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The Week Ahead – 11 Jul 2022: Energy Backwardation

We had a pretty volatile week last week, with crude selling off pretty sharply early in the week. In this episode, we looked at energy backwardation, and Tracy educated us on what’s happening in those markets.

We also had some comments from Putin about a multipolar world. Albert talked through that.

And then on Friday, unfortunately, we saw the assassination of Japan’s former Prime Minister Abe. We talked about the Japan post-Abe and what that means for the region.

Key themes:

  1. Energy backwardation
  2. Putin’s Multi-Polar world
  3. Japan post-Abe
  4. What’s ahead for next week?

This is the 25th episode of The Week Ahead, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.

Follow The Week Ahead experts on Twitter:

Tony: https://twitter.com/TonyNashNerd
Tracy: https://twitter.com/chigrl
Albert: https://twitter.com/amlivemon/

Time Stamps

0:00 Start
0:54 Key Themes for the week
1:28 Catalyst of the energy sell-off on Tuesday
5:44 Will we see more action in energy prices?
6:57 Is it cost-ineffective to make hydrogen with natgas prices?
8:11 Diesel
9:20 Vladimir Putin’s multipolar world.
13:44 Japan post-Abe
20:29 What’s for the week ahead?

Listen to the podcast version on Spotify here:

Transcript

TN: Hi. Welcome to the Week Ahead. I’m Tony Nash. Thanks for joining us. I’m with Tracy and Albert today. Sam is away, but we are talking about a pretty volatile week this week. Before we get started, actually, please like and subscribe. Please ask any questions below, make any comments. We want to make sure this is interesting for you, so just let us know any additional info you want or comments. We’re happy to address those.

We had a pretty volatile week this week with crude selling off pretty sharply early in the week. So we’re going to look at energy backwardation, and Tracy is going to educate us all on what’s happening in those markets. We also had some comments out of Putin about a multipolar world. We’re going to have Albert talk through that. And then on Friday, unfortunately, we saw the assassination of Japan’s former Prime Minister Abe. So we’re going to talk about the Japan post Abe and what that means for Japan and the region.

So first let’s get into energy. Tracy, obviously, we had a big sell off in energy early in the week, and then we saw it come back later. What was really the catalyst for that energy sell off on Tuesday?

TS: What happened is that we started on July 5, right? We opened with low liquidity in the market in general. Then we saw a sell off in the general markets and commodities and risky assets that kind of exacerbated that trade. And then on the 6th, we saw a liquidation of a couple of very large positions in that market. And so fundamentally, basically, there is no reason for this sell off other than technicalities.

In fact, if we’re looking at this market, this spreads, the calendar spreads, which means month to month, were exploding higher during this entire move. That implies that the physical market at least, is very tight right now because you’re seeing backwardation increase significantly when we’re seeing a $10 move in ZZ, which is crazy.

TN: Can you tell us what that means? A $10 move in ZZ. What does that mean for the rest of us?

TS: If you’re talking about calendar schedule, we’re talking about monthly. So we can talk about the current front month is August. So we look at August, September, September to October, October to November, et cetera, et cetera. And once these spreads start exploding higher, that means that we’re seeing people want to dump oil in the front month market because that’s more lucrative than keeping it in storage.

So if I’m an investor and I’m looking and I want to invest in a backwardated market, I’m looking at a convex market that goes from right to left, and I’m going to invest in, say, a back month, and I want my investment to move higher…

TN: I’m investing further in the future.

TS: Right. That’s what it backwards. If you’re in a contangable market, we’re looking at the opposite situation, where you’re looking at a convex structure going from right to left, whereas if I invest in December, by the time my investment reaches Frontline X free, I’m losing money. I’m losing value in my investment.

TN: Right.

TS: And so that’s how we kind of have to look at that situation.

TN: Yes. You had a great tweet this week explaining that with visuals.

TS: I did. It’s on Twitter, if anyone wants to see it.

TN: Exactly. We saw this in crude. We also saw it in a natural gas. Right?

TS: Yes. We’re kind of seeing a major pullback in many of the commodities markets. Right. We’re seeing a little bit of a bounce this week because we’re looking at China. China has recently announced we have one last announcement with $200 billion bond sale rate. So we’re looking at a lot of stimulus out of China that’s giving commodities the boost. Right now, we have to see I think the markets are still going to wait on, particularly the industrial and base medical markets are going to wait until we actually see some action in China to really see investment back into these markets after this huge goal.

TN: So nobody believes the China stimulus story right now. It’s kind of a show me the money period. Right. But once they do start to show the money, do you think we’ll see much more action in energy prices?

TS: I think you’ll see more action in metal prices than you will equity prices.

TN: Copper’s way off compared to, say, the last 18 months. But it’s not way off, given historical copper prices. If we go back before, say, Q1 of 2020, it’s kind of where it had been previously in the ballpark, at least. Right. So we haven’t necessarily reverted back to pre-COVID, necessarily. We’re just in the start-stop manufacturing world, and that’s what’s affecting base metals like copper. Is that fair to say?

TS: Oh, absolutely. If you look at, like, a monthly chart rather than looking at a five-minute chart, and the market has kind of just been consolidating, really, for the last two years, until we see a really big break above, say, $5, a really big break below $3, we’re still kind of in that consolidation zone.

TN: 3.50 to 4.50 kind of range. Interesting. Okay. Sorry, Albert.

AM: Yeah. I got a question for Tracy. Nat gas, as we’re talking, since we discussed it a little bit, that’s used to make hydrogen, if I’m not mistaken, and since the nat gas price seems to be elevated, isn’t that going to be a little bit too cost-ineffective to make hydrogen, which causes a diesel problem, if I’m not mistaken? I’m not sure about that. That’s what I’m asking.

TS: No, absolutely. I think that would be a problem. Looking forward. I think there’s a lot of problems if we’re looking at the hydrogen market. There’s still a lot of problems when we’re talking about taking this idea to actual fruition. Right. Because if you look at the hydrogen market, there’s like a rainbow of green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, this hydrogen, this hydrogen. But we really haven’t gotten to the point that can overtake, not gas the allure of the situation is that you can take hydrogen, mix it with nat gas, you can send it down the same pipeline, and that saves a lot of money.

AM: Yeah.

TS: The situation is this is not a great idea in theory, but we’re just not there yet.

TN: Okay, got you. Albert’s, question about diesel. Diesel is not any less tight than it was a week or two ago. Right? In fact, that’s just as tight or tighter than it was, say, a couple of weeks ago or a month ago.

TS: Yeah, I think the diesel market is still very tight.

TN: Right.

AM: Maintenance season starts, isn’t it? From September to November?

TS: Yes, we will start maintenance seasons.

TN: Okay.

TS: I would actually look for some of these refineries to maybe put off maintenance season. So that’s what I would watch to the maintenance season happen. And it’s happened before. If we have it such a tight market, we could see them putting off maintenance seasons. It’s not unheard of.

TN: Okay, so hurricane season and maintenance season are upon us, but we may see at least maintenance season for all of us.

TS: Oh, not I just moved to Florida.

TN: Good luck with that. I’m in Texas. We don’t get as many of you, but it’ll be a fun season for you.

Okay, let’s move on, guys, to some comments out of Putin this week. Vladimir Putin had some comments about us, the multipolar world becoming more and more of reality. We heard this ten years ago. We heard this 20 years ago, and it came up again this week. So, Albert, can you kind of let us know what’s going on there?

AM: Tony, I’ve used this multipolar example for the US. Dollar dominance I got for years now. And the fact of the matter is, we are not in a multipolar world. We are not even going into multipolar world.

People are confusing a little bit of weakness in the US. Leadership and errors and decision making, foreign policy for multipolars, it’s just a multipolarity, and it’s just not the case for the world to be in a multipolar scenario, you would need multiple countries with equal militaries and economies. We are nowhere near that.

The Russian economy is 2.5 trillion. The American economy is pushing 30 trillion. This is just a joke by Vladimir Putin. Simply undermine the US dominance both in the world stage and the dollar.

TN: Aside from some dumpster pundits who write for The Atlantic or whatever, who believes that nonsense?

AM: A lot of Europhiles that want to see the United States take a step down, they can do it. A lot of crypto guys, a lot of gold guys. These guys have to make that argument, because without multipolarity, you cannot have a neutral reserve asset to settle trade. And that’s just the fact of the matter.

The problem becomes, if you have a multipolar world, you’re on the verge of another world war, because there always has to be one alpha that takes hold of the system. You just can’t have equal people.

TN: And the cost of the transaction? Cost? The cost of trade, everything goes up. If you have multiple rights go up, everything goes up.

AM: It’s completely unstable.

TS: Inflation from other countries to other countries.

AM: Yeah.

TN: The world is built on China exporting deflation. Has been for 15, 20 years. And it will continue. If they could just keep their ports open, it will continue. And it makes people happy. Right.

AM: No, you’re right. That’s just the way our system works right now, with the dollar underpinning all of it. It’s the lifeblood that makes trade work. And people are not going to like it. But I promise you, no one alive today is going to see anything other.

TN: So let me just take a step back. Who does he think the polls are? Russia, China and the US? Or Germany or something?

AM: He’s trying to make an assumption to say that Russia and China are the new contenders to the United States. The problem with that is they don’t have military power projection globally like the United States does. They can’t even invade Ukraine. China can’t even invade Taiwan. Otherwise they would have taken it if they’ve it could have. This is the world we live.

TN: Yeah. Russia can stir up problems in Libya or the Middle East or whatever.

AM: There’s no question that they can stir up problems and they can fill in gap vacuums that we leave right, unintentionally, unintentionally. But they cannot hold that territory. They cannot force changes in governments like the United States did.

TN: And every time I hear somebody talk about the Belt and Road as a sign of China’s dominance, it reminds me of Napoleon’s march to Russia. Right? I mean, they’re spreading themselves so thin. They can’t keep that up.

AM: They can’t. That’s perfect example to do that, to make that thing actually successful, you need to back that up to secure your trade line, trade with the military. Right. China has like, what, two military bases outside of China? Like one in Djibouti and something else. I mean, they can’t send ships over to their armor.

TN: Myanmar.

AM: Yeah. This is beyond a joke to me. I don’t take anybody seriously that even brings this part up, right. Vladimir Putin included.

TN: That’s good. So anybody watching this, if you have an alternative view, let us know in the comments. Honestly, we’d love to hear it. We just want to hear some credible.

TS: Put your notes in the comments.

TN: Yes, absolutely. Okay. Now, finally today I woke up in the US to the really tragic news of Japan’s foreign Prime Minister Abe, being assassinated.

I saw Abe in his first stint as PM in the mid 2000s. And then when he came back in, in 2013, and with the Abenomics plan, which was really difficult to pull off, ultimately successfully. The guy was smart. He was all about Japan. He’s all about Japan recovering, all about Japan being competitive. I put a picture up of Abe shaking hands with Prime Minister Modi of India. Japan and India were very tight. A lot of Japanese investment going to India, a lot of partnership across those two countries and in Africa, both to defend against China in Asia and other parts of the world. So Prime Minister Abe will be missed.

