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Energy Market on the Brink: Russia, CNY, and the Fed’s Dilemma

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In the latest episode of The Week Ahead, Tony Nash is joined by Michael Nicoletos, Tracy Shuchart, and Albert Marko. The panel first explores Russia’s recent announcement that it would use CNY for trade settlement outside of the US and Europe. Michael Nicoletos explains that this move could be viable, but it would depend on whether all countries would accept the terms of trade.

Albert Marko believes that the recent rate hike was the right thing to do and predicted that the Fed would raise rates twice more. He also criticizes the lack of depth in the economics department of some central banks, citing examples from the RBNZ and the ECB.

The panel also analyzes the energy market and predicted when we might see an uptrend. Tracy Shuchart updates the chart and pointed out that crude seemed to break the down cycle a bit, leading to a good week for the commodity. The team answers a viewer’s question about the possibility of energy prices remaining low for a long time and offered their perspectives on the matter.

Finally, the panel discusses what they expected for the Week Ahead. Michael Nicoletos predicts that the energy market would remain volatile, and Tracy Shuchart believes that the focus would be on the stock market, particularly the Nasdaq. Albert Marko highlights the importance of watching the inflation data and suggests that investors should keep an eye on the bond market.

Key themes:
1. Russia ❤️ $CNY. Why?
2. Where does the Fed (and other central banks) go from here?
3. When will we see an uptrend in energy?

This is the 58th episode of The Week Ahead, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.

Follow The Week Ahead panel on Twitter:
Tony: https://twitter.com/TonyNashNerd
Michael: https://twitter.com/mnicoletos
Albert: https://twitter.com/amlivemon
Tracy: https://twitter.com/chigrl

Transcript:

Tony

Hi, and welcome to The Week Ahead. I’m Tony Nash and today we’re joined by Michael Nicoletos. Michael is the founder and CEO of DeFi Advisors based in Athens. We’re also joined by Tracy Shuchart of Hilltower Resource Advisors and Albert Marko. Guys, thanks so much for joining us. We have a couple of key themes and I was really in questioning mood when I put these together. The first one is around Russia and the CNY. There was an announcement this week. My question really is why? What’s the point of that? Next is where does the Fed go from here? And really where do all central banks go from here, but mainly the Fed, ECB. Albert is going to lead on that and I know Michael has some views on that as well. That’ll be really exciting to talk through. And then we’ll talk to Tracy about energy. For the first part of this week, we saw energy on an uptrend and we’ve seen a little bit of turbulence on Friday. So when do we expect to see an uptrend in energy? So again, guys, thanks for joining us. Michael, I really appreciate you taking the time from Athens to get involved with us today. Thanks so much.

Michael

Thank you. Happy to be here. Great, love to talk to you guys.

Tony

Great. So first, Michael, I know that you know a lot about China and you follow a lot of their economic activity. And I saw you commenting on this Russia announcement about CNY. Of course, they announced that they’ll use CNY for trade settlement outside of the US and Europe, which is Latin America, Africa and Asia is what they said in their announcement. So that’s about 37% of Russia’s exports. So I put a little chart together. I used UN ComTrade data.

This is 2021 data, which is the latest data that UN ComTrade has. So if they’re really doing that, Latin America is 2% of Russia’s trade, Africa is 3% of Russia’s trade. China is 14%. Okay? And so I guess is all of their trade with China settled in CNY? I seriously doubt it. And then Asia is rest of Asia is 18%. And of that about 1%, just under 1% is Taiwan. So I seriously doubt Taiwan would settle in CNY. But what’s obvious from looking at this chart is Europe is more than half of Russia’s trade. So it’s not as if this is necessarily a massive bold announcement that everything is going to be in CNY from here on out.

Tony

It really is just kind of putting a stake in the ground saying I think it’s almost a best efforts thing. So I guess is this viable? That’s really the question. And Michael, you put out this thought-provoking tweet.

You said if that were the case, China would have no issues running out of USDs. Let’s take that on and help me understand why is China trying to do this and what is the US dollar question that you have around this arrangement?

Michael

Well, first of all, again, thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. Now we need to segregate two things: wanting to do something and being able to do something. It’s clear that a lot of countries which are highly dependent on the US dollar for trading would rather be on something else and not be dependent on the dollar. We saw what happened with Russian FX Reserve when the war started. So clearly this was a warning shot or a lot of countries said we could be next if we go into a fight with the US. So clearly there is a tendency and China wants this to happen as soon as possible. Now, for this to happen, there are a lot of things that need to happen first. I’ll give just an anecdotal example because we get all this news flow and all these headlines where one signs an agreement with another and then two people or two prime ministers come up and say we’re going to do it, and everyone takes it for granted, especially on Twitter. It’s either a fanatic from one side or a fanatic from the other side. So again, I agree with everyone who is afraid of this happening in the sense that a lot of people are saying that the end of the dollar is close and that everyone’s going to go to something different.

Michael

I agree there is the willingness. I’m not sure this can happen soon, and I don’t think it can happen without some conflict occurring somewhere. So an example is that in 2018, Iran signed an agreement with China to sell oil in Yuan. Still, after four or five years, the volumes are ridiculously low. So again, there are agreements, but in order to enforce them and in order for them to happen, they take a lot more time than one would want. So Russia had no option. So because of the sanctions, they still sell to Europe, a few things, but they’re trying to outweigh it by selling more to China. And China and Russia are trying to make these agreements where they will be settling in Rubles or in Yuan. And they try to make these agreements. They want to expand them to other countries as well. However, you see, for example, India. India doesn’t want to settle in Yuan or doesn’t want to settle in ruble. They want to settle in Dirhams, which is back to the dollar. So you get all this information and the data, at least until now, does not support that there is a threat to the dollar.

Michael

There is a threat to the dollar in terms of willingness. There is no threat to the dollar in terms of data which says that this is going to happen tomorrow. So I think that this will eventually happen, but I don’t think it will happen soon. I think until it happens, we’re going to see a few episodes. And these episodes are not straightforward, how they will evolve.

Michael

Now, regarding China and its macro, the reason I’m saying what I’m saying and I’m saying that China needs dollars. China has been dependent, first of all, on its real estate, which was like 30% of its GDP. We saw what happened to the real estate. The second leg was it was highly dependent on exports. There’s a global slowdown. So these exports will have some issues. And now, how has China managed to keep this economy running? I’ll give you a few metrics to understand. The US is an economy which is like 26, I think 26 trillion of GDP. And if I’m not mistaken, its M2 is around 21 trillion. In China, the GDP is around 17 trillion, all in dollars. Okay? And M2 is $40 trillion. 40. Four, zero. So what does that mean?

Michael

The China government prints money. Prints money. Prints money. Because there are capital controls, the balloon gets bigger and bigger and bigger, but the money can’t leave, or it can leave for selected few, and I’ll explain how it leaves. And for the rest, because our capital control, the money can’t leave. So it stays in. But this is in one. Some try to buy gold, some try to invoice over invoice to Hong Kong and take it out of Hong Kong. But when the disparity is so big, clearly there is a problem. There’s an NPL problem. Chinese banks are like four times China’s GDP.

Tony

Sorry, NPL is non performing loans.

Michael

Non performing loans. Sorry. Sometimes they’re non performing. You cannot have an M2 of 40 trillion and a GDP of 17 trillion and not have non performing loans. Chinese banking system.

Tony

Sorry, I just want to go back and I don’t mean to interrupt you, but I just want to make sure that people understand. China has currency in circulation of $40 trillion, and they have a GDP of $17 trillion. Whereas the US has a GDP of what you say 24 trillion. I don’t remember what number you’re… 26 trillion. And they have 21 trillion in circulation. Right. So for all of these people who talk about China being this economic model for other people, why does it matter that their M2 is more than double the size of their economy?

Michael

Let me say something. First of all, let’s put something that the US. Is also the global reserve currency. So everyone in the world wants dollars. It’s not like only the US wants dollars. At this stage, less than 10% of the world wants Yuan. So it’s not like everyone wants to get.

Tony

I think it’s 2.1% of transactions or something like that.

Tracy

2.8%?

Tony

2.8, yeah, transactions.

Michael

Okay. I saw a number which was around 6%. Maybe I’m wrong. Okay. But again, it’s a number which is very small. 

Michael

All this money that is in the economy, if Chinese people were given the choice, they would be able to take it out. The economy is growing at a faster pace than its potential. I’ll give you a number. Right now, Chinese banks are more than 50% of global GDP in terms of size. The US, I think its peak was 32% in 1985 and Japan’s 27% in 1994. So we’ve passed all metrics in terms of the world dominant power or the dominant economy, if you want to put it this way, being a percentage of GDP in terms of banking assets. So the banking assets clearly have a lot of bad debts in there, which we cannot know what they are because the Chinese economy wants the Chinese government wants to control that. Now, there was a special committee put in place this month, I think, in order to oversee the financial situation in China. So I’m pretty sure they’re a bit worried about it. They want to switch from an export oriented economy to a consumption driven economy. But this is still less than 40% of GDP and this takes a lot of time to go like the US is around 70%, but it takes a lot of time to go for 40%, 70%.

Michael

Now, all this money stays in China. They have no option, they can’t do anything. So it’s an issue. And I’ll give you a ratio. If you take their FX reserve, it’s around 3 point something trillion. If you divide FX to M2, it’s around 7%. So if that money were to want if that money wanted to leave, in theory, only 7% can be covered by FX reserves, the fixed reserves of the government. Just to clarify, the Asian tiger crisis in 97, the tigers collapsed when the ratio went below 25%. So they didn’t have that support to keep it up.

Tony

And just be clear for the US that’s 100%, right?

Michael

The US doesn’t have any problems. So this is something that needs to be addressed and I don’t know how they will address it. They try to make all these agreements so that the one becomes a tradable currency and they can invoicing one. So if the Yuan, in theory was to become the global reserve currency tomorrow morning, their debt would become the world’s problem. Now, they haven’t managed to export that, so they need these dollars to keep that balloon, let’s say, from all the area in the balloon to be taken up. They need these FX reserves to keep the money in and they need to build confidence, and they try to build confidence with narratives and not with data. But again, they don’t have a choice right now, in my opinion.

Tony

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https://youtu.be/yYom7Zqezio

Tony

The difference between, say, the onshore and offshore CNY or CNH or whatever, there is a huge difference in perceived value. I would think you can’t change the perceived value of CNY onshore, but offshore, if people are nominating contracts in, say, I’ll say “CNY” in quotes, there is an exchange right there. But again, this M2 issue, which I can’t stress how important that is, I haven’t heard anybody else talking about this. And it’s so critical to understand the fiat value of CNY itself, right, because it’s not limited, and the government because they’re effectively fun tickets with Mao’s face on it.

Tony

Right. And that’s how the PBOC was treating it. And again, when people talk about CNY as a global reserve currency, nobody is looking at the integrity of the PBOC and nobody is looking at how the PBOC manages monetary policy in China.

Michael

I’ll give you anecdotal information. I haven’t checked the number for a few years, but the last time I checked, if you look at the import-export numbers from Hong Kong to China, and you look at the PBOC, and then you go and see the same numbers in the HKMA, you would assume that these four numbers should be the same, not the same. Import should be export and export should be imports. The numbers should be very close. The discrepancy is huge. These numbers do not reconciliate, which means that in some form there is some over invoicing to Hong Kong.

Tony

And you’re not talking about 30%, you’re talking about multiples.

