Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Oct 27th 2016

After the Brexit vote, Anatole became deeply bearish, fearing that a populist insurgency could unleash a destructive retreat from globalization. With the US electorate seemingly set to reject that pathway on November 8, the likelihood of other nations following Britain by turning in on themselves is greatly diminished.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Oct 20th 2016

Keynesian beliefs are based on two key ideas. Firstly, recessions are caused by an excess of savings among nasty types known as rentiers. Secondly, if there is a shortage of demand, the government should conjure it up out of thin air by borrowing money to spend as needed. In the last few years we’ve seen what happens when the first of these two ideas is put into practice. Policymakers around the world have attempted to euthanize the rentier, and...

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl

Oct 19th 2016

Despite multiple European Central Bank officials protesting a steady-as-she-goes approach to monetary policy, the recent rise in eurozone bond yields reflects market concern about a potential tapering of its bond buying. After all, inflation has ticked higher, European banks continue to grumble about a profit-sapping yield curve and the ECB’s dealing desk in Frankfurt will soon run out of eligible bunds to buy. Despite all that, tomorrow will...

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

Oct 13th 2016

Should we care about the Italian referendum? Without wanting to sound smug toward what remains Europe’s second prettiest country, I can’t remember ever witnessing an Italian election with consequences beyond its own borders. But the December 4th referendum could be such a first: an Italian election that matters.

Gavekal Research

Oct 10th 2016

Will Denyer presented a newly minted dynamic asset allocation tool which was developed from an ROIC-based framework that has helped us to better map and predict US economic cycles. He then answered listener questions on these themes.

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Oct 07th 2016

In European capitals this week schadenfreude will no doubt have been expressed at the diminished status of the UK economy and its currency. This morning’s “flash crash” in the pound most likely had technical causes, but the fact the exchange rate could fall so hard without generating automatic buying responses says much about confidence in the unit. Sterling has been under pressure since Prime Minister Theresa May earlier this week said she will...

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

Oct 05th 2016

Back in April, we pondered whether, with their negative interest rate policies, central bankers were showing themselves to be particularly incompetent by condemning commercial banks to years of unprofitability, or whether their greater design was to drive weaker banks to the wall to advance a consolidation of banking industries around the world under the umbrella of nationalization (see NIRP: Machiavellian Design Or Policy Mistake?). In other...

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Oct 03rd 2016

The second phase of the post-Brexit sterling devaluation probably started this weekend. Theressca May's announcement of March as the deadline for Britain to launch the “Article 50 process” of formally withdrawing from European Union achieved its immediate objective of averting a battle between the Hard Brexit and Soft Brexit factions at this week’s Conservative Party Conference. Unfortunately, May’s party management success is likely to...

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl

Sep 30th 2016

The eurozone’s construction sector is on the turn as super low interest rates feed through to improved housing demand and as infrastructure building starts to pick-up. The implication is that a reliable new driver of growth should help sustain a moderate eurozone recovery. Investors are advised to take note as the sector has a decently investable universe, which is generating not too shabby earnings growth.

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl

Sep 23rd 2016

European bank stocks have enjoyed a near 5% bounce in the last two trading sessions on hopes that the European Central Bank will follow its Japanese counterpart by explicitly adopting policies that help steepen the yield curve and so lessen the squeeze on bank lending margins. There are reasons to be more cheery about the outlook for European financials, but a Japanese-style rescue mission may not be one of them.

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl

Sep 19th 2016

It was billed as a show of post-Brexit unity of purpose. Without the fractious Brits to obstruct progress, leaders of the remaining 27 members of the European Union would come together to affirm their unshaken commitment to the goal of “ever-closer union”. Unsurprisingly, the reality of the weekend’s Bratislava gathering failed to live up to its billing. Without the presence of the habitually adversarial British to unite them in antagonism, the...

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

Sep 14th 2016

Ask three economists for the definition of a financial bubble, and you will be lucky to get fewer than four different answers. Even in our little shop, we like to make distinctions between bubbles in productive assets (US railroads, the internet, fiber optic cables, shale gas wells...) and bubbles in unproductive assets (gold, tulips, Japanese land, Florida condos…). We also like to make distinctions on how bubbles are financed: equity (good) or...