I think what Abe did partly was bring back Japan’s ability to defend itself by passing a constitutional change that allowed the Japanese military to defend itself where previously it wasn’t even allowed to do that. So there’s a lot of dignity that Japan kind of got back, and we can rub Japan’s nose in World War II for eternity, but it’s not going to be constructive. What happened, happened. They’ve paid their dues, and that’s kind of what Abe said, look, we paid our dues, we’re going to move on now and join the 21st century. And that’s what Japan did.

So I’m just curious to get your thoughts, guys, on Japan post Abe. What do you see as of course they moved on to another prime minister. Japan has already moved on from the Abe government. He wasn’t a sitting prime minister. But what do you see kind of the challenges of Japan’s role in Asia particularly, but also in the world post Abe?

AM: I think the most pressing issue for Japan would be contending with China, both militarily and economically. Abe was, like you said, brilliant statesman and patriot for the Japanese people. So he’s going to be sorely missed. And it’s not just he’s going to be missed, but his cabinet and the people that his network is going to be missed because they’re losing a big part of what he brought to the table in terms of strategy and ideology. It was a big shift.

I think that the Japanese are probably going to struggle for strategy in the next five to ten years. And it’s a sad thing, but I’m sure the Japanese, they’re resilient people and they’ll move on and they’ll recover.

TN: Tracy?

TS: No, I absolutely agree with what Albert said. I think the thing is that people are painting him, the media right now, in particular the Western media, painting them with some villain, which is very interesting to me. And I think that people should really just look at his legacy and respect what he’s done instead of jumping on the bandwagon.

TN: So they’re portraying him as some ultra nationalist, but he’s as ultra nationalist as Modi as in India, or Jokowi is in Indonesia, or Lee is in Singapore, you name it. Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan. It’s an Asian direction now. Right. And has been for the last ten to 15 years.

AM: Yeah. The media also, Tony, is desperate to not allow any center right or even right nationalist figures be murderers or looked up upon. They just can’t stomach it. They just can’t help themselves to demonize a person that is absolutely unjustifiably demonized by being called an ultra-nationalist and even worse, by the NPR.

NPR had two other headlines that they had to delete because it was just so atrocious. This is a.. And Modi, Abe, I don’t want to put Victor Orban into that, but all these right leaning leaders just get attacked and the media can’t help it.

TN: Right, yeah. I think from an economic plan, if we look at what Abe did with Abenomics, of course, the Japanese Central Bank is kind of “independent,” right. But they really took the JPY from kind of 76 to the dollar to, say, 120 to the dollar, and it really allowed Japanese manufacturing to be competitive again. Right.

And it took somebody with that clarity of economic vision, as well as the clarity of, say, the military vision and political vision, to be able to pull off what they did. And in terms of, say, energy sustainability under Abe, they also created much deeper relationships in the Middle East with places like Qatar, UAE.

TS: And they also looked forward to nuclear, where you looked at the west was looking to shut things down, Abe was looking to invest in nuclear projects. You’re looking for energy security, energy going forward. There are a lot of things that he did to advance that sector in Japan, which is admirable.

TN: Right. Albert if we take a US perspective on this? The US has worked hard to kind of hold a line against China. Do you think with the mediocre leadership we have in the US right now, do you think it’s possible that some of that US say coalition falls apart a little bit? Or do you think we just kind of take a breather and then it resumes based on the institutional stamina of parts of the Japanese government?

AM: That’s a great question, Tony. That’s actually a really good question. And I think where we have to look for we have to separate the Biden foreign policy cabinet with the Pentagon. Because the Pentagon is actually leading this charge for the Pacific with Japan and Australia in charge. I really don’t think that the Japanese are going to take a step back or the US is going to take a step back. I think the system is pretty much, the train has already left the station and it’s rolling.

There might be an argument from the opposition in Japan, but I don’t think. That it’s going to take hold to derail this new initiative by the US and the Pacific.

TN: Great, that’s good to hear. Okay, guys. Hey, on that somber note, we’ll end it, but let’s look at the week ahead. Guys, what are you looking for in the week ahead? We’ve had this real turnaround this week. What do you see going into next week? Do you see things calming a bit?

We saw it coming into Friday. Things really turn up in US markets and in commodity markets. Do we see things stabilizing a bit going into the Fed meeting after we’ve had some Fed comments late this week?

AM: I want to see the comments of where they might signal a 50 basis point rate hike versus a 75. I absolutely believe 75 points is coming just from the jobs data that they posted. It was obviously massaged a little bit.

TN: Just a little bit.

AM: Of course it is. Yeah, but this was a good one. And then the revision too, and it just seems to me that they want another 75 basis point rate hike.

TN: To really kill it?

AM: They got to tackle inflation. I mean, they’re looking at 8.8 on the next CPI, which is just.. And you’re staring on the barrel at 9% and 9.2 and 9.3 in the coming months, which is absolutely a political nuclear bomb that goes off.

TN: Okay, Tracy, what are you looking for in the next week especially in commodities?

TS: Yeah, I mean, I agree we probably will see 75 after non farm payroll this week, which I was looking for a clue kind of are we going to get 50, are we going to get 75? It looks like 75 for sure.

So looking in the coming weeks, I’m really looking to China right now and to see what comes to fruition with these sort of stimulus plans. What does that do to the base in industrial medals markets? And I think those are the two things that you should be focusing on right now, particularly if you’re invested in commodities markets.

TN: Very good. Okay. Yeah. I’m kind of hoping they give in to 50, but I’m not hopeful. I do think they’ll on the kind of conservative hawkish side and go 75. But if they can pick up the bat phone and talk to China, and the China guys will unload a dump truck of cash over the next week or so, then I think they’ll be a little bit lighter and do 50 basis points. But I think a lot of it depends on China ECB. They can’t get their act together, so there’s nothing ECB can do to really help.

And Europe is in so much trouble that it doesn’t really matter what they do. They have huge problems anyway. So. I think you’re right. And tell me what you think about this. But I don’t necessarily think we see massive chop. I think we see just a lot of fairly sideways moved for the next week or so.

AM: I would be wary if we jumped up to 4000 or even, like, 3970. I think a rug pull would be in an order right after that. That’s what they do. They bowl everybody up and then pull the rug out.

TN: Tracy?

TS: Yeah. After this big move down in the oil market, in particular, because we did have sort of a flow event coupled with a couple of large funds kind of workforce to liquidate. So I could see that we still could go a little bit higher next week. Sideways to higher next week.

TN: Very good. Okay, guys, be interesting to see. Thanks for joining us. Thanks very much. Have a great weekend. And have a great week ahead.

TN: Very good. Thank you, guys.

AM: I struggle with the headache through that whole thing.

Categories
Week Ahead

The Week Ahead – 11 Apr 2022

As a start, we looked at the Friday’s trading session and what it means. Is this a bullish market?

We’ve made a few recommendations over the past couple of months. We hope you’ve been paying attention specially on $IPI (Intrepit Potash) and $NTR (Nutrien).

We’ve talked about the tumbling lumber markets in recent weeks. What are Sam and Albert’s current thinking on lumber as we’re looking at $LB lumber futures. Sam talked about housing last month. We looked at $XHB, the home builders ETF. How about the rates and housing? We’ve seen that homebuilders are getting hit with expected rate rises. What is the impact of this on the mortgage market, housing inventory, etc?

Shanghai has been closed for a few weeks now and the largest port in the world won’t open for about another week. How can the second largest economy continue to close when the West has already accepted Covid as endemic? How can manufacturers rely on China as a manufacturing center if they’re unreliable?

For the week ahead, we talked about the earnings season, their portfolios, and Albert talked about Chinese equities for months, etc. Is now the time to look at KWEB, which he discussed for some time?

We’ve got CPI out on Tuesday and is expected at around 7.9% and Retail sales on Friday, which is expected at around 0.3%. Inflation seems unstoppable and consumers seem to be getting tired of spending. Sam explains on this.

Key themes from last week

  1. Friday trading session
  2. Don’t say we didn’t warn you
  3. Rates and housing (Tuna & Caviar)
  4. China’s shutdown

Key themes for the Week Ahead

  1. Earnings season expectations
  2. Near-term equity portfolios
  3. CPI (Tuesday), expected 7.9%

This is the 14th 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.

Follow The Week Ahead experts on Twitter:

Tony: https://twitter.com/TonyNashNerd
Sam: https://twitter.com/SamuelRines
Tracy: https://twitter.com/chigrl
Albert: https://twitter.com/amlivemon

Listen to the podcast on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4uQUT91ocSlxs0sdNR7Vt6?si=3ba0d0bb07724b9f

Transcript

TN: Hi, guys, and welcome to The Week Ahead. My name is Tony Nash. I’ve got Albert Marco and Sam Rines with us. Tracy is not able to join us today. Before we get started, if you don’t mind, could you please like and subscribe. That would help us out. And we’ll let you know every time a new episode is up and running.

This past week we saw a lot, but I think the most interesting thing or one of the most recent interesting things is Friday’s trading. We’re going to start talking about the market action on Friday, and then we’re going to get into a couple of things that we told you about trades that if you were paying attention, you would have seen. We’re actually going to go into rates and housing, and Sam’s going to talk a little bit about tuna and Caviar, that discussion from the Fed speech earlier this week. And then we’re going to talk about China’s shutdown, which seems to be getting worse by the hour. So first let’s get into the Friday trading session, guys. What are some of the things you saw on Friday?

AM: Well, from my perspective, the market is acting like crypto. I mean, we’re seeing interday moves on some of these equities, like 5% up and down. It’s a little bit silly. And you wonder if it’s like light volume, if it’s market manipulation by the Fed. It’s just uncanny. I’ve never seen anything like this before. And obviously the market is weak and we’ve talked about black clouds coming over the market and what’s going on. But I don’t see anything any catalyst that would say that this is the bullish market at all. So we’re waiting for multiple numbers of CPI, retail and whatnot. But for me, it’s just like everybody is on pause waiting to see which way this market goes before they take action.

TN: So a couple of weeks ago, we saw a lot of money move into equities. Right? So that money moved in. It’s just parking and waiting. Is that what’s happening?

AM: Yeah, I assume so. The Fed, as it just ups the rates, forces more money to move into the US market, which is actually a brilliant move. You know, this is what we’re seeing. A lot of money here, not knowing what to do at the moment.

SR: To Albert’s point, there’s a lot of money that’s moved in here, but it’s moved into some pretty passive areas that it’s just not moving much in terms of the overall market. You look at fixed income, right? Lots of money moving in there, short into the curb, et cetera, et cetera. I think that’s some of the more interesting stuff as well. But there’s also this weird thing going on where equal weight is outperforming the market cap weight. And has been for some time now, particularly over the last week. If you look yesterday, S&P closed in the red, but if you were equal weighted, close green and it closed green on a non trivial basis, and it was 35 basis points, something like that.

