Apologies for the sub-titles but this Hard Talk interview has an important message.
Gold approaches a watershed
Expectations of interest rate rises are growing, with 10-year Treasury yields advancing towards 2.0 percent after breaking out above 1.60.
The Chinese Yuan is easing against the US Dollar, in a managed process from the PBOC which will use up foreign reserves more slowly than a direct peg. It is also likely to minimize selling pressure on the Yuan, both from capital flight and from Chinese borrowers covering on Dollar-denominated loans.
Spot gold is easing, in a falling wedge formation, towards a test of medium-term support at $1300/ounce. This is a watershed moment. Breach of $1300 would warn of a test of primary support at $1200. But respect of support would suggest another test of the July high at $1375.
* Target calculation: 1375 + ( 1375 – 1300 ) = 1450
Rising interest rates and low inflation increase downward pressure on gold but uncertainty over US elections, Europe/Brexit, and the path of the Chinese economy contribute to buying support. Gold stocks serve as a useful counter-balance to growth stocks in a portfolio. If there are positive outcomes and a return to economic stability, then growth stocks will do well and gold is likely to underperform. If things goes wrong and growth stocks do poorly, gold stocks are likely to outperform.
In Australia the All Ordinaries Gold Index ($XGD) continues to test support at 4500. Respect (recovery above 5000) would signal another test of the recent highs at 5600. A weakening Australian Dollar/US Dollar would tend to mitigate the impact of a fed rate hike. Breach of 4500 is less likely but would confirm a primary down-trend.
* Target calculation: 4500 – ( 5000 – 4500 ) = 4000
Did the RBA just signal the end of rate cuts?
From Jens Meyer:
Did the RBA just signal the end of rate cuts and no-one noticed?
Well, not exactly no-one. Goldman Sachs chief economist Tim Toohey reckons the speech RBA assistant governor Chris Kent delivered on Tuesday amounts to an explicit shift to a neutral policy stance.
Dr Kent spoke about how the economy has been doing since the mining boom, and in particular how its performance matched the RBA’s expectations.
Reflecting on the RBA’s forecasts of recent years, Dr Kent essentially framed the RBA’s earlier rate cut logic around an initial larger than expected decline in mining capital expenditure and subsequent larger than expected decline in the terms of trade, Mr Toohey said.
Having so closely linked the RBA’s easing cycle to the weakness in the terms of trade (and earlier decline in mining investment), Dr Kent’s key remark was to flag “the abatement of those two substantial headwinds” and highlight that this “would be a marked change from recent years”….
Source: Did the RBA just signal the end of rate cuts and no-one noticed?
Credit bubbles and GDP targeting
In 2010 Scott Sumner first proposed that the Fed use GDP targeting rather than targeting inflation, which is prone to measurement error. Since then support for this approach has grown, with Lars Christensen, an economist with the Danish central bank, coining the term Market Monetarism.
Sumner holds that inflation is “measured inaccurately and does not discriminate between demand versus supply shocks” and that “Inflation often changes with a lag… but nominal GDP growth falls very quickly, so it’ll give you a more timely signal….” [Bloomberg]
The ratio of US credit to GDP highlights credit bubbles in the economy. The ratio rises when credit is growing faster than GDP and falls when credit bubbles burst. The graph below compares credit growth/GDP to actual GDP growth (on the right-hand scale). The red line illustrates a proposed GDP target at 5.0% growth.
What this shows is that the Fed would have adopted tighter monetary policies through most of the 1990s in order to keep GDP growth at the 5% target. That would have avoided the credit spike ahead of the Dotcom crash. More importantly, tighter monetary policy from 2003 to 2006 would have cut the last credit bubble off at the knees — avoiding the debacle we now face, with a massive spike in credit and declining GDP growth.
While poor monetary policy may have caused the problem, correcting those policies is unlikely to rectify it. The genie has escaped from the bottle. The only viable solution now seems to be fiscal policy, with massive infrastructure investment to restore GDP growth. That may seem counter-intuitive as it means fighting fire with fire, increasing public debt in order to remedy ballooning private debt.
Rising public debt is only sustainable if invested in productive infrastructure that yields market-related returns. Not in sports stadiums and public libraries. Difficult as this may be to achieve — with politicians poor history of selecting projects based on their ability to garner votes rather than economic criteria — it is our best bet. What is required is bi-partisan selection of projects and of private partners to construct and maintain the infrastructure. And private partners with enough skin in the game to enforce market discipline. I have discussed this at length in earlier posts.
Gold steady as rates fall
Interest rates retreated this week, with 10-year Treasury yields falling below support at 1.60 percent.
Falling interest rates reduce downward pressure on gold. Spot Gold steadied above support at $1300/ounce. Momentum above zero continues to indicate a primary up-trend. Respect of support at $1300 would confirm. Breach of support is unlikely but would signal trend weakness and a test of primary support at $1200/ounce.
* Target calculation: 1300 + ( 1300 – 1050 ) = 1550
Gold trend continues
Interest rates have stabilised with an ascending triangle formation on 10-year Treasury yields suggesting reversal to an up-trend. Recovery above 1.60% would confirm.
