Gavekal Dragonomics
June 24, 2021
One of the most dramatic shifts within the global consumer market since Covid-19 has been the sudden termination of Chinese overseas tourism. In this report, Ernan explains why Chinese tourists will likely decide to remain grounded even as other countries open their doors, leaving households with extra money to deploy at home.
Gavekal Research
June 24, 2021
On both sides of the Rhine, celebrations were afoot on Wednesday night after France and Germany managed to earn spots in the knockout phase of the Euro 2020 football tournament. But once a winner is finally decided on July 11, the citizens of both countries will be forced to focus some attention on politics. After a summer of fun, the specter is being raised of European political risk.
Gavekal Dragonomics
June 23, 2021
How achievable are China’s targets of reaching peak carbon emissions before 2030 and a fully carbon-neutral economy by 2060? Rosealea writes that the unusually large share of heavy industry in China’s CO2 emissions will make the 2030 target difficult to achieve, while carbon neutrality will require a massive reorientation of China’s economy.
Gavekal Research
May 31, 2021
Another week, another discourse on US inflation, this time triggered by the personal consumption expenditures index rising 3.6% year-over-year in April, the fastest gain since 2008.
Gavekal Research
May 26, 2021
With stimulus checks having been sent and the jobs market recovering, last month saw the biggest jump in US car sales for at least 35 years. Will Denyer and I have been bullish on autos (and for similar reasons, housing) for the last year. Yet just as the punch bowl fills up, it looks time to get more cautious.
Gavekal Research
May 24, 2021
The US dollar is nearing the bottom of its trading range, so does it bounce back, or break lower? In 1Q21, the US’s rapid vaccination rollout and improving economic outlook spurred the dollar’s rebound. In early April KX argued that as other nations followed a similar path, the relative strength of these factors would wane.
Gavekal Dragonomics
May 25, 2021
China’s Covid-19 vaccination program has significantly accelerated in May, bringing it on track to reach its target of administering at least one dose to 40% of the population by end-June. In this report, Ernan explains why this achievement does not mean the country will be opening its borders or removing domestic precautions this year.
Gavekal Research
May 7, 2021
After Mumbai and Delhi, Bengaluru is the latest big Indian city to face a second wave of Covid infections. India’s underfunded health system is collapsing, as we feared it could a year ago. Yet markets are shrugging off the crisis: equities are flat, the rupee resilient. Tom and Udith investigate whether this disconnect is likely to persist.
Gavekal Research
April 21, 2021
Vaccination programs around the world have gotten off the ground at widely varying speeds. But everywhere they tend to follow a similar S-curve trajectory. While most countries are still in the early stages of their vaccination programs, a very few are in their late stages, where the S-curves begin to flatten.
Gavekal Research
May 28, 2021
Since January, most commodity prices have ripped higher, with materials and energy among this year’s best performing sectors. So where do we go from here? Obviously, the price of energy marks the spot where current supply meets current demand.
Gavekal Research
April 16, 2021
After four weeks of trading sideways around the US$60/bbl price point, the WTI crude oil price popped higher this week following a bigger-than-expected draw on US inventories. This lends fresh urgency to one of the more important near-term questions investors are facing: how busy will this year’s US summer driving season be?
Gavekal Research
March 2, 2021
The past year has seen two important developments in the oil industry. Firstly, US oil production has rolled over by between -2mn and -2.5mn bpd and there are reasons to think this situation lasts until next year. Secondly, oil prices, which were in a clear bear market between late 2018 and early 2020 are now in a bull market.
Gavekal Research
May 21, 2021
On Tuesday I wrote a Daily note arguing that the market anxiety about US inflation is overdone, which generated a strong response from clients and Gavekal colleagues, who almost unanimously disagreed with my view. We can now be fairly sure that markets are not discounting the scenario I described.
Gavekal Research
May 20, 2021
The old rugby player in me cannot see a bar-fight without asking: “Is this a private altercation, or can anyone join in?” I feel much the same about the debate inside Gavekal about whether or not inflation is making a comeback. Here is my contribution to the brawl.
Gavekal Research
May 18, 2021
In recent days, Gavekal writers have outlined reasons to worry about the rise in US inflation. Anatole agrees with them that inflation will likely be higher in the next few years than in the previous decade, but he does not think that investors should worry about this.
Gavekal Research
May 31, 2021
Inflation rates are popping higher all over the world. Even in the eurozone, consumer inflation is set to exceed the European Central Bank’s target in the coming months. Yet like previous spikes in European inflation over the last two decades, this one too is set to prove short-lived.
