistent that QT is going to start in May, is that right?
SR: Oh, yes. Little doubt.
TN: Definitely going to start in May. Now we’ve got countries and States giving energy stimulus and other things happening. I wouldn’t be surprised if different forms of stimulus come out. So how does it work where we have really fairly significant stimulus coming out as we’re tightening? What do people read from that?
SR: I would say confusion. Right. If you’re trying to actually tackle if you’re trying to tackle inflation with monetary policy, that really has to break something in order to get it under control, and yet you’re giving people more leeway to not have something break more money in their pockets. It’s counterproductive. Right. So you begin to either have to tighten more or tighten quicker or both to get it under control or you have to stop it with the fence full fiscal.
TN: What are you hearing about that Albert out of DC?
AM: I was on this program. When was it? About a year ago, talking about tapering with Andreas, and I was against tapering. I never think it was going to happen, but because the fact that we just keep going on QE, how do you tighten when you have QE and the Fed balance sheet is still expanding by 100 billion plus a week. I mean, that’s not.
This is why there’s so much confusion in the market. Like Sam was saying, it’s just you talk about tightening. Meanwhile, you secretly spend $160 billion to pump the market. So which one is it? As an analyst, how do you even assess what you’re going to do over the next 30 days when the Fed’s confused? The Fed and Treasury is confused.
TN: So can we have that where we’re say doing tightening but helping equity markets continue to rise?
TS: I mean, is that just weird? Of course it does. It is weird. You can’t have monetary policy going head to head with fiscal policy. Right. So you’re having fiscal policy loosening. At least let’s look at the energy markets right now. You can’t have all of this stimulus and it’s not just from the United States. It’s from across the world is doing this and we’re going to see more of this every week of new countries come out and save money.
TN: Not in Japan. Japan is easing across the board.
TS: Yeah.
TN: Everyone else.
TS: True. But of course, I agree completely with the Sam said it’s confusion in the markets because you are literally having central banks butting heads with governments right now.
AM: Yeah. And that’s something people don’t really pay attention to. It’s not simply the US federal reserve with the US economy, but it’s the federal reserve with all of anglesphere. They can have the Canadians or the UK do tightening while we do expansion and vice versa. They can do it unending. It’s unbelievable.
TN: So when do we know the direction? When do we know whether we’re tightening or easing? Do we come to a point like is May the end point for easing?
AM: I don’t know, Tony. I can’t really tell you that because they can say that they’re doing that and then we find out two months later that they didn’t do it and they can use all sorts of weird little gimmicks that they have control over.
TN: Okay, Sam, what do you think?
SR: I think the comment about the Anglosphere was really interesting because it’s 100% true, right. If you look at a lot of the EMS, they’ve been talking lightning for a year or at least nine months. So I think that’s the really intriguing kind of comment for me is the US is probably so late to the game that EM is going to be easing by the time the Fed actually accomplishes any sort of tightening.
TS: They’ll have to, they will have to.
SR: Which sets something interesting up, by the way.
TN: Sorry.
SR: Which sets something interesting up for when that happens. But that’s down the road.
TN: It really does. Yeah. Remember synchronized easing and synchronized tightening a decade ago? I just feel we have so many mixed messages out there that it’s no wonder we have the volatility that we have in market. Okay. Thanks very much for this. I really appreciate it. Have a great week ahead.
In this episode, we talked about some really interesting tech earnings like of Facebook and Amazon, crude and natgas prices, and the bond market. How does the NFP data affect the bond market? Also discussed central bank’s reaction to inflation and why you should be keeping your eyes on the CPI?
This is the fifth episode of The Week Ahead in collaboration of Complete Intelligence with Intelligence Quarterly, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.
For those who prefer to listen to this episode, here’s the podcast version for you.
TN: Hi, everyone, and welcome to The Week Ahead. I’m Tony Nash. And I’m joined by Tracy Shuchart, Nick Glinsman, and Albert Marko. Before we get started, I’d like to ask you to subscribe to our YouTube channel. It helps us a lot get visibility, and it really helps you get reminded when a new episode is out so you don’t miss anything.
We had a lot this week. We had tech earnings, some really interesting tech earnings and market activity as a result. We had crude really ripping this week. And we had bonds raging at the end of the week. So really a lot happening across sectors, NASA classes.
So let’s start with the bond market, Nick. We seem to have gotten pretty much what you mentioned on last week’s show. So can you go into kind of what’s happened and what’s happening in the bond market right now?
NG: Yeah, we’ve basically been ambushed by inflation. That’s what’s happened. You saw yesterday out of the ECB, which was a hawkish twist, possibly one of the worst press conference performances I’ve ever seen in my life. But the facts of the matter are you’ve got five, six, 7% inflation in various countries of the EU. In Lithuania, you’ve got 12%. Okay. So they are failing at their predominant original mandate, which was inflation per the Bundes back from what I’ve been told, there were several members of the MPC.
TN: Sorry. When you say she, you mean Christine Lagarde?
NG: Christine Lagarde. Several members of the NPC wanted to get moved yesterday. Not going to happen but it’s reasonable to think perhaps two hikes this year, but that will still take us to -20 basis points. It will still be negative. Okay. And then that upset the European bond markets.
You have the Bank of England go first with 25 basis points, four dissenters wanting half a point. That started to rock the bond markets a little bit. Then the press conference out of the ECB, and you basically had, goodness how many Sigma move it was in two-year bubbles, two-year German government bonds. But they basically went up over 20 basis points in a couple of hours, terminating early this morning, and they’ve stayed elevated.
