Economy Archives - Page 71 of 134 - the patient investor

April 8, 2014

Big Banks to Get Higher Capital Requirement – WSJ.com

Stephanie Armour and Ryan Tracy discuss the new leverage ratio that the eight biggest US lenders will be required to meet:

The eight bank-holding companies would have to hold loss-absorbing capital worth at least 5% of their assets to avoid limits on rewarding shareholders and paying bonuses, and their FDIC-insured bank subsidiaries would have to keep a minimum leverage ratio of at least 6% or face corrective actions. That is higher than the 3% agreed upon under global standards, which U.S. regulators have seen as too weak.

[FDIC Chairman Maurice] Gruenberg said leaving the leverage ratio at 3% for large banks “would not have meaningfully constrained leverage during the years leading to the crisis.” He said the rule “may be the most significant step we have taken to reduce the systemic risk posed by these large complex banking organizations.”

Banks are pushing back against the new ratios required by the Fed, FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Banks have balked at the leverage ratio, saying it will curtail lending and saddle them with more costs that leave them at a competitive disadvantage against foreign banks with lower capital requirements. Banks will have to hold that capital as protection for every loan, security and asset they hold, not just those deemed risky.

As a general rule, share capital is more expensive than debt, but that may not be the case with highly leveraged banks if you remove the too-big-to-fail taxpayer subsidy. Improved capital ratios would lower the risk premium associated with both the cost of capital and the cost of debt, offering a competitive advantage over foreign banks with higher leverage.

I would like to see APRA impose a similar minimum on Australia’s big four banks which currently range between 4% and 5%.

April 6, 2014

Market sell-off despite improved job numbers

The market experienced a strong sell-off Friday, despite signs that the Winter slowdown in job creation is over. Nelson Schwartz at the New York Times writes:

The latest numbers are likely to be revised significantly as more information flows into the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even so, they suggest that the economy is not achieving what economists call escape velocity, something that policy makers have long sought. Neither is it falling into the rut some pessimists feared was developing early in 2014.

The S&P 500 retreated below its latest support level of 1880. Follow-through below 1840 would signal a correction, while respect of support would suggest an advance to 1950*. Bearish divergence on 21-day Twiggs Money Flow continues to warn of medium-term selling pressure and reversal below zero would strengthen the signal. An early correction (without a decent advance above the January high) would be a bearish sign, indicating that long-term sellers outnumber buyers.

S&P 500

* Target calculation: 1850 + ( 1850 – 1750 ) = 1950

CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) at 14 continues to indicate low risk typical of a bull market.

VIX Index

The Nasdaq 100 indicates long-term selling pressure, with a sharp fall following bearish divergence on 13-week Twiggs Money Flow. Breach of the (secondary) rising trendline and support at 3550 warns of a correction to primary support at 3400. Recovery above 3650 is unlikely, but would suggest a bear trap.

Nasdaq 100

* Target calculation: 3750 + ( 3750 – 3550 ) = 3950

The primary trend remains upward and none of our market filters indicate signs of stress.

March 27, 2014

Andreas Dombret: What is going on in Europe? The view from within

From a speech by Dr Andreas Dombret, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, at the New York Stock Exchange, New York, 26 March 2014:

How do we get to the end of the tunnel?

At the European level, the most important project is the banking union. The banking union is most certainly the biggest step since the introduction of the euro. And it is the most logical step to take. A single currency requires integrated financial markets and this includes the supervision of banks.

Consequently, one of the pillars the banking union rests upon is a Single Supervisory Mechanism – that is European bank supervision for the largest banks. Centralising supervisory powers in such a way can foster a comprehensive and unbiased view upon banks. It also enables policy action that is not held hostage by national interests. Thus, it will contribute to more effective supervision and better cross-border cooperation and coordination.

March 27, 2014

Is the S&P 500 overvalued?

The daily press appears convinced the S&P 500 is overvalued and due for a crash. Yet the macro-economic and volatility filters that we use at Porter Capital and Research & Investment — to identify market risk so that we can move to cash when risks are elevated — show no signs of stress. So I have been delving into some of the aggregate index data, kindly provided by Standard and Poors, to see whether some of their arguments hold water.

The Price-Earnings ratio for the S&P 500 itself is not excessive when compared to the last decade.

The bears argue, however, that earnings are unsustainable. One reason advanced for this is that earnings growth has outstripped sales, with corporations focusing on the bottom line rather than business growth.

Faced with weak domestic demand, large US corporates have actively sought to manage their expenses so as to meet and exceed the market’s expectations. Combined with the unwinding of provisions taken in the GFC, cost management has allowed US corporates to achieve a 124% increase in 12-month trailing earnings off the back of a 25% increase in 12-month trailing sales since October 2009.
~ Elliott Clarke, Westpac

That may be so, but any profit increase would look massive if compared to earnings in 2009. When we plot earnings against sales (per share), it tells a different story. Earnings as a percentage of sales is in the same band (7% – 9%) as 2003 to 2006. A rise above 9% would suggest that earnings may not be sustainable, but not if they continue in their current range.

The second reason advanced is that business investment is falling. Westpac put up a chart that shows US equipment investment growth is close to zero. But we also need to consider that accelerated tax write-offs led to a surge in investment in 2009/2010. The accelerated write-offs expired, but the level of investment merely stopped growing and has not fallen as I had expected.