Gavekal Research
May 27, 2021
Year-to-date, the MSCI EMU index has recorded a total return of 15% in US dollar terms. The MSCI US has managed only 12%. Go back to the beginning of November, when hopes for Covid vaccines began to boost markets, and the performance differential is even more pronounced. Eurozone equities have returned 44%, compared with 31% for US equities.
Gavekal Research
May 18, 2021
So far, the great inflation debate has centered on the United States. Europe has barely figured. That’s not surprising; although inflation and bond yields are both ticking higher in the eurozone, the levels are modest and the increases moderate compared with those in the US.
Gavekal Research
May 13, 2021
Semiconductors are tough to come by these days, and the shortage will be deep and long-lasting. Yet chips are about to turn into more of a commoditized product, just as companies make huge investments in production capacity and governments spend big to achieve self-sufficiency on national security grounds.
Gavekal Dragonomics
May 4, 2021
The US has changed generals in its tech war against China, but that has not brought a respite in the campaign. President Joe Biden is deploying many of the same sanctions used by the Trump administration, while also looking to invest in extending the US technological lead. In this piece, Dan surveys the state of play in the US-China tech war.
Gavekal Dragonomics
April 20, 2021
China is using the best-funded industrial policy in history to engineer greater self-reliance in semiconductors. Ambition and a big checkbook, however, do not guarantee success. In this DeepChina report, Dan argues that Chinese chip firms will increase their market share in some segments, but will not make it to the technological frontier.
Gavekal Dragonomics
May 17, 2021
Domestic futures prices for iron ore, steel rebar and coal fell sharply last week after China’s government signaled concern about rising commodities prices. In this Quick Take, Rosealea and Wei explain that policymakers are counting on a mix of tougher demand and softening demand to cool down, if not reverse, the commodities spike.
Gavekal Research
May 13, 2021
Semiconductors are tough to come by these days, and the shortage will be deep and long-lasting. Yet chips are about to turn into more of a commoditized product, just as companies make huge investments in production capacity and governments spend big to achieve self-sufficiency on national security grounds.
Gavekal Dragonomics
May 11, 2021
China’s central authorities are ramping up their campaign to deal with hidden local-government debt, rolling out new rules and high-level political instructions. In this piece, Xiaoxi explains how this scrutiny will produce more defaults by state-backed firms, but also hopefully clarify the problematic legacy of implicit sovereign guarantees.
Gavekal Research
January 27, 2021
Even though the Hang Seng index fell -2.55% on Tuesday, Hong Kong is still the world’s best performing major stock market year-to-date. In Hong Kong’s media the run-up is attributed to waves of mainland Chinese money flowing into the city’s equities.
Gavekal Dragonomics
January 19, 2021
Even after a dramatic economic recovery, many of China’s smallest businesses are still struggling. In this piece, Xiaoxi shows how the government’s financial-support measures did little to improve small businesses’ access to financing, which is already tightening. But the policies are helping banks avoid a potential spike in bad loans.
Gavekal Dragonomics
January 18, 2021
China’s Q4 GDP growth surpassed pre-Covid rates, with housing and manufacturing leading while services lagged and infrastructure investment slowed. In early 2021, this divergence is likely to continue as consumers stay home for the Chinese New Year and poor credit growth drags on infrastructure investment.
Gavekal Research
May 7, 2021
After Mumbai and Delhi, Bengaluru is the latest big Indian city to face a second wave of Covid infections. India’s underfunded health system is collapsing, as we feared it could a year ago. Yet markets are shrugging off the crisis: equities are flat, the rupee resilient. Tom and Udith investigate whether this disconnect is likely to persist.
Gavekal Research
April 30, 2021
A year ago, the world’s media were focusing on heaps of bad Covid news in the US and Europe. Unsurprisingly, global risk assets did not like it: equities collapsed, the WTI oil price fell into negative territory, and OECD government bond yields fell to new lows.
Gavekal Research
April 19, 2021
Having recorded 261,000 Covid infections on Sunday, India has emerged as the worst affected country in the pandemic. Efforts to contain the virus likely mean the IMF's growth forecast of 12.5% this fiscal year is too optimistic.
Gavekal Research
May 25, 2021
Crypto-currency prices have plunged in the last two weeks on a bad brew of news. Will wants to believe in crypto-currencies as an alternative form of money. However, he has struggled to see how such tokens make the jump to being “money”, with all that entails.