And then you had this non farm payroll data. Everybody got it wrong. And the thing is, if you think this month’s figures are nonsense, well, look at the revision.
TN: Sorry, when you mentioned the NFP data, what’s important about the NFP data? Because I think some people looked at the headline employment numbers, some people looked at the wage rate. So can you tell us what’s important there?
NG: Two things. One is nobody was expecting a non farm payroll at like this. Some people will say, well, it’s always going to be revised. Well, okay, then look at the near $400,000 upward revision for December. It’s. All their data. The way it’s coming out. The BLS isn’t necessarily the best, but everything that they look at is strong labor market.
The thing that really upset the bond market was the average hourly earnings. 5.7%. To Albert’s point last week. Wage inflation is here to stay. So having been inundated with calls this morning, that really affects what the Fed… The Fed actually are fighting for their credibility.
TN: When you say wage inflation is here to stay, but it’s really, is the Fed trying to break the back of wage inflation?
NG: Well, that’s something they could impact. Right. By increasing the demand side of the market. We’ll have another idea on inflation next week. The CPI. And the lowest forecast is 7%. The highest is 7.6%. They’re not getting the favorable comparisons because oil has continued to move up. Energies continue to move up. Right.
So assuming we’ve got a seven big handle and heaven help us if we haven’t hit the 8 handle at all, this Fed has no choice. Because as you can see with the bond market, the bond market is going to do the Fed’s job if they don’t do, it.
So every time we get to what you had over the last couple of days with a bit of pullback before the ECB had a bit of pullback by some of the Fed members, the FMC members, and the yoke of, steepened.
AM: I got a question for you, Nick. Can you buy bonds if oil goes vertical? Because I think we both think that oil is going 120 north.
NG: Yeah. Well, no. I think that’s another reason why you can’t be long bonds at the moment and the bond market will adjust to it.
Everybody said the bond vigilantes are dead. When you look at the percentage moves and the price of the bonds, they’re not these are big moves going on.
TS: Nick, can you address a little bit about what will happen to the credit markets as far as the bond movement?
NG: High yield seem to do okay today, which investment grade, fine. Historically, in rising rates, you should see investment grade is somewhat better. High yield, no. High yield. I mean, if these rates are going to start moving up and some of the stuff I heard today tells me “one and done” is not going to happen. It’s going to be more and they’re not going to have a choice.
And the central banks have been basically what you had in the last seven or eight days is the central banks admitting they made a policy error or two last year. And now they’re fearful of making further policy errors. So they’ve got to be seen to do.
And again, to Albert’s point last week, clearly the Biden administration is, had their backs on the inflation front. And I suspect from what I was being told, we’re going to be quite surprised at potentially how aggressive this Fed could be. Not 50 basis points in March. That will be too quick. Too much, too quick. But May, June could well be in play because these numbers aren’t coming down. They’re just not coming down.
TN: Okay. So regardless Q2 is when things start to happen on the interest rate front, on the rates front, right?
NG: Yeah. In terms of QT, I was told the second half, beginning of the second half. Second half.
TN: So does that mean July or November?
NG: Probably means July. Okay.
AM: I honestly think it’s a possibility we do that beforehand just because fiscal cliff is coming in March.
TN: How do they go from QE to QT? Just like that? They shouldn’t be doing QE right now anyway. That’s true. It’s still doing QE. So they missed a beat there.
AM: How do you taper if you’re doing QE still? Why doesn’t anybody ask that question or answer?
TN: I ask it every week.
AM: Tony, I was on this thing with Andreas and “we’re going to taper.” I’m like, “okay, sure.” On paper. But the reality is you’re not because the QE is continuous.
TN: I don’t know. It seems to me from what Nick is saying, it may not be continuous. It seems like that has to stop because the policy position is going to stop in March. Right?
NG: Exactly. Which is why I think 25 basis points, not 50. However, I think right now, until they’ve caught up somewhat forward guidance is not going to be with clarity.
They want to get back to normal so they can be forward guiding according to what we were used to in the deflationary times. Pre-Covid. Okay.
TN: Okay. So when you say pre-Covid, you mean pre-Covid in terms of interest rate and balance sheet?
NG: Yeah. I think it’s exactly what I’ve been told this morning. They want to get back to the interest rate level that was prevalent then. They want their balance sheet back at that level.
TN: Okay.
NG: And I think that what’s happened is not only have they been shocked by inflation, they shouldn’t be shocked by the false-ty of their forecast, but I think they were shocked by the fact that we’ve got a lot of bubbles going on.
Equity market value, housing market, NFT, crude oil. Crude oil’s not a bubble. Bonds have been a bubble. So I think we’ve got some surprise. And of course, that will then feed it.
Remember I said originally, there’s either a riot in the bond market or riot in equity market.
TN: That’s right.
NG: One or the other. It started with bonds, and then we got a bit of an equity riot yesterday, which was more earnings related. But the thing about it is if you look at interest rates as gravity, zero interest rates with basically zero gravity. So you’re on the moon. Equity starts have been up here. If they’re raising rates, they’re increasing the level of gravity. News and law means that something starts to fall.
I was also told if it’s not a cascade, if it’s orderly, sort of down 20% from here, they’re okay with it.
TN: Okay. That puts us at what, 36?
NG: 35, 36,000, which is still above where we were before Covid. Right?
TN: Right.
NG: Fed will be happy with it. This put, is not, there’s no clarity on the put anymore.
TN: Okay. Is it safe to say that your view by the end of the year is sometime between now and the end of the year will hit 35, $3600?
