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Gavekal Research
Charles Gave
Mar 27th 2020
What You See, And What You Don’t
In economics there is what you see and what you don’t see, and “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” As the world economy suffers a spasm the likes of which has rarely been seen in peacetime, it may help to go back to first principles to figure out what we are not seeing about this crisis, and who is going to end up paying for it.
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Gavekal Research
Arthur Kroeber
Mar 26th 2020
How Long For The Costly Cure?
Is the cure worse than the disease? This question is already being asked about the economic lockdowns being imposed in response to Covid-19. It will be asked a lot more in the coming weeks as the economic pain gets worse. The short answer is that the cure is costly, but needed; and well-designed policies can enable a transition to a much lower-cost approach by mid-May if not earlier.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Andrew Batson, Ernan Cui, Thomas Gatley, Wei He
Mar 26th 2020
Webinar: China's Recovery From Covid-19 Lockdown
At Wednesday's webinar, Andrew Batson, Ernan Cui, Thomas Gatley and Wei He discussed how China is recovering from the lockdown imposed to deal with the Covid-19 outbreak, and the outlook for the economy.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Thomas Gatley
Mar 25th 2020
The Coming Collapse Of Exports
As other economies shut down to contain their outbreaks, China’s hopes of a V-shaped growth rebound are evaporating. Thomas explains how the ensuing collapse in Chinese exports could result in a 4-8pp drop in GDP growth for Q2, offsetting any domestic recovery and pressuring policymakers to ramp up economic assistance.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Andrew Batson
Mar 24th 2020
The Great Fiscal Role Reversal
In the global financial crisis of 2008, China defied economic orthodoxy with its huge debt-financed stimulus. In the coronavirus crisis of 2020, by contrast, it is the US, UK and other Western countries that are throwing the fiscal rulebook out the window. In this piece, Andrew explains what’s behind this surprising role reversal.
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Gavekal Research
Louis Gave
Mar 24th 2020
Four Baskets For Four Quadrants
As investors survey the shattered remnants of the past decade’s bull market, they can reasonably assume that the winners of the future will not be those who dominated in the last decade. Louis applies the Gavekal Four Quadrants framework to address the question of which asset class will emerge victorious in a new macro environment.
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Gavekal Research
Arthur Kroeber
Mar 23rd 2020
Lockdowns Loom; What’s The Exit Strategy?
We are heading into another difficult week. Covid-19 case numbers and fatalities outside China continue to grow rapidly. Social lockdowns are spreading to more US states and European countries. In the short run, fiscal support is on the way. Longer term, governments will have to start asking the uncomfortable question of when the economic pain outweighs the public health gain.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Xiaoxi Zhang
Mar 23rd 2020
Rural Banks On The Brink
The economic stress of the Covid-19 outbreak is all but certain to cause a rise in nonperforming loans. Even before the outbreak, China’s rural commercial banks—its smallest and most troubled lenders—were already short of capital and performing poorly. As Xiaoxi shows in this piece, another jump in bad loans will push more of them into distress.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Rosealea Yao
Mar 20th 2020
Local Governments Will Lead On Property
Even as China’s property market has experienced an unprecedented decline, central government policymakers have kept a tight leash on official support. However, given growing signs of a lasting disruption to the sector, Rosealea believes that Beijing will tolerate more ambitious municipal efforts to keep local markets afloat.
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Gavekal Research
Charles Gave
Mar 20th 2020
Money, Value And The Markets
Above all, economics is the study of why goods and services have value and why these values are constantly changing. This study is greatly complicated by the fact that there are two different sources of value. In Gavekal-speak, we call these “scarcity” value (think jewels) and “efficiency” value (think tools). So the key question becomes not only “why do things have value?” but also “why do the relative values of scarcity and efficiency change...
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Gavekal Research
Udith Sikand, Will Denyer
Mar 19th 2020
The Dollar Squeeze Intensifies
Policymakers in the world’s biggest economic blocks are responding to the current crisis with fiscal and monetary “shock and awe”. Yet even as the much maligned European Central Bank joined the asset purchase party, markets have continued to crater. For all the coordinated economic responses to the coronavirus pandemic, there has been no serious effort to free up the offshore market for US dollars.
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Gavekal Research
Arthur Kroeber
Mar 19th 2020
A Bad Prognosis
The US and Europe are moving towards Hubei-style societal lockdowns. Arthur sifts through the latest epidemiological research, and concludes that while the worst case public health scenarios will be avoided, the coming lockdowns will be severe and last long enough to have an economic impact possibly more damaging than in China.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Wei He
Mar 18th 2020
Deposit Rates Are Back On The Agenda
The People’s Bank of China has failed to join other central banks in the recent wave of rate cuts. But with the coronavirus now threatening a substantial hit to global demand, the PBOC is going to need to do more. In this piece, Wei argues that a cut in the benchmark deposit rate—a tool that has not been used in four years—is on the way soon.
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Gavekal Research
Louis Gave
Mar 17th 2020
Solvency Crisis Or Liquidity Crisis?
Collapsing equity markets, rising bond yields, widening spreads, falling gold—in recent days, there have been few places to hide. When markets act so sick, it usually pays to take a deep breath (in a socially distant manner) and ponder whether we are facing a solvency crisis, or a liquidity crisis.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Thomas Gatley, Andrew Batson
Mar 17th 2020
Terrible But True
Given the extent of China’s coronavirus lockdown, it’s not surprising to see double-digit declines in economic indicators. The real surprise is that the statistics bureau did not fudge the data, as analysts expected it would, and printed numbers bad enough to be plausible. This suggests authorities will be pragmatic about the growth impact for 2020.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Andrew Batson
Mar 16th 2020
From The Supply Side To The Demand Side
As China gets back to work, the biggest problem facing the economy is no longer restrictions imposed on the supply side, but the near-certain prospect of a major shock in global demand. Andrew argues that this shift will cajole Chinese policymakers, who have so far kept a conservative approach, into stepping up their growth support measures.
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Gavekal Research
Anatole Kaletsky
Mar 16th 2020
A Modest Proposal To Avert Economic Catastrophe
Contrary to initial expectations, the spread of the coronavirus around the world is not following the relatively benign trajectories experienced in China outside of Hubei, and in Korea, Singapore and the rest of Asia. Instead, across Europe—and likely in the US—the spread increasingly resembles the path it took in Hubei. This threatens both medical and economic disasters.
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Gavekal Research
Charles Gave
Mar 13th 2020
What I Know
In fraught times, Charles has decided to keep it simple and focus only on what he knows. In this piece, he considers changing relationships between oil prices, long-bond rates, US equities and the dollar and offers various approaches that could help investors survive the bear market.
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Gavekal Research
Tom Holland
Mar 13th 2020
The Conditions Needed For A Bottom
Financial markets are now in full-blown panic mode. For investors, the key question is: What will it take for markets to form a bottom, and when will this happen? No one can answer with any precision. However, it is possible to discern the broad conditions needed to allow the markets to find a bottom. We are nowhere near them yet.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Ernan Cui
Mar 12th 2020
Despite Shortages, Inflation Will Cool
China’s consumer-price inflation is now around an eight-year high, driven primarily by continued pork shortages due to the African swine fever and exacerbated by the Covid-19 lockdown measures. That said, headline inflation figures are ticking down, a trend Ernan expects to continue in the coming months with an assist from lower oil prices.
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