Gavekal Research
May 19, 2021
Many Asian countries face a worsening Covid outbreak, even as the region’s mostly commodity-importing economies face sharply rising prices for energy and raw materials. Asia did go into this crisis with significant policy headroom, so it retains room for action but as Udith and Vincent discuss in this video interview that is now narrowing.
Gavekal Research
May 12, 2021
Hailed as a breakthrough when it was struck back in December, the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement On Investment is in trouble, with little chance the deal will be ratified in the European Parliament amid a deep deterioration in bilateral relations.
Gavekal Research
May 10, 2021
Some long-term investors do seem to be worried that a breakup of the United Kingdom could add another element of uncertainty to what I described last year as the “triple whammy” of Brexit, Covid and the British Treasury’s surprising flirtation with tax increases and premature fiscal tightening.
Gavekal Research
February 22, 2021
The British pound has been the strongest major currency so far this year, contrary to Anatole’s expectations at the end of 2020. In this piece he outlines three reasons for sterling’s outperformance, but maintains that in the long term the pound will be forced lower.
Gavekal Research
February 2, 2021
The fiasco of Europe’s vaccination plan and Brussels’ retreat from its standoff with the UK and AstraZeneca have has caused the euro to weaken.
Gavekal Research
June 1, 2021
The lesson Asian policymakers learnt from the 1997-98 financial crisis was the importance of self-reliance. In its aftermath, they deployed undervalued exchange rates to pursue export-led growth and secure big current account surpluses that gave central banks ample forex reserves.
Gavekal Research
May 26, 2021
As the global contest between China and the United States intensifies, Southeast Asia is on the front line. Investors should pay attention to this test case of superpower rivalry as the region is home to 650mn people, a US$3trn economy and critical global supply chains.
Gavekal Research
May 25, 2021
A defining reason to hold emerging market risk assets is their better growth prospects relative to more stable developed economies. Over the last year, this premise held true as pandemic-induced domestic economic weakness in emerging economies was offset by strong external demand.
Gavekal Research
June 3, 2021
The US Federal Reserve’s April minutes revealed that some policymakers are keen to begin talking about tapering the Fed’s assets purchases. In 2013, talk of Fed tapering triggered a traumatic sell-off in emerging market assets and currencies. So how great is the risk of a similar emerging market rout this time around?
Gavekal Research
May 28, 2021
Global commodity prices have been on a tear in recent weeks due to strong global growth prospects and constricted supply. The macro picture, however, is murky, with China simultaneously being the driver of soaring iron ore prices while moving to tighten controls over property and infrastructure spending.
Gavekal Dragonomics
May 27, 2021
China’s companies are enjoying a historic boom as domestic and global demand bounces back from the shock of Covid-19. But how long will it last, and what will the longer-term effects be? In this annual chartbook, Thomas lays out the fundamentals of China’s corporate sector through a detailed examination of income statements and balance sheets.
Gavekal Dragonomics
June 2, 2021
China’s steel output restrictions are softening following a sharp downward price correction. Rosealea writes that while environmental targets prevent officials from abandoning production curbs altogether, they will need to introduce demand-side constraints to match these supply-side measures and to avoid a repeat of the recent price dislocations.
Gavekal Dragonomics
May 17, 2021
Domestic futures prices for iron ore, steel rebar and coal fell sharply last week after China’s government signaled concern about rising commodities prices. In this Quick Take, Rosealea and Wei explain that policymakers are counting on a mix of tougher demand and softening demand to cool down, if not reverse, the commodities spike.
Gavekal Dragonomics
May 5, 2021
China’s iron and steel prices have broken through their post-financial crisis highs, the result of strong domestic demand, constrained international supply and government plans to curb steel production. In this report, Rosealea explains why prices are likely to remain elevated but slowing demand growth should keep them from rising further.
Gavekal Research
November 23, 2012
In our politically correct age the pressure to bow down before certain popularly accepted and apparently proven “truths” can be overwhelming. In the aftermath of the US elections, two such nostrums are unnecessarily vexing investors—the urgency of deficit reduction and fear of higher taxes.
Gavekal Research
July 20, 2011
In A Study of History, Toynbee explains that the role of a society’s elite is to rise to the challenges of the times, and find solutions fitting to those times, even if this involves a radical break with the past.
Gavekal Research
February 28, 2011
Perhaps the most famous economic law is the one that there is no such thing as a free lunch. By keeping US short rates at abnormally low levels beyond the financial crisis and as growth bounces back beyond the dreams of the wildest optimists, the Fed increasingly seems to be trying to ‘feed the US economy for nothing’.