NG: Look, the Fed. These rate markets will carry on. Any mistake by the Fed, any hesitation, it’s going to be punished by rates. And you’ve seen what’s happening, and it happens. It crosses over. You saw what happened in the European bond market as well this Thursday. Bank of England. You saw Gilts market also adjust, and that flowed through to the US market and it continued today.
TN: So do you think the ten-year crosses 2% next month?
NG: Oh, yeah. My target on the ten-year for this year is 260.
TN: Okay, great. So let’s take that and a central bank’s reaction, inflation. Tracy, we’re seeing crude prices just kind of a rocket ship. So can you talk us through that and let us know how does that contribute to next week’s CPI? And Nick mentioned CPI, but what do you expect for that as well?
TS: Well, I mean, I expect CPI to be high. However, the Fed doesn’t really include energy and housing in there and food in their metrics. So that doesn’t necessarily play into that.
That said, I think what we saw today was a lot of shorts being squeezed out of the market. That said, still expecting higher crude prices later this year into Q3.
The reason being because the global oil inventories just drew another 8 million. We have OPEC that just announced another 400K increase for next month this week. Right. And they haven’t even been able to keep up with their production increases. I mean, their compliance is over 132% right now. They just don’t have the spare capacity to move forward. US products consumed last week hit 21.6 million barrels. That’s over 2019 levels.
So globally, we’re seeing higher demand with lower supplies. So this market is likely to continue higher just because of actual supply and demand issues, which I’ve been talking about week over week.
What’s also interesting today is that nobody’s really talking about is that Saudi Aramco just announced that they’re mulling another 50 billion equity stake sale. Right. And so it would be a good thing to keep kind of oil prices higher and inventory is kind of lower. Right?
TN: Sure.
TS: There’s a lot going on in the market right now.
TN: Okay. And as we see this cold front come through different parts of the US, of course, it’s winter. But do you expect, say, Nat gas to continue to rally or say, for the next couple of weeks or next couple of months, or do you expect that we’re kind of in the zone where we’re going to be through the winter?
TS: I mean, I think we’re kind of in the zone. US nat gas prices are not as subject to the volatility or the constraints that say European nat gas prices are concerned. I mean, we have an overabundance of Nat gas, we tend to flare it.
We’re going to be this year the world’s largest exporter. Right. But that’s not necessarily going to bring I mean, you have to look at our gas prices trading at four or $5 compared to nat gas prices in Europe trading at $40. So I think we’re at a sideways market right now just because of the oversupply that we have.
What we are saying is depending on what area you live in, then natural gas prices tend to vary. So we’re looking at the North East, for example, where we have this cold front. Nat gas prices are at $11. Right. But Henry Hub, which is what everybody’s trading is still at 4 to 5. We’re going to see not gas prices rise in Texas right now because we have a cold front coming through. But again, that’s a regional market.
TN: I was just complaining about gasoline prices being $3 here in Texas earlier today, so I just can’t deal with it. Where is it where you guys are?
AM: $4.25 in Tampa.
TN: $4.25?! Holy cow. What about you, Tracy?
TS: $3.99 in the Northeast.
TN: We’re right at $3, and I can barely stand it.
Okay, let’s move along with the geopolitical stuff. So, of course, Ukraine is on everyone’s mind. And we’ll put a link to this in the show description, the video from the State Department spokesman and the AP diplomacy reporter. Albert, can you talk us through a little bit of that kind of what’s happening there and what is that doing to the situation to find a diplomatic solution?
AM: Well, simplistically, I mean, you have the Biden administration trying to amp up the rhetoric and make it more dramatic, basically to distract from what’s going on domestically in the United States from inflation and social issues, and SCOTUS picks down the list of the problems that are facing the Biden administration. That exchange was unbelievable.
You had an AP reporter just taking him to task and saying “where’s the declassified information? And his response was, “I’m telling you verbally right now, and that’s the declassified information.” That’s unbelievable. You’re not going to get away with that.
This is just more of a symptom of the ineptitude of Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State. He shouldn’t even be called “Secretary of State” anymore. It should be “Secretary of statements,” because that’s all he does. He doesn’t do anything else. And when it’s concerning with Ukraine and his method for, “diplomacy”, he’s a non factor. The United States is a non factor, right now.
They’re behind the eight ball where they keep talking up this rhetoric and putting their allies in Europe behind the black ball here. What do we do here? We need support from the United States to show strength, but realistically, we can’t stop them going into Ukraine.
TN: Okay. Yeah. So let’s just go onto a viewer question here from @SachinKunger. He says, what will happen if there is an actual escalation between Russia and Ukraine? What’s the likelihood of actual escalation and what do you think would happen? Both you and Tracy? Part of it is commodity prices. Is there an impact on commodity supply chains, meaning wheat and gas and other stuff to Europe or other places, or is that not necessarily a huge issue?
AM: Well, I believe we’re about 75% that they’re going to have some sort of incursion into Ukraine. I mean, you don’t mobilize that many people and create supply chain logistics to not do anything. That question really depends on the level of incursion. Right. Because if it’s just ten, 20,000.
TN: It goes back to Biden’s minor incursion.
AM: That’s the Pentagon’s working model. And that’s my working model. 10, 20 thousand, you go in the same place as you were before, you loot the countryside, cause a little disturbance. The west looks weak. You leave after a month or so. Right. That’s the likelihood situation.
Of course, the markets are going to freak out in day one.
TS: That’s exactly what I was going to say. I mean, obviously you’re going to see a reaction in the commodities markets just because we’ve had four years of really not much geopolitical risk factored into a lot of these markets, the agricultural markets, the energy market. Right. Pretty much after Libya had a ceasefire in 2020, all that risk premium kind of came out of at least the energy markets and the agricultural markets, we haven’t really seen a lot of geopolitical risks.