Michael

You’re talking about a lot. It’s ridiculous. So I think if you see the Hong Kong peg has been stable to the upper bound lately because I guess because of the interest rate differential, a lot of money is leaving. So it’s putting pressure on Hong Kong as well. So it remains to be seen what happens there.

Tony

So let me go to Tracy. Tracy, in terms of Russia using CNY, okay? And I know you look at a lot of their energy exports, and of course there’s all this official dumb around sanctions and stuff, but what’s your kind of guess on Russia using either USD or proxy USD, Dirhams or something else as currencies for collecting on energy exports or commodity exports more broadly?

Tracy

Well, first, I think that they prefer dollars no matter what this kind of China saying we want to trade a Yuan. And Russia said, okay, but that was a suggestion. That does not mean that it’s necessarily happening. But what is really interesting is earlier this week, on Monday, Russia laid out conditions for extending the grain, the black seed grain deal, right? Because it was supposed to be for 90 days, but they cut it to 60 days because they’re trying to use that as leverage. And one of the things that they are trying to use as a leverage is they will extend the deal or they’ll give or the other part is they’ll give African countries just free grain instead of selling it. But one of the big conditions for that was for the removal of some Western sanction, specifically to get them back on Swift. And so if that happens, forget it. Everything’s going to be all the trade will be all euros and dollars.

Tony

I thought Swift was terrible and everybody wanted on Swift.

Tracy

I just thought it was important to point out because if they get back on Swift, obviously that’s going to make trading in dollars easy for everything, all commodities across the board.

Tony

Right. And so that goes back to what Michael said initially about kind of these guys really want dollars and all this other stuff. There’s the official dumb of the prime ministers meeting each other, right. And then there’s the factual activities they undertake based on the reality of their position in the world economy. Right. What are your thoughts here?

Albert

I agree with Michael and Tracy to talk about the reserve currency. Switching from the dollar to the Yuan is a joke, to be honest with you. You do have some people in other countries in the Middle East and China and whatnot talking about the death of the dollar and actual serious tone. But anyone with even like a shred of financial backing and insight knows that it’s just an impossible thing. From what it sounds like, it’s more of like a barter system. But that introduces even bigger problems. I mean, you can’t scale it up. There’s no standardization. How do you value things to begin with?

Tony

That’s it.

Albert

Valuing goods and services without using the dollar right now is just an impossibility. And on top of that, you have the political problems that come along with it. I mean, like the Saudis, they want dollars for their oil. They need defense assistance. The Greeks needed US defense assistance. The Turks, as much as they want to make noise again, they’re reliant on the US and NATO for defense and whatnot. These components not just financially, what Michael talked about and decided much more eloquently than I would ever would, but there’s also political components that you just can’t get around in the near term.

Tony

But even if they had a barter system, they would reference the price in dollars, right?

Albert

Well, yeah.

Tony

10 billion.

Tracy

Your chocolate is back to iran did that when they were first sanctioned over a decade ago. They were trading oil for gold, but it was still referencing dollars.

Albert

On top of that, you run the risk of hyperinflation eliminating dollars from your FX reserves and starting to trade away from the dollar. You’re going to end up in a hyperinflation event.

Tony

Right.

Michael

Can I say something? Can I say something? About all these points? I agree with all these points. There’s one more thing. Let’s say you trade in rubles and you trade in Yuan, okay? It means that you’re going to keep FX reserves in rubles or in Yuan. So you feel more comfortable keeping a currency from an authoritarian regime than holding the US. Dollar, which is fully liquid, fully tradable, and anyone in the street will take it at a split of a second. You need many years of track record to build that trust. There are a lot of bad things about the dollar. We agree that I don’t think anyone will say that it’s a perfect mechanism, but right now, it’s very functional, it’s very liquid. And if you want to keep your reserves in US Treasuries, you can sell them at the split of a second. You don’t have any issues with that. If you have Yuan, you’re going to do what? You’re going to buy Chinese government bonds? And how will you sell them if the PBOC calls you and says, it’s not a good idea to sell your Chinese bonds this week? We would prefer you didn’t.

Tony

Bet on the central bank, right? If you’re holding rubles, you’re betting that the Russian central bank is trustworthy. If you’re holding CNY, you’re betting that the Chinese center. So what central banks are out there that you could potentially trust? You have the Fed, you have the ECB, you have BOJ, right? Those are really the only three that are visible enough that have the scale and transparency to manage a currency. And look what the BOJ has done since Abenomics. And on and on and on. Do you trust the ECB? I don’t know. And it becomes, do you trust the ECB or the Fed more? I mean, sorry, but I just don’t trust the ECB.

Michael

I don’t trust ECB. But it’s relative. I mean, you don’t have a problem keeping Euros. Maybe it’s not your preferred choice, but you don’t lose your sleep on holding Euros. Let me put it at this stage.

Tony

That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Okay, guys, this is great. Let’s move on to the next thing, because I think we all agreed violently here, but I think we’re going to not agree on the next one, which I’m really excited about. So let’s talk about central banks. And where does the Fed and where do other central banks go from here? So, of course, we saw the Fed raise this week. I think it was the right thing to do. Albert, I know you think it’s the right thing to do. Markets have been up and down since then. And Albert, you’ve said that you expect the Fed to raise two more times, and I want to talk about kind of what’s behind that assertion. And then we get silly statements like this one from the RBNZ in New Zealand, where the chief economist basically says, if inflation expectations don’t fall, we’ll be forced to do more regarding interest rates.

Well, of course. Why wouldn’t you do that. So can you walk us through a little bit, kind of just very quick, because there have been thousands of hours of Fed analysis this week. But why do you think the Fed is going to raise two more times?

Albert

Supercore is trending up and it continues to trend up. Services are on fire. Real estate numbers have been on fire. There’s no slowdown in reality. I mean, even the layoffs have been slow. They’ve come from the tech sector. They haven’t come from construction or any other blue collar jobs at the moment. So until we see that, the economy is going to be red hot and it’s a problem for the Fed, inflation overall.

Tony

Okay, so play devil’s advocate here. Banking crisis, Fed had to bail out banks, all this other stuff. So why isn’t the Fed saying, let’s pause on the banking crisis worries?

Albert

Because banks are fully liquid. The big banks have no problem whatsoever. Some of these smaller banks that have no risk protocols are getting exposed. The tech heavy investments are getting exposed. Everyone knows that higher rates hurts the tech sector the most. And those banks were at fault. They didn’t hedge properly.

Tony

Now you have duration risk. I just want to be clear. I just want to make sure that people understand. You’re not saying that they failed necessarily because they’re tech, but they failed because of duration risk and then their tech depositors took their money out. Right?

Albert

Absolutely. But the banking system overall is not really at risk. They’re just shaking out some of the weaker players. But that was inevitable as interest rates have risen. A lot of the problems stem from the Fed and them guaranteeing four, five, 6% deposits, while the banks only do 1%. They can’t compete with that.

Tony

Right. Michael, I know that you think this wasn’t the right action. So what’s your perspective?

Michael

Well, let me say something first. I believe that it was a mistake, and I’ll say why it was a mistake. I think it’s a mistake when you raise interest rates as a central bank and the banks follow by raising rates on the loan side and on the deposit side, what do you do? You make debt more expensive and then you make people because you have, let’s say, a 5% interest rate on your bank, you create an opportunity cost so people want to save. So you reduce liquidity from the deposit side, and also you reduce loan demand because it’s more expensive, and that creates a slowdown. What happened now, because we had ten years of QE, everyone forgot that there was an interest rate on the deposit side. So the Fed, MDCB and all the central banks raised the interest rate. So the loan side adjusted. That became more expensive, but the deposit side stayed zero at 1%. I don’t know where this is in the US. But it’s really low. At some point, people started waking up when it arrived at 4% and they suddenly started saying, okay, I don’t have any interest on my deposit.

Michael

Let me put my money in the money market fund. How much does it give? Three, four, 5%? I don’t know. It’s a much higher rate. So I think I saw somewhere today that around 5 trillion have gone into money market funds. The numbers close to that. So when you take your money out of the deposit and you take it to a money market fund, this is the equivalent of a bank run for the bank that you’re taking the money, it’s a deposit living. It might not feel like a bank run, but on the balance sheet of a bank, it’s a bank run. So this started happening, and again, because of what you mentioned, they had invested in Treasuries and the duration risk was a mismatch. They didn’t do some of them at least hadn’t done appropriate hedging. They started losing money and they started selling this bond at a loss, although they had them at the Healthy Maturity portfolio where you don’t need to take a mark to market loss. And suddenly both sides of the balance sheet were screwed. Let me put it this way. So a few banks started going under. Now, I know that the central bank has come up and I know a lot of people come up.

Michael

And I do agree that there’s no systemic risk. And I mean that I don’t see a cascade of people losing their deposits. But nevertheless, people feel uncomfortable and try to do something about it. Either take them more money market funds or take their money from a regional bank, if they can. To JP morgan or one of the big guys. This creates a big problem for the economy. Yes, there are some signs which show that the economy is still robust. But I think a lot of leading indicators suggest that the economy is slowing down and most of the metrics coming from the inflation side have collapsed. Yes, core CPI is still high and it’s a lagging indicator, so it will take time for it to come down. But I think that given the stress we saw this week and why do I say that? Because we look at the US as a closed system. It’s not. When you raise interest rates as the Fed and you are the global reserve currency, you create a global credit crunch. You saw that last week. The Fed had come out with swap lines for everyone. You saw today that foreign banks borrowed 60 billion in liquidity, the ones that didn’t have a swap line.

Michael

And we see today Deutsche Bank being in the headlines and Commerce Bank being in the gate. So you might think that the US system is okay, but it creates a domino effect, which we’re starting to see. We saw Credit Suisse going under in a deal, which was not, I’d say, what we would think of. I believe that that deal in combination with the high rates is probably the root of the problem in the sense that they destroyed the capital structure, they wiped out all the 80 ones without wiping out the equity holders. Which means now that in Europe everyone’s wondering if my 81 is of any value. And that creates another uncertainty in combination with the higher interest rates and the stress that has started to build up. I think we’ve passed the moment where, okay, it could be debatable if they did right or if they did wrong. The US bond market is saying that it was wrong. It was a mistake. The two years at 370. And so the bond market went from the one side and the Fed went on the other side.

Tony

Why? The two year at 270 is important.

Michael

373, 70. Sorry, yeah. Three seven. Because if in two years you’re getting 3.7% and the Fed fund rate is five someone, it means that someone is buying a two year bond getting much less. Which means what? It means that the market is saying rate cuts are coming soon. So the market is saying there’s no way we can keep it this way. And the Fed is saying the opposite. Historically speaking, the bond market has been right. If you take it into context, it could be this time that they are wrong. It feels to me, at least from the stress I look in global markets and not in US. Only, that things are getting a bit out of hand. And having a bank like Credit Suisse go under, which is a big bank, and having all the central banks come in together on a Sunday night to give up swap lines, it means that the stress in the system, it’s much bigger than with yeah, but Sunday night.

Tony

Is the best time to get swap lines. Okay, so you talk about European banks, but we had Mueller from the ECB out this week saying, I wouldn’t worry about a financial crisis in Europe.