That deviation between market that was led by predominantly tech and only tech, to a market that’s led by other sectors in general is something I think under the surface that paying attention to it can be something that at least can make some money in the near term.

TN: Including Crypto Walmart, which we’ve seen over the past week as well. So we’ll talk about retail later in the show.

Okay. So we had as a group talked about some calls over the past couple of months. Some of those were calls earlier, but let’s get into those just to walk through. Albert, you and Tracy had talked about Intrepid Potash. She talked about Nutrien. We’ve got those on the screen right now. Can you walk us through those and kind of what you’re thinking was on those and what’s happened? What do you expect for those to happen in the near term?

AM: Well, speaking about IPI, Intrepit. It’s like a leveraged ETF in the fertilizer market. That thing swings 5-10, 11% in a week, no problem. That call was basically on the premise that the Ukraine war is going to go on. Russia is cutting off the fertilizer supply. Belarus has a big fertilizer supply. OCP in Morocco has shifted from actual fertilizers to more like phosphate batteries for EVs.

So it only made sense that besides Mosaic, which is the 800 pound gorilla, IPI and Nutrien were just the logical choices for investments.

TN: And is there room to run on fertilizers like there was a target put on Nutrient by one of the banks of like 126 or something? Do you think we could keep running on those trades?

AM: We can, right? Certainly we can. It just really depends on what goes on with the Russians and whatnot. My only risk for running too far is that the Dixie could go to 105, 110 and then we have significant problems across the market, not just fertilizer prices.

TN: Okay. So even if dollar does go to 110, we’re planting now in the US, right. And now and for the next couple of months. And the fertilizer demand is right now and it has been for the past couple of months. But it’s especially right now, is all of that, say planting demand, is that all priced in already, or do you feel like some of that is to come?

AM: I think it’s pretty much priced in. And let’s just be careful because some of the farms that are planting crops are using nitrogen and also fertilizer derived from nat gas. So it really depends on which way the farming community wants to go, what they see the most profitable crops.

TN: Okay, great. That’s good to know. We also talked about lumber, as I remember a conversation probably three or four weeks ago where I think, Sam, you brought up lumber and how lumber was coming off. Can you walk us through that trade, as we have it on the screen?

SR: Yeah, sure. I mean, it’s a Fed trade, right. It’s a Fed tightening quickly, mortgage rates going up and housing demand coming down. The idea that a Fed going this quickly and having the market priced in, there’s a difference. Right. The Fed has only moved 25 basis points.

TN: Right.

SR: The market has done the rest of the tightening for it across the curve. It’s been pretty spectacular. Housing, housing related stocks, those in general, are going to be the first thing that the Fed affects and they’re going to be the first thing that the Fed affects on the margin very quickly. And you’ve seen mortgage rates go to five plus percent.

TN: Sure. Before we get on to housing, I just have a couple of questions about lumber and other commodities. So the downside we’ve seen come in lumber over the past week or so. Do we expect that to come to other commodities as well? I mean, things like weed and corn, there’s still pressure upward pressure on those. But do we expect other commodities to react the way lumber has?

SR: Oh, no, I would not expect the foodstuffs to react in anywhere near the same manner as lumber. Right. Lumber is a fairly… Lumber, you cut it up, you put it in inventory, you sell it, and then you use it for something.

TN: Right.

SR: It doesn’t last forever in good condition either.

TN: Great. Okay, good. Thank you. Now moving on to home builders, which is where you are going. You also talked about XHB, I think two or three weeks ago, and we’re flashing some warning signs about that. We’ve seen obviously rates rise. I was speaking to a mortgage broker earlier this week. He’s doing mortgage at almost 6% right now and expects them to go up kind of close to 8%.

We’re starting to see the resurgence of ARMs. People are already getting back into adjustable rate mortgages because 5.99% is high. Just as a bit of background, less than 10% of US mortgages over the past few years have been adjustable rates. So can you talk us through XHB? And maybe you had mentioned earlier kind of Home Depot and some of the other home makers. Can you talk us through what kind of… Home Depot was a leading indicator on that? Is that fair to say?

SR: It’s fair to say Home Depot and Lowe’s this kind of ties into the lumber conversation. Home Depot and Lowe’s were two of the best at ordering and trying to actually keep inventory on the shelves, even when during the first tremendous spike in lumber. Right. So they kept a lot of lumber on the shelves. They currently have a lot of lumber inventory on the shelves. And it’s part of the reason that you’re seeing what could be described as almost an over inventory of lumber, not just at those two entities, but across the board, because everybody had to buy lumber in order to keep it in stock.

So, yeah, Home Depot and Lowe’s are the tip of the spear in terms of both home building and in terms of home remodeling. Those are both fairly significant drivers of the business there. There’s a little bit of weekend contractor type deals, but very little.

So overall, I would say they are a leading indicator and they have not been acting very well. But when you have mortgage rates to your point at 6%, that creates a problem for the marginal buyer. It’s not a problem for somebody who owns a home. Right. You have your mortgage rate locked in, et cetera, et cetera. It’s not going to destroy you. It might set off being able to put a new deck and redo a pool or something like that. But it’s not going to hurt you in any meaningful way.

TN: Right.

SR: It does hurt the marginal buyer. It hurts the first time buyer, et cetera. So you begin to have slower turns in housing and you begin to have problems with where does that incremental inventory of homes go? And that’s the real problem with higher invetories.

TN: Right. Before we move on to officially talking about rates and housing, I’ll share a story about a friend who is building a house and their lumber broker who should be able to get the best pricing actually has worse pricing right now than Home Depot. Okay. So they can actually go to Home Depot and get better pricing than their lumber broker. And that’s how messed up the lumber market is right now. They’re arbitraging their lumber broker versus retail any given week in their bulk buying to make sure that they can get their house built. So that market both on the lumber side and on the housing side is just a mess.

So let’s officially go to housing and rates. We’ve done a lot of the discussion, but there was a CNBC story about rising mortgage rates are causing more home sellers to lower their asking prices.

And Sam, you talked about that marginal buyer, which is great, and that new buyer. When I talk to people who are doing mortgages, they tell me that even with the rate rises we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks, there is still not a lot of inventory on the market. That’s a big issue. And they’re not seeing a fall in demand for new houses. So is this kind of a last minute rush for people to get a house before rates rise even more? Is that plausible?

SR: There’s some plausibility to that. Yeah, 100%. The other thing is that we’re in Texas. Right. The demand for housing in Texas, the demand for housing in Florida does not tend to be, I would say, as tied to mortgage rates as everywhere else. The rest of the country is much more sensitive to what’s going on. Texas and Florida and a couple of other spots simply have too much inbound demand from higher priced areas. So California, New York, et cetera. There’s still an arbitrage when you sell a place in California or sell a place in New York and move to Texas, Florida, some of the Sunbelt States.

So it’s tough to take Texas as an example, particularly Houston. We’re actually the fourth largest city in the country, and yet we do not get counted in the S&P Schiller because of how different the housing market is here. Dallas gets kind of for whatever reason, but Houston does not.

TN: We’re not jealous at all about that.

SR: No, we’re not.

AM: Go ahead, Sam. Sorry.

SR: But just to wrap that up, I do think that there’s a nuance to Florida and Texas that should almost be ignored. When I look at the data, I’ll be taking out the Southeast region just because it’s one of those that is a little special at the moment.

AM: Yeah, that’s a key point that I always made is like, because of the migration patterns in blue to red States, things are just really wacky. Florida and Texas, Arizona will be red hot. Meanwhile, Seattle, Chicago, parts of New York are just dead spots at the moment. So until that all gets weeded out, people stop moving. Then we’ll actually see the housing market starting to cool off.

TN: Right? Yeah. I was just up in Dallas yesterday, and things are just as hot up there. And the immigration from the coast to Dallas, especially around financial services and tech, it’s just mind blowing. It is not stopping. It has been going on for probably five years, and it’s just not stopping. Those counties just north of Dallas are exploding and they continue to explode.

Okay, so our next topic is China and China’s slowdown. Shanghai has been closed for a couple of weeks with kind of a renewed round of Covid. And obviously the largest Port in the world, which is in Shanghai, is closed. And that kind of exacerbates our supply chain issues, especially around manufactured goods that we’ve been seeing globally. We’ve seen overnight that. Well, not just overnight, but over the last, say, five days. Food has become really scarce in Shanghai. We’ve seen people on social media talking about how it’s difficult to get food. We’ve started to see little mini protests around Shanghai, around food. And things are seem to be becoming pretty dire.

Overnight, we saw that parts of Guangzhou that the government is considering closing, parts of Guangzhou, which Guangzhou is the world’s second largest port. So the two largest ports in the world, there is a potential that those are closed. There is also gossip about parts of Beijing being closed as well. So I’m curious, what do you guys think about that? I can talk about China for days, but I’m curious, kind of, what alarm bells does that raise for you? Not just for China, but globally.

AM: Well, Tony, you recall, you Balding, and I discussing China’s attempt to attack Taiwan and what had happened. And I had pointed out that closing those ports would cause food insecurity and here we are. Although it’s not a Taiwan invasion, it’s a zero Covid policy that shut down the ports and now we have food stress in China causing all sorts of problems.

Most China observers, especially yourself, know that Shanghai has always been the epicenter of uprising for the CCP. It’s a problem for them. They’ve always tried to wash it. Maybe that’s why they’ve come down hard on Zero Covid Policy. That’s something that I’d have to ask you. But from there, this was very predictable. I mean, you shut down ports, China has a food security problem.

TN: On a good day, China has a food security problem. It is an issue that the Chinese authorities worry about day in, day out, not just when there’s a pandemic. Okay. So one of the things that I was talking to some people about yesterday is why is China closing down? Why are they closing down these big cities? There’s a lot of gossip. You can find a lot of theories around social media saying there’s some sinister plan, honestly and for people that don’t know. I’ve done work with Chinese officials over years. And the economic planners I was seconded to economic planner for almost two years. I believe that they’re closing because they’re worried about how the China virus looks, meaning they don’t want Covid to be seen as the China virus. And they worry about the world’s perception if there’s another outbreak that comes from China.

And so I think the leadership believes that they have to be seen to be disproportionately countering COVID so that there isn’t more wording and dialogue about the kind of, “China virus.” And so, again, I don’t think there’s something sinister going on. There’s a lot of gossip about China intentionally trying to stop supply chains to bring the west to its knees and all the stuff. I don’t believe that at all. I think it’s real sensitivity to how they look globally.

Of course, there’s the public health issues domestically. That goes without saying. But I think a big part of it is how do they look globally.

AM: Yeah, but doesn’t shutting down these ports is going to cause even a bigger spike in inflation within China and actually globally?

TN: Oh, absolutely. This is the one thing that I think they didn’t plan on is they’re about to embark on a whole lot of fiscal, a whole lot of monetary stimulants because they have major government meetings in November of this year. So they absolutely cannot go into recession.

