Category: China & HK

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China tests support while India strengthens

Shanghai’s Composite Index is testing support at 3100. Twiggs Money Flow recovered above zero but buying pressure remains weak. Breach of 3100 would warn of a primary down-trend.

Shanghai Composite Index

* Target medium-term: May 2016 low of 2800

Hong Kong is faring better, with the Hang Seng index recovering above 24000 to signal a fresh advance.

Hang Seng Index

India’s Sensex is testing major resistance at 30000. Rising Twiggs Money Flow indicates medium-term buying pressure. Breakout is likely and would offer a target of 32000*.

Sensex Index

* Target medium-term: 29000 + ( 29000 – 26000 ) = 32000

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Weak Dollar strengthens gold outlook

The Dollar Index broke support at 100 despite strengthening interest rates, warning of a down-trend. Target for a decline would be the May 2016 low of 93.

Dollar Index

China has burned through a trillion dollars of foreign reserves in the last 3 years, attempting to support the yuan. I believe the sell-off is unlikely to abate and plays a major part in the Dollar’s weakness.

China: Foreign Reserves

A falling Dollar would strengthen demand for gold. Spot Gold is retracing from resistance at $1300/ounce and is likely to find support at $1240/$1250. Respect of support would suggest another advance; confirmed if gold breaks $1300.

Spot Gold

Spot Silver displays a more bearish medium-term outlook, however, with a stronger correction testing support at $17.00/ounce. Breach of support would test the primary level at $15.65 and warn of further gold weakness.

Spot Silver

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China dips while India strengthens

Shanghai’s Composite Index is experiencing selling pressure, with Twiggs Money Flow crossing below zero for the first time since 2014. Reversal below 3100 would warn of a primary down-trend.

Shanghai Composite Index

* Target medium-term: May 2016 low of 2800

India’s Sensex is consolidating in a bullish narrow band below major resistance at 30000. Rising Twiggs Money Flow indicates medium-term buying pressure. Breakout is likely and would offer a target of 32000*.

Sensex Index

* Target medium-term: 29000 + ( 29000 – 26000 ) = 32000

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Is the Donald long gold?

Don’t know if he is long, but Donald Trump is doing his best to drive up demand for gold.

From the FT overnight:

Donald Trump has warned that the US will take unilateral action to eliminate the nuclear threat from North Korea unless China increases pressure on the regime in Pyongyang.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the US president said he would discuss the growing threat from Kim Jong Un’s nuclear programme with Xi Jinping when he hosts the Chinese president at his Florida resort this week, in their first meeting. “China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t,” Mr Trump said in the Oval Office.

“If they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don’t, it won’t be good for anyone.”

But he made clear that he would deal with North Korea with or without China’s help. Asked if he would consider a “grand bargain” — where China pressures Pyongyang in exchange for a guarantee that the US would later remove troops from the Korean peninsula — Mr Trump said:

“Well if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you.”

Nothing like the threat of nuclear war to drive up the price of portable assets. Not that it would do much good if you are on the receiving end.

Spot Gold broke resistance at $1250 an ounce. Follow-through above $1260 is likely and would signal an advance to $1300.

Spot Gold

Theresa May had a calmer, less belligerent approach: “….encourage China to look at this issue of North Korea and play a more significant role in terms of North Korea … I think that’s where our attention should focus.”

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3 Headwinds facing the ASX 200

The ASX 200 broke through stubborn resistance at 5800 but is struggling to reach 6000.

ASX 200

There are three headwinds that make me believe that the index will struggle to break 6000:

Shuttering of the motor industry

The last vehicles will roll off production lines in October this year. A 2016 study by Valadkhani & Smyth estimates the number of direct and indirect job losses at more than 20,000.

Full time job losses from collapse of motor vehicle industry in Australia

But this does not take into account the vacuum left by the loss of scientific, technology and engineering skills and the impact this will have on other industries.

…R&D-intensive manufacturing industries, such as the motor vehicle industry, play an important role in the process of technology diffusion. These findings are consistent with the argument in the Bracks report that R&D is a linchpin of the Australian automotive sector and that there are important knowledge spillovers to other industries.

Collapse of the housing bubble

An oversupply of apartments will lead to falling prices, with heavy discounting already evident in Melbourne as developers attempt to clear units. Bank lending will slow as prices fall and spillover into the broader housing market seems inevitable. Especially when:

  • Current prices are supported by strong immigration flows which are bound to lead to a political backlash if not curtailed;
  • The RBA is low on ammunition; and
  • Australian households are leveraged to the eyeballs — the highest level of Debt to Disposable Income of any OECD nation.

Debt to Disposable Income

Falling demand for iron ore & coal

China is headed for a contraction, with a sharp down-turn in growth of M1 money supply warning of tighter liquidity. Falling housing prices and record iron ore inventory levels are both likely to drive iron ore and coal prices lower.