So we have ECB guys out there going, yeah, Credit Suisse happened and we know Deutsche is an issue, but I wouldn’t worry about that in Europe. So I think we’re seeing statements from Yellen, the Fed, the ECB, other guys who are saying, no, there’s nothing to see here, but then we see things kind of blowing up all over the place. Right, and then we have a question especially specifically for you, Michael, from a viewer who said, I’d like Michael’s thoughts on the EU, particularly banks, pensions and future growth prospects. So can you talk us through? How do these banking issues in Europe flow through to European pensions?

Michael

First of all, let’s say something. We’re talking about the US and.

Albert

Duration.

Michael

Risk on the bond losses. Let’s remind everyone that at the peak of QE 18 1818 trillion worth of bonds had negative yield, and these were mostly Europe and Asia. So pension funds and banks in Europe which are forced to buy these bonds were buying bonds. With a negative yield. So they were losing on day one these bonds from -50 basis bonds have gone to two and 3%, the losses on these are much greater and pension funds will have much bigger issues than the ones that have in the US we were talking about a pension crisis in the US. But the European one is pretty bad too. Just look at in France, they raised this week the year that you take your pension from 62 years old to 64 and the country is burning to the ground. Now, you understand that it’s 62 to 64. It’s not like they made 62 to 70 years old. So it’s very delicate. And the situation in Europe, given the negative bonds, given the interest rate hikes and given one more thing in Europe, given that Europe doesn’t have the dollar and it has the Euro was mostly a supply driven issue.

Michael

It means that we were importing oil and energy from Russia and from everywhere and all these commodities were priced in dollars. So as a Europe tell, the price of these commodities were more expensive. So inflation was a supply driven problem. I think there’s a report, I think from the San Francisco Fed two thirds of the inflation was supply driven in Europe. So when inflation is supply driven and you raise rates to stop it, you’re using the wrong medicine to stop the problem. You need to crash the economy in order for this to stop. This is not really efficient. Now, in the meantime, you have yields going higher and now the yields that we see on our screen on Bloomberg or anywhere are not the yield real yields because the ECB is in and tries to contain the spreads. If you left the market low, I’m pretty sure the spreads would be much, much wider. And you have the new thing which came up this week when the Swiss National Bank decided that tier one, additional tier ones would be written off and equity holder, an equity holder would be saved. Now, imagine what happened. You probably saw what happened this week, all the 80 ones in Europe got smashed because everyone says I don’t trust this instrument.

Michael

I don’t know. Yes, central bankers will come out.

Tony

These are the cocoa bonds that came out in I think, 2013, right?

Michael

Yeah, there are a few of them, yeah, but it’s a cocoa, it’s contingent convertible. It means that they’re convertible be converted to equity if something happens. Let me put it as simple as it is, but these are supposed to be wiped out before the equity. So the question is what prevents for something else similar to happen again, the ECB came out, BoE came out, they said this is not accepted. But the fear and the is now everywhere. So you have a combination of factors. You have a factor that this ECB has been raising rates when I don’t think it’s a proper mechanism to address inflation in europe, they’ve created a slowdown. If you see Germany’s numbers and everywhere’s numbers in Europe, the economy is slowing down fast. You have a discussion on the capital structure of lending, which is very critical in the way companies and banks go and borrow themselves and all this at the same time and when the US. Is draining liquidity from the global system. I think the situation in Europe is very tough. Again, after 2008, I don’t think we have a systemic risk on our hands and the risks never materialize in the same place.

Michael

But I think things are about to get tough and it’s going to be much worse before it gets any better.

Tony

So what I would offer back, and I think everything you’re saying is valid and Albert Tracy, let me know if you want to think about this, but in the US. We have a presidential election next year. There is almost no way that we will see the US economy crash in the next 24 months because Janet Yellen won’t let that happen. And so we may see issues in Europe and we may see Europe and the rest of the world suffer based on US interest rate and monetary policy. But the US. Will do everything, the current administration will do everything they can to keep the US. From crashing in that time. And I’m not just saying this because they’re Democrats, Republicans would do the same thing to keep the economy afloat in the year before an election.

Albert

Albert, what do you think about that? It depends on what is happening specifically with debt ceiling, right? I mean, Janet Yellen and the Biden administration would gladly let the economy sink, the market sink anyways if they could blame it on escape both the GOP on the debt ceiling not getting hyped. So that’s definitely something you need to watch over the next six months because it is campaign fundraising season and they can’t really agitate their voters all that much, to be honest with you. Certainly the political component is going to be high over the next twelve months.

Tony

Okay, great. Let’s move on. Thank you for that, guys. Let’s move on to energy.

Michael

Can I say something?

Tony

Absolutely. Yes, please.

Michael

What appears to be happening right now, at least in my eyes, is that the Fed is using interest rates to attack inflation and it’s using the balance sheet to give liquidity. So these two do not go in the same direction at this point. The question is if they can do this for a long time. It doesn’t feel to me that they can. But at least right now they’re giving liquidity on the one side and they’re raising rates on the other side. I’m not sure they can do this for us.

Albert

We’ve actually talked about that at length here. But it’s not the Fed. It’s really the treasury. Sterilizing QT They’re coordinating.

Michael

They’re coordinating.

Albert

Of course they coordinate for the most part, but sometimes in the last six months or the last twelve months. Powell and Yellen have been at odds with each other in policy. So this is a lot of the reasons why the markets has just been topsy turbine. Don’t understand which way it’s going because you have conflicting policy and agendas from the treasury and the Fed.

Michael

So you feel it’s conflicting or do you think it’s coordinating? They’re doing it on purpose. That’s what I haven’t figured out yet.

Albert

I think the want to eliminate excess cash in the system is coordinated but I think the policy of how they’re doing that is conflicting and that’s going to be a bigger problem, say second half of this year.

Michael

Okay, sounds logical, but it’s one of these things that pass on me. I don’t know if they’re doing it on purpose or if they do any as you say, because they’re using other tools and they step on each other doing so.

Albert

My rule of thumb is to side with incompetence rather than conspiracy.

Tony

Okay.

Michael

It’s not conspiracy when the Fed chairman talks with the treasury guy?

Albert

No, I am absolutely in your corner on this one. I absolutely believe that they talk and coordinate things for sure. I just think that their agenda at the moment doesn’t line up 100% of the time.

Michael

Okay.

Tony

Very good. Okay, thanks for that guys. Tracy, let’s talk about energy for a while. Up until Friday we had a pretty good week for crude. I thought we were breaking that down cycle a bit, but we’re seeing some chop in energy markets. And so we had a question for you from a viewer saying when do you see oil and natty in a sustainable uptrend?

Tracy

Yeah, nat gas is a whole other issue. I think it’s going to be very difficult really. We’re trading in the range that we’ve been trading in most of the time for the last 20 years or so. That $2, $3 range has been very comfortable for nat gas. We produce a lot of nat gas. Yes, we are building out LNG facilities and yes, we have had problems with freeport and such. I just think that we probably won’t really see a big spike in prices unless we see another energy crisis in Europe, do you know what I’m saying? And then we’re going to have to force to sell even more. So for right now I would kind of get comfortable with nat gas about that range. But if it starts breaking above like 375 or so I would start getting bullish. But for right now, just kind of in that area where it’s been comfortable most of the time. Right. So I think it’s going to be a while for that. So we got to kind of assess the situation in Europe as we get to summer air conditioning use and to next winter if they have a bad winter, I think it’s going to be a few more months at least down the line for natural gas as far as oil is concerned.

Tracy

Brent said about $75 right now, saudi Arabia would like it around 80, 90 range is where they’re really comfortable. I think right now what we’re going to have to get through is we’re going to have to really assess we need more time to assess Russia’s situation. They just extended that 500,000 barrel a day cut out until June. The latest records do show that they actually have cut that much so far in March. So the cut is happening, which also means that they’re experiencing kind of a pullback in demand, even though they have really it’s more on the product end rather than, I should say, rather than the crude oil end, because they have floating storage, they have ships piling up everywhere with product. And so I think that will help clear their excess product a little more. So it’s really on the product end and that we also have to see everybody’s freaking if the Fed again decides to stop raising rates or pause. I think commodities really like that situation just because of the cost of carry and transportation and storage for all these commodities is very expensive. Right.

Tony

Because.

Tracy

You get bank credit lines for that. Right. And so I think that’s putting downward pressure on markets right now. And then obviously fear of recession is kind of kicking in again after the recent bank crisis in the US. And in Europe. And so I really don’t think that we’ll see higher prices. I mean, typically this is the time of year we do start seeing higher prices heading into high summer demand season. But we’ve also been seeing, I think everybody expected China. China demanded to shoot up right away. That’s taking longer than anticipated, which I kind of have been saying that on this show for quite a few months.

Tony

Long time. Exactly.

Tracy

So I think that there’s a lot of factors involved right now. I do think, again, it’s higher for longer. Historically still, prices at $70 is high for oil. The market is crashing by any means, just coming down from geopolitically induced spike last year. I think it’s higher for longer. And definitely I could see prices go into that $110 range, but likely into 2024. Not really this year, obviously, unless something happens. Okay.

Michael

Do you think if the Fed poses or whatever reason, or if they do a rate cut, do you think that commodities will explode or do you think.

Tracy

I think if they cut, commodities would get really excited. I think if they pause, they would get excited. Right. I think we would see a rebound in a lot of these commodities, grains, things of that base metals and industrial metals and oil. But if they start cutting, then I think that they’ll really like that because then they don’t have to throw product at the market because they can’t afford to store it.

Michael

Thank you.

Albert

I’m actually quite bullish for oil in the near term. One of the reasons is I’ve heard through the grapevine that the Chicanery and the futures market and I’m reading that hedge funds and other money managers sold the equivalent of 139,000,000 barrels of oil in futures over seven days a week and a half ago. So, I mean, to me, it’s like they’re almost out of ammo when it comes to suppressing oil at the moment. And any little flare up or anything is probably going to be bullish for oil and probably shoot right back up to 80.

Tony

So what could that be, Albert?

Albert

It could be a natural event. It could be weather, I mean, some kind of economic policy stimulus from Europe coming out there, or even the United States going into, like Tracy was saying, the travel season and whatnot. It could be anything, really. I mean, I think the market is just begging for some kind of bullish signal for them to run it up.

Tony

Okay. And Tracy, if you’re sitting in Europe because energy prices were such a factor in 2022, what are the main things that you’re worried about? Their nat gas storage. Has that been depleted much over the winter?

Tracy

No, it wasn’t depleted. They just had to start injections again because what we are seeing is that this really started in fall of 2021. Everybody kind of forgets that the crisis started before the Ukraine invasion, but what we saw is industry start to shut down, especially industry like smelting and glass blowing and things of that nature that require a lot of energy. Right when nat gas prices started spiking, and that was well before that summer of 2022 spike, they didn’t need to spike much where we saw a lot of those industries shut down. So what we’re seeing now is that since prices have been muted for long enough now, now we are seeing manufacturing and whatnot pick up with the numbers came in overnight for Europe. We’re seeing manufacturing pick up again. We’re starting to see some drawdowns finally in storage. Spain in particular has really ramped up a lot of their industry that had shut down prior. I have to say, natural gas prices are still more expensive than they typically are in Europe. Even at this price, right, they’re still higher than normal. So this is also why we’re not seeing a flurry of activity.

