Gavekal Research

Joyce Poon

Mar 22nd 2017

Going into 2017, the logic of Donald Trump’s “America First” program suggested that investors should be long US equities and the dollar, and short longer-dated treasuries. Such an outcome would have been horrible for emerging markets. And yet EMs have rallied 13% year-to-date. The swing factor has been the sideways move of the US dollar in the intervening period, which persuaded investors to cover short-bets on EMs. In this chartbook Joyce...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Andrew Batson

Mar 21st 2017

After forty years of market reforms, state-owned enterprises retain an exceptionally large role in China’s economy. Though their financial performance is deteriorating and their debts are growing, SOEs’ share of the economy is rising rather than falling. In this chartbook, Andrew pulls together the data to show the true state of China’s SOEs.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Mar 20th 2017

With Theresa May’s government set to begin the formal exit process from the European Union, Charles reckons now is the right time to step back and see just how the UK economy has fared in the nine months since that fateful referendum. In this concise chartbook, he tours Britain’s economic and market landscape and finds that value is to be had across multiple asset classes.

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl, Nick Andrews, Anatole Kaletsky

Mar 17th 2017

Yesterday’s call had Cedric Gemehl and Anatole Kaletsky opine on political risk leading up to French and German national elections later this year. Nick Andrews argued that the eurozone recovery is becoming self-sustaining, and offered views on capturing the upside, while hedging against political risk.

Gavekal Research

Joyce Poon, Udith Sikand

Mar 16th 2017

Ignore for the moment the drumbeat to hostilities on the 38th parallel; it has still been a head-spinning few weeks in the normally staid world of South Korean governance. First, the head of Samsung, the country’s biggest company, was arrested on bribery charges, and then last Friday saw President Park Geun-hye ousted by impeachment. It is our view that a political upheaval is afoot in Seoul that threatens the collusive ties between officials...

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Mar 15th 2017

Today’s Dutch election may not seem very important in itself, since it is almost inconceivable that the anti-immigration Freedom Party of Geert Wilders will win enough votes to enter the next Dutch government. Nevertheless, the result—which is likely to be clear by around 0400 GMT Thursday—will have a big market impact. That’s because the Freedom Party’s performance will rightly be seen as a leading indicator of political events during the...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Gordon Liu

Mar 15th 2017

Thanks to the 2009 health reform plan, most of China’s population now has health insurance. But hospitals are still crowded, doctors underpaid and drugs overprescribed. And the next big challenge will be to persuade Chinese people to live healthier lives.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Long Chen

Mar 15th 2017

We expect only marginal and gradual tightening from the PBOC. But three factors could make it more hawkish: higher than expected inflation, rising financial risk, and a shift in the politics of growth.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Andrew Batson

Mar 15th 2017

Despite what Beijing thinks, political liberalization wasn’t what brought down the USSR. The economy did. Andrew Batson reviews Chris Miller's The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Yanzhong Huang, Gordon Liu, Joshua Kurtzig, Nina Wang, Cameron Wilson

Mar 15th 2017

China’s growing economy has brought its people longer lives, but also a new set of health problems. Though the government is trying to improve coverage, change is happening slowly. So there is a growing opportunity for private companies to fill the gap. This issue of China Economic Quarterly investigates the nation’s health problems, and solutions.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Long Chen

Mar 14th 2017

China’s latest data show the reflation that began in 2016 continued in early 2017: growth is accelerating and the housing market is very strong. Chen Long draws two conclusions from this. First, with construction supported the government will have no problem keeping growth stable in 2017. Second, a further tightening of policy is very likely.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Thomas Gatley

Mar 13th 2017

China’s listed companies won’t report their final Q4 earnings for another month, but preliminary numbers show it was their best quarter since 2010: profits for the median company jumped 28% in Q4 after a 25% rise in Q3. Strong earnings mean that fundamentals are supporting the slow but steady rally in A-shares that is now about nine months old.

