PhD Economist, Founder+CEO
@ExanteData
&
@MarketReaderInc
Formerly: MD at Goldman, Head of Research at Nomura & Bridgewater.
#1
Ranked by Institutional Investor
A brief history of global monetary policy since 2008
(with reference to the ECB's and the Fed's slow exit from ultra-easy monetary policy & Japan's current run-away quantitative easing).
THREAD
Russia went 'nuclear' in relation to its economic war with Europe on Friday, by permanently shutting down Nordstream flow.
But NatGas prices only bounced for a day & are now back to the level seen before the Russian shut-down.
Russia is now mostly out of economic leverage...
There is a huge amount of focus on China contagion/Evergrande at the moment. Hence, it is a time to be precise. I will not do a comprehensive thread (yet). But just provide some specific color on the High Yield credit moves, which themselves are generating a lot of attention.
One definition of an emerging market country is a country where currency weakness and bond market weakness go hand in hand (opposite the US, where higher yields support the USD)
In the UK today, 5Y rates are up 50bp in a day, and the GBP is collapsing
Draw your own conclusion
US (S&P500) vs China (CSI300) equity returns:
YTD return
๐บ๐ธ +16%
๐จ๐ณ +0%
5 year return
๐บ๐ธ +58%
๐จ๐ณ +14%
10 year return
๐บ๐ธ +169%
๐จ๐ณ +67%
Higher reported GDP growth, is not showing up in equity returns.
Maybe I should do a thread about why...
I have been pretty vocal over the past few quarters about how bad the trend in Chinese foreign direct investment was.
But the Q2 data was EVEN WORSE than I expected. Global corporates have simply stopped investing in China...
(The liabilities, blue bars, are the inflows)
Last week it was Japan intervention (FX), yesterday it was the UK intervention (bonds), and today it is China intervention (FX). Do you see a pattern?
This cycle is different, and major countries are fighting market dynamics in a way we have not seen since the 1970-1980 period.
It is official.
On a very windy and rainy day in December 2022, I went to the US District Court in the Southern District of New York, and I obtained a US Citizenship.
I have been following banking crisis for years...
But the latest price action is highly unusual
(the latest tension, with epicenter in Europe, is lacking an obvious catalyst, and seemingly happening very impulsively)
= THREAD
Does this look like a reserve currency to you?
Lots of talk about USD losing reserve currency status, and the CNY gaining it.
But NOBODY wants to own Chinese bonds...
The GBP had a VERY bad day on Friday
What can UK policy makers do to stabilize financial markets (currency, bonds, equities)?
Is currency intervention an option?
= A Thread
@nateobrienn
I never understood the obsession with lounges:
You have to wait to get in, they are often super full, you get an old pretzel for free, you have to trek around the terminal to find it.
Just buy a beverage and go direct to the gate. Problem solved.
Here is a chart that is not getting enough attention.
From early 2020 to mid-2022, China attracted 100s of billions in Foreign Direct Investment.
Now, the inflow has evaporated, and net corporate investment flows are negative for China!
The ECB will have to move AGGRESSIVELY in coming months to fight inflation, even if the growth outlook is also problematic.
Here are six simple reasons why the ECB will have to go BIG
=THREAD
And there you have it, the market is now pricing that Fed Funds will be at 100bp, by end-2022.
A few months ago, taper had not started, and there was a debate about whether Fed rate lift-off could happen in 2022. Now the consensus is 4 hikes this year.
Things are on the move...
Everybody is talking about the Nasdaq meltdown, but there is also stuff going on in credit.
Spreads finally breaking out, and approaching the highs from 2018 (March 2020 is a different matter, obviously)
[High Yield CDS spreads shown]
And there you have it. The US rate market is pricing 85bp of CUTS in 2023.
The market is convinced that rapid hikes in 2022, will turn into rapid cuts in 2023.
[proxied based on spread between end-2022 and end-2023, money market futures]
China used to be able to control its currency. It mostly put the CNY (and CNH) where it wanted, and the market followed.
But in 2022, things are different. The market is mostly leading, the the PBOC is following.
This is a notable historical shift = THREAD
The IMF released new data on currency composition of global central bank currency reserves on Friday.
While the CNY share went up from 1% to near 3% from 2017 to 2021, the share actually edged lower during 2022.
Despite all the talk about the CNY gaining reserve currency
Normally, it takes the Fed many months to flip from hiking to cutting.
But in 2023, we have HIKES priced for May & CUTS priced as soon as July...