Tracy

As soon as prices came down, you have to realize that relative to where they were, they’re still generally high. But we are seeing, I think people are getting used to kind of this price range for Ttf, which is Dutchnet gas. And so we are seeing in manufacturing and industry pick up again in some of these traditional industries that require a lot of energy. So we’ll have to see, and if that really picks up, companies are going back to where they went to fuel instead of gas. We’re seeing them go back to gas now. And so that’s really what I’m watching on the energy end. Is this just one off, kind of, or does this continue throughout the summer?

Michael

Okay.

Tracy

Sorry.

Tony

And then everybody’s favorite energy secretary, Jennifer Grandholm, had some comments about refilling the Spr this week. Can you fill us in on that? And what does that mean for markets?

Tracy

Basically, she said we’re not filling in the Spr, refilling the Spr anytime soon.

Michael

Sorry.

Tracy

She said a few years, which means a lot more years unless there’s a change of administration and a policy change. But I would say from until the election not going to see an Sbr, which makes sense because they know that if they fill the Spr, what’s going to happen? Oil prices are likely going to go higher, and they can’t afford that going heading into an election year. And so I think that’s really why they kind of pushed that off. That’s kind of what’s going on with that.

Michael

Can they be saying something and doing something else?

Tracy

Yeah, but we would know if they’re actually filling the Spr or not because it’s a public auction.

Tony

Okay, why don’t we just stop calling it the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and just call it the Petroleum Reserve? Nothing strategic about the way they’re using the Tactical Petroleum Reserve.

Tracy

They’re using it as a piggy bank. Right.

Albert

Instead of strategic, you use slush fund, petroleum reserve.

Tony

Right, exactly. Okay, guys, one last question, I guess. What are you looking for in the week ahead? We’ve had a lot of volatility over the past couple of weeks. Michael, what are you looking for in the week ahead?

Michael

I’m focusing on central banks and interest rates. I think the issue will be banks. Again, I think the big stress in the economy is private markets and not public markets. BCS, private equity, all these investments need to do write downs. It will take a bit more time for them to do that. It doesn’t happen that fast. They don’t adjust as fast as public market. I believe that bank we will see that stress mostly on banking stocks. A because the cost of funding goes up, b because the capital structure is put into a discussion. C because they continue to raise interest rates. And there is a stress within, I think, focusing on what happens to the banks and to the two central banks. Again, we’re looking at the same thing, unfortunately, but the problem is not in the same place. But these are the indicators you need to look. I believe that you’re going to see inflation coming down fast. That’s my expectation. Maybe I’m wrong, but if you see inflation coming down, it’ll make the life much easier for central bank. Yeah.

Tony

And for all of us. Do you expect to see, like VCs, for example, some VCs close up because of the cost of funds and a lot of these banking issues, or do you think it really doesn’t impact them much?

Michael

I don’t know if they’re going to close down because it’s a 510 year investment. It depends if they can reinvest or if they have to liquidate. But I think funds that are coming up to their maturity, they need to liquidate or they need to roll over. It’s going to happen at a much lower price than they thought, or they’ll have to wait one or two years more. So I think that stress is going to show up somewhere.

Tony

Tracy, what do you see over the next week?

Tracy

I think it’s type based markets. There’s not really a lot coming up as far as oil is concerned. OPEC meeting is the following week, which we already know they’re going to do nothing. So really, next week, end of month stuff, there’s not a whole lot going on in the commodities world, really newswise next week. So I think probably see the same sideways action.

Tony

Okay, great. Robert, what are you looking for? Let me ask a little bit of a kind of loaded question with that. As springtime is coming in in Ukraine, do we expect that to heat up at all as things warm a bit there?

Albert

Well, yeah, I would say yes. Geopolitically? I think it would be advantageous for Russia to do something to stay face. Absolutely. But for the week ahead, I think the narrative shift I’m watching for the narrative shift of interest rates to banking, like Michael was talking about, I think Yellen is most likely going to come out and try to guarantee 500,000 in deposits and even talk about 750 and get it up there and just get the crisis over and done with. So that’s what I’m looking for.

Michael

Okay.

Tony

Wow. Would that require congressional no, they can use emergency powers. Everything’s. Emergency power is great. Perfect. Okay, thanks, guys. Thank you very much. Really appreciate your time and all your insight, and have a great week ahead.

Albert

Thanks.

Michael

Thank you very much. Have a great weekend, too.

Tony

Thank you.

Categories
Week Ahead

Systemic Risk: Silicon Valley Bank(ruptcy) & America’s Feckless Energy Policy

Explore your CI Futures options in this March Madness Promo.

In this episode of The Week Ahead, the hosts discuss three key themes: Silicon Valley Bankruptcy, the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Tightening (QT) and systemic risks, and America’s energy policy.

The discussion begins with a focus on Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB), which had a major issue raising capital and faced a bank run on Thursday. On Friday, the California bank regulator shut the bank down. SIVB had $175 billion in deposits, $151 billion of which were uninsured. One of the discussions surrounding the SIVB collapse is how venture capitalists have been affected.

The hosts then move on to discuss the Federal Reserve’s QT and systemic risks. They note that the US has been experiencing strong data and inflation, and Fed Chairman Powell hinted at a 50 basis point increase this month. The hosts discuss whether the Fed will accelerate QT in this environment, what that could look like, and what risks it would pose to the US financial system.

The third theme discussed is America’s energy policy. Host Tracy Shuchart mentions a speech given by US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, which didn’t seem to give her more confidence in Granholm’s competence as an energy secretary. The discussion touches on the problems with America’s energy policy and how it affects the country’s overall economic outlook.

Finally, the hosts share their expectations for the week ahead.

Overall, this episode offers a comprehensive analysis of current events and trends in finance and policy, with a particular focus on the implications of SIVB’s bankruptcy and the Federal Reserve’s actions. The hosts provide insightful commentary and thought-provoking questions that will be of interest to anyone following these issues.

Key themes:
1. Silicon Valley Bank(ruptcy)
2. Fed’s QT & systemic risks
3. America’s feckless energy policy

This is the 56th episode of The Week Ahead, where experts talk about the week that just happened and what will most likely happen in the coming week.

Follow The Week Ahead panel on Twitter:
Tony: https://twitter.com/TonyNashNerd
Joseph: https://twitter.com/FedGuy12
Albert: https://twitter.com/amlivemon
Tracy: https://twitter.com/chigrl

Transcript

Tony

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Week Ahead. I’m Tony Nash. Today we’re joined by Joseph Wang. You may know him as @FedGuy12 on Twitter. He’s a CIO at Monetary Macro and a former senior trader at the New York Fed. Joseph, we’re really happy to have you here. Thanks so much for joining us. We also have Albert Marko and Tracy Shuchart will be joining us during the show. There are some key things we want to talk about. First is a hawkish Fed of course we can’t talk about that without the Silicon Valley Bank things, events that happened today. So we’ll cover that a bit. We’ll get into the systemic risk of quantitative tightening and the likelihood of that happening, as well as America’s rudderless energy policy. And we’ll talk to Tracy about that in detail.

So guys, thanks very much. There’s been a lot going on this week. Albert, I know you’ve been on the road. Joseph, it’s your first time here, so I’m really glad we can have this conversation. Guys, let’s start out with Silicon Valley Bank. I mean, this is something that just kind of happened yesterday. It actually happened with a communications announcement on Wednesday coming in the wake of another bank failure.

And it was really bad timing, it was really bad advice for them to do this. And we’ve just seen a bank explode right, or implode. So can you help us walk through what actually happened from your perspective?

Joseph

Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me on the show, guys. I love your show and I do listen to it. So it’s real honor to be here today.

Silicon Valley Bank. So as of recording today, it looks like they’ve been taken into receivership by the FDIC. So basically it’s bankrupt. Now, Silicon Valley Bank over the past couple of years, if you look at their equity prices, they soared really high, especially during the crypto boom. They were known as a bank that would lend a lot to the financial tech sector. And as the financial tech sector imploded, it seemed like that kind of hurt them as well. These past few days you saw it stock price steadily decrease. So if you’re a bank, you have two big concerns. The one is solvency. Are your assets worth more than your liabilities? And the second is liquidity. Do you have enough cash on hand to meet investor withdrawals. When I put money in a bank, so I am an investor in that bank, right. So I eventually lent money to local bank and local bank bought from me and I can go and get that money back anytime I want. And that is part of the problem of a bank. Your liabilities, they are short term, so they can disappear anytime you want. But your assets tend to be longer dated, things like loans, let’s say a five year, ten year loan.

So I can’t really comment on the solvency situation of Silicon Valley Bank. I suspect that they are insolvent simply because I read that they’ve been making a lot of loans to these fintech companies and we all know how that turned out. But you can actually get pretty good insight on their liquidity situation by looking at their regulatory filings. If you want to study a bank and I study bank, so you want to look at something like this.

That’s all this is a call report. A call report is a financial report that banks file. It’s literally 100 page reporting form, and it comes with instruction manual that’s 800 pages in leads. So that’s why I can actually keep a reference here. So if you look at Silicon Valley’s financials, you’ll see that it’s a bank that is vulnerable to liquidity runs. It might not seem so on the surface, but so just for the audience, Silicon Valley Bank has about $210 billion worth of assets. It’s largely funded by deposits. Now let’s look at their asset side first. Now if you’re a bank, you got to keep liquidity on hand because what if everyone starts to ask for their money back? You want to have some liquidity on hand to meet those redemptions. So Silicon Valley Bank has actually a pretty good portfolio of liquid assets. Of the 210 billion in assets, about 120 billion are securities. Securities are good because you can sell them. That’s what a security is. If you have a loan to local company, you can sell them. That’s illiquid. Of the 120 billion, 80 billion are high quality liquid assets. So in the banking world, you want to have high quality liquid assets because you can sell them easily to raise cash.

These are Treasuries and Agency MBS. So so far, $80 billion of high quality liquid assets. Sounds like a great liquid bank. You dig down a little bit more, you find out they’ve already pledged about 50 billion of those away. So they’re already using that to either to secure borrowings. For example, let’s say you are a huge investor. You’re putting money into Silicon Valley Bank, but you don’t really know if you want to take that risk. So you could ask for some collateral. So that could be a possibility as well. So the bottom line is they don’t actually have that much liquid assets, even though they look like they do. Now let’s look at their liabilities. It doesn’t look good either. So normally if you and I okay, I don’t know about you guys, but when I put money in a bank, I have less than 250,000. So it’s within secured by the FDIC. But if you have a lot of money more than 250,000, then it’s not secured by the FDIC. Then you have credit risk. When you look at the depositor profile of Silicon Valley Bank, you can see that they have $150 billion unsecured deposits.

So those are institutional investors who basically lent maybe unsecured, maybe definitely uninsured to Silicon Valley Bank and they could lose everything. If Silicon Valley Bank goes bad, down really badly, they probably will, they’ll get something back. But it’s not good to lose money when we put it in the bank. So they have liabilities that are runnable and they began to run. Now I’ve been hearing anecdotally that everyone was like, get your money out of Silicon Valley Bank. So I’m sure they were. Now you have if you’re a Silicon Valley Bank, that’s a huge, huge problem. You have no liquidity. Everyone is asking for their money back. Your last lifeline is to borrow from, let’s say, the Fed or a Federal Home Loan Bank. It looks like they’re already borrowing from the Federal Home Loan Banks and I don’t know if they can borrow even more. A Federal Home Loan Bank is basically a government sponsored agency whose job is to provide cheap loans to the commercial banks they’re already lending to to the Silicon Valley Bank. In theory they could lend more, but they have a lot of exposure to Silicon Valley Bank. So the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which is the bank that’s lending to Silicon Valley Bank, 20% of their loan book is to Silicon Valley Bank.