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Mar 10th 2017

As changes of tone go, Mario Draghi’s was a muted shift. At yesterday’s meeting, the European Central Bank president said that the sense of urgency driving additional easing had diminished, and dropped his pledge to use all the weapons in the ECB’s arsenal to effect monetary accommodation. Interest rates will still remain negative for an extended period, and quantitative easing will continue at least until the end of the year. But while the...

Gavekal Research

Yanmei Xie

Mar 09th 2017

This week’s missile launches by North Korea, the latest in a recent series of provocations, are forcing the US into a position where it must take steps to limit the threat to itself and its Asian allies. But such moves are certain to antagonize China, and shatter the fiction that the US and China have common interests in dealing with North Korea.

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Mar 08th 2017

Britain’s House of Lords passed a crucial amendment yesterday to Theresa May’s Brexit bill. This amendment would give Parliament a “meaningful vote” at the end of the Brexit negotiations and could offer the possibility of stopping Brexit or seeking to extend the negotiations beyond the 2019 deadline, if the deal Mrs May brings home next year is deemed to be not good enough. Anatole argues this is a game changer for opponents of Brexit.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Mar 07th 2017

Over the last few months Charles has argued that the US stock market rally was running on fumes. In the intervening period, US equities have, of course, powered to new highs. He now says that for the first time since 2007 his valuation model definitively points to US equities being overvalued.

Gavekal Research

Udith Sikand

Mar 07th 2017

In India, home building constitutes just 1% of GDP and fails to satisfy basic amenity demand—some 60mn Indians live in urban dwellings deemed unfit for human habitation. The good news is that India is getting serious about supporting residential property development, which could yet have a China-like impact on domestic demand and global commodity markets.

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Mar 03rd 2017

As even formerly dovish policymakers on the Federal Open Market Committee have hardened their rhetoric in recent days, the US dollar has strengthened, with the bilateral EUR/USD rate falling back to dip briefly below the US$1.05 mark late Tuesday. Whether the US dollar’s run-up can be sustained is questionable, however. With the market expecting three US rate hikes this year, the US dollar appears priced for a “Trumpflation” outcome that both...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Rosealea Yao, Arthur Kroeber

Mar 03rd 2017

Is China’s continued rally in iron ore prices the result of benign structural change in the steel sector, or frenzied financial speculation? Rosealea and Arthur review the competing explanations, and find both have some merit. So while a lot has to go right to avoid an ore price crash, this correction could still take a while to materialize.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Mar 01st 2017

For more than a quarter of a century Japan has been a reliable source of disappointment for investors. After a nice little run-up late last year, a familiar pattern has emerged in 2017 as equities edge nervously sideways. Despite some evidence of Asia’s trading economy spluttering into life, Japan yesterday released surprisingly soft industrial production data for January. To top things off, the Wall Street Journal on the same day ran a...

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

Feb 28th 2017

What was the biggest surprise of 2016? Ask the question in the US and invariably the answer is Donald Trump’s election victory. Ask in Europe and the answer is either the same or, if not, it is the result of the Brexit vote. But are these the events that genuinely moved markets the most? Look at it this way: over the past 12 months, commodity producers have typically been the best performers in almost every market, followed by financials. The...

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

Feb 27th 2017

Tomorrow Donald Trump is scheduled to address a joint session of the US Congress. Although expected to be long on characteristic bombast, the president’s speech is likely to be short on hard details about his core policies. That shouldn’t be too surprising. Drawing up tax reform and infrastructure spending plans and squaring them away with the Republican majority in Congress will take many months. However, without concrete information to sustain...

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Feb 24th 2017

The “Logos” encompasses a society’s language, its way of looking at the world, and its dominant political narrative—he who commands it has his hands on all the levers of political power. Every so often, however, a new communication technology emerges that allows the rise of a new Logos to challenge the old.