So of course, the markets will freak out. I totally agree with Albert on this point. Whether that’s going to last or not, that’s a totally different story.
TN: Yeah. I also think that we’ve had so much money supply that that cushions geopolitical risk on some level. And interest rates have been so low that that cushions geopolitical risk as well. So as we’re in this interest rate cycle and this balance sheet cycle, geopolitical risk counts for more. It’s more costly for companies, it’s more costly for countries and investors.
NG: I would add one other thing. These markets are not trading liquidly. So these moves on geopolitical risk could be exaggerated. Right?
TS: Exactly. My point is that geopolitical risk will be exaggerated at this point.
NG: You can see there’s no liquidity, right?
AM: Yeah. To be fair, any kind of event right now just makes the markets look like it’s a crypto exchange. 30% up, 30% down 300 points on the ES. That’s insane.
TN: On that, Albert, let’s move to some tech earnings and let’s talk about Facebook and Amazon. So if we want to talk about big moves, everyone kind of knows this, but can you talk us through a little bit of that? But I’m more interested in why it’s happening. Why is everyone negative on Meta and why are they positive on Amazon?
AM: Well, from my perspective, the Fed and their cohorts use maybe a dozen companies to pump the markets. Right. They’re mainly tech. Right. They’ve expanded out into a few other things, but it’s mainly tech, Facebook being one of them, Amazon being another. AMD and Google and all these guys. Right. All these big tech names.
Now when you see Facebook miss and a couple of other miss, and the markets start to get weak, there’s a point to where… This goes back to what Nick says about different levels in the markets and whatnot. He always stresses that with me. There’s a point to where if they break this level, we’re going down to 4100 or 4000 or God forbid, 3900. Right. So that lined up right when Amazon’s earnings were coming up. And I’m looking at the market and I’m looking at these levels and I’m like, there is absolutely no way they’re going to allow Amazon to miss. Whether they let them look the books or say something in guidance or whatnot. And lo and behold, what happened? Amazon beat. Did they really beat? Probably not. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then Pinterest that nobody cares about beats and then Snapchat. I don’t even know what the hell why they’re a company. They beat unbelievably. I think they were up like 50, 60% and after hours. Right.
So now they have their juice to pump the markets back up to 45, 30 or even maybe 4600 next week before the fiscal cliff becomes a problem.
TN: Okay.
TS: You also have to look at the bond market. Right? I mean, the more the ten-year tanks, the more that’s going to drag on tech.
TN: Right. So what does that tell us about the next couple of weeks, specifically next week? But the next couple of weeks? As we’ve seen, say Meta come down, Facebook come down. But we’ve seen these other things really rally. Where is tech as a sector?
AM: It’s a pump sector. That’s all it is right now. There’s nothing really behind it. It’s built on zero rates. Well, we know we’re going to get rate heights. So what are you betting on at the moment?
TN: Right. And that’s the basis of my question. If tech is a deflation play and we’re in inflationary environment and we’re going to have rate rises, what does that mean for tech in the near term? So are we at the kind of tail end of tech? That’s my real question.
NG: We’re at the tail end whilst we have to see these interest rate rises come through. And actually, you don’t necessarily have to see the central banks officially raise because if they don’t, the bond markets are… And then there’ll be a catch up. This is the problem. If they Underperform in their credibility catch up because they’ve already implicitly admitted their errors of policy, bond market will adjust and they have to catch up again.
Now, if they do something surprising on the rate side. So yesterday was an ECB shock, right? Today, there was nothing to do with the Fed. It was the data. Well, we’ve got that CPI date next week. Right. That’s going to be very interesting because I agree with Tracy. Core is at a certain level which is still too high. But it’s the full Monty, the full CPI that labor uses when they’re discussing their wage claims. Practically, that’s the behavior of economy.
TN: CPI is the single biggest event next week. Is that fair to say?
TS, AM, NG: Yes.
TN: Okay, so let’s look at that. What if it is, say seven, which is kind of the expectation, I guess the lower bound of expectation kind of. Right? So let’s say it’s seven or let’s say it’s even five. What does that mean for us? Does that mean continued, easy Fed? Or does that mean you have the same assumptions and that’s just kind of a milestone or something that we’re passing along the way to higher rates anyway?
NG: We’re on the way to higher rates anyway.
TN: Okay.
TS: I mean, if it’s five, the market, temporarily if it’s five, the market temporarily will probably rally because that lessens the effect that Fed is going to raise. Right. That percentage will probably go down. But that’s a temporary. If we’re just talking about market reaction on the data release, I don’t really see that happening. I don’t see 5% coming in. I don’t see that a possibility.
TN: But then let’s look at the other side. What if it’s eight and a half? What happens then?
NG: Well, then in the old days, it would have been an inter meeting rate hike.
TN: Okay. Right.
NG: And the bond market will just, it’ll be another riot. Even if the core is steady. Big figure eight on the full CPI? that would shock a few people. Like people were shocked today with the non- farm payroll data.
Literally, if you could watch Bloomberg TV, it was like. They couldn’t believe what was going on.
TN: So we’re in that place in the market where the porridge has to be just right. Is that fair to say?
TS: I think we’re in for volatility. Right? I mean, we’ve been experiencing volatility for the last month or so. I think this will continue until March, until we have some resolution of whether the Fed is going to raise rates or not.
In between, it’s going to be volatile because everybody’s looking at intermittent data saying, does this mean the Fed is going to raise rates? Does this mean the Fed is going to look do you know what I mean? So I think we’re in that pushbull thing, and I think that volatility will continue into next week. I think that volatility will continue until actually the March meeting, until we get some resolution on whether the Fed is going to raise rates and by how much.