Rising interest rates increase downward pressure on gold. Tall shadows for the last three weeks indicate selling pressure and a test of support at $1300 is likely. But the metal remains well above the rising trendline on a weekly chart and Momentum holding above zero indicates a healthy primary up-trend. Respect of support at $1300 would confirm. Breach of support is unlikely but would signal weakness.
* Target calculation: 1300 + ( 1300 – 1050 ) = 1550
ASIC review of investment banks shows poor practice
From Sarah Danckert:
The ASIC review of investments banks found that not only do the heavyweights of Australia’s financial system have difficulty in managing their conflicts of interest they also financially reward staff for potentially conflicted behaviour.
…..So ugly is the result the Australian Securities and Investments Commission has warned the people often known as the smartest men and women in the room it will take action against the culprits if the poor behaviour continues.
……Managing conflicts of interest are crucial for investment banks because often one part of the bank is advising on an asset sale or an initial public offering while the bank’s research arm is producing research for the investment banks’ investor clients about the quality of the assets or the IPO.
….ASIC said it had also found “instances of remuneration structures where research remuneration decisions, including discretionary bonuses, took into account research analyst involvement in marketing corporate transactions”.
The review also found “instances with mid-sized firms where research reports on a company were authored by the corporate advisory team that advised the company on a capital-raising transaction or had an ongoing corporate advisory mandate”.
Results of the review come as no surprise. When there is a conflict between profits with multi-million dollar bonuses and independence the outcome should be obvious.
Having worked in the industry, I believe that the only way to achieve independence is to separate investment banks from research houses, with no financial linkage. A professional body for research houses would ensure independence in much the same way as the auditing profession. There is no better way of enforcing good behavior than the threat of censure from a professional body that has the power to prevent its members from practicing.
Source: ASIC review of investment banks post UBS-Baird government run-in shows poor practice
Gold shudders on strong jobs numbers
Long-term interest rates surged on strong jobs numbers, well above the estimate of 180,000. From the WSJ:
Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 255,000 last month, the Labor Department said Friday. Revisions showed U.S. employers added 18,000 more jobs in May and June than previously estimated.
10-Year Treasury yields strengthened to 1.58 percent in response, from a record low of 1.33 percent four weeks ago. Expect a test of the descending trendline at 1.66 percent.
Gold fell to $1335/ounce on expectations of higher interest rates. Penetration of the rising trendline would suggest a correction to test primary support at $1200/ounce. Follow-through below $1300 would confirm.
* Target calculation: 1300 + ( 1300 – 1050 ) = 1550
At present I don’t see much threat to support between $1300 and $1310. Especially with safe-haven demand for gold enhanced by European uncertainty over Brexit, the dilemma of US November elections (a choice between two equally undesirable alternatives), and a declining Yuan encouraging capital flight from China.
Why the Fed should use NGDP targeting
Good point made by R.A. in The Economist as to why the Fed should target nominal GDP rather than inflation:
One of the strongest points in favour of NGDP targeting, in my view, is that it implied a need for far more action from the Fed far earlier in this business cycle. People remember how aggressively the Fed intervened to prop up the financial system in the fall of 2008, but they forget how slow the central bank was to react to what was obviously a precipitous decline in the macroeconomy. The fed funds rate stayed at 2% from April until October of 2008. The Fed didn’t ramp up its initial asset purchase programme above $1 trillion until March of 2009, at which point the economy had already lost some 6m jobs. Why the delay? One data point worth noting: the monthly core inflation rate was positive throughout 2008 and 2009. NGDP growth, by contrast, was already negative in the third quarter of 2008, and was sharply negative in the fourth quarter of that year, when total spending in the economy shrank at an 8.4% annual pace. A central bank with an explicit NGDP level target would have faced (appropriately) intense pressure to do much more much sooner than one with the Fed’s present, vague focus on an inflation target as a means to broader macroeconomic stability.
If we look at the graph below, it is likely the Fed would have cut the funds rate to near zero by May 2008, when Q1 GDP results were available — possibly earlier if they were using surrogates to give more up-to-date measures of GDP — rather than waiting until November 2008.
But that misses the key point. The Fed would have intervened far earlier with tighter monetary policy — in late 2003 when GDP growth jumped to 6.4 percent — and prevented the bubble from forming.
Source: Monetary policy: Understanding NGDP targeting | The Economist
Steve Keen: Australian mortgage debt levels are “outrageous”
Steve Keen has a number of detractors who knock him for his incorrect forecast of collapse of the Australian housing bubble. But he was wrong for the right reasons…. the Australian financial system, based on highly-levered mortgages, is a house of cards. It was only rescued post-GFC by massive stimulus in China, resulting in a mini-boom in the Australian Resources industry.
Steve is at the cutting edge of economic theory. He and Richard Koo (The Holy Grail of Macroecomomics) were at the forefront of identifying the role that debt plays in the Aggregate Demand equation. We should take heed of his warnings.
“Our models predicted it [the GFC] couldn’t happen. It did happen. We therefore shouldn’t trust our models.”
“…What drives house prices is acceleration in mortgage debt…..Australians avoided collapse of the bubble by continuing to lend but mortgage debt is now 1.1 times GDP which is outrageous.”