But here’s what I have been thinking about. Okay. We’re looking at a Russia-Ukraine war that could potentially bring down Russia and destabilize Russia domestically. We’re now over the past couple of weeks, looking at a China that is starting to self destruct domestically. And I don’t know of anybody who had the domestic issues of both China and Russia as systemic risks in 2022. These things are just coming out of nowhere. And those two risks can be destabilizing for the whole world. And I’ve said for some time, Western governments have to sit the Chinese leadership down and say, look, you guys are systemically important globally. You need to get your act together around COVID, and you have to normalize your economy because it’s hurting everybody.

AM: Great points. Now, going back to Guangdong, there are some really elite families in China out of that area, really wealthy ones, that actually basically gives Xi the support he needs in the CCP. If he loses those families, there’s real trouble for Xi going forward.

TN: I think there’s trouble for him anyway. I think he is not a one man show. Contrary to the popular Western opinion, Xi Jinping is not a one man show. He is not a single Emperor, kind of claiming things from on high. There is a group of people who run China. It’s just too big for a single individual to run.

So I think Xi has been, I wouldn’t necessarily say on thin ice, but I think things have been risky for him for some time. And as you say, it’s pretty delicate for him right now. And if he doesn’t handle this deftly, I think, again, there could be some real destabilizing factors in China. So this is something again, they didn’t plan for. They were talking about major infrastructure stimulus. They were talking about monetary stimulus, getting ready for this big party in November to nominate Xi for more power and all this other stuff. But it’s possible that these events could really hurt him and really hurt his relationships, meaning the key people around him and then the other factions.

Because as much as people say that China is a one party state, sure, it’s a one party state. But there are factions within that one party. And it should be alarming for China and destabilizing China should be alarming for other people around the world.

AM: Yeah. Same thing as Putin. Like their factions behind them that keep them in power. Same thing as Xi. Most autocratic rulers have a circle of trust behind them that keep them in there. If Xi falls and China starts to, I don’t want to say crumble, but at least wobble, if we think we have serious supply chain issues now, wait till that happens.

TN: Oh, yeah. So Russia is important on energy and a couple of other things, but it’s not globally systemically important on a lot. Okay. I would say maybe it’s regionally important, especially to Europe, but China is globally important. And if they can’t figure this out, it will destabilize everybody.

And so I think Western governments need to not lecture to China, but they need to go forward with real concern about China. How can we help you guys out? Right? How can we help you out? Can we get you vaccine? Can we get you support? Is there anything logistically we can do? That is a way that Western governments can come to the legitimate aid of China. They’ll act like they have it all together, but they don’t. It’s obvious. We see it every day on social media. They don’t.

So Western governments really need to offer genuine aid to China in terms of intelligence, in terms of vaccines, in terms of capabilities, and so on and so forth.

Good. Anything else on that?

AM: No, we covered that.

TN: Okay. Looking at the week ahead. Guys, we’ve got earnings season coming up. Can you talk us through your expectations for earnings season?

SR: Sure. I’ll jump in here quickly. I think there’s a few things to watch. One, the consumer sentiment has been dismal. Right. For the last six months. It’s falling off a cliff. Where the US University of Michigan survey, well below where it was at peak of Covid. But we haven’t necessarily seen retail sales. We haven’t seen corporate earnings and corporate announcements follow that sentiment lower whatsoever.

For anybody paying attention this past week, you had Costco with absolute blow out numbers in terms of its same store sales. Take out gasoline, take out anything, and you still have 7% foot traffic. That was stunning. And that’s not a cheap place to shop.

TN: Right.

SR: So that’s indicative of the higher end consumer that’s still holding in there, at least fairly well through March. That’s pretty important. So then there was Carnival with its best week ever in terms of bookings. Those two things are pretty important when it comes to what is the consumer actually doing versus what is the consumer actually saying, which I think is very interesting.

This week we’ll have Delta Airlines. It’ll be interesting to kind of listen to them and see what their bookings have looked like, see what their outlook is for the summer. And then I’ll be paying really close attention to the consumer side of the earnings reports, not necessarily as much the banks. I don’t really care what Jamie Dimon has to say about Fed policy, but I will say…

TN: I think she do.

SR: Nobody does. But I’ll say the quiet thing out loud. But I will be paying very close attention to what the earnings reports are saying about the consumer, because the consumer drives not just the US economy, but the global economy generally, both on the goods side, services side and really trying to parse through what’s happening, not what the US consumer keeps telling us is happening.

TN: Go ahead.

AM: Sam, really quick. How much of these earnings because I’m a little bit suspicious of how much is it inflationary, prices of everything are higher and remnants of stimulus PvP, whatever the people have been getting for the past year. How much is that calculated?

SR: Yes, which is one of the reasons why it’s a great point, one of the reasons why I pointed out Costco. Costco much less on the stimulus side, much less on the saving side, much more on the high-end kind of consistent consumer. And with foot traffic up 7%, inflation was I think it was about 8%, give or take. So they’re passing on the inflation and they’re still getting the foot traffic. So I think that’s an important one.

On the CCL side, it was after the bookings were after the significant stimulus had already run out or run off. You just weren’t getting checks. I think that was also an indication that maybe there’s a shift from the goods to the services side. The one thing that was somewhat disconcerting, if you’re paying attention to the higher end consumer, was Restoration Hardware. They ran down their book to about 200 million in backlog and don’t really appear to be bullish about this year. They guided well below what some were expecting. I think we’re going to hear a lot more about that, partially because they just can’t get enough inventory in time and they’re kind of in trouble on that front.

AM: Yeah.

SR: To your point, it’s a lot of inflation, but some of these guys are seeing some pretty good traffic, too.

AM: Yeah, actually, funny, you mentioned Restoration Hardware because that was one of the things I was looking at specifically for the housing market, like who’s buying a $30,000 at the moment right now. You know what I mean? It’s just silly.

TN: Yeah, that is silly. Okay, great. Thanks for that. And I’m interested to see how the earnings from Q1 also translate to Q2. I’m expecting a real turn in Q2, and I’m wondering how much that is on investors minds as they look at Q1 earnings.

Albert, as we move into the next point around kind of short term or near term equity portfolios. You’ve talked about KWEB for some time, and I’d like you to, if you don’t mind talking about KWEB a little bit, but also if you and Sam can help us understand what is your thinking right now on your term portfolio.

AM: I mean, KWEB is one of my favorite little stocks because it’s a China technology index and it’s been beaten down to a pulp by the Fed. They have absolutely annihilated not just China, but pretty much all foreign equities. And from my perspective, you’re looking at China stimulating in the fall of the shore of Xi. So it’s like it’s a no brainer to me. I think KWEB at 28 is a fantastic deal. Start piling into that.

One of my other ones I was looking at was FXI, which is basically all the China’s big wig companies. So that’s another one I was looking at right now. In terms of the US equities and portfolios, I mean, we’re so overvalued right now. Where do you put your money into? One of my favorite stocks was TWY a tightened tire. It makes 85% of the world’s agriculture tires. Right. I mean, this thing ran up from $1.45 to $14 at the moment. You know what I mean?

How do you put more money into equities at this stage without some sort of correction or something happening with the Fed to show us which way they’re going to go? Are they going to go 50 basis points in the next meeting and then another 50 and another 50, or they’re just going to use a long bond to actually what Sam said earlier and I forgot to bring it out is they’re using the long bonds also to kill the market. So it’s just like,what do you do?

TN: Yeah. The change to valuations we’ll see over the next three months seem to be really astounding.

AM: They’re just silly. Everything is so inflated at the moment. I can’t in good conscience, say get into this stock or get into that stock, because I know how is it going to run right?

TN: Exactly. Sam, anything to add on that?

SR: I love Albert’s point on KWEB. Think about what’s built into the risk there. You have the risk of the SEC delistings. You have the risk that appears to, at least on the margin, be waning. You have the threat of sanctions on China from them helping Russia. You have a lack of stimulus. You have shutdowns. There’s a lot weighing on that index on top of Fed, et cetera. There’s a lot weighing there on that. And you begin to have some of these calls, the geopolitical onion risks begin to be pulled back a little bit. And that to me is a spectacular risk reward in a market that is generally pretty low on the reward.

TN: Okay.

AM: I had one of my biggest clients from the golden guy. I mean, it’s gold and KWEB is what he’s seeing right now. That’s the only thing he wants to even touch, which is fascinating.

TN: Yes, I can see that. Okay. Next, this week ahead, we’ve got CPI out on Tuesday, which is expected to be about 7.9%. Sorry. And then retail sales on Friday, which is 0.3%. So it doesn’t feel like inflation is abating. But, Sam, you talked about, say, Restoration Hardware and other folks earlier. What concerns you guys have about inflation eating into retail sales, do we expect serious difficulty with retail going forward?

SR: Probably not this month. We’ve going to get the release and it’s going to be for March. And I haven’t seen what I would describe as a poor number coming from any of the major retail facing guys for March. I don’t think that number is going to be distressing at all. I think it’s much more of a . May-June story in terms of the economic numbers lag with a hard L. That’s somewhat problematic.

So I would say you’re not going to see the bad official numbers for a month or two. And on the CPI front, I’ll just throw this out there. And Albert can make fun of me for it, but I don’t really care where the inflation readings come in as long as it’s above 5% the Fed still going and it’s still going with its previous plan, and it really doesn’t care, quite frankly.

TN: That’s good to know.

SR: I just think it’s one of those it’s going to be a no. It’s going to be a no reaction type deal. Unless you get a huge break, then you might get a little bit of a come down on twos through sevens or something. But that’s about it.

AM: Yeah. I mean, as much as I want to make fun of Sam on that one. Yeah. Nobody cares about the inflation. Nobody cares about the inflation number right now until the election season starts really ramping up in about June, July. That’s when I agree with Sam with the retail sales are probably crater or starting to lag significantly in May and June. But yeah, prefer inflation. It’s just like everyone is expecting a 7.9 to eight point whatever, you know, so it won’t be a surprise.

TN: Great. Okay, guys, thank you very much for this. This is really helpful and I appreciate it. Have a great week ahead.

SR: Thank you.

AM: Thank you, honey.

Categories
Week Ahead

Week Ahead 17 Jan 2022

This is the second 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. Among the topics: industrial metals, energy markets, natural gas, China’s flood of liquidity and property market, CNY, and bond market.

You can also listen to this episode on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1JGX3v5tpmQ5sS2wtOr0mK?si=3692162380a84ab0

Follow The Week Ahead experts on Twitter:

Tony: https://twitter.com/TonyNashNerd

Tracy: https://twitter.com/chigrl

Nick: https://twitter.com/nglinsman/

Albert: https://twitter.com/amlivemon

Show Notes

TN: Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining us for The Week Ahead. My name is Tony Nash. We’re with Tracy Shuchart, Nick Glinsman, and Albert Marko. To talk about the markets over this past week and what we’ve expect to see next week. Before we get started, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss any of the upcoming episodes.