TN: Okay. So if I just a couple of things for you to agree or disagree with, just short yes, no. Next week volatility in equities with downside bias, you agree or disagree?
AM: Disagree.
TN: Disagree. Nick, you agree or disagree? Downside bias, you agree. Tracy, equities, agree or disagree?
TS: I think it depends on the sector. Okay. Give me one or two. I think we’ll see, my downside bias is in tech and then obviously, yes, because it’s heavy tech. Right. And so I think we see sideways markets in the Dow and the Russell.
TN: Okay, then let’s do the same exercise for commodities. I know there’s a lot of companies out there, but generally commodities. Choppy with an upside bias. Agree or disagree?
TS, AM: Agreed.
NG: That’s a dollar call.
TN: Okay. Explain that.
NG: Yesterday because of the dollar’s weakness against the Euro and the Dixie, I tend to agree with you. I think it’s going to be choppy until we see the color of the CPI number.
TN: Okay. Very good. Anything else to add for the week ahead?
NG: Just keep your eyes on the bond market. My mantra.
TN: Very good. Okay.
TS: Keep your eyes on B come.
TN: Thanks guys. Thanks very much. Have a great weekend. And have a great week ahead.
TS: Thank you.
TN: I don’t know the left side of my screen is the pineapple people.
AM: We’re going to call Nick Luke for the episode today.
NG: The professional version of Luke.
AM: Okay. Anyways, I’m done joking. Let’s get this thing on the road. Okay.
Our CEO Tony Nash recently guested at the BBC Business Matters to share his thoughts on the lifting of the vaccine patent protections to help in manufacturing more vaccines faster. Is that fair specially in this time of need? Also discussed are the special case of Facebook and Twitter’s suspension of Donald Trump’s social media accounts, college football, and the growing industry of recycled furniture.
The US government has backed a temporary suspension of intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines in a move likely to enrage the pharmaceutical industry, which strongly opposes a so-called waiver. Shares of the major coronavirus vaccine companies were hit by the announcement but is it just an empty gesture? We speak to Jorge Contreras, Chair of the Open Covid Pledge, a group that is lobbying organisations to share their patents and copyrights in relation to vaccine efforts. We also hear from Thomas Cueni, of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations. And there’s no status update for Donald Trump anytime soon; Facebook decides to uphold it’s ban of the former US president. We speak to Issie Lapowsky, Senior Reporter at tech site Protocol. Also in the programme, college sports in the United States are a big business, but the athletes taking part have typically been compensated through scholarships rather than salaries. But could that change? The BBC’s Will Bain reports. Plus, the Swedish furniture retailer Ikea has launched a scheme in the UK to buy unwanted furniture back from its customers, in a bid to save items from going to landfill. Hege Saebjornsen is the company’s sustainability manager for the UK and Ireland explains how it works. And we’re joined throughout the programme by Tony Nash, chief economist at Complete Intelligence in Texas and the writer, Rachel Cartland in Hong Kong.
Show Notes
VS: Tony, do you think, people in Texas will be as upbeat as George, our first speaker?
TN: Yeah, absolutely, I think people here are pretty happy about that. A couple of weeks ago, there was an uproar in India over Americans not sharing vaccines with India. Houston has a very large Indian community. And so we were very supportive of everything that could be done to help get vaccine components and vaccine intellectual property to India. So this is a positive development in every way.
VS: And so in terms of an anxiety of giving vaccines away before the population is fully inoculated, does that not exist in your experience?
TN: I don’t think so. There’s plenty of capacity, at least in Texas, if you want a vaccine today, you can sign up to get it. So it’s not really an issue here. I think India has the manufacturing capacity and the know how to do very good vaccines in India. So once the licensing is clear and the components are there, they can manufacture for India and for many parts of Asia, Middle East and Africa.
VS: Tony, what does this actually mean for Donald Trump? He’s not allowed to use social media at the moment.
TN: There are other social media channels, but I think it’s bigger than that. I think the real issue here is around what’s called section 230 in the U.S. government, which allows websites to not be considered publishers. And under Section 230, they are supposed to provide unrestricted access to posting content unless it’s a rules based system. This is clearly a personal deal. Whether you like Trump or not, this is this is making special rules for an individual. I think the bigger issue is around whether Facebook and Twitter and the other social platforms are abiding by Section 230 or whether they should be considered publishers. The BBC is a publisher there and certain things that the BBC has to adhere to that Facebook doesn’t. And so if Facebook was a publisher, they would have to adhere to the rules that the BBC abides by. So if they’re going to restrict postings like this, they should be a publisher. Otherwise, they need to have rules that they enforced regardless of the individual, regardless of the political party, regardless of the country someone from. I think they need to be applied consistently.
VS: So this idea of this board is a way of sort of perhaps circumventing that.
TN: But nobody does. I mean, nobody if you ask anybody in America, nobody actually believes this is an unbiased board. It’s just a fallacy so…
VS: Wide ranging from all around the world, different types of backgrounds. So you can kind of argue that they are a mixed background with lots of different worldviews.
TN: I run an artificial intelligence company. Nobody in the technology community, hand on heart. I actually believe this is an unbiased view. I’m sorry. It’s just not true. And it’s a big pretend game to act like this is unbiased. I’m not on Trump’s side here necessarily. But if you’re going to make rules personal, that really companies lose credibility as a result of that. And all I’m saying is that Facebook should be considered a publisher and they should abide by the rules that publishers like the BBC abide by.
