Toro's Running of the Bulls Market Blog

The Effects of Opposition to Globalization in India

From the Cato Institute

As the world approaches the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, it is worth investigating the costs borne by countries like India that did not become communist but drew heavily on the Soviet model. For three decades after its independence in 1947, India strove for self-sufficiency instead of the gains of international trade, and gave the state an ever-increasing role in controlling the means of production. These policies yielded economic growth of 3.5 percent per year, which was half that of export-oriented Asian countries, and yielded slow progress in social indicators, too. Growth per capita in India was even slower, at 1.49 percent per year. It accelerated after reforms started tentatively in 1981, and shot up to 6.78 percent per year after reforms deepened in the current decade.

What would the impact on social indicators have been had India commenced economic reform one decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster economic growth and improvements in human development indicators? This paper seeks to estimate the number of "missing children," "missing literates," and "missing non-poor" resulting from delayed reform, slower economic growth, and hence, slower improvement of social indicators. It finds that with earlier reform, 14.5 million more children would have survived, 261 million more Indians would have become literate, and 109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line. The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither.

The Copper Standard?

Is China buying copper as a way to diversify out of dollars?

China's State Reserves Bureau (SRB) has instead been buying copper and other industrial metals over recent months on a scale that appears to go beyond the usual rebuilding of stocks for commercial reasons.

Nobu Su, head of Taiwan's TMT group, which ships commodities to China, said Beijing is trying to extricate itself from dollar dependency as fast as it can.

"China has woken up. The West is a black hole with all this money being printed. The Chinese are buying raw materials because it is a much better way to use their $1.9 trillion of reserves. They get ten times the impact, and can cover their infrastructure for 50 years."

"The next industrial revolution is going to be led by hybrid cars, and that needs copper. You can see the subtle way that China is moving into 30 or 40 countries with resources," he said.

The SRB has also been accumulating aluminium, zinc, nickel, and rarer metals such as titanium, indium (thin-film technology), rhodium (catalytic converters) and praseodymium (glass).

While it makes sense for China to take advantage of last year's commodity crash to restock cheaply, there is clearly more behind the move. "They are definitely buying metals to diversify out of US Treasuries and dollar holdings," said Jim Lennon, head of commodities at Macquarie Bank.

John Reade, metals chief at UBS, said Beijing may have a made strategic decision to stockpile metal as an alternative to foreign bonds. "We're very surprised by Chinese demand. They are buying much more copper than they will need this year. If this is strategic, there may be no effective limit on the purchases as China's pockets are deep."...

The beauty of recycling China's surplus into metals instead of US bonds is that it kills so many birds with one stone: it stops the yuan rising, without provoking complaints of currency manipulation by Washington; metals are easily stored in warehouses, unlike oil; the holdings are likely to rise in value over time since the earth's crust is gradually depleting its accessible ores. Above all, such a policy safeguards China's industrial revolution, while the West may one day face a supply crisis.

China PMI Signals Expansion

The manufacturing PMI in China came in above 50.  Generally, a reading above 50 signals economic expansion.

The Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) of China's manufacturing sector rose for the fourth straight month in March to 52.4 percent, up 3.4 percentage points from a month earlier, the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing (CFLP) announced Thursday.

    It was the first time the PMI rebounded above 50 percent since July 2008, when the index fell to 48.4 percent.

    A reading of above 50 suggests expansion, while one below 50 indicates contraction.

    The PMI includes a package of indices that measure economic performance. The survey, jointly conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), covers purchasing and supply managers of more than 700 manufacturers across China.

    March indices measuring new orders, output, purchasing and new export orders all increased more than 4 percentage points from February, according to the CFLP.

    The output index rose to 56.9 percent in March, up 5.7 percentage points from the previous month. The new order index jumped 4.2 percentage points to 54.6 percent.

    The index measuring new export orders rose 4.1 percentage points from February to 47.5 percent. The figure, although still below the threshold of expansion of 50 percent, showed the depth of decline has been narrowing.

    "The continuous rebound of the PMI not only shows the government economic stimulus package has begun to take obvious effect, but also indicates a stabilizing and warming economy," said NBS head Ma Jiantang.

Taiwan Rising on Heavy Volume

The Taiwan Taiex index is rising off the bottom on heavy volume. 

About half the index is technology and electronics companies.  Most of the tech companies in Taiwan sell into export markets.

 

This is good for the bulls.

Japan Equity Partners LLC

A while ago, we suggested that the US government become a giant hedge fund.  Instead, the government has decided to become a prime broker!

However, someone in the Ministry of Finance in Japan reads Running of the Bulls because Japan is thinking about buying stocks!

