Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian, Will Denyer

Aug 11th 2017

Two years ago banks started to make it harder for US construction firms to borrow and soon after activity began to fizzle. While blame has been pinned on skilled worker shortages and rising costs of both land and materials, KX and Will think financing was the key issue. The good news is that banks seem to be again loosening their purse strings.

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

Jul 27th 2017

The miniscule change of wording in yesterday’s Federal Reserve statement appears to confirm that the Fed will go ahead and begin to shrink its balance sheet from September. June’s statement said balance sheet normalization would begin “this year”, implying the process would start by December at the latest. Yesterday’s statement altered that to “relatively soon”—and relatively sooner than December suggests September, as the only other meeting...

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian, Will Denyer

Jul 20th 2017

Gavekal has long maintained that bull markets rest on three pillars: liquidity, valuations, and growth. Now with the Fed set to tighten further in an environment of weak bank credit growth, KX and Will warn that the liquidity pillar which has done so much to support the current bull market in US equities is looking increasingly shaky. That is especially ominous, given that valuations are no longer cheap and catch-up growth is played out for this...

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

Jul 13th 2017

In her testimony to Congress yesterday, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen attributed the weakness of US inflation to temporary factors. As a result, the Fed remains focused on tightening policy. However, given that US inflation has consistently undershot the Fed’s target, any further decline will raise concerns that the US business cycle is rolling over.

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian, Will Denyer

Jul 07th 2017

As often happens, US data is sending mixed messages. Yesterday’s ADP report showed weak job growth in June, despite the latest ISM service sector PMI being decidedly perky. Investing according to the latest high-frequency growth data is a good way to get whiplash. Instead, let’s take a step back and review the US economy’s overall positioning.

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

Jun 26th 2017

Those with a constructive view of quiescent asset markets say low volatility is justified by the stable economic situation. Others mutter of a looming “Minsky moment”. KX does not rule out a sharp rise in near-term volatility, but says the secular trend is down.

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

May 19th 2017

Could this be the US economic expansion without end? Almost certainly not, but it is starting to break some serious records for longevity. Yet as the expansion gets longer in the tooth, the obvious question is whether it simply withers due to old age. Like Janet Yellen, KX is suspicious of such a deterministic arguments and in this piece says there are very good reasons for economic cycles to be getting longer.

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

May 11th 2017

US home prices are on the up, having climbed 6% over the 12 months to February. Yet housebuilding has failed to keep pace with the rise in prices. Although construction has made a positive contribution to GDP growth over the last couple of quarters, activity has built from a very low base. Housing starts in March were an annualized 1.215mn, with a consensus forecast for April of 1.25mn. Both figures are well below the long term pre-crisis US...

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

May 01st 2017

Recent days have not been good for US treasury bears betting on higher yields. First, Donald Trump’s much hyped tax reform plan proved thin on detail and lacking in credibility. Then Friday’s weak US GDP release for 1Q17 showed an economy facing a notable softening in consumption demand. The one factor offering succor to treasury shorts has been reduced political risk in Europe after a centrist made it through to the second round of France’s...

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

Mar 29th 2017

US auto sales leveled off 18 months ago, and growth has been stalled ever since. Now with interest rates rising and lenders tightening standards on auto loans, KX sees additional reasons to believe that sales have reached their speed limit. Happily, the problems are largely sector-specific, not indicative of general weakness in US consumer demand.

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian, Joyce Poon

Mar 16th 2017

Yesterday’s 25bp rate rise from the US Federal Reserve was universally expected. The relative dovishness of Fed officials was not. With headline CPI inflation in the US running at a brisk 2.7% in February, ahead of the meeting at least some market participants had been pricing in four rate hikes this year. But after the latest dot plot signaled that policymakers continue to see only three hikes—including yesterday’s—in 2017, those expectations...

