Spot Markets Live, 17/11/23 (Finance ski challenge, EM opportunities, Pawnbrokers for all season)

And I am joined this morning by Izzy whom I introduce to you a little bit like when Parky introduced Helen Mirren onto his talk show. This is what I want you to imagine

How are you Julian.

Wine evening last night, i shall fill you in later.

like my driving

like everything else in life

This weekend Val Thorens and Tignes are opening some of their ski areas ahead of schedule.

The lifts start on Saturday 18th November.

They are the first French resorts to open for the season.

It’s just the higher altitude resorts for now, and anything can still happen. But fingers crossed it’s a good sign. (Though I’ve seen early snow  dumps give way to Christmas period snowless disasters. So let’s not speak too soon).

BUT! I’d like to use this as an opportunity to pitch the following YouTube series concept, which I am very much open to being funded.

Like they do on Top Gear

 Yep. So if you’re a TV executive please fund this. 🙂

Think “Ray Dalio on skis”. This is what i’m aiming for. We film it around Jan to compete with Davos.

He’s cancelled

Have you seen our original Blind Spot winter Davos production?

https://x.com/izakaminska/status/1615522466524184576?s=20

I think it was actually on at the cinema before a tom cruise film

But let’s move on to actual market stories.

What’s caught your eye this lovely Friday?

Jerome Powell struggling with the H4L narrative after Tuesday’s CPI data. No matter how hard central bankers are trying to keep FCI tight, the mkt is pricing in 30% chance of a rate cut in the spring.

H4L is nothing like HS2

That put the total at $778.1 billion, its lowest level since 2009. To create the BRIC currency, a long-term objective, they need to back it with something and that won’t be treasuries but it may well be gold.

UK retail sales for Oct -0.3% you, worst month since Feb 2021

I wish I could say I felt this way. This is not how the high st feeels. Higher interest rates eat into household budgets despite wage growth surpassing inflation.

Or sighs. Sometimes, less regularly, woops of joy.

Sounded mad

yes, crude is in a bear mkt, 4th consecutive weekly fall and looking round the world and seeing who owns most of the oil, it’s very gratifying.

Given higher rates, the consumer needs a break where he/ she can find it.

Is oil reacting to geopolitical risks having peaked? Or is it pricing in a 2024 recession? It’s a bit of both but more of the former, I suspect.

For now, 4.5% on UST10YR is just the right Goldilocks level

The Q3 reporting season is pretty much concluded with eps growth in the US +3% much better than Europe -8%

Although if one strips out the energy sector (2022 was an outlier) then the US is very decent @ +9% and Europe’s performance at +3% is not bad considering.

The bigger companies have clearly been very good at managing costs throughout this downturn.

This week witnessed the 2nd biggest inflows of the year into US stock funds @ $23.5bn, presumably reflecting an exodus from money-mkt funds. and that ends the market miscellany segment

Speaking of bear markets

Panda Diplomacy

Does Leia like pandas?

Competes for attention with Unicorny.

And Parroty

I guess its easier to remember

must remember that strategy for when alzheimners kicks in

where was i ?

So no Blinken eye rolls in this house.

That was very amusing no?

I missed smthg else

Rod Liddle of The Spectator summed up the philosophy of China’s panda diplomacy very succinctly and very presciently more than a decade ago when the Chinese were trying to fob us off with Ursus Made in China.

‘The Chinese are doing their panda thing again, buying international goodwill by depositing one of these doomed and slightly sinister creatures with any country which might otherwise have an objection to their foreign or domestic policy. Worried about human rights and prisoners of conscience? ‘Ere you go, mate, have a panda and shut your gob. Top-quality panda this is, ten years old, one previous owner, runs on bamboo, very eco-friendly. Shove it in a zoo and watch the kiddies pour in. We do a sideline in panda mugs and panda toys — all manufactured by kiddies, as it happens — and we’ll bung you some of them too for a pony.’

The serious point here, though, is what fools, political leaders, especially the Chinese, take people for, that the key impression that will be left in the minds of the public after this summit between the world’s two most powerful men is of cuddly bears, rather than substance.

The Chinese have form when it comes to the inauthentic exploitation of bears

And it’s not just limited to bears. They’ve passed dogs off as lions too.