So, guys, this week we saw kind of a whipsaw in equity and commodity markets with a slow start, but a lot of action mid week. And commodities seem to kind of extend gains until the end of the week. We saw bonds really wait until Friday to start taking off, but they took off quite a bit today. And part of that may have been on the back of the retail sales print that we saw. That was pretty disappointing. So, Tracy, do you want to kick us off a little bit with talking about commodity markets and energy?

TS: Sure. I mean, obviously, we’ve seen a big push in the oil market. Right, in WTI and Brent this week. We’re definitely a bit overbought. But that said, what I think is happening here is we’re seeing a shift from sort of growth to value. I think the markets are pricing in the fact that OMA crime is over. Right. And the Fed may raise rates. That’s putting pressure on growth and giving kind of a boost to the value market. And we’re kind of seeing a chase here a little bit in the oil markets.

As far as if we look at the natural gas markets, it’s been very volatile this week, not only in the US, but global markets. I think that will continue. And we saw a big push up on Wednesday, and then we saw a big pullback, but that was due to weather. But now we’re looking at this weekend, we’re having another cold front. And part of that reason was also because we discovered that Germany had less natural gas in storage than initially thought. So that market, I definitely think it’s going to continue to be very volatile. So try lightly in that market there’s.

TN: You mentioned the Germany supply side of the market, but what does supplies look like, say in the US and other parts of Europe? Are supplies normal? Are they low? What is that dynamic?

TS: Yeah, we’re pretty much normal in the US, and we’re set to in this year. We’re set to pretty much overtake the market as far as the export market is concerned. That would mean taking over Australia and Qatar because of the amount that we’re building out in the delivery system in Texas. But the supplies here are okay. The problem is within the United States is that the distribution is uneven.

So you’re talking about the Northeast, where you’re seeing local natural gas prices a lot higher there. Then you’re seeing, say, in Henry Hub, which is the natural gas product that trade that you’re trading.

TN: So I saw some just to get a little bit specific on this. I saw some news today about some potential brownouts in, say, New York or something because of this winter storm. How prevalent will that be? Maybe not just say, this weekend going next week, but for the rest of the winter. Are the supply problems that extreme?

TS: Yeah, I think you’re going to have a lot of problems in the Northeast. And I’ve been alluding to this over the last few months saying that they have decided not to go ahead with pipelines. They’ve shut pipelines. They kind of cut off their supply because they don’t really want to pursue that Avenue anymore.

However, it’s turning out to be a particularly cold winter, and that’s a lot of pressure on that market. And that’s why we’re seeing $11 natural gas prices up in that area as opposed to $4 in Henry Hub.

TN: Right. Meantime, Albert’s warm down in Florida, right.

AM: Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask Tracy what happens if we have an extended winter where the winter temperatures go into late March or early April.

TS: Then that’s extremely bullish. That’ll be extremely bullish for domestic supplies because domestic supplies will be in higher demand than they are normally seasonally, especially at a time where we’re a giant exporter right now.

We just came to save the day in Europe with 52 now cargo. So we’re exporting a lot if we have an expanded winter here. Supplies are unevenly distributed. We’re going to see I think we’ll see higher prices in out months that we normally see a pullback in those markets.

TN: Great. Texas, thanks you for those cargo, by the way. We really appreciate it. Okay. What about the broader commodity complex? What are we seeing on, say, industrial metals and precious metals?

TS: So obviously, those have been very bullish are going to continue to be bullish because they’re in deficit. As far as if we’re talking about battery metals and such, I think we’ll continue to see that we’re seeing a little bit in the platinum markets. We’re seeing some demand. I think there’s going to be bigger demand this year.

TN: So we’ll show some platinum on screen here so our viewers can see kind of where the platinum price is and where it’s expected to go.

TS: Yeah. So platinum demands expected to grow because of the automobile markets and because of Palladium is so high they can substitute platinum for that. But that may be capped for the rest of the year, and then we may continue to see higher prices going into 2023.

TN: Okay. So when you say that’s growing because of automotive, is this growth in ice ice vehicles. Okay. And is that happening because and I don’t mean these leading questions, but is that happening because the chip shortage is alleviating and we’re having more manufacturing in ice vehicles?

TS: I mean, that’s part of it. But platinum is used for catalytic inverters Palladium. And because of the fact that there’s platinum happens to be a lot less expensive. Right now. And also there’s more of it right now. So we’re seeing kind of demand pulled to the platinum industry. And I’ve kind of been worrying about this for the last couple of years that this was going to happen.

And now we’re kind of seen that comes to fruition because it takes a couple of years to retool and everything to sort of switch that metal. So I think demand looks good right now for that. We may see it capped a little bit. That may go up again. But if we look at this chart, technically speaking, I would say anywhere between 1005 a 1010. If we kind of Zoom above that, then that market could go a lot higher.

TN: Right. So short term opportunities in platinum, medium term, not so much, but longer term back in.

TS: Yes.

TN: Okay, great. Now when you talk about industrial metals like copper and you say a lot is needed for batteries, these sorts of things, that’s a more medium, longer term term opportunity. Is that right?

TS: Absolutely. When you’re talking about things, I mean, we’re already seeing the nickel market, cobalt market, lithium market, aluminum markets all hitting new highs. Copper’s kind of waffling about. But that’s kind of more a marathon trade rather than a sprint trade, in my opinion. So I think we’re going to see more and more demand for that further out in the market. So it’s kind of a longer term investment.

TN: Okay, great. And then what about industrial metals demand in China? As we switch to talk about a China topic, are we seeing industrial metals demand rise in China, or is it still kind of stumbling along and it’s recovery.

TS: That is still kind of stumbling along. And so what I have said before try to emphasize is that I think a lot of these battery metals in particular demand is going to go going to be outside of China.

China won’t be the main driver of this demand anymore as the west policies want to change to EVs and greener technology. So I think you’re going to start seeing very much increased demand for the west. So China demand might not be as significant anymore in that particular area.

TN: Okay. So that’s interesting. You mentioned China demand, Dink and Albert, I’m interested in your view on that. We had the Fed come out last week and talk about tightening and reinforced some of that this week. What dynamic is necessary in China, if anything, for the Fed to start tightening?

AM: Well, I think first of all, Tony, China is going to have to stimulate. They’re starting to prioritize growth for the first time in a long time. They see the US in a bit in a little bit of trouble here with the Fed making policy errors. I don’t want to say heirs. We’re more about like throwing together against the wall and see what works. Right.

So China is trying to be the seesaw for the world’s finance sector. Money comes into the United States it goes out. Where is it going to go? It’s either Europe or China. Europe right now is a complete mess. So obviously you see that money going into China you will keep on leaning on businesses and look to control more than you should but they’re breaking up a lot of the old power structures and that’s actually bullish long term for China. We can debate many of these episodes that we’re doing now, Tony, about whether it’s a good or bad thing for the China power structure. But that’s for another day.

TN: Right. What kind of stimulus if we look at things like loan demand so we’ll put up that chart on loan demand. Can you talk us through can you talk us through the chart of what it means and what the PPO will likely do as a result of low demand or consumer credit? Sorry.

NG: Yeah, the credit impulse so that’s private sector lending as a percentage of GDP and that chart shows it may have based and that looks like what we’ve been hearing is that the PBOC has been encouraging the private sector to start extending credit into the system, particularly to find off the real estate market which is not a surprise.

My personal view and some of the people that I talked to on China is that’s just filling a hole. This is plugging holes or putting plasters on various holes. So what will be interesting is to see how that progresses further down the line along this year. I don’t think nothing’s going to happen before February 1, lunar new year and then you’re running into that plenum. Do they encourage that you’ve got the Olympics and then you’ve got the plenum? Do they encourage some sort of boost?

I don’t think there’s going to be much fiscal. I think there’s a reason for that. I think there’s a connection with the real estate sector. Real estate sector. As a source of great funding for the local governments.

TN: They spend fiscal on bailing out real estate already. Why would…

NG: You have to provide fiscal to the local governments just for the services?

TN: Right. So the central party meetings are in November, so there’s plenty of time between Lunar New Year and November to really tick off some monetary stimulus and get some feel good factor in, say, Q three or something. Is that what you’re thinking?

NG: There is a desire, as Albert rightly said, they are talking about the economy now, but it just feels like it’s one plug the bad, the big holes that have been appearing and they just keep appearing and now we’ve got Shamal. It just seems like it’s step by step plug every hole and then give a little bit of access to try and get the private credit rolling again.

AM: Tony, everybody is looking for a flood. When is the flood of liquidity going to come into China? Right. But that’s not going to happen until May or June until they see what the US Fed is going to do because nobody right now knows what the Fed is going to do.

Inflation is obviously a problem within China, specifically oil and other commodities, as Tracy was talking about. Their eyes are completely on the Fed. China will have to pop services sector as a real economy. It’s kind of a shambles there due to commodity prices and inflation.

The willingness is there to lend. There’s no question about that. But who wants property right now in China? They can force feed the economy via credit. But that’s inflationary also. So there’s another do move here within China. How do they boost their economy but still keep inflation down? Same thing the United States is going through. Okay.

TN: So let me give you a really simple trick here.

NG: Let’s not forget you’re seeing some majors. Shanghai now has Omikaron. Remember, China, supposedly, according to the World Health Organization, didn’t suffer the first route, but you got Dahlin is closed, Nimboa’s got problems now Shanghai, Shenzhen, and they’re worried it’s going to head up towards Beijing.

All these international flights to Hong Kong completely canceled. So that’s another problem if you extrapolate and equate it to what’s happened in the west whenever these outbreaks have occurred.

TN: Yeah, but I think the solution. Yeah, that’s a problem. I think everybody’s facing that and I think China is just very, very sensitive about that. We can come up with whatever kind of conspiracy theories we want about China, but I just really think that they’re very embarrassed by COVID and they’re trying to cover things up, not cover up, but they’re trying to offset the negative preconceptions globally by taking dramatic action at home. That’s my view.

TS: And they have Chinese New Year and the Olympics coming up, right?

TN: Yeah. And they’re being very careful about that now. My view for quite some time has been that they would keep the CNY strong until after Lunar New Year and after Lunar New Year, they could get some easy economic gains by weakening CNY just a bit. Is that fair?

AM: I think it’s fair. They don’t want the bottom to fall out of the economy. And the extent of their damage the extent of damage to the economy was pretty significant. So they’re going to have to pull off a few tricks. Like you said.

TN: It’s percentage wise, it’s a lot. But in reality, at 65667 CNY historically, it’s nothing compared to where that currency has been historically. And I think it’s pretty easy to devalue to that level. And I think they would get some real economic gain from that.

AM: Yeah. But again, it matters what the Feds are going to do with rate hikes. That’s the wild card.

NG: The devaluation not just look at the dollar, look at the CFA, because I think it pays them to value against the Euro more than the dollar.