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Sep 12th 2016

After months of contented lethargy, Friday’s big sell-off seemed to confirm the main points that Louis and I made in our conference call two days earlier. Firstly, the faith in “lower forever” bond yields is not a reason for reassurance, but a cause for concern. Secondly, political risks have not been eliminated by the summer’s market rally, merely ignored. Thirdly, what I call the “financial hurricane season” usually starts in early autumn—and...

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Sep 09th 2016

In times past, capitalist systems were organized on a simple premise. At the centre sat “money” as the medium to express all values. The primary operating dynamic of this system was that surplus money (savings) got channelled into economic activity, with a secondary effect that “unused”, or “left over”, money ended up in financial assets, usually equities, such that at times of great optimism a bull market resulted. After running for a year or...

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Sep 07th 2016

It is only three months since the European Central Bank crossed its latest “unconventional” threshold with corporate bond purchases, yet when policymakers meet tomorrow, more monetary expansion is in the cards. Eurozone economic growth is not collapsing, but it remains weak as shown by the latest flash PMI reading which slumped to a 19-month low, and consumer inflation running at just 0.2%. With the ECB’s quantitative easing program set to...

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Sep 01st 2016

For the European Central Bank, achieving its target of inflation “below, but close to, 2%” is proving harder than anticipated. Eurozone consumer prices rose just 0.2% year-on-year in August, unchanged from July despite more than two years of negative interest rates and nearly 18 months of quantitative easing. With core inflation actually slipping in August, the ECB is facing calls to ease policy even further. However, the central bank now finds...

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Aug 26th 2016

As the high priests of global central banking congregate in Jackson Hole, much of the chatter ahead of the meeting has concentrated on the “mystifying” fall over recent years in the natural rate of interest, and possible reasons why it should have declined to such an extent. Having spent the last ten years attempting to apply the economic theories of the great 19th century Swedish economist Knut Wicksell, I have to say I am delighted with the...

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews, Stefano Capacci

Aug 24th 2016

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has bet his premiership on a referendum over constitutional reform. It is a high stakes gamble. Renzi’s promise to step down if there is a “No” vote has turned the referendum into a vote of confidence in the government, its Europhile policies, and Italy’s membership of the eurozone itself.

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Aug 21st 2016

Nick presents what's at stake in Italy's upcoming constitutional referendum, and what it could mean for the European Union

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Aug 15th 2016

Among my long-standing decision rules is one that generally proved reliable in the past. If two developed and open market economies trade freely with each other, then over the long run the return on invested capital in each economy will tend to be the same. In turn, this implies that over the long run, the ratio of total returns from each stock market will exhibit no trend in common currency terms. This makes intuitive sense—if one market...

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Aug 11th 2016

Eurozone equities have been sucked higher in the post-Brexit global rally, but with earnings showing a mild pick-up and fears of a populist political contagion fading, the hope is that a 15 month downtrend has been broken. On a technical level the MSCI EMU’s 200-day moving average has flattened out nicely, and with the DAX on Tuesday hitting a high for the year, German stocks look as if they could break out. As to whether the broader market can...

Gavekal Research

Joyce Poon, Tan Kai Xian, Neil Newman, Udith Sikand

Aug 01st 2016

In a world in which the Fed shows no inclination to get ahead of the curve on inflation and in which both the ECB and the BoJ are in full quantitative easing mode, investors everywhere are on the hunt for yield. But the chase is a nervous one. Investors are all too aware that equities and bonds are sending conflicting signals, and that the favorable trends that have lifted most assets over the last six months could be disrupted by a sudden spike...

Gavekal Research

Joyce Poon, Udith Sikand

Jul 27th 2016

Despite this year’s strong run-up, there remain good reasons to stick with emerging market assets. The twin impact of collapsed borrowing costs amid a renewed global hunt for yield, and greatly reduced exchange rate volatility has been the ideal environment for EM yield curve flattening trades.

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Jul 26th 2016

On Friday, the European Banking Authority will publish the results of its 2016 stress tests. Although 51 banks from across the European Union have been tested, attention will focus most closely on the results of the five Italian banks covered. With Italy’s banking system widely identified as the most likely locus of a new eurozone crisis, bankers, politicians and investors are all hoping for the “best” likely result. This would see all the banks...