The Japanese government and ruling coalition are considering a plan to use taxpayer funds to buy stocks and other assets directly from the market to help prop up prices, the Nikkei financial daily reported.

The report reflects growing concern that falling stock prices will lead to more losses among banks and other companies and put further stress on Japan's weak economy.

Tokyo's stock market is down about 18 percent this year.

Under the proposal, the range of assets that could be bought under an existing program also would be expanded to include exchange-traded funds, the Nikkei said.

The purchases would be made through the Banks' Shareholding Purchase Corp, set up to help to revive the Japan's weakened banking sector, which was burdened by bad loans after a decade-long 1990s recession and the bursting of the tech bubble in 2002.

Legislation that would allow the agency to resume stock purchases and tap a total of 20 trillion yen ($207 billion) in government guarantees has already been submitted to parliament.

With stocks in Japan at 1981 levels, and a wide-range of stocks trading below net cash value, methinks that such a venture would pay off enormously for the Japanese government years down the road!

Chinese Banks Using Stimulus Funds to Speculate in Stocks?

I see under no circumstances how this could possibly be a good thing.

Chinese companies may be using record bank lending to invest in stocks, fueling a rally that’s made the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index the world’s best performer this year, according to Shenyin & Wanguo Securities Co.

As much as 660 billion yuan ($97 billion) may have been converted by companies into term deposits or used to buy equities, Li Huiyong, Shanghai-based analyst at Shenyin Wanguo, said in a phone interview today, citing money supply figures.

China’s banks lent a record 1.62 trillion yuan in January as part of a government drive to stimulate the world’s third- largest economy, while M2, the broadest measure of money supply, climbed 18.8 percent from a year earlier. The Shanghai Composite has surged 29 percent since the start of 2009, compared with a 10 percent decline in the MSCI World Index.

“Part of the liquidity flowing into the stock market could be from companies using borrowed funds to invest in the stock market instead of working requirements,” said Li.

He arrived at the 660 billion yuan figure by subtracting M1, which includes cash and demand deposits, from M2.

Reasons to be Bullish

Frankly, I am having a hard time being bullish because everything feels so bad.

I was in the office on President's Day and watched the S&P 500 futures tick down to near-term support at 806, such that futures are indicating a 20 point decline at the open on Tuesday.  Now, it appears the market has formed a short-term double-top, and with stocks continuing to reach lower highs, it feels like we are about to break to the downside and re-test the November lows.

Emotionally, selling feels like the right thing to do.  However, cerebrally, since I have a time frame longer than my nose, there are many reasons not to sell at these levels, and to in fact buy stocks.  But it is difficult not to walk away in disgust, especially after last week's action, which was just horrible.

Everyone knows why you should be bearish - the credit crunch continues, the economy is terrible and earnings estimates continue to come down.  The reasons to hate stocks are very well known.  So I made a list of reasons why stocks could be substantially higher within the next year or so.

• Credit spreads have improved.  Credit remains tight, but spreads have come in.  Over the past 50 years, the average gain to stocks has been 18% when credit spreads are falling.

 

• Cash spreads are improving.  The TED spread and swap spreads are at levels last seen before the crisis began last fall.
• Treasuries are backing up and yields are rising.  The bond market has experienced a violent sell-off in the long end of the curve, while short-term T-bills - which were yielding negative returns a few months ago - have seen rising yields.
• The yield curve is steep.  When the curve is this steep, it almost always signal economic expansion over the next 12 months.
• Corporations issued the highest volume of debt in January than in any month since May.  In fact, debt issuance was greater than the last four months of 2008 combined.
• The dollar may be topping.  Some may argue that this is because of all the debt that the Treasury will flood onto the market.  However, a rising dollar has also been indicative of fear and a flight to safety.  A falling dollar may indicate that fear is seeping out of the market.

• The euro/yen cross has been moving sideways for months and may be basing.  The euro/yen carry trade had been popular over the past several years as investors bought higher-yielding euro-denominated bonds and financed the purchases by borrowing in lower-yielding yen.  This carry trade has been seen as a proxy for risk appetite in the global capital markets.  It may be signaling that investors are becoming less fearful.

• The gold/silver ratio has fallen below 70.  The ratio was as high as 80 a few months ago.  Both gold and silver have been rising the past few months, but silver has been rising faster than gold.  From September through November, silver fell 30% to the trough whereas gold fell 10%.  Silver is a thinner market but it is also an industrial metal and more exposed to the general economy than gold.  Gold is a haven during crises.  Silver prices rising faster than gold prices may be signaling that the economy is going to get better in the future and/or investors are less fearful about financial markets.
• Metal prices may be bottoming. Though it is still early, a bottom in stocks is sometimes presaged by a bottom in metals and commodity prices. 
• Commodities may be bottoming.  Oil may be putting in a bottom as well.