So if you’re a CFO there, do you want to increase your exposure to this bank that’s probably going bankrupt? So yeah, it’s over for them, which is why the FDIC souped in.

Tony

Those are amazing details and it’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Now what I had read earlier was that there are $171 billion of deposits at Silicon Valley Bank and 175 billion but 151 billion of that is uninsured. So basically $24 billion people can pull $24 billion out, but there’s $151 billion that they may or may not get back. Right. So for a lot of these VCs, early stage tech companies and so on, I don’t know if private equity firms or investment funds bank there, but certainly it seems to me to be a systemic risk, especially in the venture capital community. Is that a fair assumption to make?

Joseph

I don’t think it’s systemic to the banking sector and we can talk about that. But these guys who in that community for sure, Tony, I imagine that a lot of people in that community are banking with Silicon Valley Bank. And if Silicon Valley Bank goes under, they’re going to have to have haircuts and maybe it’s a lengthy process. Maybe they get tied up in bankruptcy court or something. So that’s a liquidity problem for them. And so for that community, yeah, I agree, it could be a big problem.

Tony

So if I’m a limited partner in a venture fund today, I’m checking with that venture fund to make sure that my cash is okay. Is that the process that people would be doing? For people who don’t know, limited partners are the investors who put money into a venture capital fund. And my assumption is a venture capital fund would likely store that money in Silicon Valley Bank. And if they can’t access all of well, they could take the first $150,000 of that. But if they can’t get beyond that, then it’s not just the VC that’s hurt, it’s that limited partner. Is that correct?

Joseph

Yeah. So that losses, like you mentioned, partnership losses flow through from the entity to the partnership. That’s what being a partner is about. I imagine there are some rules depending on your general partner, limited partner, things like that, but yeah, it’s investors that get hurt.

Tony

And so the allocation just both of you guys probably know more about this than I do, but the allocation of, say, venture capital from, say, a pension fund is a relatively small allocation of all of the allocations of, say, a pension fund. So I would suspect that this probably isn’t a systemic risk back to, say, pension funds and other investment funds like we had maybe in 2007-8. Right. It’s probably less of a systemic risk than that was.

Joseph

Yeah, I totally agree. I don’t view this as a systemic risk.

Albert

I agree with that. Tony. I don’t think anything systemic is going to happen because SVB Bank goes under. I mean, SVB Bank is the FTX of the fintech banking world. I mean, everything on there, everything that they invested in, is based on trust, and not very much for the fundamentals at A. So it’s not a surprise that it went under as the Fed has been raising rates. Everyone knows that if the rates rise, the tech sector is one that gets hit the most. So it’s not really a surprise that this happened now.

Joseph

Yeah, I totally agree. When the Fed is raising rates, it’s trying to slow down the economy through sectors that are interest rate sensitive. I think the great irony here is that we all expected that to be real estate, right? But real estate is fine, but we miss the fact that the other really interest rate sensitive sectors is tech. And we see big layoffs in tech. So it’s actually all the well paid people who complete on Twitter who are having a bad problem, but the more blue collar industries seem to be doing fine.

Albert

Yeah. Housing got a boost because there’s a lot of cash buyers. People were cashing out at the behest of bloodstone, buying everything, but they were cashing out three and four times the value of the homes that they had a mortgage on. So they go and buy other homes, pure cash. There’s no mortgage risk in the system for the rate. Just like you were saying, the housing sector is not really affected by rates at the moment. You can see that because the houses are still going up and still a little bit of a shortage. But the tech sector was always the biggest loser of the hawks.

Joseph

One of the things that I hear is that there’s the fiscal stimulus from all the construction stuff, like is flowing into the state and local governments. And so that kind of construction spending seems to be supportive of employment, at least in the construction sector. So the guys who, if they’re building residential houses, maybe they can go and do something that’s benefiting from fiscal stimulus.

Tony

Sure. Here in Texas and probably in Florida, where Albert lives, there is construction all over the place, and it’s helping the tax base, it’s helping the overall impact of related jobs and other things. So it is still very strong, at least in the south.

Albert

Well, look at the layoffs. It’s all been tech and no construction. Construction has a shortage of workers at the moment, that’s the best indicator that you can have at the moment.

Tony

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Tony

Right. Okay, in talking about that strength, let’s talk about the Fed a little bit. Okay. If we were talking two days ago, there would probably be a bias toward the Fed becoming more hawkish. Right.

All the buzz two days ago was, well, we’re going 50. Fed is going to be more hawkish. It’s going to be tough. But over the last 24 hours, things have really started to lean away from that. So what do you see as drivers of the Fed being hawkish and drivers of the Fed being less? So we can’t say that they’re dovish. Right. But it’s more the degree of the rate rise. So what do you see in the calculus that they’re thinking through?

Joseph

Yeah, so let’s level that a little bit. So at the last FOMC conference, Chair Powell basically said that from now on, we’re going to do 25 basis points. He said that through his statement. So the language was that rather than talk about the pace of the hikes, we’re going to talk about the extent. So that’s kind of a that would seem like a done deal. And from my experience with the Fed, very slow, very conservative organization. 75-50-25-25-25, you know, you don’t go from 25 to 50. Now, that’s what everyone assumed. And also corroborated by, let’s say, President Mester. And then Chair Powell kind of threw that whole thing upside down this past week when he was testifying before the House and Senate. He was basically suggesting that, you know, if the data is still strong, we’re going to do 50 until the market began to price that in. So the question ultimately is, is data strong? And that has to do with what happened today with the non farm payrolls and what happens with the CPI report next week. Now, when you’re looking at market pricing, like you suggested, Tony, they seem to be taking out that 50 basis point hike today, Friday, and that could be in part because of fear contagion in the banking sector, I don’t know.

Now, looking at the non farm payroll itself, it looks like the jobs number over 300,000 was comfortably above Bloomberg expectations of about 200 some thousand dollars. But there was a little bit of a mix in it as well because of the unemployment rate increased. I think the pace of a wage increase is also moderated as well. So it seems to be on the stronger side, but not unambiguously. So my perception from this is if the Chair Powell is basically upending everyone’s expectations and putting 50 on the table, the presumption is 50. And this was not clearly weak. We got to watch CPI next week as well. As long as CPI is not like super, like a big disaster, I think the presumption should be about 50 basis points for the March hike.

Tony

So you think the presumption is 50 now?

Joseph

I think today’s headline employment was pretty strong. It’s not something that is weak enough, I think, to take away the presumption. Again. Everything could change with CPI next week, but we’ll see.

Tony

Thank you very much. That’s okay. We know you’re busy, so thank you so much. So Joseph, with the jobs data, there were 50,000 department store jobs in that jobs data. And to me that seems like a statistical extrapolation from an old model or something. I mean, I don’t know of any department store that’s hiring. So when these things come out, what are we supposed to think about that type of data?

Joseph

Yeah, so a lot of people get into the guts of the report and the Fed actually, internally, they have their own model for stuff like this. I would be hesitant to be looking into too much into these adjustments. As you mentioned, they matter. But then you can look at every single job report and say, oh, it’s actually not as strong as it is, or not as weak as it is. For all these little idiosyncratic reasons. I would just take it as it’s presented and knowing of full well, of course, that it is a statistical abstraction of what reality is.

Tony

So is it fair to say you see it more as a kind of a direction than something that’s more specific?

Joseph

Yes. And also if you just average this one with the past few months, it does seem like the labor market not slowing, has decent momentum and there could be revisions going forward. I mean, January was revised slightly, slightly weaker. So it’s just not obvious evidence that data is weak from my reading.

Albert

Tony, for a long time I’ve been saying the Fed should have been doing 50 basis points months ago, but here we are now talking about 50 after doing 25 a few times. I don’t think that they’re going to do 50. I think more that what they’re going to end up doing is talking about QT and doing QT for longer rather than rates at the moment, just because I think Powell and Yellen and the entire crew over there is a little bit worried about the economy, especially after the bank failed. And looking at the jobs numbers, I just can’t see more than that’s. I just think that things will start breaking. If we go 50, we’ll be down 200 points on the S&P, and things will start breaking. And you start wandering down to 3500 on the S&P, you actually make it a financial crisis.

Tony

Isn’t that kind of what they like? They kind of want some things to start breaking. Right. Not that they don’t bankrupt people, but they do want some things to start breaking.

Albert

They keep talking about a soft landing, and that’s the plan at the moment.

Joseph

I agree with Albert. I think the right policy would just be emphasized QT a bit more. It makes perfect sense. I guess we’ll talk about QT in a bit, but it’s a good policy from my perspective, because when you do QT, you’re putting upward pressure on the rates that actually matter to the economy. You hike the Fed funds up and down. Nobody really cares about the overnight rate. When you’re talking about economically sensitive rates, like mortgage rates or like your auto loan rates, those are like the five year, ten year sector, and that can be influenced by QT. So you want to slow the economy down, you want those rates to go higher. But I think the Fed is pretty stubborn when it comes to QT, in part because they don’t really understand they don’t feel like they understand it well. They feel that they understand the overnight rate a bit better.

Tony

Okay, so let’s talk about that. QT is on our agenda, so let’s move to that. So in terms of rates, Joseph, you’re the 50 camp. Albert, you’re the 25 camp. Let’s move to QT. We have been undertaking QT for, what, ten months now or something, and it’s been gradual. Albert, you smile when I say that. What’s your thought?

Albert

Well, I mean, we’ve been doing QT, but then it’s been offset by Yellen’s TGA activity.

Tony

Yeah. Now what are you hearing about the TGA? Has that slowed down?

Albert

It slowed down now, but once the tax revenue comes in late April, she’ll have that again in May.

Tony

Okay. So if we have quantitative tightening, which means the Fed is selling things from their balance sheet into the market, probably at a discounted rate, which takes money out of the out of circulation and it tightens the money supply. Right, but if we have the Treasury issuing funds from the general account, it’s offsetting those QT efforts. Right?

Albert

Yeah, that’s exactly what it’s doing. She’s actually, right now, as we speak, being questioned by the TGA from the House Ways and Means Committee. That’s exactly what she’s been doing, and I think it’s more like why she’s doing it politically rather than anything with economic policy in mind.

Tony

Okay, so what are the politicians generally asking her about, Albert?

Albert

Well, they’re asking her about her sterilization of QT by using the TGA and the effects of inflation because of it at the moment. I have a list of the questions that I can definitely give you guys for afterwards if you want to post them up here. But that’s what they’re asking her about. Why is her action why is she talking about rates when she is a CFO of the country? She is the Treasury Secretary. She’s not the Fed chair. She should be talking about rates one day after Powell comes out being hawkish.

Tony

Right. It’s hard to quit the Fed, I guess. Okay, moving on.

Joseph

I have a question, Albert. Do you have any views on who might be the next vice chair? I mean, right now the frontrunner seems to be Janet Everley, this academic in Northwestern, but I watched the hearings and everyone there was like, from the Democratic side was like, “”oh, we got to have an Hispanic vice chair. We got to have an Hispanic vice chair. And Janet Everley, maybe she has distant relatives or maybe she’s going to write a cookbook about tacos or something like that, but she doesn’t appear to be Hispanic to me.