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Jul 18th 2016

With a newly installed British prime minister gravely intoning that “Brexit means Brexit” and having just appointed a cabal of Brexiters to run the UK’s exit strategy from the European Union, it would look to be game-over. Anatole would beg to differ and explains why there remains a strong likelihood that the UK government will change tack in the face of different circumstances than prevailed at the time of last month’s referendum.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Jul 12th 2016

Of all basic freedoms, one of the most fundamental of all is the freedom of the individual to organize his or her relationship with time. The way we order our affairs with respect to the all too brief time allocated to us on this earth is a profound right that we all should be allowed to exercise unhindered. In short, everyone should be free to choose whether to be an ant or a grasshopper.

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl, Romain Metivet

Jul 07th 2016

This month Russia’s Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Company delivered two 100-seater passenger airplanes to the regional Irish carrier CityJet, and has orders for 13 more over the next year. The news caught our eye as it is the first time the Russian plane maker has broken into the European aviation market. As economists rather than aviation experts, it got us wondering whether Russia is finally curing itself of a decade-long bout of “Dutch disease” as...

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Jul 04th 2016

The British were recently asked if they wanted to leave the European Union and to the establishment’s horror, they chose to do just that. Italy will host Europe’s next big referendum in November with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi threatening to resign if his package of constitutional reforms isnot passed. Such a dénouement in Europe’s most indebted big economy would trigger a political crisis and require fresh elections. The issue with referendums...

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky, Charles Gave, Nick Andrews, Cedric Gemehl, Neil Newman, Joyce Poon, Udith Sikand

Jul 01st 2016

The world is now a considerably more uncertain place than a month ago. Following the UK’s referendum vote in favor of Brexit, a near-term recession in the UK is more likely than not, the European Union faces the possibility of a renewed economic slowdown, and investors find themselves forced to reassess the probability that Donald Trump will win November’s US presidential election. In this edition of the Gavekal Monthly, our analysts set out to...

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Jun 28th 2016

Back in September 1989 as it became clear that big forces were shaking up the Cold War status quo, I wrote a research piece that aimed to place these convulsions in a broader context. It borrowed from a core idea of the great historian Arnold J. Toynbee that a driving force of history is what he dubbed “missionary ideas”, which tend to find their inspiration in religion (see History Moves Again). In the post-enlightenment era there have been...

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Jun 24th 2016

There are moments in history when the impossible becomes inevitable without ever passing through improbable. The period after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was such a time. Last night’s unexpected repudiation by British voters of 40 years of European Union membership is another. The outcome of the referendum is a shock fully comparable to the Lehman collapse. Rarely, if ever, has a G7 currency fallen by -10% in a single trading session, as the...

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl

Jun 22nd 2016

Recent releases of hard and soft macro-economic data point to a cyclical eurozone recovery whose domestic drivers are increasingly robust. On the back of stronger consumption and investment, GDP growth was just revised up to 0.6% QoQ for 1Q16. Unemployment continues to fall and, after a weak start to the year, economic sentiment indicators have rebounded—the ZEW released yesterday for June leapt to 20.2 from 16.8 in May. This improvement is...

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Jun 15th 2016

The febrile behavior of financial markets ahead of Britain’s EU referendum shows that the voting on June 23 will influence economic and political conditions around the world far more profoundly than Britain’s share of 4% in global GDP might suggest. This outsize impact has at least three explanations.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Jun 13th 2016

The UK political class is all in a flutter as the latest European Union referendum polls show an apparent rising tide of support for “Leave”. Having orchestrated the great and good into warning of catastrophe should a Brexit materialize, it would seem that “project fear” is not cutting through. I tend to have strong political convictions and perhaps for this reason I have a lousy record of guesstimating election outcomes. Since the UK referendum...

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl

Jun 10th 2016

France may be racked by strikes and edgy about terrorist threats as a major soccer tournament it is hosting kicks off today, but the eurozone’s second biggest economy has a decent story to tell. Consumer confidence is at a post-2007 high, recent GDP readings have surprised on the upside and even jobless claims hint at an improvement in the labor market (see Is France Getting Better?). All of this perhaps explains why French investment for 1Q16...

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Jun 03rd 2016

The ruling class, which over the last 20 years has done so much to manage our decline, has found a new enemy in the shape of political “populism.” While acknowledging that times have been tough, what so annoys this elite is the realization that “we the people” do not recognize that a complicated world is being run in our own best interests. For this reason it is no great surprise that such ingrates have been labelled populists.

