Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Feb 25th 2016

I do not know as much as I should about China, but I would beg readers’ indulgence as I have some general knowledge of how economies work, and some particular insights into economic history. My fairly unoriginal starting point is that the first phase of China’s development, starting in about 1990, required a focus on building infrastructure and this caused particular rules to be adopted. Since the essential roads, bridges, power plants and...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Matthew Forney

Feb 19th 2016

We all know that big swaths of China are suffering, especially areas dependent on the declining coal and steel industries. Matt spent his Chinese New Year break in a poor county of Shaanxi province to see what things are like on the ground. He did not find what he expected: conditions are neither as dire as he feared nor as good as he hoped.

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Research Team

Feb 15th 2016

Is the world really facing a 2008-style economic and market meltdown all over again? If it is, then the prescription for investors is clear: load up on long-dated US treasuries in expectation of a continued slide in yields, leaven your portfolio with exposure to gold, and prepare for the apocalypse. But what if the end of days is not imminent? In that case, investors face a trickier call.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Ernan Cui

Feb 11th 2016

China’s housing-led slowdown is clearly taking a toll on jobs, with troubled industrial firms laying off millions of workers. Offsetting these losses is the very rapid pace of job creation by the service sector, a fact the government regularly trumpets. But a closer look reveals that most new service jobs are at low-paying small businesses.

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Research Team

Feb 04th 2016

Things have come to a pretty pass when the heads of two of the world’s three leading central banks come out with all guns blazing in an attempt to persuade markets that they will do whatever it takes and more to ease policy—and their currencies promptly strengthen by two big figures. Yet that is exactly what has happened this week. On Monday Mario Draghi dropped a heavy hint that the European Central Bank is preparing to push interest rates even...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Rosealea Yao

Feb 03rd 2016

China’s coal imports dropped a stunning 30% in 2015—and all signs indicate more declines are coming. Imported coal is taking the brunt of the adjustment in the nation’s energy demand, as the domestic transportation bottlenecks that made imports attractive have eased. We think China will stop being a major net importer of coal in about two years.

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Anatole Kaletsky

Jan 27th 2016

Charles has boldly defined a serious bear market as a downtrend in which investors who buy at the top do not recover their money for four years or more. By contrast, he dismissed a -15% to -20% decline lasting less than 18 months as a mere bear cub that could equally well be described as a “pause that refreshes”. In my view the present decline it looks rather more like “cub” than an Ursus Magnus.

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Long Chen

Jan 25th 2016

Some calm has returned to China’s exchange-rate market—but for how long? For the past two weeks, the renminbi’s value has been relatively stable against both the US dollar and its official trade-weighted basket. But questions about the future trajectory of the renminbi have not gone away. Despite the central bank’s massive recent interventions, many market participants view the current “peg to a basket” as a temporary tool that will, at some...

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

Jan 21st 2016

One of the core tenets of Gavekal’s philosophy is that we embrace open debate. Rather than concealing the diversity of our analysis beneath a single suffocating “house view”, we strongly believe that conducting our —often animated—discussions about the big topics of the day out in the open adds value for our readers. And few of our recent debates have been as lively as the one over Beijing’s renminbi policy. Joyce’s view is that the Chinese...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Andrew Batson

Jan 19th 2016

China’s “two-speed” economy coasted to a moderate slowdown in 2015, with rapid gains in services helping offset a downturn in industry. But industry will worsen further in 2016, and the recent strength in services will prove to be cyclical. We think this slowdown will be gradual, but are watching risks in the financial sector and the job market.

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Arthur Kroeber

Jan 18th 2016

By most measures, the first two weeks of 2016 have been the worst-ever start of the year for risk assets. With the MSCI All-Countries index down nearly -20% from last May’s high, we are now in a global bear market.

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Arthur Kroeber

Jan 11th 2016

We began 2016 thinking that China’s policymakers had learned some lessons from last year; obviously, last week’s mayhem proved us wrong. But the real problem with the missteps on the currency and the stock market is not that collapse is imminent. Rather, it is that the leadership is not setting a clear course toward a more market-driven economy.

Gavekal Research

Joyce Poon

Jan 08th 2016

Emerging markets have faced significant headwinds ever since the “taper tantrum” of mid-2013 when investors began to factor in tightening moves by the Federal Reserve. Their headache got much worse last summer when China allowed a mini-devaluation of the renminbi, and 2016 is hardly starting well. The root problem is that most emerging markets are over-geared and need to ease policy if growth is to be kick-started. Unfortunately, easing is...

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky, Charles Gave, Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian, Joyce Poon, Long Chen

Jan 07th 2016

The new year has been a wild ride so far, with sharp drops in the renminbi, Chinese stock markets, and oil prices leading global markets down. In our first Gavekal Monthly of 2016 we try to make sense of the risks facing investors today. As usual there are some strong differences of opinion: Anatole argues that developed economies are in decent shape, the dollar's rise will soon be over, and equities should post a better performance than...