VS: I’m sure it’s not going to last that we’re going to hear from this issue. And for those of us outside the United States, we don’t understand the significance of college football in everyday American life. Tony, you’re in Texas. Can you paint us a picture of that?
TN: Yeah, so college football is not professional and it’s kind of professionalizing, but by professional, I mean paid, right. So this California bill starts to professionalize college football. I think part of the problem with that step is that we have students who come out of high school effectively 17 or 18 year olds who have really raw talent. They’re not necessarily trained to play professionally. They typically spend time with high caliber coaches in universities to develop their skills in their craft over three to four years. Many of them go out early to try to go pro, but it’s over three to four years and then they’ll go into the professional leagues and make money.
So there is a very large investment that universities are making into those athletes. And what happens at the university level is, when students come to a university, they do get a scholarship. The athletic dorms are not normal dorms. They are first class dorms. The food they eat is first class food. I’ve been in their cafeterias. It’s amazing. So they are not treated like normal students. So they do get a lot of advantages above a scholarship, but there’s this huge investment in their skill. And so, the other side of this is if students want to get paid when they leave high school, they’re welcome to try to go pro after their senior year in high school when they’re 18 years old.
And so if there’s a problem with them getting paid, they’re welcome to to try to join the draft and go through that process. They can do it at any time. They could go pro at 18 years old. I doubt many of them, if any of them, at least in football, would would qualify, would get drafted by a team.
VS: As you say and say presumably then, sports is encouraged at quite a young age, given how lucrative it can can be.
TN: Sure. And so they can try to do that, LeBron James actually went into the NBA out of high school, he never went to university. So there are kind of phenoms who can do that and, more power to those guys. They’re welcome to do it. But university, so the school where I went, where I did my undergrad is Texas A&M University. It has the largest revenue sports program of any university in the United States, very large. But the facilities that Texas A&M has for their student athletes are amazing. They rival any pro facility. And so what’s happened over probably the past 20 years, I would say, is a dramatic kind of upskilling and a dramatic improvement of not just the facilities, but the coaches.
And so there are coaches who go from college level to pro and back because the skills that they impart on the students are are amazing. So, the path to getting paid for your sport is one that is always there. They can always go pro straight out of high school. LeBron James did it, other athletes to it. But it’s a very, very, extremely rare process, I think, paying student athletes. Part of the reason I like college football, I prefer college football to pro because you root for a team in college football, you don’t root for an individual in pro football, really. It’s rooting for individuals. And it’s not really a team sport as much as it is at the college level. So I think a lot would change. I really do think a lot would change.
VS: When we heard that about Rachel’s lockdown project. Lack of. And are you cycling anything?
TN: Always, you know, so we just moved back to the U.S. about three years ago, so we’re not recycling much, but when we lived in Asia, we would regularly recycle as my kids grew up, as we worked through furniture, we would regularly, regularly recycle in Singapore.
There’s a guy named the current goony man in every neighborhood who would come and take your recycled materials. And so we would work with with him and he would donate it or something like that. So, you know, every community has its own way of dealing with these things.
VS: Do you sell on furniture that you don’t know because of these websites these days? You can do that well now.
TN: We do that as well. And it’s pretty common. I mean, there are loads of websites where we can do that. So it’s pretty common. We don’t really throw away much big stuff there. We had my son, my son’s bunk bed here. We just sold it on one of those sites about six months ago. So, yes, it’s very common.
VS: Costly to these sites around. Don’t say I wonder if if a company or a retailer decides that they’re going to buy back things. They’ve actually got quite a bit of competition, haven’t they?
TN: Yeah, I mean, I think they’ve probably done that calculation, it’s a pretty crowded market, so, you know, people will dispose of it in a pretty economic way and make money where they can. So I don’t know that everything will be coming back to them.
That’s probably just a small, small fraction that will actually.
VS: Thank you very much, Rachel and Tony, for joining me today.
Tony Nash is back in the BFM podcast to break down what´s happening in the US Market with IPOs like Doordash and AirBNB selling at a higher price than expected. What´s up with the tech stocks? It´s obviously IPO season, and what should investors do. Should they buy? Also discussed is the current oil price rally to the high 40s. What is the expectation or forecast for oil in the last month of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 for oil?
It’s IPO season again in America and Doordash is first out the, well, door with a pop and wallop, while Airbnb is next, also with a higher price range, like Doordash. Which of the debutantes will be a Buy and which a Sell? And whither oil prices?
Tony Nash, the CEO of Complete Intelligence, discusses.
Show Notes
WSN: On global markets, we got to the line with us tonight, the chief executive of Complete Intelligence to break it down for us. Tony, thanks for talking to us. Nasdaq closed in the red after a 10-day rally. What’s your view? Is this just a technical correction?
TN: Well, Nasdaq still up 36 percent year to date. Things are still pretty good with tech stocks. But it’s been a lot of retail investors so far this year focused on fang stocks. Part of this decline today may be related to the stimulus talks. There are a number of other things involved, but if there is more stimulus, we may see more investment, especially in tech stocks. If you remember, the tech rally started in Q2 of this year really on people investing via Robin Hood in small increments. There were other institutional and retail investors, but Robin Hood investors really led to a lot of the run ups in these tech stocks.
KHC: And I want to pivot this conversation to an IPO, which is closed last night. So Doordash it debuted with an 80 percent jump to close at $189 from an IPO price of 102. Does that make you a buyer?
TN: It makes me a wait-and-see-er. Tech stocks have done really well. Stocks like Palantir are up 200 percent or something since their IPO. A lot of people are looking at those as an opportunity, which is quite possible. But tech IPOs tend to settle shortly after. We saw this with Palantir for a few weeks after the IPO. It declined, then it meandered. And then it really only started coming up over the past couple of weeks.