Private (non-residential) fixed investment as a whole is rising as a percentage of GDP, not falling.

Lastly, when we compare the S&P 500 to underlying net asset value per share, it shows how frothy the market was before the Dotcom crash, with the index trading at 5 times book value. That kind of premium is clearly unsustainable without double-digit GDP growth, which was never going to happen. But the current ratio of below 2.50 is modest compared to the past decade and quite sustainable.

I am not saying that everything is rosy — it never is — but if sales and earnings continue to grow apace, and with private fixed investment rising, the current price-earnings ratio does not look excessive.

March 25, 2014

Fedex bellwether

Bellwether Transport stock Fedex is headed for another test of primary support at $129/$130 on the monthly chart. Recovery above $145 would offer a target of $170*, but breach of support would warn of a primary down-trend — suggesting a broad economic slow-down. Breach of the (secondary) rising trendline, and support at $120, would strengthen the signal.

Fedex

* Target calculation: 145 + ( 145 – 120 ) = 170

March 24, 2014

Stability is destabilising – Hyman Minsky

A pretty clear explanation of Hyman Minsky’s key ideas:

Most macroeconomists work with equilibrium models which assume the economy is fundamentally stable and that booms or crises are precipitated by external shocks “whether that be a rise in oil prices, a war or the invention of the internet”.

Minsky disagreed. He thought that the system itself could generate shocks through its own internal dynamics. He believed that during periods of economic stability, banks, firms and other economic agents become complacent.

They assume that the good times will keep on going and begin to take ever greater risks in pursuit of profit. So the seeds of the next crisis are sown in the good time.

March 23, 2014

Australia’s housing affordability crisis

This private submission by Michael Dromgool to Australia’s Housing Affordability Inquiry identifies supply restrictions as the key cause of the current housing affordability crisis:

Traditionally the flexible forces of demand and supply in the property market self-managed the development of land for housing. Development occurred in locations where and when demand was sufficient to warrant it, with a process that was responsive to demand.

…Now fast-forward to the present day. The government has shut off the supply of land on the city fringe to limit the city to its present size, abolishing a free market system in favour of a centrally-directed scheme that severely distorts the property market…..Smart growth is a deliberate policy to make land more expensive, to increase the city’s population density and force more people into apartments, not the detached houses that most people actually prefer to live in….

Economists and politicians in Australia confidently attribute the decline in housing affordability to strong demand driven by economic and population growth, conveniently neglecting the supply side of the equation…..

Many cities in the United States, such as Atlanta, still use responsive planning. In 1981 more people lived in Melbourne than Atlanta and in both cities the median house cost less than three years of median income in that city to purchase. Over 30 years demand from economic and population growth in Atlanta was stronger than Melbourne, it grew much faster and Atlanta’s population was nearly 50% greater than Melbourne’s by 2011 and the median house price there was $129,400, 2.3 times the median income of $55,800. Yet in Melbourne the median house price reached $565,000, nine times the median income of $63,100. The government tries to convince us that houses are expensive due to high demand, yet they are actually cheaper in a city where demand is substantially stronger. The state government of Georgia drew no arbitrary boundary around the city of Atlanta and consequently it expanded outwards onto greenfield land. In Australian cities, homes are expensive because the land is expensive.

March 19, 2014

Australia: Weaker Dollar will boost economic growth

….The paper, written by staffers from the RBA’s Economic Analysis Unit says that a temporary 10% depreciation in the real exchange rate for the Aussie dollar can increase growth by between a quarter and a half of a percent over 2-3 years.

hat tip to Greg McKenna.

March 16, 2014

Income inequality: A big whopper

Hats off to John Mauldin for publishing retired economics professor (North Carolina State University) Dr. John Seater’s rebuttal of the Cynamon and Fazzari article on Income Inequality from last week’s newsletter:

A big whopper, for example, is their assertion that a shift in income from the poor to the rich will reduce total spending. Complete nonsense. What it may do is shift the composition of spending away from consumption a little toward investment. The permanent income/life cycle theory of consumption, developed independently by Modigliani and Friedman in the 1950s questions even that conclusion.

Second, John says most academics accept the view that inequality hinders growth. I don’t know how he knows that. I certainly don’t know that to be true. I am an academic economist, and I am unaware of any such consensus. I also know for sure that few and probably no economists who actually study economic growth (which happens to be my own current field of research) believe such a thing.

March 14, 2014

Redistribution boosts consumption, not output | Richmond Fed

Abstract from a February 28, 2014 paper by Kartik Athreya, Andrew Owens, and Felipe Schwartzman:

The aftermath of the recent recession has seen numerous calls to use transfers to poorer households as a means to enhance aggregate activity. We show that the key to understanding the direction and size of such interventions lies in labor supply decisions. We study the aggregate impact of short-term redistributive economic policy in a standard incomplete-markets model. We characterize analytically conditions under which redistribution leads to an increase or decrease in eﬀective hours worked, and hence, output. We then show that under the parameterization that matches the wealth distribution in the U.S. economy (Castaneda et al., 2003),wealth redistribution leads to a boom in consumption, but not in output.