TN: Yeah. Okay. We can have a long talk about the CFO’s basket at some point.

NG: My point is you got to look at the Euro CNY as well as the US, because I think that’s where they’ll go.

TN: Yeah. Okay. So does this present an opportunity for Chinese equities in the near term, or is it pushed off until Q two?

AM: I mean, from my perspective, I’ve been on Twitter saying that I’ve gotten into Chinese equities. They are de facto put on the US market, in my opinion. They don’t have the strength of the actual but does. But money has got to flow somewhere, and if it’s not going to the United States. It’s going to go to China.

TN: Okay. All right. Let’s move on to bonds. Okay. Nick, can you cover bonds and tell us are we on track? Are things happening as you expected? Do markets do bonds like what the Fed has been saying? What’s happening there?

NG: Well, the initial reaction after the testimony from Powell was you had a steadying and a slight rally in bond prices, slightly slower yields. But I thought today was fascinating because today we’ve across the York Cove. We’ve made new highs for the move, so we’re at the highest yield for the last year.

What was interesting is we had that disappointing retail sales. Okay. That would typically suggest if this Fed is sensitive on the economy, perhaps they won’t do much. Well, the bond market didn’t like that. So now you have what is typically good news for the bond market, creating a sell off. And that tells me that the bond market is beginning, especially with the yield curve. Stevening, the bond market is beginning to express more anything that suggests that the Fed doesn’t do what they’re talking about. The market wants to see action. Not words.

TN: We’re getting punished for now.

NG: And what’s interesting is if you think a little bit further forward, if the Fed does hold back and isn’t as aggressive as some of the governors have been suggesting, three to four hikes I didn’t think Ms. Bond Mark is going to like that.

TN: Or Jamie Diamond saying eleven heights.

AM: Jamie diamond is nothing that comes out of his mouth should be taken at face value. Him knocking the 30 year bonds down today, he’s just setting himself up to buy. I mean, the guys he talks his book always has.

TN: Hey, before we move on, before we move on to talking about next week, we did get a question from Twitter from @garyhaubold “Does the FOMC raise rates at the March meeting? And how much does the S&P500 have to decline before they employ the Powell put and walk back their lofty tapering and tightening goals” in 20 seconds or less going, Albert? Oh, 20 seconds or less.

AM: Well, the market needs to get down to at least the 4400, if not the 43 hundreds. That’s got to be done in a violent manner. And it has to put pressure on Congress to do it. And they can’t raise rates unless they get at least $2 trillion in stimulus.

NG: And also don’t forget the Cr expires on February 18. So we could be in the midst of a fiscal cliff.

TN: February 18. Okay. We’ll all be sitting at the edge of our seat waiting for that. Okay. So week ahead, what do you guys think? Albert, what are you seeing next week?

AM: Opec pump for Tuesday and then Biden dump for Wednesday as they set up a build back better push in Congress, along with probably a hybrid stimulus bill to try to get to that $2 trillion Mark. Otherwise, they got no fiscal and this market is going to be in some serious trouble.

TN: Okay. Can they do it? Can they do some sort of BBB hybrid?

AM: Yeah, they can do it. They can get ten Republicans on board as long as there’s a small business, small and medium sized business stimulus program. Okay. They’ll get that.

TN: And if they do market react and you say that’s $2 trillion. You say that’s…

AM: They need a minimum of 2 trillion to be able to even think about raising rates in March.

TN: Okay. And Nick, how does it matter?

AM: This is dependent on how bad inflation actually gets, because if we get an 8% print of inflation next month. Then everything is on the table.

TN: So can you say that you cut out just a little bit if we get what, an 8% print?

AM: If we get an 8% print on CPI the next time around and anything is on the table.

NG: Okay. I think what was happening with the bond market basically is it’s beginning to look a little bit longer term. And I’ve had this conversation, the big traders, the big fund managers are sitting there thinking, okay, look at crude oil now, 85 on Brent. Energy price is crazy in Europe.

That’s going to feed through from the wholesale level all the way through to the consumer via manufacturing goods, via the housing market, via service industries. Starbucks has to charge some more because they’ve got a much bigger overhead.

TN: Netflix just raised their prices by a buck 50 or $2 a month or something.

TS: Filters down to everything. Energy runs the world, right? So that’s going to higher energy prices are going to factor into literally everything you do.

NG: And my personal view, I think that sort of works is in sync with Tracy. I think crude goes a lot higher. I think this year we could see north of 100, perhaps as high as 120. This all feeds through, right? So the point is the bond market there’s a lot of conversations on a longer term plane right now. And the bond market is an expression if it’s higher yields, yield curves deepening.

Anything that says that the fed is hesitant, I think you get sent off. I think that’s why we sold off. We should have been running on week retail sales.

TN: Okay, Nick. Sorry. If we do get a $2 trillion bill, what’s going to happen with bonds?

NG: They’ll be sold.

TN: They’ll be sold. Okay. So they’re going to punish the fed if we get fiscal?

NG: They’ll punish the fiscal fed to start acting and acting in short order. And I remain unconvinced. We’ve only heard words. We got to see the action. They’re still doing. Qe. Right? It’s absurd.

TN: Yes. We’re going to keep the flow going over here, but we’re going to raise interest rates over here. I’m not sure I get it. There’s been that disconnect ever since they announced this in December.

Okay, guys. Thank you very much. We’ve hit our time. Have a great week ahead and we’ll see you next week. Thank you very much.

AM, TS, NG: Thank you. Bye.

Categories
Visual (Videos)

CNA Asia First: Omicron sparks sell off

The full episode was posted at https://www.channelnewsasia.com. It may be removed after a few weeks. This video segment is owned by CNA. 

Show Notes

CNA: Welcome back to Asia First. Wall Street took a hit overnight amid concerns that a rise in Omicron cases would stall growth and add to inflationary pressures. Experts say supply chains and corporate profits could be dealt another blow as the possibility of increased restrictions is back on the table.

The Dow and the Nasdaq tumbled 1.2 percent. The S&P 500 closed 1.1 lower, with financials and materials among the biggest decliners. Also weighing on sentiment, Goldman Sachs has lowered its US growth forecast for next year. This after Senator Joe Manchin said over the weekend he would oppose President Biden’s 1.75 trillion dollar spending bill.

Let’s bring in Tony Nash. Now, he’s founder and CEO of Complete Intelligence, joining us from Houston, Texas. Lots to talk about today, Tony. So let’s start with Omicron. How much do you think potential measures are going to dent economic growth given the spread of the highly transmissible variant coinciding with the end of the era of cheap money?

TN: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think it really depends on where in the US you are. I’m in Texas and in in certain parts of the country you could barely tell that there’s a pandemic. There aren’t restrictions at all here, in Florida and other places. And also, we had our surge a couple months ago. So we’re on the downside of that surge now.

In the north, where you have kind of seasonal viruses, they’re on the up upward motion of the surge and so there’s a lot of sensitivity in northern states like New York, Boston, or Massachusetts, Washington DC, Michigan those sorts of places. So I think what you’re seeing is a kind of seasonal sensitivity because of Omicron and people getting nervous and so you know, again it really all depends where you are in the US.

For the upcoming Christmas break, flights are packed. Americans are traveling again. These sorts of things are happening. So, of course, there’s always a risk that people will do a hard lockdown like DC has put in some new measures today. But other places are seeing the virus as endemic and just kind of trying to move on with it. So, I think it could go either way but I don’t necessarily think we’ll have sustained negative impact. We could have short-term negative impact.

CNA: What about the risk from Fed moves and do you think the projected three rate hikes next year are going to be enough to contain inflation given the potential for Omicron to cause these price pressures to spike?

TN: Sure. You know, I do think that the Fed will pursue the tightening, meaning of its balance sheet pretty quickly. I think the rate hikes they’ll probably do one and wait and see and then they’ll proceed with the others later.

I think we can’t forget that 2022 is a midterm election year in the US and the Fed, you know, they they try to stay nonpartisan sometimes. But you know, there’s going to be a lot of pressure for them to make sure that the economy continues growing at an acceptable pace and kind of pushes down against inflation, So they’re in a tricky spot so they can’t just go out of the gate with three rises. They have to take one. See how the market digests it. Continue to build up expectations for the later rate rises then proceed based on how the expectations are set in.

CNA: What would that mean for the flows into markets given how Biden administrations Build Back Better Plan is also facing a setback? We could see a narrower bill than the 1.75 trillion on the social and climate front. What then do you think the market drivers are going to be if both the central bank and the government are curtailing that stimulus?

TN: Right. You know it is possible. Like I said earlier, kind of travel those sorts of things are coming back. I think Americans are just dying to get back to something that’s a little more regular, a little less constricted.

You know we do see things like food, entertainment, travel these sorts of things moving. Temporarily, we do see things like technology dialing back. But you know as we get into Q1 or Q2, we think that stuff will come back and be interesting again. So. But not necessarily as much of the work from home activities. People here are gradually getting back into the office.

So you know what we will see say for US equity markets is because tapering and interest rates we will likely see a stronger Dollar and that stronger Dollar will attract more money from the rest of the world as well. So both domestic growth, although it’ll be a bit tepid in ’22 will help to continue to push markets marginally.

We’re not going to see massive growth like we saw in ’21. But the the strengthening US dollar will draw up liquidity from other parts of the world, too.

CNA: Just very quickly if you can, Tony. What do you think the outlook for energy demand and oil prices is going to be like given how some countries are already reverting back to containment measures?

TN: Yeah. Oil is tricky. In the near term, I think oil is a little bit tricky for the next few months. I think the outlook is better as we get say to the end of Q1 and into Q2. But for now, we’re not expecting a dramatic upturn in crude prices like we’ve seen in gas prices in Europe and other places.

CNA: Okay, we’ll leave it there for today and keep an eye on those commodities. Thanks very much for sharing your insights with us. Tony Nash of Complete Intelligence.

Categories
QuickHit

Inflation: Buckle up, it may get worse (Part 2)

Nick Glinsman and Sam Rines are back in this QuickHit episode special Cage Match edition about inflation, part two, where we start looking into things like raw materials cost versus processing and manufacturing bottlenecks. Also discussed are the wage inflation and labor availability and how long these impacts will last. And finally, we start talking about central banks. What will the Fed do? Will it do anything? When will it do it?

 

For those who prefer to listen to a podcast, here’s the Spotify link for you: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3CK3SNwMK97oWLy1DMRQnD?si=uV1As8VsTxSVrQNE0iYuiA You can also find us in other podcast audio streaming services. Just search “QuickHit”. Thank you!

 

Part one covered a lot around specific commodity inflation and why it’s happening.

 

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This QuickHit episode was recorded on April 28, 2021.

 

The views and opinions expressed in this nflation: Buckle up, it may get worse QuickHit episode are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any content provided by our guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.