Gavekal Research

Arthur Kroeber

Jan 05th 2016

“Well, that was an oddly timed report,” one of our long-suffering clients remarked yesterday, with justice. Right after we pressed send on our outlook for the year ahead, assuring readers that China fears and commodity prices would not play as big a role in markets in 2016 as they did last year, the Shanghai index collapsed by -7%, and oil prices had a volatile ride thanks to growing tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Have we been proved...

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Arthur Kroeber

Jan 04th 2016

On the whole, 2015 was a year for investors to forget. US bond and equity prices were both flat, equity gains in Europe were mostly wiped out (for US dollar investors) by the fall of the euro, and commodity plays and high-yield issues crumbled. China sparked a brief panic after a clumsy intervention to cushion a stock-market collapse and an unexpected currency devaluation, but by the end of the year the Shanghai index was still up nearly 5% in...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Long Chen

Dec 17th 2015

Our latest quarterly overview of China’s economy outlines the prospects for 2016. Growth will slow further, as industry stays weak and the performance of services fades. More moves to support growth are also certain, with the focus switching to fiscal from monetary policy. Meanwhile, pressures on the financial system and labor market are rising.

Gavekal Research

Arthur Kroeber

Dec 14th 2015

Over the weekend in Paris, the leaders of 195 nations announced a landmark deal to address climate change that its more optimistic supporters say heralds “the end of the fossil fuel era.” But both market action and many government policies point in the opposite direction. Crude oil prices continue to tumble towards the US$30 mark, and coal prices have also collapsed—both moves that reflect abundant global supplies of fossil fuels. The Paris...

Gavekal Research

Andrew Batson

Dec 10th 2015

What is the latest rout in commodity prices telling us? Certainly, China’s demand for many commodities is weak—but everyone knows this. The most important signal is rather on the supply side: low prices are finally pushing commodity producers to cut output. It is this restructuring that will eventually bring stability to commodity prices.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Thomas Gatley

Dec 08th 2015

There are many privileges that come with being a state-owned enterprise in China. One of them, apparently, is the freedom to not pay your bills. We find that SOEs are delaying payments to their suppliers, in order to hoard the cash they need to pay their large debts. This does help SOEs avoid defaults, but at the expense of smaller private firms.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Ernan Cui

Dec 07th 2015

As the downturn in China's investment-driven economy deepens, ever more hope is being placed on consumer spending. But the dynamics of Chinese household spending remain poorly understood. In this concise presentation, we outline the macro factors driving the growth of consumption, as well as the key structural changes.

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Joyce Poon

Dec 02nd 2015

On the face of it, the valuation of emerging markets looks compelling. After declining -30% from its 2011 high, the MSCI Emerging Markets index is now at a forward P/E ratio of 12, a third cheaper than the S&P 500. As a result, the valuation premium of developed over emerging equity markets is close to its highest in more than ten years. What’s more on average, emerging-market currencies are now below fair value against the US dollar,...

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Long Chen

Dec 01st 2015

It’s official: the IMF has confirmed that the renminbi will join the SDR currency basket. Now that China has achieved this goal, attention will turn to the renminbi’s exchange-rate outlook. The reality, however, is that SDR inclusion is largely irrelevant to the trajectory of the exchange rate; what happens to the US dollar will be the key.

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Tom Miller

Nov 27th 2015

Over the last year China has stepped up its efforts to build an informal empire in Asia. This “One Belt, One Road” initiative has the potential to boost regional development and strengthen China’s geopolitical heft. But in the shorter term, can Beijing’s grand plan absorb China’s industrial overcapacity and revive commodity demand? Sadly, no.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Andrew Batson

Nov 19th 2015

With China’s industrial sector in a deep slowdown, the services sector has been generating most of the good economic news in 2015. But there is no economic law that makes services immune to the business cycle. Services have their own ups and downs, and while that cycle has helped growth this year, it will provide less of a boost in 2016.

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

Nov 13th 2015

At Gavekal the conversation with clients never stops and from time to time we like to offer up a taste of debates that strike us as interesting. Louis got into just such a discussion earlier this week with one of our smarter, free-market embracing US clients. The topic of discussion was China and why Louis is such an apologist for the Chinese Communist Party when he clearly has little time for governments meddling with markets elsewhere?

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Tom Miller

Nov 10th 2015

As China’s growth slowdown deepens, making even the government’s reduced growth target of 6.5% a year for the rest of this decade look less and less realistic, policymakers are increasingly pinning their hopes on Beijing’s much-touted “Belt and Road Initiative”. Not only do they hope that the plan to build new trading networks across Central Asia and the Indian Ocean will boost China’s flagging exports, but that the demand for commodities and...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Arthur Kroeber

Nov 10th 2015

Xi Jinping’s ambition to extend China’s global influence is obvious. Whether he can sustain the long-run economic growth needed to finance that ambition is less clear.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Tom Miller

Nov 10th 2015

As a ‘peace-loving’ China flaunts its military, political and economic might, Asia and the US puzzle over how to respond.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Raffaello Pantucci

Nov 10th 2015

China’s economic activity is gradually reducing Russian influence in Central Asia. Despite that, shared authoritarian values keep the two countries closely aligned on many issues.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Aaron L. Friedberg