Gavekal Research

Joyce Poon

Feb 22nd 2017

The Hong Kong-listed H-shares of mainland Chinese financials are the best performing segment of one of the world’s strongest markets year-to-date. So far this year, the H-share index is up 12% in US dollar terms, driven largely by gains in the stocks of China’s big banks and insurers. So it is natural for investors to sit up and take notice on reports that China’s big four financial regulators have drafted a joint proposal to tighten their...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Long Chen

Feb 22nd 2017

China’s central bank is striking a hawkish tone by pledging to curb speculation and leverage, but its actual tightening has been marginal and gradual. What might shift its stance to something tougher? In this piece, Chen Long evaluates three things that could push the PBOC to tighten more: inflation, financial risk, and the politics of growth.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Thomas Gatley

Feb 21st 2017

Debt is rising rapidly in China, yet the debt-to-equity ratios of large public companies have still fallen. The secret of this deleveraging is that regulators allowed firms to raise lots of new equity through private placements. But regulators are now setting a higher bar for those deals, so this deleveraging formula won’t work as well in 2017.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Feb 20th 2017

As regular Gavekal readers may remember, I have always maintained that over the long run the returns delivered by two different stock markets— adjusted for exchange rate fluctuations and differences in pay-outs—must be the same. This is just another way of saying that in an open economy the returns on invested capital generated by well diversified stock markets have to be the same.

Gavekal Research

Joyce Poon

Feb 17th 2017

The emerging market reflation trade has been on fire. This week Dr. Copper broke out of his six-year downward trend, adding fuel to the reflationary flames. As a result, while the relative performance of cyclical stocks has moderated in developed markets during February, EM cyclicals have continued their bullish run. Their strong performance has helped to lift the MSCI EM index by 10% year-to-date in US dollar terms to reach a 19-month high. But...

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Feb 16th 2017

In recent months, few discussions at Gavekal have been as polarized as the debate over sterling. Charles and Louis both note the pound’s undervaluation. History suggests it will revert to the mean. Anatole argues that the British economy will undergo a painful restructuring over the coming years facing hard Brexit. I will examine the structure of the UK’s current account and the forces that are at work to propel sterling.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Long Chen

Feb 15th 2017

China’s balance of payments show that 2016 was another big year for capital outflows, which accelerated in the second half. But Chen Long argues this pickup will not continue into 2017. Current outflows are not large enough to stop the central bank from pursuing its exchange-rate policy, which can be sustained for another couple of years.

Gavekal Research

Udith Sikand

Feb 14th 2017

Udith discusses the effects of India's demonetization last year on the growth of the economy

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

Feb 13th 2017

If there is one consensus view about US markets it is that inflation is ticking up, a tightening cycle is underway and the dollar will again rise. As markets are made at the margin, any hit to these beliefs could push investors into a sharp repositioning. Within Gavekal there is disagreement on this score, with Anatole arguing that US inflation and bond yields are on an upward trend, Charles taking the opposite view and Louis stating that US...

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Feb 10th 2017

It was a record that Germany would rather not have announced, at least not this week. Yesterday official data showed that Europe’s über exporter racked up a current account surplus in 2016 of US$281bn versus a mere US$210bn for China. With the US running by far the largest offsetting deficit, such data means that the temperature between Washington and Berlin is likely to get hotter.

Gavekal Research

Joyce Poon

Feb 09th 2017

Over the last seven years, emerging markets have been stuck in a trading range they show no sign of exiting. For this reason, in Asia at least, I have advised investors to adopt a market timing strategy based on return-to-the mean valuation measures (see Go Contrarian In Asia). The problem with this approach is that it works until it doesn’t. So what could cause a breakdown? Charles for one worries that the presence of a huge global US dollar...

Gavekal Research

Neil Newman

Feb 07th 2017

This Friday Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe will touch down in Washington for his second meeting with Donald Trump since the November 8 US election. The auspices hardly appear propitious. In the run-up to the meeting, the new US president has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade deal built largely around the US-Japan economic axis. He has railed against Japan for deliberately undervaluing the yen. He has bemoaned...

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Feb 06th 2017

Back in 2002 I wrote a book, Lions Led By Donkeys, whose main point was that the euro’s adoption would kill the competitive and heterogeneous Europe that I so loved. It was prefaced by Milton Friedman who predicted that Europe was set to enter a period of rigor mortis. Fifteen years on and it is clear that Europe as a unitary concept is indeed dying.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Feb 03rd 2017

Great economists are seldom top flight mathematicians. One exception was Maurice Allais, who won the Nobel Prize in 1988 for his “rigorous mathematical formulations of market equilibrium and the efficiency properties of markets”. Among his findings was his so-called “golden rule”, which states that over the long run, long term government bond yields always converge with the structural growth rate of the economy.