 

• Canadian stocks may be bottoming.  Energy and metals comprise roughly half of the total market capitalization of the Toronto Stock Exchange.  Materials stocks in Canada have been performing fairly well.

• Chinese stocks may be bottoming.  Stocks in China have been acting well as of late.  I am long the FXI.

• Semiconductor stocks have been outperforming and may be in the beginning of an uptrend.  Semiconductors are often an early indicator of the health of the technology industry.  I am long a basket of semiconductor and semiconductor equipment stocks.

• The VIX is acting like it wants to break below 40.  On Thursday's intra-day reversal, the VIX closed sharply down.  On Friday, when the market sold off during the last 20 minutes of the day, the VIX gave up less than half the decline of the prior session.  This may be a sign that investors are getting more confident of the future.

• Asset allocation by individuals towards equities is at or near all-time lows whereas allocations towards cash is at or near all-time highs.  The public is generally positioned like this at bottoms.
• Cash levels are at multi-decade highs.  There is nearly $9 trillion in cash on the sidelines currently.
• Hedge funds are heavily in cash.  There are very few hedge funds that are bullish now.
• Private equity investors are sitting on their hands.  After incurring large losses in their portfolios and wary of the cash crunch of their limited partners, private equity funds are doing little.  It seems that everyone is waiting for a turn before investing.
• Everybody whom I talk to is negative.  I have had in depth discussions with two dozen highly knowledgeable investors this month, and they are all overwhelmingly and uniformly bearish.  Every.  Single.  One.  Even those who are buying because they see value in the market are bearish on the market and the economy as a whole.  I had to talk a friend and a 20-year veteran of the business off the proverbial window ledge last week.
• Reversion to the mean suggests at least a bounce.  Last year was one of the worst years on record.  Tremendous selling usually begets a significant rally.
• Stocks are cheap.  Whether you want to measure by the 10-year moving average of earnings, Tobin's Q, or measures of book, sales and normalized earnings, stocks are inexpensive.

Now, as I tell you all this, I think there is a fairly good chance - 60% or 70% perhaps - that the market is about to re-test the lows over the next week or two.

Even after I listed all those points above, I cannot tell you that I feel bullish.

Maybe that is a sign a bottom is near.

China New Loans Rise to Record

From ShanghaiDaily.

China's new loans rose by a record in January and money supply expanded at the fastest rate for more than a year, riding on China's stimulus packages to bolster the economy.

Banks extended 1.62 trillion yuan (US$237 billion) in new local-currency loans and M2, the broadest measure of money supply, climbed 18.8 percent from a year earlier, the People's Bank of China said today on its Website.

M2, which includes cash and all deposits, gained 17.8 percent in December.

The outstanding value of yuan loans rose 21.33 year-on-year to 31.99 trillion yuan at the end of January.

Chinese banks are following the government's call to support the economy by granting more loans.

I bet Obama and Bush wish they could do that.

Japan 2.0

Want to be scared?  Then read this post by Financial Ninja who argues that America is repeating the mistakes of Japan.

Given the way the government is supporting so many "zombie" companies, the comparison may be apt.

This is a graph of the Nikkei 225 since 1980.

So much for buy and hold.

Lebanon, Beacon of Stability

It says something when Lebanon of all places is seen as a beacon of stability in the global credit crisis.

As financial panic spreads across the globe, some investors are moving their money to an unlikely place: Lebanon.

This small country, chronically battered by war, turns out to have a banking sector that has so far been a beacon of stability and growth. Its banks are posting record profits, aided by conservative central bank policies, skillful management and money from Lebanese expatriates.

Lebanon’s very instability — its 15-year civil war and frequent political crises — appears to have bred the banking sector’s fiscal prudence, analysts say.

Three years ago the central bank here barred investments in derivatives and other structured financial products, giving banks virtual immunity to the widening financial contagion. The banks here have done little borrowing on international markets. Deposits account for about 83 percent of their assets, making them among the most liquid in the world.

“The banks here are used to turmoil,” said Nassib Ghobril, the head of economic research and analysis for Byblos Bank, the country’s third largest. “Since the end of the civil war in 1990, there has been no loss of deposits, and there’s great confidence in the sector.”

As of August, the money flowing into deposits grew 16 percent over 2007 — itself a record year. Lebanon had no working government for most of that period, and at times seemed to be on the verge of civil war.

Those inflows appear to be rising further. The central bank released statistics showing that it increased its foreign assets by $572 million in the first two weeks of October, possibly a sign that foreign deposits are growing.

Fascinating.