 

Show Notes

 

TN: What the people in the middle. So the manufacturers, what capacity do they have to absorb these price rises? What are you guys seeing when you talk to people when you read? Are you seeing that manufacturers can absorb the lumber prices, the copper prices and other things, or are they passing that directly along?

 

NG: Sorry, Sam. I’m jumping in here. The beauty of that question right now is there was a major headline, the Financial Times talking about margin compression of how US corporates are going to be increasing prices. It was today. You have the likes of Chipotle. We’ll go on to that. That’s a labor cost issue. But the other company, you know, J&J, various bare necessities manufacturers for nappies for kitchenware also they’re saying they’re going to have to put price pressure through to the consumer and as we were discussing just before we started, there’s the elasticity of price increases is very high.

 

The elasticity of price decreases is extremely low. And I would contend that this becomes a rolling, snowball effect as these prices get passed through to the consumer. There are other costs that will be passed through to which we can talk about later on labor side. But this clearly, one of the signals that our well worth watching, on the margins in the corporate reporting, and all of them are suggestive of higher prices to the consumer.

 

Then you look at the ISM prices paid. I have a chart, a model that looks at that versus the CPI. And if that sticks to what it’s done over the last couple of decades, it’s indicative of CPI, actually, the big figure having a getting up to somewhere around four, maybe even higher.

 

TN: Which was kind of a China 2011 scenario of four to six percent CPI.

 

NG: Correct. But also also the the process of decoupling, as long as it may be, that process has created a demand because of the supply shock.

 

There’s a supply shock in the system. The demand is adjusting there, too, so that work as additional demand to fill in the gaps, so if the decoupling replacement process is long standing, the demand is still there, it’s a matter and then catching up. There’s a price disparity caused by that.

 

TN: Yeah, we definitely have a mismatch, at least in the short term. And will those supply chains catch up? That’s a real question. Sam, what’s your view on that in terms of manufacturers being able to absorb these cost and margin pressures?

 

SR: So I’ll jump to the housing market as my example, which I think is one of the more interesting ones filtering, filtering through down into lumber.

 

A very close friend of mine in Houston is delaying the start of one hundred and ninety homes that were supposed to be going into, well… He has the pads laid. He won’t build those homes until lumber prices go down. It’s the largest backlog he’s ever had. And that got us talking and kind of working through the market. And when you look at the market for pine studs in the US, it’s an intriguing look into kind of where the cost pressures are coming through, where mills are making mills that make the two by fours are making an absolute fortune off of the disruption.

 

But if you own a pine stand of several thousand acres, the tree that you are cutting off of it is the exact same price that it was a year ago. You have seen none of the prices at all.

 

TN: So there’s not a supply, a raw materials supply issue. It’s a processed materials issue.

 

SR: Yes. Exactly. So it’s the supply chain breaking down. You didn’t have enough. You didn’t have the mills up and running for a couple of months. You had about 40 percent of the capacity offline. And that created a shock to the system that eventually will be sorted out at some point.

 

We didn’t destroy any capacity for two by fours. We’re building even at the current rate, we’re building one point seven million homes. That’s nowhere near what we were doing in 2005. And yet lumber is four times where it was. So, yeah.

 

NG: May I ask a question because you’re obviously in touch with that level on a micro basis? So one of the things that I’ve been told by several different sources is they don’t disagree with your number coming down eventually. The problem the homebuilders now have is labor shortage.

 

SR: That might be a problem in the northeast. That might be a problem in a kind of coastal problem in the US, where I have fewer contacts in construction. But in the south, there’s no labor shortage. Wages are still very strong. You have some projects that were delayed for large oil which created a supply of able bodied plumbers, electricians, where there’s a shortage elsewhere. So I would say that’s probably very true for parts of the country.

 

There’s anecdotally, Beth. Beth Iron Works? One of the major boat docks in the north, northeast is driving around an RV trying to recruit people to come, trying to recruit welders. That was a problem before Covid that was and will remain a problem. The trades will be a big issue. Common labor, particularly in the South, does not appear to be an issue. That is an issue in the north.

 

NG: I’ve heard it’s an issue in Florida, actually, which is back to you point about coasts. Sorry, I interrupt.

 

TN: We’re in Texas. It’s the Promised Land. I mean, I think you…

 

NG: Would agree with you on that one.

 

TN: OK, so we’ve gone long. I know these are very detailed issues, but I’m going to ask another question. I did ask for some questions over Twitter.

 

So one of them came in from Brent. This was around supply chain disruptions, which we’ve already talked about. There’s another from Jerrett Heath. He says, “Will it be velocity or magnitude that causes the Fed to react to inflationary pressures?”

 

So what do you guys think? Are we going to see kind of the magnitude inflation push the Fed to react or what’s going to push the Fed to react to start to taper a little bit, if they do at all?

 

NG: I would say both at the same time. My great fear is that there is, and this was actually covered by the Wall Street Journal, but I’ve written and spoken about this as well. I sit there looking at the Fed becoming reactive rather than proactive, and the punch bowl analogy is gone, and that worries me enormously because they have great confidence in something that they’re forecasting as transitory and we know what their forecast record is, and if you really want a bad forecast record, just go to Frankfurt and see what the ECB is all about.

 

Now, it’s interesting to me that the conventional wisdom, the consensus forecast is for tapering to the end of this year as opposed to next year. It seems like the more people talk about the inflation pressure, the greater it is. But I wonder whether we will get tapering. That’s what worries me about the Fed.

 

I’ve been really working hard on looking at what Claudia Sahm has written and said over the last couple of weeks. She wrote an op ed in The New York Times and Bloomberg. She’s said… She’s an ex-economist for the FOMC and the Board of Governors, actually. And you get the feeling that the priorities are unemployment with equity, racial equity as opposed to equality. Furthermore, you get the feeling that financial stability… Both of those more important than inflation.

 

Now, if that’s the case and we start to see any signs of a taper tantrum, I worry that this Fed is going to do a proactive. Either stop the idea of tapering or do a twist or something that eases this market. I think they’ve got themselves, we have a very political Fed that, if it’s reactive by nature, it could be procyclical by action. And that’s where I find I really worry about it.

 

Then, we’ve got Powells term expiry February. Well, Lail Brainard is one of Janet Yellen’s favorite people. And if she gets in, we’re going full MMT. So those are my concerns about the tapering, its focus on financial stability and the risk that reactive policy will be procyclical.

 

TN: Interesting. OK, that’s great. Thank you. Sam. Help me understand, what’s your point of view on this? What gets the Fed to react and how do they react?

 

SR: Yeah, so I would go with neither of those will get the Fed to react. It’s not a question of should they or, you know, what they think they should do. But it’s a question of will they. And they won’t react to inflation. They do not care about the magnitude. They do not care about the velocity. And they won’t care for at least another nine months because we know the combination that they’re going to look through, the combination of basic facts and supply chain disruptions, at least through the end of the third quarter. They do not care. And then they will start the clock on their four quarters of inflation above or at two percent, and they want full employment before they raise. That’s four percent at least on measured unemployment.

 

So I would say, it, whatever you want to look at for inflation numbers, they don’t care. And maybe they should, but they don’t.

 

TN: So they don’t care yet. Or they don’t care period?

 

SR: They don’t care, period, until it’s been until it’s been a year of around 2 percent in this summer and fall don’t matter to them.

 

NG: Let me add one or it’s too late.

 

SR: Yes.

 

NG: I’m with you. You and I seem to agree. I mean, that is exactly the impression I got from Claudia Sahm’s words. I mean it was just straight up. And that’s where I worry, you know, I have a huge respect for Lail Brainard. She is a very, very accomplished economist. But she’ll go full MMT is what Janet Yellen wants. It’s what the Democrats want and I really worry about that.

 

Plus, you combine this with here we go back to Larry Summers. You combine this with this fiscal effort and one thing that, so in American terminology, progressive policies typically have historically been inflationary. In English terminology, is what I am, these socialist policies have a history of inflation. More government intervention, more pushing against the string of inefficient allocation of resources. Labor restrictions, minimum wage, universal basic income. It all leads to in one direction.

 

So I agree with you, Sam. I think the Fed doesn’t care and I think, hence, the reactive. When they react, it’s going to be, in my view, potentially too late. It’s already started.

 

TN: So I just sent out on Twitter a chart that Sam published about three weeks ago from another source on the negative impact of fiscal stimulus, and as we end up ’21, like in Q3, Q4 of ’21, that fiscal stimulus starts to have a negative impact. And certainly in ’22, the US fiscal stimulus has a negative impact.

 

So, you know, there are a number of things to worry about, not just with inflation, but with the efficacy of some of this fiscal stimulus that’s going into the market.

 

So with that, I want to thank both of you guys. Honestly, we could talk about this for hours. I would love to have this discussion with you guys again, you know, even in a couple of weeks to talk about other issues. So let’s see where this goes. But thank you so much. Thank you very much for your time on this. I really appreciate it.

 

We’ll get this out as quickly as possible. Thanks to everyone who’s watching this. Thanks for everyone who submitted questions. For those who did submit questions, for the questions we used, we’ll give you guys a month of CI Futures and look forward to the next time. Thanks for joining us.

 

Categories
Podcasts

Biden “clear we will win” but key results still outstanding

Tony Nash joins Rahul Tandon at the BBC for Business Matters podcast where they examine how diversity of Hispanic groups in Florida, voted and how this influenced Trump’s winning of the state in this election.

 

This podcast was published on November 5, 2020 and the original source can be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172x192dk8khr8

 

BBC Business Matters Description:

 

Democratic challenger Joe Biden says it is clear he is winning enough states to take the US presidency, despite key results still outstanding. We get the latest from the BBC’s Michelle Fleury in Pennsylvania, one of the decisive states still counting votes. We examine how diversity of Hispanic groups in Florida, voted and how this influenced Trump’s winning of the state in this election. Will President Trump soften his stance towards China if he is re-elected? And how might relations with Sino-US relations change with Biden in the White House? We ask Stephen Vaughn, General Counsel for the Office of the United States Trade Representative under Donald Trump until 2019.

 

All this and more discussed with our guests throughout the show. Nicole Childers, executive producer of Marketplace Morning Report in Los Angles, Tony Nash, founder of Complete Intelligence, in Austin Texas and Samson Ellis, Bloomberg’s Taipei bureau chief.

 

Show Notes

 

RT: And you confused, Tony, from above, from the messages coming from from the Trump family, from some within the Republican Party, Mitch McConnell Lasalle’s Mitch McConnell says, look, this is part of American life. You get lawyered up and that’s how it works.

 

TN: I’m confused about things like your reporter who said that Republicans are claiming they’re irregularities without evidence, but she herself said in her report that they’re showing her photos of irregularities.

 

RT: So I suppose she wouldn’t be able to check. She wouldn’t be able to check what those photos are. But on the general point here of where we are at the moment, because this seems to be an election that may well be decided not by the public, but by the courts.