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

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

Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian

Jan 27th 2017

US president Donald Trump moved a step closer to realizing his “America first” trade policy yesterday, promising a 20% tax on imports from Mexico. However, rather than an outright tariff on imports, it is looking increasingly likely that the new levy will come in the form of a border tax adjustment, as envisaged by the House Republican majority as part of a wider US tax reform program. In theory, border tax adjustments should be trade-neutral,...

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian

Jan 16th 2017

Tax reform is high on the agenda both for US president-elect Donald Trump and for the new session of Congress that began earlier this month. Among the reform proposals that could most affect investors are those advanced by the House Republicans, which many commentators have argued could cause a substantial exchange rate appreciation of the US dollar. In theory—all else being equal—this would be true. But our examination of current exchange rate...

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian

Dec 15th 2016

As expected, the US Federal Reserve went ahead and raised its benchmark interest rate by 25bp yesterday. Less widely expected was the positive tone of the Fed’s comments on the economic outlook, and its slightly more hawkish view on the trajectory of rates, with policymakers now projecting three rate increases next year rather than two. Fed chair Janet Yellen described the changes as “tiny”. But the market reaction—10-year treasury yields rose...

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

Nov 29th 2016

In market conditions that abound with conflicting signals, KX argues that investors should keep a close eye on an adjusted measure of real US money supply growth as an early warning signal of recession, and suggests how a tool based on this measure could make a useful allocation tool for equity managers.

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian

Oct 26th 2016

Over the last seven years global investors have benefited greatly from a combination of moderate growth and non-threatening inflation, allowing for constantly loose monetary policy. Yet for the US, we are increasingly concerned that, one way or another, this “Goldilocks scenario” is about to come to an end. Here’s why:

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian, Will Denyer

Oct 12th 2016

We are on recession watch after yesterday’s release of September’s NFIB small business optimism survey. It was not the headline number which got us worried—that ticked down from 94.4 to 94.1. Rather, it was the significant drop in the job openings component—from 30 to 24, or from a cyclical high to the lowest level in 15 months. This suggests that demand for US labor may be rolling over, which is concerning indeed.

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian

Oct 06th 2016

Three weeks ago we asked whether the uniform weakness in US data—across manufacturing, services and home construction—signaled the start of a recession or merely a summer soft patch. At the time we concluded that what we were seeing was yet another soft patch. Thankfully, the latest round of data releases appears to confirm that conclusion, with the US economy now emerging from its summer doldrums.

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian

Sep 21st 2016

A funny thing happened to US equities once the dust cleared after the late June sell-off that was sparked by the UK’s Brexit vote. As yields of most income earning assets fell on hopes of yet more central bank easing, equity investors discarded growth concerns and engineered a multiple expansion which drove the market to new vertigo-inducing highs (see Real Yields In The Driving Seat). The big question now is whether a profits boost can keep the...

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian

Sep 16th 2016

With all the current focus on the Federal Reserve and markets, it’s easy to overlook the increasingly ugly state of the underlying US economy. Throughout the long post-2009 recovery, when any one driver of US growth showed signs of stalling, the others continued ticking over nicely, which meant overall growth averaged out around 2%. Recent data releases signal that has now changed. Although none of our key indicators has shown a dramatic...

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian, Simon Pritchard

Aug 31st 2016

More than three years after the world fretted about the US economy falling off a “fiscal cliff”, there is suddenly much talk of government spending being used to gin up growth. Whatever their many differences, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump favour a fiscal expansion, with a focus on upgrading the US’s aging infrastructure stock. At the same time Federal Reserve officials, led by Janet Yellen and John Williams, are arguing for more fiscal...

Gavekal Research

Joyce Poon, Tan Kai Xian

Aug 24th 2016

With global growth having stabilized and central banks remaining in super-easy mode, the dash for yield is making emerging markets ever more interesting. In recent months a number of our Hong Kong-based writers have advised investors to play this trend through bonds not equities, with Udith chiming in on Monday (see Indonesia: Bet On Stability Not Growth). The question for those who expect this “not too hot, not too cold” phase to persist is...