Albert

Yeah, I don’t know. That decision is going to be made by Brainard who they want is the vice chair. That goes with their liberal policies and enacting and using the Fed to push those political agendas. That’s what they’re looking for. I mean, it could be Hispanic or black or white or whatever, but the base case is that they need someone with a liberal slant in their view to help them out.

Joseph

Yeah. Janet Everly definitely has a liberal slant. For you guys who are not aware, she thought it was a good idea to have a higher inflation target. Maybe that will be in the future, not with Jay Powell, but maybe in the future, maybe like 3%, maybe 4%. Who knows?

Albert

I think 3% is definitely coming no matter what. I don’t think it’s realistic for us to get back down to 2%, especially with the Fed members being former liberal than they were a few years ago.

Tony

Okay, let’s talk about the three 4% rate at some point.

Tony

But let’s get back to QT. Joseph, can you talk us through some of the if the Fed were to accelerate QT, which seems to be something that you’d like to see them do, more of what forms would that take?

Joseph

They could just simply raise the cap for Treasury. So right now the Treasuries can match. The QT pays for Treasuries is a maximum $60 billion a month. They could raise that. So what happens mechanically is that you can think of it as the private sector having to hold more Treasuries. You’re increasing the supply of Treasury debt that must be held by the private sector. So basic supply and demand, increasing supply prices for Treasuries decline and so yields go higher. So that’s a way that they could try to tighten policy by making, let’s say, longer dated interest rates higher. And I think it’s helpful, especially in today’s context. So investors look at the world, look at the future based on their experience in the past. And our experience over the past decade was a Fed who would just cut rates at the drop of a hat. And so because the investor community believes that you have a very, very deeply inverted curve and that’s a big problem because as the Fed is hiking rates on the front end, you don’t see that as much in the ten year. And so you can see, for example, mortgage rates continue to go down as they did in January, thus essentially undoing all the hiking the Fed is doing in the frontend.

Joseph

So you really need the market to either believe that the Fed is higher for longer, or you could have the Fed engineer it by just boosting the supply of longer dated Treasuries. And it’s hard to convince the market of something and the market has a reason to believe that JPowell and his committee of largely dovish committee is just going to cut rates. So it’d be easier to just boost the supply of Treasuries through QT.

Albert

Okay, that’s something that nobody talks about, is durational liquidity. Nobody speaks about that right now with the Fed and the Treasury. I haven’t seen one analyst talk about duration liquidity.

Tony

Okay, so can you guys talk about that? How would they change? Well, first of all, if we focus more on QT, would that potentially pose a threat to, say, banking systems or there are other potential systemic threats that QT could pose for the US.

Joseph

Yeah, it could blow up the Treasury market.

Tony

Okay, tell us how that wouldn’t tell us.

Joseph

So I think there’s huge the great systemic risk today is not in the banks or the private sector. It’s in the public sector. It’s in the Treasury market. And we saw kind of a prelude to that with what happened with the gilt market in the Bank of England last year. For those of you who don’t remember, last year we saw gilt yields basically 30 year long good data gilt yields basically explode higher late last year, and in part because, one, the Bank of England announced that they were doing quantitative tightening and also because the government announced that they were going to issue a whole bunch of gilts. Now there are some levered players in that market who basically blew up. Now if you recall throughout late last year, okay, the summer of last year, there’s a lot of articles about Treasury market liquidity. This is something that I’ve been writing about since last January. And Treasury market liquidity is not really strong, in part because the size of the Treasury market is just growing so quickly. It’s not growing in proportion to the underlying market. So I think about this as like a stadium that gets bigger and bigger, but the exits don’t get any bigger.

Joseph

So 20 years ago we had about $7 trillion in Treasuries outstanding. Today we got about 25. And Biden is going to promise that he’s going to issue even more through his spending. And the underlying market liquidity in the market hasn’t scaled in the same way. 20 years ago we were doing $400 billion a day in cash transactions. Today it’s 600. So again, there is some potential for fragility. Now the market got was looking pretty dicey in the summer last summer, but it got bailed out when recession fears predominated and people began to think that Fed is going to cut rates. Recession, you got to buy Treasuries. But in the event that those recession concerns go away or inflation stays persistent, you can have, I think, some real discontinuous event there where yields spike higher like they did in the UK, which of course wouldn’t lead the Fed to respond. Yeah. So that’s what I view as I’m not really worried about banking or anything like that. So one thing that people have to be aware of is that the banking system has really changed a lot over this past decade. So an easy way to look at that is just Fed QE, right?

Joseph

So now banks have $3 trillion of basically liquidity from QE on their balance sheet. They didn’t have that preg. There’s also a lot more regulation. Now banks are really, really boring businesses. Back then it was exciting. Everyone is making huge bonuses and so forth. But now that’s all in the tech sector.

Tony

Okay, so you say that the gilt blow up happened because of long dated yields. Is there anything, if we move into QT, is there anything the Treasuries could do? Could they move that to the shorter end of the curve to avoid that?

Joseph

I think that would be a great idea. So one of the things that they floated is a buyback operation. So what they would do is they would issue bonds and use that proceeds to buy old bonds. Now I think it would be a good idea to issue shorter dated bonds and buy longer dated bonds. They basically change the duration profile. I don’t think that’s what they want to do. So far they’ve been pretty adamant that they want to make it a maturity bond. Now I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you issued a 30 year bond and. After ten years, it rolls down to a 20 year bond. Now it’s an off the run bond. So an off the run is something that was issued, not recent, and that off the run market is very, very illiquid. So what you could do is you could issue a new on the run 20 year on the runs are very liquid because they’re the recent vintage. Take that money and buy back the old 30 year, which became a 20 year. So you don’t really change the duration of the debt outstanding, just the liquidity profile. That’s what they’re floating.

And maybe that’s something they’ll do. I suspect that it’s not going to be enough. If they want to do something like that, they probably will need to rely well, it’s not going to work, so they’re going to have to rely on the Fed. Just like in the UK, they relied on the Bank of England.

Tony

In Japan. What they’ve been doing particularly kind of seven to ten years ago, the Ministry of Finance was issuing shorter duration debt to buy longer duration debt, and the BOJ was buying that shorter duration debt and letting it expire at maturity. Is that something that we could do here? Where the Treasury would issue shorter duration debt, the Fed would buy it, they would pay off the longer duration debt, and then it would just go into nowhere?

Joseph

They could totally change the maturity structure of Treasury debt. It’d be a really good idea if they did that. They don’t actually need the Fed to buy it. There’s a ton of demand for cash at the front end in the US financial system right now. There’s so much demand that people are putting it into the Fed’s reverse repo facility, which is about $2 trillion. So that means that the Treasury could issue $2 trillion worth of Treasury bills, and the market would just lap it up like that. So they don’t need the Fed to buy it.

Tony

Okay, while we’re here, while we’re talking about people buying Treasuries, I saw some notes over the past week or so where people are saying China is selling their Treasuries, everyone needs to worry. Can you talk to us about that? Joseph Albert, can you talk to us about that? To me, that seems laughable, but it is laughable.

Albert

They need dollars to keep even if you look at if you look at over the long run, I think over the last, like, five years, yeah, sure, they had bought a lot of Treasuries and now they’re selling Treasuries. But it’s pretty even at the moment, if you look going back five years, I don’t even take that kind of argument seriously. When people say that China is going to sell Treasuries and dollars going to crash and blah, blah, blah, buy my crypto, buy my gold, it’s what it usually is. So I personally don’t see it as a big deal. I mean, you know, that’s just the way I think about it, so pretty pretty explicit about it.

Tony

Joseph, what do you think?

Joseph

Yeah, it’s hard for China to find a substitute for Treasuries. So Brad sets there at the Council of Foreign Relations, he’s an expert on this and he has done some pretty interesting detective work. And one of the things that seems interesting is that the China foreign reserves actually hasn’t changed all that much over the past several years. So based on their publicly disclosed data, it stayed around, let’s say three, three and a half trillion over the past few years. But if you recall, China has been making a lot of money through exports. During COVID for example, they were exporting like trades to the US trade deficit with China between US exploded higher. Right. So where is all that money going? It’s not going to the sovereign fund. It must be going somewhere else. I think part of it is going to the commercial banks, but I don’t really know how their data works out. I think they definitely have a huge problem in that they have a lot of exposure to the US. That kind of gives the US political power over them, just like the US could seize Russia’s sovereign reserves. It’s a problem for them.

I don’t know how they can solve it. I’m sure they want to solve it, but so far it seems like they’re stuck, at least for the moment, in Treasury.

Albert

It is a big problem for China because when Yelling calls them up and said, you got to help us out in inflation and crush commodities, you’re going to have to do what Yellen and the Fed say just because of how much they’re held off. I absolutely agree with you on that one.

Tony

Let me bring Tracy in here because I don’t like it when she’s quiet. So, Tracy, what do you think about the issue about Chinese selling US treasuries? Do you see that as an issue from your perspective? Does China have other options? What do you think they’re doing with the money they’re making on US. Export, on exports to the US?

Tracy

Well, I think if we look at the big picture, right, we have seen increased central banks buying gold and selling US treasuries, but we have to look at the bigger picture. More people own US debt than any other country in the entire world, so that’s not going away soon. So I hate to cater to these people and say, yeah, central banks are wearing a lot of gold, but that means that they’re shutting us right? Because it’s simply not true. You still look at the highest countries that own US debt still continue to be the same one china, Japan, et cetera. That’s not going away anytime soon. It is notable in the fact that looking at the gold market, which has been particularly lagging, I think it’s very interesting if we’re looking at the commodity side of things because we’ve seen last year particularly we saw outflows of gold flows, people investing in gold, whether it’s physical, ETF, et cetera, literally for eight months straight. I think that kind of makes this market interesting. But again, I don’t want to conflate that with central banks are buying gold, digging US. Treasuries. That means nobody likes us.

Tracy

Debt anymore.

Albert

That’s an important fact that, yeah, whenever they sell gold or Treasuries, they’re just raising my opinion. They’re just arbitraging for dollars later on. It’s nothing systemic that’s a threat to the US dollar by any means.

Tracy

That was my point. Let’s not make this a bigger issue than it needs to be that we have often seen, yeah, central banks can.

Tony

Walk and chew gum and spin plates and all that stuff at the same time. I think they’re capable. They’re very smart people are capable of doing all this stuff. So okay, just before we move on from QT, albert, is there anything else on QT that you wanted to bring up that you’re watching?

Albert

No, Joseph pretty much talked about it extensively, and there’s not really much I can add. I just think that the proper thing for power to do right now is to accelerate QT and keep rates as they are at the moment.

Tony

Okay, so with housing remaining relatively strong, do you think that they’ll sell off more MBS as a part of their QT portfolio, or do you think they’ll just keep it in the same proportion that it’s been now?

Albert

I think they’ll just keep it in the same proportion right now. I mean, housing at the moment is a big political problem because homes are unaffordable at 70% mortgage rate. So they’re going to have to do something they’re keeping an eye on. That I can guarantee.

Joseph

Yeah. I also note that Powell has been asked his point, Blake, and just said no. He can always change his mind. Powell has a reputation for being a pivotal like he just did. But to Albert’s point, mortgage rates are 7%. That’s kind of already a big drag on housing. If it went to 8%, would that really make that much of a difference? It’s already very high, and you’ve already.

Tracy

Seen housing prices come down extensively, right? Redfin just came out and said 45% decrease in luxury homes and 37.5% decrease. So I think what we’re seeing is housing prices decrease in response to the increase in mortgage rates.