Doordash seems to have risen very quickly. I think it’s really on hopes, unfortunately, that a lot of the work-from-home stuff continues. Without work-from-home orders or stay-at-home orders, it’s really hard to see Doordash continuing at these levels. I think with a somewhat normal return or return to normal, people start going out again. Some of the people would at least rather go out than order in.
KHC: The other IPO is Airbnb, which is supposed to be priced later today. Is this a name you’re excited about?
TN: Sure I am. What’s interesting about Airbnb is it’s been very resilient with Covid. We’ve seen long-term rentals via Airbnb. We’ve seen people travel using Airbnb. When travel starts up again in a big way, they benefit as well. So it’s a really interesting name for me. It depends on what were the prices and where it goes. But on the face of it, it’s a very interesting name.
WSN: Yeah, it really is IPO season, isn’t it, Tony? I mean, what’s driving the liquidity? Is it still a retail market, institutional or a bit of both?
TN: A lot of it is retail. The retail investors are looking for the quick upside. People are trying to close out the year with as much juice as they can. I think a lot of the institutions were in very early. They take quick profits and then they just wait and see what happens. But if you look at the distribution, the allocation of some of these recently IPO tech companies, it’s a lot of retail investors.
KHC: With virus cases rising in the states, it’s almost certain that the FDA will authorize the emergency use of the vaccine today. So this brings back the question, do you think that the stimulus package that everyone is waiting or expecting, will they still be in the quantum of 908 billion or would it actually be downsized?
TN: I think it’ll be around the current level. The problem is, this is something that should have happened two months ago. And you’ve seen over the past two months, the U.S. economy really start to stall and sputter out. The employment picture is looking grimmer. The demand picture is looking a bit grimmer. If the U.S. wanted to keep things moving at the pace it had been in Q3, it really should have happened in late October. But it didn’t for political reasons.
And I think it’s really critical for these guys to come out with something before Christmas. The politicians look really stingy, like the real economy doesn’t affect them, which is true. And if they come out with something, they have the likelihood of looking like heroes before Christmas. So this is likely political theater so that they can build up some drama for a last minute agreement before the Christmas holiday.
WSN: Sliding over to oil, Tony, with crude inventories starting to build up, can prices break through the fifty dollar resistance level, do you think? And what are the catalysts needed to carry it across the threshold?
TN: Yeah, we think they can. So we’ve seen inventories build up. You know, they built up 15 million barrels over the past week, which is quite a lot well ahead of expectations. But, you know, we’ve expected oil to cross the 50 dollar mark in January, late December or in January. When we started saying this a few months ago, people really pushed back on this. We said we saw a spike in January in the crude price. And so we still believe that. NYNEX crude is trading at forty seven dollars right now. So even with the supply glut right now, we’re still seeing a forty seven dollar WTI price. So we think we’ll see high 40s, low 50s by January. Brent, of course, will be slightly higher than that. So we think breaking through fifty dollars is quite likely, especially at the start of Q1.
WSN: Hey, Tony, thanks so much for your time with us. Tony Nash, the chief executive of Complete Intelligence. And just to make a couple of remarks. And while we just discussed with him. The higher oil prices go, obviously the better it is for Malaysia because we are generally an oil country. West Texas is at 46, 47 right now is about 49 dollars, definitely, too.
He also talked about the Doordash and how he’s waiting to see Doordash. The numbers are not huge. They’ve only got like five million subscribers and they charged off the food guys 30 percent commissions to just deliver the stuff.
WSN: It’s not like they’ve had a choppy fiscal quarterly performance some months at some quarters up, some quarters down. And, you know what is so it’s so frothy. I mean, they nearly double the reference price on IPO day itself, already increased from two bucks, 100 to close 182 crazy, crazy days.
KHC: Well, I think, you know, at the end of the day, what is causing this one is that tech seems to be, you know, the darling darling on Wall Street. That’s when the second is that that clearly there still is a lot of cheap money flowing everywhere and nowhere to go.
WSN: Yeah, of course. Tony was talking about the Robinho traders, right?
KHC: Yeah. So as long as interest rates remain close to zero, I think people are willing to watch. And I used the funds, all investors, you know, regardless of whatever valuation. So it doesn’t really matter what your valuations are anymore. Exactly. So even like for Airbnb, you don´t even talk about earnings, you’re talking about price to sales because there is no earnings.
WSN: OK, well, talking about tech Facebook, right. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 46 states, 46 states, that’s just fall short of the full 50 complimented America. They’ve all brought antitrust cases against Facebook and accusing the company of using the social media dominance to crush competition. They’re calling for penalties that include a forced breakup and they are accusing Facebook of conducting a years long course of anti-competitive conduct.
KHC: Well, in particular, the FTC highlighted the acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 as designed to neutralize any competition, because the argument is that they are a monopoly and they cut off services to squeeze rival developers. So the FTC said it was seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that could potentially require Facebook to unwind its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions. Now, if I looked I remember correctly this morning, Facebook closed down, I think, close to two point six percent based on this news. So it doesn’t seem like, you know, markets are really concerned about this. Or maybe the point is any dispute with the government takes forever and ever and ever so maybe for the moment, I think people are just shrugging it off.
Tony Nash joins BFM 89.9 The Business Station for another look at the global markets particularly discussing the “Japanese equity market”. Is it the time to rotate into value or maybe it is a sign that the broader economy is recovering?