China M1 Money Supply Growth

Australia has survived the last decade on Mr Micawber style economic management, with something always turning up at just the right moment — like the massive 2009-2010 stimulus on the chart above — to rescue the economy from disaster. But sooner or later our luck will run out. As any trader will tell you: Hope isn’t a strategy.

“I have no doubt I shall, please Heaven, begin to be more beforehand with the world, and to live in a perfectly new manner, if — if, in short, anything turns up.”

~ Wilkins Micawber from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

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The Chip on China’s Shoulder | WSJ

…..Fully 70% of Chinese television dramas have plots related to war with Japan, he tells us, and in 2012 alone 700 million imaginary Japanese were killed in Chinese movies. Mr. French’s findings on this count are ominous: “Up until the present day,” he writes, “East Asia has never proven large enough for two great powers to coexist peacefully.”

….he points to the enormous demographic shift under way in China as the population ages and birthrates fall far short of replacement. China is on course to have more than 329 million people over the age of 65 by 2050, while the younger, working-age population is set to plummet. The inexorable aging of the population will, Mr. French predicts, restrain the country’s ability to project power in the future. It will halve the size of the military-age population while saddling workers and the government with enormous expenses to care for the elderly. He suggests that the incredible pace with which China is currently trying to assert control over the South China Sea is driven by President Xi Jinping’s awareness that the country has a window of at most 20 or 30 years before demographics catch up to it and such an expansion becomes impossible.

China’s attempt to dominate East Asia (if not Asia) brings it into direct conflict with Japan. Expect increased militarization of Japan as China attempts to expand its sphere of influence. The Korean peninsula and Vietnam are simply sideshows.

Source: The Chip on China’s Shoulder – WSJ

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Don’t Believe the Hype: China’s North Korea Policy is All Smoke and Mirrors

Dr. Van Jackson is an Associate Professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, and author of the book Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in US-North Korea Relations:

Social media is abuzz with news that China’s Ministry of Commerce announced it will suspend coal imports from North Korea as part of U.N. Security Council sanctions enforcement for the North’s most recent nuclear and ballistic missile tests in violation of prior Security Council resolutions. So China is finally standing arm-in-arm with the United States and international community to actually do something about North Korea. That’s great, right? Wrong.

China’s suspension of coal imports is smoke and mirrors; an act of geopolitical misdirection. The United States is being played, as it has in the numerous past instances when China supported sanctions resolutions against North Korea at the United Nations only to fail to implement them….

….China’s “emotions” toward North Korea don’t drive its policy. China has a long tradition of paying lip service toward cooperation with the United States and the international community while largely failing to apply any meaningful pressure on North Korea, and for good reason: It doesn’t want a nuclear-armed neighbor on its border to become a nuclear-armed enemy. We ignore China’s enduring strategic interests in North Korea at our peril.

Source: Don’t Believe the Hype: China’s North Korea Policy is All Smoke and Mirrors

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The Catch-22 in U.S.-Chinese Relations | Carnegie-Tsinghua Center

Paul Haenle served as the director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolian Affairs on the National Security Council staffs of former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama prior to joining Carnegie:

When, at the no-necktie summit in California in 2013, Xi [Chinese President Xi Jinping] put forward the [strategic partnership] concept, he mentioned three foundational principles: no conflict and no confrontation; mutual respect, including for both countries’ core interests and major concerns; and win-win cooperation. The United States has long reiterated that the relationship should be based not on slogans but on the quality of the cooperation.

….But China’s call for respect for core interests has been a showstopper in Washington, seen as an indication that what China really seeks is U.S. concessions on areas of long-standing disagreement between the two countries.

Historically China has defined its core interests as including Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang (the Uyghur Autonomous Region) but these have lately expanded to include the South China Sea (9-dash line) and Diaoyu (Senkaku) islands administered by Japan.

Vladimir Lenin advocated: “Probe with a bayonet. If you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.”

Any attempt at conciliation would encourage further expansion.

Source: The Catch-22 in U.S.-Chinese Relations – Carnegie-Tsinghua Center – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

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Australian miners and the PBOC

I mentioned on Friday that the ASX 300 Metals & Mining Index is falling, with declining Twiggs Money Flow warning of long-term selling pressure.

ASX 300 Metals & Mining

The reason is not hard to find. China’s PBOC is tightening monetary policy to force a slow-down in real estate and construction. Money supply (M1) growth contracted over the last 6 months, with a sharp drop in January 2017.

ASX 300 Metals & Mining

Bulk commodity prices are expected to ease.

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Can Australia dodge the great deleveraging? | MacroBusiness

Interesting chart from UBS (via Macrobusiness). Movement between 2002 and 2016 for a number of Developed and Emerging Market (DM and EM) countries in the ratio of bank credit to GDP and bank debt to credit.

The good guys are in the top left corner and the bad guys bottom right.

Australia and China are testing record levels of bank credit to GDP, tracing a similar path to Spain. We all know how that ended.

Source: Can Australia dodge the great deleveraging? – MacroBusiness

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