China has a well-known demographic problem: its working population is aging quickly. For years, many analysts have rhetorically asked whether China can get rich before it gets old. We have the answer. A recent McKinsey study found that China has beaten the US to become the richest nation. McKinsey found that China’s wealth rose...
My Trend Asset Allocation Model has performed well by beating a 60/40 benchmark on an out-of-sample basis in the last few years. The early version of the Trend Model relied exclusively on commodity prices for signals of global reflation and deflation. While the inputs have changed to include global equity prices, this nevertheless raises some...
The S&P 500 fell as much -4% from its all-time high in Evergrande panic pullback last week. Is the recent weakness just typical seasonal weakness or something more serious? The intermediate-term breadth looks disconcerting. The percentage of S&P 500 stocks above their 200-day moving average (dma) had been at the 90% level which indicates a...
Global markets have taken a decided risk-off tone today. The spark is the China Evergrande implosion. Fears are rising that Evergrande is turning from a liquidity crisis in which the company doesn't have enough cash to pay its obligations, to a solvency crisis in which the company's assets are less than its liabilities if it...
13 years ago yesterday, Lehman Brothers fell into bankruptcy. Today, the world is watching China Evergrande collapse in a debt spiral. The overly indebted property developer told China's major banks that it won't be able to pay loan interest due Sept. 20. The company has been swamped with protests from individuals who invested in its...
When Trump began his trade war with China, the Street's narrative was "decoupling". It took a few years, but it's finally happened. As China's economic outlook and market deteriorated, it did not drag down the economies of Europe and North America. To be sure, the news out of China is grim. A series of...
The Chinese markets panicked on the news of government crackdowns on technology and education companies. As well, Beijing has been working to restrict the flow of credit to property developers in order to stabilize real estate prices. In reaction, foreigners have been panic selling Chinese tech on high volume. Despite all of this...
The S&P 500 took fright last Monday and skidded -1.6% after falling -0.8% the previous Friday. Talking heads attributed the decline to worries about the rising incidence of the Delta variant around the world. Fears over the Delta variant slowing economic growth are overblown. However, there are two other key risks that equity...
The headlines from last week sounded dire. It began when China’s May economic activity report was disappointing, with industrial production, retail sales, and fixed-asset investment missing market expectations. Then the Federal Reserve took an unexpected hawkish turn. The statement from the FOMC meeting acknowledged that downside risks from the pandemic were receding as vaccination...
Remember when I called for a bond market rally (see What a bond market rally could mean for your investments). The 10-year Treasury yield broke support last week and shrugged off a hot CPI print. Is the bond market tempting FAIT, or the Fed's Flexible Average Inflation Targeting framework? Here are some of...
Recently, a growing narrative in the market is arguing for a pause in the reflation trade for the following reasons: Both the cyclically sensitive copper/gold and base metal/gold ratios have moved sideways. The 10-year Treasury yield peaked out in March and it is now falling, which is an indication of the bond market's belief...
Recently, an investor aptly characterized value investing as a portfolio of problems with a call option on good news. One sector stands out as a group of value stocks that are taking on growth characteristics. As shown by its relative performance against MSCI All-Country World Index (ACWI), this cyclical industry bottomed out on a relative...
Is it too late to buy into the commodity supercycle thesis? The latest BoA Global Fund Manager survey shows that respondents have moved to a crowded long position in commodities. Many analysts have also hopped on the commodity supercycle train, myself included (see How value investors can play the commodity supercycle). As a cautionary...
The nature of the market advance has been extraordinary and relentless. From a long-term perspective, the monthly MACD model flashed a buy signal last August for the broadly-based Wilshire 5000 and there are no signs of technical deterioration. This is a bull market, but sentiment has become sufficiently frothy that a reset is overdue. ...
Happy New Year! Investors were happy to see the tumultuous 2020 come to a close. The past year has been one with little precedent. A pandemic brought the global economy to a screeching halt. The stock market crashed, and it was followed by an unprecedented level of fiscal and monetary response from authorities around the...
As the clock ticks down on Trump's days in the White House, and Biden election has been confirmed by the Electoral College, it's time to ask if a Biden Administration will reset the Sino-American relationship. The key questions to ask are: What does each side want, and what are the sources of friction? What constraints...
Two weeks ago, I rhetorically asked if investors should be buying into the cyclical recovery theme (see Buy the cyclical and reflation trade?). Global green shoots of recovery were appearing, but I identified the "uncertainty of additional fiscal stimulus" as a key risk to the cyclical rebound thesis. Now that Biden appears to be winning...
I am not in the habit of peddling conspiracy theories, but this is inadvertently becoming a Halloween tradition. Last Halloween, I wrote about how China could control Taiwan without firing a shot (see Scary Halloween story: How a weak USD could hand China a major victory). This year, a new geopolitical tail-risk is materializing for investors...
When a stock market shifts from a bull to a bear market, leadership usually changes. Bear markets are often periods of catharsis. The old leaders get tired, and they have been bid up to excessive valuations. A reality check sets in and they fall. As the old leaders fail, new market leaders emerge to guide...
The Buttonwood column in The Economist had this to say about the recovery in metal prices (before the most recent risk-off episode): A pattern in markets is that a lot happens by rote. China’s response to a weak economy is to build; investors’ response to the Fed’s easing is to buy stocks; the algorithms’ response...
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