Gavekal Research

Tom Miller

Feb 02nd 2017

After the fiasco that followed India’s move in November to scrap large denomination banknotes, yesterday’s budget was carefully calibrated to reassure jumpy markets. With the IMF estimating that the monetary bloodletting will drain 1pp off growth this fiscal year, doubts have resurfaced over India’s ability to realize its economic potential. The good news for nervous investors is that India remains wedded to fiscal responsibility. The bad news...

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl

Feb 01st 2017

The data flow out of the eurozone—both forward and backward-looking—continues to paint a picture of accelerating activity, subdued core inflation, ongoing monetary accommodation, and—most notably for investors—improving corporate earnings.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Jan 31st 2017

There are many areas where Anatole and I agree to disagree. But one in which the two of us see eye to eye is the heightened influence political risk may have on markets this year. Consider France, where the political situation threatens to get complicated. The problem is not so much the presidential election, due to be held in two rounds in April and May, but the legislative elections set to be held a month later.

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Jan 30th 2017

Last week Louis set out a comprehensive roadmap for 2017. I have just five points to add: two points of strong agreement (on Europe and the oil price); two of dissent (on US bonds and Britain); and one that echoes Louis’s uncertainty and anxiety, but for slightly different reasons (about the pressures on the US dollar and what they could mean for emerging markets). I will explore these specific issues of agreement and dissent in a lengthier...

Gavekal Research

Jan 27th 2017

Yesterday Donald Trump met members of Congress to discuss a 20% tax on imports into the US. However, what is being proposed is not an outright tariff, but rather a system of “border tax adjustments”. Will explains what these are, how they will work, and what effect they will have on the US dollar and the real economy.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Long Chen

Jan 26th 2017

Monetary policy is getting interesting as the Chinese New Year holiday approaches. The central bank has injected huge amounts of liquidity to the market, but it has also made a rare move to raise the rates of its lending facilities. In this piece, Chen Long explains the PBOC’s moves and why they don’t signal a hike in benchmark interest rates.

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Jan 25th 2017

Inflation is re-emerging in Germany, and a tightening labor market implies inflationary pressures will continue to mount in what could promise to become the great German reflation that many have long looked for to rebalance the eurozone economy. Yet rising inflation threatens to erode one of the central tenets of the German economic model.

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

Jan 25th 2017

The US monetary base is shrinking, and with Fed officials talking about winding down their bond holdings, it is only natural for equity investors to be concerned. However, as KX explains, the contraction in base money is a technical effect of recent regulatory changes, and the Fed is not yet running down its assets.

Gavekal Research

Andrew Batson

Jan 23rd 2017

China reported an acceleration in its economic growth on Friday, just hours before Donald Trump was sworn in as US president. But growth could take a hit if Trump makes radical changes to tax and trade policy. And while China has plenty of weapons to fight a trade war, those measures are unlikely to completely offset a sudden shock to its exports.

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

Jan 19th 2017

Even more than getting it right on US interest rates, performance in 2017 will most likely be driven by getting the US dollar call right. And forming a view on the US dollar with any high degree of certainty is a challenge.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Jan 19th 2017

For much of the second half of 2015, Charles was concerned that the US economy was softening, and that it would tip into recession sometime in mid-2016. The feared recession never materialized. In this paper, Charles asks “why not?”, re-examining normally reliable indicators to work out where and why they went wrong.

Gavekal Research

Arthur Kroeber, Charles Gave, Will Denyer

Jan 18th 2017

Charles Gave argued that Donald Trump’s protectionist policy could lead to a breakdown of the post-1971 fiat money system that is based on a US dollar standard. Will Denyer deconstructed the likely workings of a new trade taxation regime in the US and explained what that means for currencies. Arthur Kroeber outlined the likely Chinese response to a US trade broadside and argued that Beijing was decently well placed to weather the attack.