 

TN: Oh, it definitely will be. We’re not even close to finishing this up. This thing won’t be done on Friday. It won’t be done next week. We’ll be in the courts for weeks, if not months, because if you look at things like Wisconsin’s voter turnout, it was 89 percent of the voting population.

 

Turned out that’s a five and a half standard deviation event, which is like one in 100 million. OK, there is no likelihood that 89 percent of registered voters in Wisconsin turned out because unlike places like Australia, it’s not mandatory to vote in the U.S. And so you normally have 60 to 70 percent of a voter base turnout in a place like Wisconsin with 89 percent of people turned out of five and a half standard deviation event.

 

It’s just not normal. And so there’s…

 

RT: But not normal doesn’t mean that it’s not possible, does it, Nicole? Or is Tony right here? We do need to look at some of these figures and understand why there’s a different.

 

TN: Well, I’m sorry, but it’s statistically impossible for that to happen. A five and a half standard deviation event is statistically impossible to happen on an election day.

 

RT: Nicole, I really should have concentrated more in school, but on statistics. But here we go.

 

TN: These are the reasons that they’re looking at legal action and these are the reasons they’re looking at recounts.

 

RT: If you could come back on this point, because then we’re going to move on to Florida.

 

TN: We can be sure that Pennsylvania is going to the Supreme Court. There was a court action that went to the Supreme Court before the election, before Amy Meconium was on the Supreme Court. So now there is a clear Republican majority on the Supreme Court. So at the time, the Supreme Court said we’re going to leave this alone until after the election, unless there are grounds for the court to review it. And so this is why there’s plenty of photographic evidence you can look at all over Twitter. You can look all over. I’ve spoken to a number of very senior Republican Party officials today. Pennsylvania is definitely going to the Supreme Court and there may be other states as well. So we’re not even close to deciding this thing. And if these cases are at the Supreme Court, these state level safe harbor laws mean nothing.

 

RT: Let’s see what happens…

 

TN: If there are federal violations when these just don’t mean anything.

 

RT: Let’s see if there’s a long way to go. Clearly, as you both said in this story, we’re going to be continuing to cover it here on the BBC World Service.

 

An interesting discussion there on the Hispanic vote in Florida, There in Texas, where, of course, there is also a large Hispanic community. But it’s too easy to generalize in this election, isn’t it, because the Hispanic community is so diverse, it’s not one vote at all.

 

TN: I live in Texas, we have about 40 percent Latino or Hispanic population and about 40 percent Caucasian or white population. So it’s pretty even and the rest of the population is very diverse. So now this is a pretty deep red state.

 

And there was a huge move about, I think, three or 400 million dollars that came into Texas from Democrats out of state to try to turn Texas blue, which means turn out to be Democrat. And it utterly failed. There was not a single seat that turned to Democrat in the state of Texas that wasn’t already a Democrat.

 

RT: But that gap of victories is narrowing, isn’t it, in Texas?

 

TN: I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s happening, I think that’s more wishful thinking than anything. And I think when you see the amount of the Latino population that is voting Republican, it’s growing, actually.

 

And if you look in Florida, in Miami, you actually see a very large amount disproportionately Hispanic community that actually voted Republican. So the Republican Party is appealing to African-Americans and Latinos and Asians. In a way, if you look at the Indian population, meaning the Indian population in America, they’re generally very heavy supporters of Republicans under Trump, not before.

 

RT: That’s a global trend. I want to move to Nicole very quickly, but that is a global trend because we see it here in this country as well with a move towards a conservative candidate that’s often to do with economic success. And Tony, I’m sad to see you go, but thank you very much for your contributions. It’s a difficult subject that you’ve managed to make some sense of, I think, for us. So thanks very much for Tony for giving us some of your time on what’s been a very busy day for.

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QuickHit: “LUV in the Time of COVID”

Avalon Advisor’s chief economist and author of “After Normal: Making Sense of the Global Economy”, Sam Rines joins Tony Nash for the 14th episode of QuickHit, where we discussed the L, U, and V recoveries in different states and industries. He also shares some interesting data on traffic congestion, CPIs, car sales, and food prices — and what these data mean for investors, businesses, and people. And what trend is he seeing to pop back up in travel and leisure?

 

Don’t miss out some of our relevant QuickHit episodes:

Proactive companies use data to COVID-proof their supply chains

Manufacturers are bouncing back, but…

We’re not going to normalize

How do we use up all the corn now?

 

The views and opinions expressed in this QuickHit episode are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any content provided by our guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.

 

Show Notes

TN: I’m trying to figure out when and how do we come out of this? We have our models, we have our views on things. But I read your stuff every day and what are you thinking? Where are we right now? Are we early, mid, late? Where are we now and where do you think will go in the next few weeks or months?

 

SR: So I think the answer is all three. We call it LUV in the Time of COVID. There will be an L-shaped recovery, a U-shaped recovery, and a V-shaped recovery depending on whether you look at Texas or Florida or Kentucky. Whether its manufacturing or services. Everything has its own shape. So we’re early on some, middle on some, and late on others.

 

On the overall employment side, we’re probably past peak pain. At this point, you’re mostly having unemployment benefits a hindrance to bringing people back to work, not help people keep afloat. That’s not true everywhere. Certainly, there are places that are still shut down and those people still need those unemployment benefits. But places like Texas that are reopening to a certain degree like Florida and Georgia. It’s difficult to bring people back to jobs that pay less than the enhanced unemployment benefits.

 

One interesting piece of the puzzle though is the continuing unemployment claims and you’ve begun to see the states that open actually begin to roll those down. So people are coming off those unemployment slowly. It’s not happening quickly. Florida is one of the exceptions that Florida came off extremely fast. I think that’s going to be one of the stories that’ll pick up pace over the next three to four weeks. There’s a decent chance that if we’ll continue to have these types of numbers for continuing claims. There’s a decent chance that the May unemployment number will be the worst number we see this year. You begin to improve pretty quickly. The June number, we don’t take that survey for another few weeks. That’s more than likely going to be better than May in terms of unemployment beginning to come down. So we think it’s a mixed bag. But employments probably going to improve from here.

TN: That’s good news, I hope. There are a lot of service jobs and blue-collar jobs that were laid off in the first waves. Is that right?

SR: Yeah most of them. The interesting thing is it’s fairly easy to social distance within most manufacturing facilities. So manufacturing, theoretically, can snap back a little bit faster than the services side of the economy. The services industry is going to be the laggard here. But the service industry is also the majority employer, far more important on the employment side of manufacturing.

TN: You keep an eye on things like traffic patterns and restaurant usage. What are you seeing as the rate at coming back and then what does that say about things like food prices or gasoline consumption?

 

SR: It’s snapping back very quickly on the driving side of things. That’s snapping back much faster than public transit, airlines, etc. You have the U for airlines and mass transit. But you have what appears to be a pretty sharp V in driving. Congestion is almost back to normal levels in places like Houston during rush hour. Texas generally is back towards its baseline according to most of the metrics.

 

The RV sales are through the roof. People still want to go on vacation. And if you can’t and don’t want to get on a plane and go to Cabo, you get in an RV and go to the Grand Canyon. It’s just another way to get out of the house. I got to a little bit of trouble for saying it. But I’ll say it again, if you keep boomers off of cruise ships, they’ll find a way to still go places and still have fun in retirement. They’re not just gonna stay up. They’re not just going to stay cooped up in their house. And the interesting thing about that is an RV is not a small investment for most people. So I think that travel might have more legs than people are really giving credit for. Camping might actually make a come back here versus your more crowded areas, particularly within that boomer crowd.

 

TN: Back to the 70s for camping. We hear about food shortages with meat and we also hear about storage for crude oil. With more activity, are you seeing faster drawdown with crude oil? Are you seeing anything happening there in terms of food?

 

SR: So with crude, we’re beginning to see drawdowns and I’m not sure that it’s faster than we anticipated. But gasoline particularly has picked up much faster than people anticipated. That drawdown will be much faster, much stronger and have longer legs than was anticipated. On the overall demand side for oil, it’s a harder picture to paint. Aviation fuel is a significant driver on the margin of usage within the US. A lack of that is offsetting any bullishness on the gasoline side. Those will probably balance each other out for the most part as we move forward and you have a drawdown that’s relatively in line with what we were anticipating a few months ago.

 

On the food side, you’ve seen a snapback in restaurants for Texas in particular. We are back to, give or take 55 percent usage for restaurants. We have 50% occupancy allowed in Texas. That appears to be pretty close to maxed out. At least restaurants, we get reservations. We’ve seen some interesting things on the eat-at-home food side. We dug through the CPI, the inflation data pretty carefully and found that the food at home was getting increasingly expensive in a way that we hadn’t seen in a long time. Eggs were getting expensive. Meat was getting expensive. Fresh fruits and vegetables are getting expensive and they were accelerating at a pretty rapid pace.

 

It does look like we’re going to have some pretty good crops. It doesn’t look like we’re going to have trouble on that front. So we shouldn’t have the pricing pressure emanating from that side, which is good.

 

The critical aspect is going to be how do we get the beef demand back up to the point where you actually have cattle ranchers wanting to not cull their herds and therefore drive state prices higher. I think that’s going to take more states opening restaurants like New York, California, and other big steak consuming areas of the country reopening and really beginning to drive that incremental demand.

 

Another fun note is I grew up in New Hampshire. Lobster is an important part of eating there. And lobster prices plummeted to the point where lobstermen decided they probably shouldn’t even go out and they were selling for two to four dollars a pound on the side of the road.

 

TN: Let’s just take a minute and we’re sitting in October 1st. We’ve gone through Q2. It was carnage. We’ve gone through Q3 and we’re looking back on Q3 versus Q2. What are you thinking at that point, October 1st of this year? Help me understand a little bit of that based on your perspective today.

 

SR: Based on my perspective today, I’ll probably be sitting in Boston, hopefully having a client meeting at a lobster that’s more expensive than three bucks, looking back and wondering how we missed the pickup that was happening in June and July and how the pockets of things that were doing much better than anticipated.

 

It’s worth noting according to one of the data sources I used, auto sales are actually picking back up rapidly from down, north of 60% for new cars and used cars. New autos only down, I’d call it the high 20% range from a year ago. Used cars down single digits from a year ago, on a volume basis. That kind of snapback in different pockets of the economy is going to be what I’m looking back and wondering how I missed whatever it might be whether it was people wanting to get back on cruises. I don’t think they’re going to want to give back on cruises. I don’t think people are gonna jump back on planes very quickly.

 

I think we have a 911 type of recovery. Three years, give or take there. I think that’s the mindset to use. But there will be something that just completely catches me off guard in terms of the speed and rapidity that it comes back, or with the L-shaped, it’s just never coming back. One thing I think we’ll catch a lot of people off-guard is the pivot on the margin from hotels to homes. Renting at home instead of renting a hotel. Being spaced away from people, having the pool to yourself. I think there will be trends like that that have become pretty clear whether or not they have legs by October and I think that’s probably one of them.