[market pricing of Fed funds peaks in May-June, and then quickly drops from July]
Every week, we crunch thousands of capital flow and alt data time series
@ExanteData
This one stood out to me this week:
Saudi Arabia is aggressively stepping up purchases of US assets in recent months, with inflows of $45bn in a short 3-months period!
This chart (via
@WSJ
) suggests that we are massively under-recording the US outbreak currently.
This is quite important if you are calculating any ratios (fatality ratios, hospitalization ratios etc)
This is an incredible chart from a recent Substack by
@GeneralTheorist
.
It shows how non-energy industrial goods (blue line) were in persistent deflation for 20 years in all major economies, and then spiked abruptly when the COVID shock hit.
Bottom line:
I have done this for a while, and I have never seen such extreme prices action, seemingly divorced from an actual catalyst.
(and at the same time, other assets were fine, think Nasdaq, and even KRE).
END
The Czech Republic is a small county that is totally off the radar for most people. But they hiked rates by 75bp today in one step to get ahead of their inflation issue.
Interest rates are now well above pre-COVID levels (shown in 2y rates here)
This cycle is FAR from normal
Every week we crunch thousands of capital flow and alt data time series
@ExanteData
This one stood out to me this week. Foreign central banks's holdings of US Treasuries at the Fed custody facility are dropping fast (almost $40bn in just one week).
Do you remember the European energy crisis?
A few charts...
First, temperatures in Europe are way above normal as we start 2023...
(look all the way to the left)
Yesterday, I did a mini-thread on what is going on under the surface in Chinese High Yield credit (and it generated A LOT of feedback).
Hence, here is a follow up thread on the structural issues in Chinese real estate, and differences to the US in 2008.
There is a huge amount of focus on China contagion/Evergrande at the moment. Hence, it is a time to be precise. I will not do a comprehensive thread (yet). But just provide some specific color on the High Yield credit moves, which themselves are generating a lot of attention.
Lot of people upset about the change from 'twitter' to 'X'
but how come you are hearing much less about Bloomberg changing the ticker for 2y swaps from 'USSW2' to 'US0SFR2'?
Japanese authorities did verbal intervention on Friday. Are they about the step into the currency market again?
Here is a THREAD about the history of (actual!) currency intervention in Japan...
As the CEO of both a macro strategy firm, and a FinTech venture, here is a conundrum that continues to amaze me:
With all the information now available to everybody, and the ongoing revolution in data analytics and computing power; how come markets are so incredibly inefficient?
We crunch thousands of capital flow data series on a weekly basis at
@ExanteData
This is the most interesting data series this week: Foreigners are dramatically accelerating their selling of Japanese Government Bonds
(almost $40bn sold in the latest week!)
@stavnitser
I look forward to staying there when it has been rebuilt.
I always wanted to go to Odessa, for many reasons, and now there is one additional one
Second, the move was truly historical relative to the move UP in UK interest rates
Here is a scatter plot with weekly changes in GBP vs USD and changes in interest rates (also relative the USD)
The orange dot is totally off the chart (GBP down 5%, while UK interest up 100bp/1%)
Foreign investors only put about $5bn of fresh capital into China in the form of FDI in Q2, the lowest since the data series began back in the 1990s, when China was a much much smaller economy
In 2021, we saw close to $100bn per quarter!
I have been working on this chess table for the kids for quite some time.
From an 80 year old stump of ash from the garden (kids did the gold squares themselves, not bad for 6 year olds)
I hope
@TimDuy
approves :-)
For those thinking that the inflation experiences in the 1970s and the 1980s are instructive to this cycle...
Just a few background charts...
(mini-THREAD I guess)
Just a few more observations on Evergrande/China Contagion.
Last week, saw the Evergrande tension spreading through the real estate sector (but not much beyond, except Iron ore)
This week, there is already broader based pain...
Every week we crunch thousands of capital flow and alt data series
@ExanteData
This week, this one stood out.
ETF and mutual fund flow to China is turning into an exodus
I have finally completed all the steps of getting US citizenship:
- Entry visa (2004)
- Greencard (2009)
- Naturalization ceremony (2022)
- Passport (2022)
- AND: Country music concert (2023)
We have not seen moves in European bond markets like these since the the Euro-crisis (2011-2012), and there are few episodes like this in general (ERM crisis 1992, GFC 2008)
Bonds fully understand the gravity of the situation
This is my favorite chart from the Jackson Hole presentations so far (the longer-term trends especially)
Simple, but important, historical perspective
@JHaltiwanger_UM
I will leave it at that.