With technology stocks hitting all time highs, there has been some inflow into the finance and utilities sectors. We ask Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence if it is time to rotate into these names. We also ask his views on the Japanese equity market and if there is still money to be made with the change in leadership.
Produced by: Mike Gong
Presented by: Khoo Hsu Chuang, Wong Shou Ning
Show Notes
WSN: So far, deeper dive in global markets today. Joining us is Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence. Good morning, Tony. Now, last night, U.S. tech stocks will slump relatively while laggards like finance and utilities saw some inflows. So do you think this is the time to rotate into value and maybe a sign that the broader economy is recovering?
TN: I think it’s certainly a time to to that that that rotation is starting. I don’t necessarily think it’s in full swing yet, but but we’ve received signals for the past week or so that that rotation would start sort of seeing some of the techs off.
Today is not really all that surprising, given especially some of the Fed and Treasury statements over the past couple of weeks.
KHC: Yeah. So in terms of cyclical stocks, Tony, what is your point of view in terms of which sectors might benefit?
TN: Well, I think, you know, we’ve seen tech with companies like Nvidia, Tesla, and these guys have just had amazing gains over the past, say, four months. I think, you know, the rotation into some of the finance stocks, into some other more mainstream, broader market equities is likely. I think the indices are assuming that tech stays at elevated values. That rotation will only help the indices if tech comes off. Given the concentration of waiting within those stocks, it could really hurt some of the overall indices.
WSN: And, Tony, let’s focus on one of these, you know, super winners in the last few months. And it’s Tesla, right? They have a decision to sell five billion worth of shares. Is that smart or overly ambitious? Move now. And what more what kind of growth can we expect from this company?
TN: Well, the I think the the growth in the stock price is very different from the growth of the company, so Tesla’s trading at a PE ratio of almost 1200.
OK, the stock’s more than doubled since March. So, you know, the company itself isn’t doubling. You know, I think it has. I think what the management is doing is making a very smart decision to sell equity while they know the price is very high. So from a management perspective, I think that was a very smart decision. In terms of a buyers perspective, I’m not so sure it’s possible that Tesla stays at these elevated level. People have been trying to short Tesla for years and it just hasn’t worked.
So it’s possible there’s growth there and it’s possible they stay at these elevated levels.
WSN: So, Tony, are you a big fan of Tesla? This level…
TN: It’s hard not to be whether I’m a buyer, personally or not, I would hesitate here. But, gosh, you know, I think there are other places to look that are better value.
But it really, you know, part of it really all depends where the stimulus is going. So since the Treasury and Fed are intervening in markets, if they’re targeting specific equities or specific sectors, then you kind of have to follow that money.
And so it’s it all depends on how much further these things are going to run and where that stimulus is targeted.
KHC: OK, based on PMI data, most of Asia remains contractionary. But for China, of course. You know, Tony, in your opinion, why is recovery not yet forthcoming? And is there a main catalyst needed for manufacturing to take off?
TN: Yeah, I mean, look, in terms of manufacturing PMI, as you have Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, you know, they’re all growing, which is great. Myanmar is actually growing faster than China.
But what we don’t have really is the demand pull. And that’s been a real problem. And, you know, we’ve been talking about that since February and we’ve been really worried about deflation. And, you know, what we see even in Southeast Asia is government intervention in markets is really what, propping up a lot of the activity. And I think, you know, the big question I have is, will we see steam come out of recovery in Asia in the same way we’ve started to see steam come out of recovery in the U.S.?
I think the answer is unfortunately, probably yes. And I think until the demand from both consumers and companies comes back and the fear of covid wanes, I think we’ve got some some volatility ahead.
We’re expecting some real trouble in September. I think it’s great that markets are doing well today, but we’re starting to see the the momentum really slow this month.
And without additional help from the Fed or PEOC or other folks, it really slows down. The problem is the efficacy of that support really deteriorates the more you add to the system.
WSN: And Tony, look at Japan, right?
I mean, are trading the equities. They are trading at a steep discount to their historical premiums. Do you see any value in yen based assets? After all, Warren Buffett himself just dipped his toes into it by six billion dollars worth of trading companies did. What do you think?
TN: Well, that’s the answer. I mean, it’s hard to it’s hard to bet against Buffett. He’s obviously seeing real value there. And I think the Japanese trading companies are really, really interesting because they’re you know, they’re a very good play right now. So is there a value? Sure. I think there’s value there. I think with Japan, a lot of the story is around productivity and automation. If if Japan can continue to raise its productivity through automation, I think it will be a very good play.
If that productivity and if the level of automation slows down, then it becomes questionable because everyone knows about the demographic story in Japan, but the economy continues to grow, which is really amazing.
WSN: So it seems like you’re quite a believer in that this can overcome some of the structural issues. But what about the fact that Abe has resigned for health reasons? Does it change at all the economic and monetary policies in Japan that might change your decision?
TN: Yeah, I think when someone like Abe steps down, there’s always momentum. So it last for several months. The real question is, how long should the next leadership last? And is there enough structural stability to continue the momentum in Japan, meaning it’s not growing leaps and bounds, but it’s stable growth and it’s healthy growth. So I like Japan a lot. We have had reform under Abe. We have had structural reform under Abe. I think it’s much more healthy today than it was in 2011 or 2010. A lot’s been done.
Japan has the capability to continue to improve, but it all really depends. There are regional dynamics and there are domestic dynamics. But again, I think if demand regionally and globally doesn’t return, which is likely COVID induced, then I think Japan, like everywhere else, will have issues.
WSN: All right. Thank you for your time. That was Tony Nash of Complete Intelligence, speaking to us from Houston, Texas.