Tony

Okay, very good. Okay, let’s move on. Since we’ve been talking about the US. Government for the first two segments, let’s move on to the US. Government for the third segment and talk about America’s rudderless energy policy. So, Tracy, you were tweeting about a speech that Jennifer Granholm, U. S. Energy Secretary, made earlier this week, and I want to kind of parse that through with you because she is the spokesperson for US. Government’s energy policy.

And there just seems to be a lot of mixed messages. And I’ve got a tweet on the screen about the grand home speech where you said she said, we’ll still need fossil fuels in 30 to 40 years, then to send it into how the Inflation Reduction Act makes the US. Irresistible for new energy. So can you talk us through kind of what were you thinking of as you heard her, and what were your big takeaways?

Tracy

Well, the first thing I want to note in that speech is that for the last two years, this administration has been pushing on the energy industry, right. And has been talking about how they have all these profits and they’re not.

Tony

Producing greeny energy companies. Greedy.

Tracy

That’s been the mo, right. For the last two years. And then in this speech, she did like, 180 when asked the question.

Tony

How.

Tracy

Do you think oil companies, oil and gas companies are responding? She said, we’re very happy how oil and gas companies are responding to our request for like, she gave them props, which is literally 180 degree. So to me that I was like, what? Because really our production has not really increased at all. But suddenly she’s at Fair a week giving props to the energy companies because.

Tony

The CEOs were there.

Tracy

Well, right. So it’s a huge mixed message. The other important thing, I think, to take away from that particular speech was that the US. Wants to move on to energy transition. We want to move away from China. We want to be able to mine our own metals and minerals in the US. For this energy transition. But she was quick to add that the permitting process is a nightmare. It takes ten years just to get a permit. And then if you get lawsuits on top of that, to get to an idea from, I want to build this mine in the US. To actual fruition is a ten year permitting process, and then it’s then plus however many lawsuits you have. I thought that was really interesting and that she actually admitted that the permitting process was completely horrible. Since her administration, or the administration that she works for, has said, what we want to do is streamline this permitting process. We’re going to give people all these incentives to build mines, et cetera. Basically, what she did I take away from the speech is basically what she said was completely opposite of what this administration has been telling us, and that is we have all these incentives.

Tracy

We can build all these mines, no problem. And we love the fact that the US. Oil and gas companies have responded to us and are producing more, which is outright not true. Sorry.

Tony

Okay.

Albert

These are political pipe dreams by the Biden administration. As long as the EPA is there and staff with environmental Nazis, there’s no way that manufacturing and mining is going to propel to the next level in the United States.

Tony

Biden budget proposes 17,000 more EPA staff.

Albert

Oh, yeah, that’s a great sign. That’s a great sign.

Tony

But what they’re saying, tracy, tell me if I’m wrong. They’ve already pushed all this money or they’re already planning to push all this money out into the market. Okay. And this week, the EU developed a proposal to kind of complement the US. And compete with the US. So there’s dump trucks of cash now out there to develop alternative energy. But both the US. And Europe have very restrictive policies on getting those mines together. So out of one side of the mouth, they’re saying they want alternative energy for a safe future. But the reality is they’re paying companies to have Congolese children mind cobalt. I mean, that’s the reality of the situation, right.

Tracy

Situation is it’s not in my backyard. Right, right. That’s the reality situation.

Tony

We want cars that plug in, and we don’t want people to know that Congolese children are mining cobalt. But that’s the crude, stark, horrific reality of these policies today.

Albert

Absolutely, yeah. If you want an American built iPhone or American built Tesla, from the battery on all the way up, it’s going to cost you $5,000 for an iPhone and $190,000 for a little smallest Tesla you can possibly buy.

Tracy

Yeah, it doesn’t matter because it’s never going to be enough, but it doesn’t matter. You think Yellen went to Africa, right? Her trick on Africa, all we heard was she went into Africa to join the renewable generator. That is not why she went. She went to go make deals for mining in Africa. It’s really the back of that situation.

Tony

Wow, that’s terrible. I mean, it’s just the rainbows and unicorns of the policy as it’s portrayed versus the reality, the ugly reality of this industry is pretty horrific. So, Tracy, as you watched Grand Home, what did you think about the oil and gas sector? Did you think, okay, everything’s fine, I don’t have to worry about all this restrictive stuff for 510 years, they’re just going to keep on with status quo?

Tracy

No, I think once you’re looking at the oil and gas sector and you have to look at what actual oil companies said. So you had Scott Sheffield, a pioneer, say there’s five good years left of the permian. That’s a scary thought. Right. And there’s no incentive to drill more because the government’s telling you that in ten years, we want you totally phase out. And so we are going to have a serious problem. And I have said repeatedly, I think that the 13.1 million barrels per day the US. Produced at the end of 2019 in December is probably the height of that’s. It that’s the height of shell, unless something drastically changes within policy.

Tony

Okay, so it sounds to me, since there’s five good years left to the permian, since the US. Government wants this phased out in ten years, there is no ability for oil and gas and money firms actually to have a capital planning cycle. Right. Anything that has longer than a five year payback just is not worth investing in, is that fair to say?

Tracy

I would say that’s fair to say in the United States. Now, if we look offshore, which is really interesting, and that’s where we’re seeing a lot of investment in, say, Guyana or Namibia or a lot of offshore sector kind of seems to be the focus right now in other countries because they just don’t have the same policy hurdles that the United States does.

Tony

Okay.

Albert

Yeah. All places where the EPA is not at.

Tony

Right. So the entire US energy policy and renewables policy is just a big Nimby policy, like you said, just not in my backyard.

Tracy

It is right now. We’ll see what happens. There’s a project going on in Alaska right now which people should be paying attention to their policymakers want this to go through. I sincerely doubt that it’s going to go through because no majors want to invest up there because they run into a bunch of lawsuits. Right. And so why would you knowingly, even if you bought the land rights or the leases, it’s a horrible place because you know that you’re going to be faced with a million lawsuits and give me a million hurdles and whatever. Even if you look at the recent Gom auction, now, you have environmentalists suing anybody that bought leases. It’s a lose lose situation if you’re really trying to explore more gas in the United States right now.

Tony

Okay, so when you say it’s a horrible place, do you mean specifically that Alaska is a horrible place? Because I think we have, like, three there.

Tracy

Alaska is amazing place. I have friends from Alaska.

Tony

Okay.

Tracy

I’m just saying the problem is that you run into a whole lot of regulatory issues, and then you run into a whole lot of lawsuits that are going to take place. And really, that’s a whole separate issue. Now, I really wrote about this in 2020 was the land that they auctioned off is part of a reserve?

Tony

That’s always a good idea.

Tracy

Probably should have never been. Right? And that’s why it really got no interest. It did get a bid from Chevron again, but I don’t see that project going forward ever.

Tony

Okay. Yeah, it’s crazy. And as I try to figure out the policy and I talk to you and I talk to other people, I just can’t figure out what we’re going to look like in five years. And if I was in charge of capex budgets with upstream, downstream, midstream, I honestly wouldn’t know what to do.

Tracy

Because there’s that’s why we continue to look at these companies, continue to focus on dividends, capital, discipline, and paying down debt. I mean, you have to remember, these studies were not making money for years.

Tony

That’s an important point. So when the President of the United States says that Chevron is a terrible company for giving large dividends and doing large share buybacks, they’re doing that because they cannot spend that money on capex. Because they don’t know what the environment is going to be like in five or ten years, is that correct?

Tracy

Yes, exactly. And that’s the point. And they’re trying to gain shareholders. You have to look, two decades ago the oil and gas sector was 20% of the SF 500 weighting wise. Right. And at the lowest in 2020 we were a little bit below 2%. We’re now at about 4%. But you can see where that market has fared fairly poorly.

Tony

Yeah, but Tracy, it’s all going to be AI software forward, so just complete intelligence.

Tracy

It’s going to be chevron AI.

Albert

Yeah, I’ll fund it by a new Silicon Valley bank.

Tracy

That’s right.

Tony

Okay guys, we have a big week ahead going into leading up to the Fed meeting. So what are you all expecting? Joseph, what do you expect to see next week with the various prints coming up?

Joseph

It’s all about the CPI. I mean, I want to know if it’s actually strong. If it’s strong, then we got 50 basis points blocked in right now. Like you mentioned, Tony, that’s been taken out of the market. It could be a violent repricing. So that’s what we want to focus. So I’m suspecting that a lot of people are pricing in rate cuts in part because of what they perceive to be some risk in the banking sector. I just don’t see that. And so when we see that come out of the market, we could have rates go back to expecting a more higher for longer stance by the Fed.

Tony

Okay, great. What is a high CPI to you?

Joseph

I haven’t checked this expectations yet, but whatever is higher than expectations.

Tony

Okay, so literally higher than expectations, if it’s higher than the consensus, then that’s a high CPI.

Joseph

Yeah. If you think back a couple of months, we’re seeing CPI go down. Right. Deceleration, I want to know if it really just did reaccelerate or if it just kind of gave back. What the increase from last month?

Tony

Okay, great. That’s perfect. Albert, what are you looking for next week?

Albert

Same thing CPI is to make a break for the Fed on 25 verse 50. I’m hoping somehow they’ve managed to manipulate the CPI number to make it somewhat in line with the consensus. Hoping for a nothing burger probably be the best option at the moment. Something meaning consensus. If core CPI is hot, like Joseph said, fifty S, fifty S locked in.

Tony

And if super core CPI is hot, that just reinforces wage expectations and it’s all this super circular situation. Right? Okay, so if we do see a 50, do you see an impact on equities? Like a negative impact on equities? Do you think it’d be sideways?

Albert

Without a doubt. Without a doubt. I think if they go out and do 50, I think we’re down 200 points in the S and P pretty quickly in a week. If they do 25, we might even rally 100 points. You know how it is, we’re in bitcoin world now in the S and P. Right?

Tony

Exactly. Okay, that’s good to know. Tracy. We’ve seen oil kind of move sideways. We see energy kind of move sideways lately. What’s happening and what do you expect to see?

Tracy

You know what? I think we talked about this the other week. I continue to think it’ll move sideways. I think we’re in a range. OPEC is very comfortable with that $80 to $90 range for Brent crude oil. And so I see no reason for much to change in that. I think as we head into high demand season right, june, July, August, we could see an uptick in prices. But for right now, the market is very comfortable.

Tony

Okay. And then this Saudi Iran peace agreement that was announced today, do you think that has an impact on crude supply? Do you think that could push crude prices down?

Tracy

I don’t think that, no. Because OPEC has existed for a very long time. Iran is an original member of OPEC.

Tony

They were the founding member. Right.

Tracy

So that relationship has existed cohesively beyond any of the other geopolitical problems that they have had. And Saudi Arabia has always said that this relationship will exist beyond whatever other problems we are having. So I don’t think within the oil market, it really changes any dynamic because that relationship was already solid.

Tony

That’s good to know. Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time. Thanks for all your knowledge. Have a great weekend. And have a great weekend. Thank you.

Albert

Thanks, Tony.

Joseph

Bye, guys.

Albert

Thank you.

Categories
Podcasts

BBC: How are sanctions affecting Russia?

This podcast is owned and originally published by BBC here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172ydqbbld0z8y

The BBC’s Business Matters podcast covers a range of topics, including the positive economic signs in the US, the Russian tech brain drain, and the potential for a new plug to be the secret to a green transition.