Watching China contagion is very important now, and while it is unlikely to be a 'banking crisis' like the Global Financial Crisis, there could be other types of 'real contagion'.
We just have to monitor it very precisely.
There used to be little correlation between crypto and global markets in general. But the sell-off in Nasdaq futures overnight does look (very and unusually) correlated to the breakdown in crypto space
[here illustrated with BTC (green) and ETH(yellow), vs Nasdaq (white)]
Since I have gotten a million requests for interviews about the TRY today, I am writing down a few basic points here, that attempts to summarize the situation in the most basic way...journalists: feel free to quote.
Google search trends over the last 7 days (color in each state determined by the topic with most searches)
Different parts of the country care about different things.
The debate about bitcoin now reminds me of a wedding I went to in 2006.
A beautiful wedding that was ruined by a discussion about the US housing market.
It went like this...
A personal post about dreams and the circle of life: I grew up in a small town in Denmark. I had a keen interest in economics & markets, even before high-school; and I watched
@CNBC
via my parents cable subscription in the 1990s
When I met with our study group at the economics
Friday, was a very big reversal day for the USD.
In fact, it was the biggest since 2009 (when G20 took against against the Global Financial Crisis), when looking at G10 currencies overall...
(more charts below)
As background:
Did PhD research about the 1998 Asian Crisis
Sat at Goldman Sachs' prop desk during 2008 crisis
Was at Bridgewater Associates in 2009
Followed the Euro-crisis as Head of Research for Nomura in 2010-2013 (and wrote the book "The Fall of the Euro" about it)
This is not a normal cycle...
I have argued this for many many months now (looking at economic trends).
And NOW monetary policy cycles are starting to look highly unusual too (central banks and yields curves are on the move)
= THREAD
Here are some thoughts about why I worry about the US:
I have been following the outbreak pretty much non-stop since Jan 20, from well before it was called COVID-19
It is also worth putting UK reserves into context: it has simply not been a priority to build FX reserves, so the reserves are not large
China: $3055bn
Japan: $1173bn
Switzerland: $860bn
Korea: $436bn
Mexico: $198bn
UK: $108bn - not a lot, relative to the size of the UK economy
Every week, we crunch thousands of alt data and capital flow series
@ExanteData
This (simple) chart stood out to me this week
The Eurozone has flipped from large trade surpluses to a VERY dramatic trade deficit over a short period of time.
For a few decades, simply owning assets, as opposed to active risk management, generated nice returns.
But everything has changed; the macro environment is fundamentally different. Active asset management is now crucial...
The DB stock started to tank on Thu-Fri, and other assets simply followed (EUR, 2y rates etc etc etc).
But nobody knew WHY...
- there was simply no new news about DB
- my client network
@ExanteData
(the top institutional investors in the world), did not have a good explanation
I have said it before, and I will say it again.
When the market is hyper-focused on a single event, the price action after that event is often counter-intuitive.
Money growth has turned sharply negative in major economies, and M1 is now contracting at a pace of around 10% annualized in the Eurozone.
But how dramatic the trend looks like, depends a lot on what specific definition you use.
(THREAD)
I will leave it at that.
UK policy makers need to think hard about strategic economic policy steps, to avert severe economic and financial market tension.
Currency intervention is no strategic solution.
END
It is strange to have a reserve currency that nobody really wants to own in bond-form.
Hence, I recommend that those projecting the historical rise of the CNY, follow what is going on in their fixed income markets.
END
Let me put it this way
Not a lot of investors know what AT1 debt is
It will take while for the market to fully digest the impact
(this is not like a payroll release, that get fully digested in a second)
Is this like 2008? Over the last few days, I have heard many say markets are behaving like that. I think this is a very narrow-minded observation (sorry). Look at this chart for Bank CDS for major banks. You literally cannot see the stress yet, in the big picture.
This is a metric/chart some people like to look at, and some hate.
But here it is: Credit Default Swap pricing for the UK vs Germany, over the past year.
Something is up. You can decide, on your own, how you feel about it.
The alternatively explanation is that after CS, many are just looking for the next victim. DB has had that reputation, and it is hard to shake, and some data is smelling like shorts are playing a notable role
(pls reply if you have better data perspective...)
โThe data releases weโve seen over the last week or so have been not just weak, but I would say outright alarming,โ Exante Data Inc. CEO
@jnordvig
says on China. โTheir reopening has clearly run on steam. They have big challenges on their hands.โ
What is impressive is that this shift is happening even before we have any new CPI or NFP data.
The market is convinced that the softening global growth data will map into weaker inflation soon, and put the Fed on hold.