Nov 10th 2015

The longstanding US approach to a rising China—economic engagement and military balancing—no longer works. More muscular balancing, and smarter engagement, is now required.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Raffaello Pantucci, Jing HUANG, Aaron L. Friedberg

Nov 10th 2015

In the last two years China has made a bold push to expand its influence in Asia, using both the carrot of well-funded infrastructure diplomacy and the stick of forceful assertion of territorial claims in the South and East China Seas. What explains this newly assertive foreign policy, and what are its effects likely to be? This special issue of the China Economic Quarterly tries to answer these questions.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Rosealea Yao

Nov 03rd 2015

One of the few recent bright spots in China’s economy has been the recovery in housing sales. Unfortunately, a number of indicators show that recovery losing steam: gains in sales and prices will slow in coming months. This turn in the cycle reinforces our view that construction activity will be weak in 2016, and that more rate cuts will come, says Rosealea.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Andrew Batson

Oct 30th 2015

China’s leaders have launched their next five-year plan with a big step back from planning, at least of the family variety: henceforth all couples will be allowed to have two children. This is a good thing. But we’re not so sure it is a sign of the “decisive” move away from central planning and toward market mechanisms that reformers have promised.

Gavekal Research

Oct 27th 2015

We held our main fall seminar on October 27 in London, where Anatole Kaletsky, Francois-Xavier Chauchat, Neil Newman, Tom Miller and Louis-Vincent Gave presented their views on the global economy. Anatole discussed the implications of recent developments in financial markets; Francois examined Europe’s resilience to global headwinds; Neil outlined three major investment themes in Japan; Tom explored China’s regional foreign policy ambitions, and...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Long Chen

Oct 26th 2015

More important than its sixth rate cut in 12 months was the Chinese central bank’s announcement that it has abandoned the ceiling it has long set on commercial bank deposit rates. This step brings the decade-long process of interest rate liberalization almost to completion, and ushers in a new era for China’s monetary policy.

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

Oct 21st 2015

Charles sometimes likes to say that investing is simple: all one needs to do is figure out whether there is “more money than fools”, in which case risk assets rise, or “more fools than money”, in which case equity markets struggle, since they are one of the world’s main reservoirs for excess liquidity. Alas, what Charles fails to say with this quip is that working out whether there is more money than fools, or the reverse, is no easy job. What’s...

Gavekal Research

Oct 21st 2015

This is the full recording from Gavekal's October Hong Kong seminar featuring Joyce Poon, Andrew Batson and Anatole Kaletsky as well as a Q&A session.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Long Chen

Oct 19th 2015

The better-than-expected GDP number China released today should help further calm market fears about collapsing growth and capital flight. But while growth is not collapsing, it’s also not rebounding, The data will likely look a bit better in the fourth quarter, but we still think China’s growth will take another big step down in early 2016.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Ernan Cui, Andrew Batson

Oct 14th 2015

Chinese consumers spent plenty of money over the national holiday this month—but growth in retail sales has clearly slowed along with the rest of the economy. On top of this slowdown, structural changes in shopping patterns are wreaking havoc with traditional retailers, who increasingly struggle to benefit from the bright spots in consumption.

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Tom Miller

Oct 09th 2015

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hailed this week’s deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership as evidence that “the curtain is finally rising on a new Asian century.” The TPP is the biggest trade agreement for 20 years, its 12 members accounting for a full 35% of global trade (see The Big Winner From The TPP). Yet it is hard to get excited about a trade deal that deliberately leaves out the world’s biggest trading nation: China. The TPP is designed...

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave, Joyce Poon, Nick Andrews, Andrew Batson

Oct 02nd 2015

With the Fed having put its rate hike decision on hold, investors face an uncertain environment of weak global growth and inflation, tottering emerging markets and continued worries about China. In this edition of The Gavekal Monthly, Louis-Vincent Gave surveys the crucial questions investors must grapple with and identifies the indicators to monitor in the coming weeks. In addition, we highlight three calls from our analyst team: Joyce...

Gavekal Dragonomics

Long Chen

Sep 29th 2015

In our latest quarterly overview of the Chinese economy: monetary easing has done little to reverse the slowdown, and weakness in heavy industry and construction is now spreading to exports and consumption. Meanwhile financial markets are in turmoil and the reform agenda is disappointing. Another step down in growth looks inevitable.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Long Chen

Sep 25th 2015

China’s long-awaited plan for state-owned enterprise reform centers on the vague concept of “mixed ownership.” This new slogan at first seemed to promise more privatization of state enterprises and a greater role for the private sector. But in actual practice, mixed ownership does not look much like privatization at all.

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Joyce Poon

Sep 18th 2015

How much does China’s slowdown really matter to the rest of the world? At first this might sound like a silly question. After all, China is home to a fifth of humanity, it is the world’s second largest national economy and its second largest importer, and in recent years has contributed between a quarter and a third of global growth. What’s more, the recent volatility in China’s stock markets and exchange rate caused shockwaves around the world...