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky, Tan Kai Xian, Cedric Gemehl, Nick Andrews, Long Chen

Jun 01st 2016

Even as markets nudge higher, investors are unnerved by a rising tide of populist politics whose tangible expression will be tested on June 23, when UK voters must choose between Brexit or a less than perfect status quo inside the European Union. Investors are also concerned that the US dollar will strengthen further as the Federal Reserve mulls the question of whether to raise interest rates. In this monthly our writers weigh these big issues...

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews, Cedric Gemehl

May 24th 2016

It has become an article of faith for Europe-watchers that the one thing holding together the single currency area is super easy monetary policy. Yet in light of Brussels deficit policing bureaucracy having recently been revealed as a toothless tiger, expansionary fiscal policy can perhaps be added to the list. It is hardly news that Europe is back-tracking from German-dictated austerity, but for the first time officials are openly admitting...

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl, Nick Andrews

May 19th 2016

By most measures, the eurozone remains unbalanced, with a competitive north eating the lunch of a productivity-challenged Latin periphery. Germany’s current account surplus stands at 8.6% of GDP and its banks are stuffed with excess deposits, suggesting that thrift remains the Teutonic economic passion of choice. Yet look closer at Germany and it is clear that domestic demand, not exports, is driving growth—household spending accounted for about...

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

May 06th 2016

Recently I reada bookcalled Je n’ai plus peur (I am not afraid any more)by the French writer Jean-Claude Guillebaud. I do not know Guillebaud personally, but even though he is very much on the left of the French political spectrum, I must confess that I have read all his books, and that I have always liked what he has to say.

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

May 03rd 2016

By all accounts, 2016 has so far proved to be a challenging year for “market neutral” funds, and “smart beta” strategies, along with various quant funds. Before we have even reached the seasonally-challenging part of the year—sell in May and go away, and all that—a quick glance at year-to-date returns for “low volatility” hedge funds illustrates that the pain is pretty widespread. In a sense, this is surprising; after all, spreads are tighter...

Gavekal Research

Cedric Gemehl

Apr 29th 2016

He was not quite Reaganesque in his cheery optimism, but in a recent primetime television appearance President Francois Hollande did declare to France that life was “getting better”. He could point to growth rising to 1.1% last year from a meagre 0.2% in 2014. Unfortunately, the French jobless total hit a new record of 3.6mn in February contributing to a public response of general derision, not to mention rioting at proposed labor market reforms...

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews

Apr 20th 2016

Last February we published a detailed score card of the structural reform efforts undertaken by Europe’s battered peripheral economies (see Assessing ‘Thatcherite-Keynesianism’). The last year has seen small improvements, but not enough change to warrant another box-ticking exercise. Our assessment in 2016 mostly focuses on the key relationship between the labor markets and national competitiveness. Inevitably such changes are slow moving and in...

Gavekal Research

Nick Andrews, Cedric Gemehl

Apr 11th 2016

The grand old men who conceived of a united states of Europe knew that a successful single currency demanded a modern federation with integrated monetary, fiscal and political institutions. Such a leap into the unknown was politically impossible in the 1990s, and their assumption (and perhaps hope) was that the less than optimal eurozone would suffer periodic crises, so creating the conditions for reform and a centralization of powers. Since the...

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Apr 04th 2016

What was the weakest major currency in the world in the first quarter? It was not the Brazilian real nor the Australian dollar nor any of the other usual suspects among the emerging market and commodity currencies. That accolade went to the British pound, which managed to depreciate by -4%, from US$1.48 to US$1.42, even while the dollar itself fell another -5% on its trade-weighted index.

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave, Will Denyer, Nick Andrews, Cedric Gemehl, Andrew Batson

Apr 01st 2016

The big change over the last month is that the US dollar is now falling on a year-on-year basis. This weakness reflects a more abundant international supply of dollars as the US trade balance, ex-China and ex-oil, has swung back into the red after six years in surplus. In this edition of The Gavekal Monthly, Louis outlines why, in such a plentiful-dollar environment, investors should consider prioritizing “jewels” over “tools”.

Gavekal Research

Joyce Poon

Mar 21st 2016

One of our long-standing rules of thumb has been that a deteriorating US trade balance is good news for the rest of the world, and especially for emerging markets. It is thus a positive sign that the ex-energy, ex-China trade balance shifted from surplus to a deficit in 2015, sending US$150bn to the world outside of China and the oil exporters. The overall trade balance is likely to continue worsening through late 2017, thanks to the lagged...