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/16/world/asia/china-zoo-dog-lion/index.html#:~:text=As%20they%20approached%20the%20cage,to%20disguise%20dogs%20as%20lions.%E2%80%9D

(Winnie the pooh)

(The bear of very little brain)

So in other news i wanted to flag this story on the FT.

PMRR – the central purr of reserves. Acronym wise. Do check out this week’s newsletter and spotlight for more on the significance of PMRR and LCLoR.

10:58In other cbanker news, I had the op to have lunch with quite an informed name, which unfortunately i can’t divulge. But they disagreed that central bank losses are a thing, and instead blamed the drama (specifically here in the UK)  on Mervyn King for giving the Treasury an indemnity in the first place.

It’s all about the optics, they say. (I’m not entirley sure about this myself.)

Speaking of Mervyn King, his pitch to move cbanks on to a “Pawnbroker for all Seasons” model is now really being picked up.

As i’ve flagged here before, the code really for PFAS (as we now call it) as any central banker talking about “pre-positioning”.

We’ve had now Andrew Bailey, Sam Woods and Andrew Hauser reference the idea of pre-positioning as an alternative to higher liquidity buffers. But yesterday this idea travelled even further.

‘PRE-POSITIONING’ WATCH: Former BoE governor Mervyn King’s pawnbroker for all seasons (PFAS) model may be making more inroads than previously appreciated. Here at Morning Central Banker we’ve been watching for signs that cbanks are subtly turning towards the use of extensive pre-positioning of collateral as an alternative defense against bank runs in the wake of this year’s liquidity troubles. And on Thursday there were a good few.

Preparedness is key: At the Seventh European Systemic Risk Board annual conference, Michael Barr, Vice-Chair for Supervision at the Fed, was among several supervisors who hinted the idea was being wmveaxed. “As we continue to look at how we can enhance our own operations; we are also emphasizing to firms the importance of preparedness to tap contingency funding sources which means pre-positioning collateral and testing at regular intervals,” he told the webinar.

But is the approach really new? No. Pre-positioning of collateral at central banks has been standard practice for a while now, notably at the ECB, the BoE and the Fed. But the shift in thinking comes in the scale of pre-positioning being proposed — ideally to the point that bank runs become impossible — as well as in normalizing and facilitating such borrowing.

Stifling stigma: As Barr noted “even those that had some collateral pre-positioned weren’t as prepared as they should be” this spring when troubles started. That meant that even one of the Fed’s best-established tools, the discount window, ended up being underutilized.

PFAS on Enria’s mind too. The ECB’s top supervisor, Andrea Enria, told the same webinar banks should be ready to access central bank facilities and get the liquidity they need at short notice. “Pre-positioning of collateral is an important issue on which we are now trying to focus our banks’ attention,” he said, while noting — with respect to Lord King’s proposal — “we should think about something in that direction.”

Given the above, I simply had to ask Merv if he thinks this is evidence of that PFAS is being subtly picked up.

Here’s the blurb based on what he told me:

LORD KING’S OWN VIEW? When asked if it was fair to equate growing “pre-positioning” talk in bank supervisory circles with his scheme, Lord King told MCB “I do think that the phrase ‘pre-positioning collateral’ is very much a shorthand for the basic principle of my scheme,” but added “I am confident that they will not make a public announcement that they are going to adopt the Pawnbroker For All Seasons Scheme,” even if “all recent experience will lead them down that path.”

Who’s leading the charge? “The Bank (of England) is clearly in the vanguard of work in this area (in terms of departing from the international approach to liquidity regulation),” Lord King said.

And why now? The current abundant reserve environment allows for a PFAS framework to be introduced without imposing too much of a bind on banks’ ability to accept deposits. “The creation of a clear ex ante framework for the provision of central bank liquidity is recognized by many now as essential to the way forward. I do not expect that it will be called PFAS but the principle will be the same,” he said.

But, before we move on to other interesting market curios. Julian, are you familiar with “A letter to America?”

Mr OBL

Aka Osama Bin Laden

I  have read about this on twitter and it is astonishing.

But these kids having an “existential threatening” epiphany because they realised that 9/11 was about palestine and not some arbitrary psycho behaviour by terrorists… is quite something to watch.

