Gavekal Research

Arthur Kroeber

Mar 26th 2020

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.

Gavekal Research

Louis Gave

Mar 24th 2020

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.

Gavekal Research

Arthur Kroeber

Mar 23rd 2020

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.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Rosealea Yao

Mar 20th 2020

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.

Gavekal Research

Udith Sikand, Will Denyer

Mar 19th 2020

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.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Wei He

Mar 18th 2020

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.

Gavekal Dragonomics

Thomas Gatley, Andrew Batson

Mar 17th 2020

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.

Gavekal Research

Anatole Kaletsky

Mar 16th 2020

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.

Gavekal Research

Charles Gave

Mar 13th 2020

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.