So the zoomers are now all in on Shariah banking apparently as well as death to the infidels. (That will ironically delight the central bankers who we all know are working hard to displace interest-bearing deposits with zero remunerated deposits be that via MRR or CBDC).

Having said that, it must be better than any of the French banks i have used in the last 20 yrs.

Ok, but seriously, it must be propaganda. Nobody can be that dumb.

I must look that up

Was the focus of Chris Wood’s Greed n Fear this week.

 One central bank benefitting from benign US inflation data is State Bank of Vietnam.

SBV cut 4x ytd to 4.5% as the nation benefits from the friendly/ off/ near-shoring phenomenon that took place during the pandemic and after the Sino-American trade disputes.

Vietnam is a Marxist-Leninist communist utopia with whom the Americans can do business.

The Vietnamese index.

rallied 9% ytd, driven primarily by the trade surplus.

Which, of course, also supported the dong

(my favourite locution)

But the tightening that took place last year did have an impact on the residential property mkt.

The good news for Vietnam is that its economy is nowhere near as dependent on property mkt as, say, China, for example.

The piece points out the main problem for Vietnam in terms of investability is the lack of domestic institutional investors. No pension funds exist really and mutual funds tot up to ~$5bn only.

Vietnam’s mkt is priced along similar lines to China, on 12x PE, for an economy growing close to 5% in 2023

‘Vietnam, unlike China, also continues to have a collective political leadership though, as in China, it has in recent years, under General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong, implemented an anti-corruption campaign to restore the legitimacy of the Communist Party and to increase the influence of the Party relative to the government. Vietnam appears to be playing a growing role as a conduit of China’s indirect exports to US following the emergence since the Trump administration of what can best be described as a trade war between the US and China’

There are 99 million people in Vietnam and it does not have the demographic problem which undermines the investment case for China.

The market looks appealing on a relative basis.

EM local currency debt.

Beneficiaries of the softening in DXY and the decline in US bond yields is the EM fixed-income asset class. See this chart.

from Bloomberg:

Weakening off the dollar on the fed is done narrative alleviates pressure on EM fx

Plus Chinese helicoptering money in, positive for EM, especially EMBIG HY, spreads at low since 2021

Currently yielding about 7.8% after hitting a 10-yr high this spring.

The end of Fed tightening cycles can provide decent buying opportunities….

For EN fixed income

Chart here provided by Allianz:

From the note:

’ investors should be prepared for a pivot in the months ahead. US swap markets have priced in a pause in rate hikes about three months from now. History shows that Fed pivots have provided a significant buying opportunity for emerging markets (see Exhibit 3). On average, emerging market hard currency sovereign bonds have delivered double-digit (10.1%) returns for the last two Fed monetary policy tightening cycles, which ended in June 2006 and December 2018, according to our analysis of performance (proxied by using JPMorgan’s emerging market indices) in the six months before and after Fed cycles ended’

CPIs in most EMs have peaked, there is a large differentiation among EM sovereign  credits so stripping out basket-cases like Argentina for example, vastly improves returns, growth forecasts for 2024 have bottomed and overall the EMB ETF looks attractive here

Last night’s entertainment was a book talk by Rebecaa Gibb MW, who has just published https://twitter.com/rebeccagibb?lang=en ‘Vintage Crime’

About various types of wine fraud that have taken place over the millennia

Very fruity, Rebecca

The only master of wine I know from Stockton on Tees.

oop north somewhere.

Further north than Liverpool even

Well, the crimes range from the Romans adding seawater to their most famous wine , to the champagne riots of 1911, the Austrian anti-freeze scandal and of course, the Rudy Kurniawan hoax who managed to convincea lot of people to buy expensive Burgundy that he was actually mixing in his factory in a California garage

As someone who spends his days selling overpriced wine to the unsuspecting good burghers of Kew.

I know about wine crime.

And in my days as a singleton my idea of seduction could have been classified as a wine crime of sorts.

But this was fascinating

Not just berrys

And I have often thought about diversifying my income stream by renting it out to hostage takers and abductors because no one would hear the screams down there.

yum yum.

On that upbeat note

Thank you again for joining us.

Do spread the word!

Bye everyone.