Guests Emily Eng, NPR’s Beijing correspondent, and Tony Nash, founder and CEO of the financial forecasting platform Complete Intelligence in Houston, provide their insights on these topics.

They discuss the impact of economic sanctions on Russia and how the country is responding to them, including increasing exports to China and reducing its crude oil supplies by 500,000 barrels per day to push up prices.

The conversation also touches on a controversial proposal by the European Commission to seize Russian assets to help rebuild Ukraine.

Additionally, the podcast covers the announcement by the US federal government that all new garages and four courts built in the country will have to include charging points for electric vehicles and its potential impact on accelerating EV adoption.

Transcript

BBC

Hi there. Welcome to Business Matters. My name is Ed Butler, and today, despite all the political rows we’ve been hearing about a potential debt default, there are more positive economic signs from the United States. This week, we read the tea leaves with a former presidential economic adviser and hear about the new incumbent in that job. Also, we consider the Russian tech brain drain, and why a new plug could be the secret to a green transition.

Emily

This will definitely help accelerate EV adoption. Charging is one of the things that really does stand in the way of someone’s decision about going electric.

BBC

All the latest on electric vehicles in the States coming up in the show, and I’m going to be joined throughout the program by two guests on opposite sides of the world. Emily eng is NPR’s Beijing correspondent, although she is based in Taiwan at the moment. Hi, Emily, can you hear us?

Emily

Yes, I can. Good morning.

BBC

Great to have you on the show. Tony Nash. He’s the founder and CEO of the financial forecasting platform Complete Intelligence in Houston, Texas. Hi, Tony.

Tony

Hi, Ed. Thank you.

BBC

Great to have you both with us. Tony Nash this is obviously a function of, to some extent of the economic sanctions that we’ve been talking about, those applied against Russia. I mean, the funny thing about this is to some extent Russia hasn’t done that badly in the last twelve months, at least initially. I mean, that’s what the headline data is telling us. You look further into the future, I mean, are you seeing a kind of more serious decline potentially with Russia now because of what’s been applied against it?

Tony

Sure, there are a couple of things to look at. First, in the four weeks in January, Russia exported more crude oil than during any four-week period in 2021. So they are recovering their export capacity to places like India, China, parts of Africa, and other places. So, you know, it really hasn’t necessarily hurt their crude exports. When you look at imports, they’ve really substituted, say, the west for China. Their imports from China have grown by, I think, $8 billion a month. It’s got to be more than that, but I saw some numbers recently, but they’ve substituted imports from China. So in terms of trade, they’ve really turned eastward and southward instead of westward, which is just a natural response to sanctions. So where they’ve hurt is domestically in terms of things like industrial production of, say, machinery and domestic goods outside of, say, coal and oil and gas.

BBC

What the west, of course, has tried to do most recently is apply these caps on Russian crude exports. Now you’re saying that they’re getting around those or are they simply selling a larger amount of crude but at a lower price?

Tony

They’re getting around them. They haven’t hit the price cap yet. The crude is trading, or what has been trading at, I think, a $20 discount to the price cap. So they’re not even hitting the price cap. There’s a $20 discount to Euros crude. What Russia on its own, announced last week is that they’ll reduce their supplies by 500,000 barrels per day. So Russia is, on its own, taking barrels off the market as a way to push up crude prices. So the volume and the price caps really aren’t having an impact necessarily on crude itself. Of course, the Russian economy is being hit. Of course the isolation, of course other things are impacting Russia. I’m not trying to say that there are no impacts at all, but in terms of that natural resources, trade, and some of the import substitution, they’re actually doing okay.

BBC

Yeah, import substitution. This is the thing, and it’s a fascinating subject, actually. I was suddenly trying to dig into this, and it’s really complicated. But Tony, one last tantalizing thought on this. An element we understand, what Bloomberg is reporting that may be part of these new sanctions from the EU is to force banks to report more information on what Russian central bank assets they are actually holding. Because of course, the EU and other countries want to know how much has been frozen in Western bank accounts that used to belong to the Russian state budget. Now, this is seen possibly as a first step towards a controversial move touted by the European Commission, not just to freeze Russian assets, but to actually seize them, to use them to start rebuilding Ukraine or to at least pay Ukraine back for the damage that’s been caused. I mean, gosh. Do you think that that could be something we’ll be looking at in the next few weeks?

Tony

I think as a threat, I guess useful as a threat, but as an actual policy, I think it would be very difficult to execute and justify. Usually, these things are seized for years or decades. Sorry, frozen for years or decades, not necessarily seized. So I think that could be a very problematic policy to carry out.

BBC

Because it would set precedents.

Tony

Yes, that’s right.

BBC

For western countries, I suppose. Okay.

Tony

And the banking system that supports Russian assets or sovereign assets, would be dangerous for people like Russia going forward.

BBC

Tony Nash, thank you for now but stay tuned to this because this is big news. If you’re a car owner who wants to buy an electric vehicle, maybe you’ve got an electric vehicle already, especially if you’re in the US. The Us federal government has said that from now on, all charges that are used in the garages and the four courts around the states must be American made and have to be usable for all-electric vehicles. That means that Tesla, which has had most of the existing charging points, they have to carry, adapters, allowing other cars to use them. I spoke earlier about this with Alexis and John of Business Insider in Detroit. Well, Tony Nash, there you are in the big oil state, famously, there Texas. How is EV adoption going in the States?

Tony

It’s great. I’m sorry. It’s great. A lot of my neighbors have EVs, and I think it’s probably not as dense as, say, San Francisco or something. But we do have a lot of EVs here in Texas.

BBC

You’ve got a lot of territories to cover, though, don’t you? I mean, if you’re a driver. We do, and I have an electric vehicle. Every time I’ve gone 100 miles down the road, of course, I’m starting to sweat at the thought that, you know, at some point I’m going to have to refuel, otherwise I’m going to stop on the highway. Tony Nash are you confident that the move to electric vehicles is going to move as fast as some politicians, I suppose particularly politicians in Europe, are saying that we can sort of phase out the internal combustion engine in the next few years and rely entirely on electric vehicles? It’s going to require an awful lot of infrastructure. An awful lot of rare earth. Exactly, that’s right.

Tony

A lot of infrastructure. I mean, I understand the aggressive plans, but I just don’t think it can happen on that time scale. So it seems to me that maybe add ten years to it and sure, that makes sense. And to be honest, ten years in terms of adoption, in terms of building this stuff is really just the blink of an eye. So sure, I think it’ll happen, but I think it’s going to take a bit longer than people right now believe.

BBC

Right, it’s going to take longer, but that’s going to leave, I guess, a lot of politicians with egg on their faces, isn’t it?

Tony

That won’t be the first time. Quite true. Especially American politicians. Won’t be the first time.

BBC

Quite true. evelyn professor Jason Furman. Tony Nash, obviously he’s speaking in an upbeat way. He’s a supporter of the Democratic cause. Are you sensing a slightly kind of warmer, more positive mood in the US right now over its economic performance?

Tony

I think the mood is tentative because inflation is affecting everything. So if we look at that retail sales number, if you look at it in inflation-adjusted terms, we actually saw a decline of retail sales by 2.3%, and it was the fifth consecutive year-on-year decline. So five months in a row we’ve seen negative retail sales if we adjust for inflation. So I think inflation really covers everything. One of the things that the professor said that I’m not really sure is right is he says the White House can’t do anything about inflation. So we have Janet Yellen, who is a Treasury Secretary reporting to the White House, who is spending $140,000,000,000 a month from the treasury general account, and it’s offsetting all of the work that the Fed is doing. So the treasury is actually putting $140,000,000,000 into markets every month to keep markets booming. When the Fed is raising interest rates and selling off its balance sheet. So the US Treasury is actually and literally offsetting all of the good that the Fed is trying to do.

BBC

It’s interesting because we got Lyle Brainer coming from the Fed right this week to the White House as an economic advisor. You’re seeing that the political executive and the Fed are basically in conflict.

Tony

Absolutely. And Lail Brainerd is very smart. She’s fantastic. But she is very much a dove. She’s very much a loose monetary policy believer. And so what Janet Yellen is doing at the Fed in terms of pumping money in through the treasury general account, Lail Brainerd would be an absolute supporter of. And so we have to be very, very careful of inflation. All of these stimulatory activities really hurt your average worker. So there’s a concept called core inflation which really takes out everything energy, food, and so on and so forth. And really all it’s reflective of is service industry wages. Okay? So what we like to see is a headline number which will say 6% or something and what we’ll talk about is a core number which may be 1.2%. All that really means is that your hourly workers are being squeezed by inflation. So when the headline exceeds the super core inflation rate it just means that your hourly workers are being squeezed. And so it’s a really tough environment for wage workers.

BBC

Okay? It’s a tough environment. The bigger issue perhaps. Meanwhile, Tony, we still have this debt default issue, don’t we? We’ve been hearing about it in the headlines. Yet another cliff edge approaching in the United States. The wearyingly inevitable to some people kind of confrontation between Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Tony

Yeah, I think what’s happened is the US has not actually had a budget for years and my understanding is what is trying to be negotiated is for the US to actually start doing an annual budget again that gets approved by Congress which is their constitutional role. One of the other items that I know are under discussion is this Treasury general account issue. Kind of profligate spending from the treasury to support markets. So there are some issues. It’s not just about the full faith and credit of the US. Of course, nobody wants the US to default but we’ve had some pretty ugly spending patterns for the past well as far as I can remember and I think some of that is just being discussed to come under control. So the US won’t default but it’s going to take some time to come to an agreement.

BBC

Yeah, indeed it will. We’re probably just going to be talking about it for weeks and weeks and weeks.

Tony

Well, I don’t think people realize there are thousands of protests in China every year. It’s not rare to have protests in China. Some of them are local workplace protests. Some of them are bigger. There was a protest east of Wuhan a few years ago about the location of I think a plastics factory or something like that. And there was one in Guangdong about, I think, an incineration plant or something, probably four or five years ago. But there are thousands of protests in China. It’s good that this is happening, and it’s a good discussion to have, and it’s good that Western media are able to view it. So every society has protested and every society has disagreements, and China is no different. Yeah, but there are older people, and even during the COVID lockdowns, the aunties in the buildings were yelling at the people, bringing food to them, and yelling at the police. So there is a difference in the age population in China. So I just don’t find any of this surprising, whether it’s a protest or a deference to old people.

BBC

What are they yelling down at the government? I mean, is this an escalation in the sense of the language, perhaps the boldness of some of the protesting and the way it’s being put?

Tony

They’re not saying, down with the CCP. Right? So if Beijing will let local governments take the flak for local issues, that’s not all that abnormal. It’s not a daily occurrence, but it’s not all that abnormal. If they were shouting down at the CCP, of course, that protest would have been squashed, but local governments and local government officials always take the hit for these types of issues. That’s normal in China.

BBC

Okay, Tony and Emily and Tony Nash, I suppose workers, you know, if they did kick up a fuss, for example, at a handful of Starbucks stores, they are still, particularly they’re still potentially vulnerable to just being fired, aren’t they? I mean, how protected are they from that kind of retaliatory action if they were to try and organize just on a shop-by-shop basis?

Tony

Yeah, I honestly don’t know. I think that would have to do with the contracts they negotiate. As your guest said, unionizing is one thing, but getting a contract is a whole different level. So I think her interview is very interesting. And what’s really interesting to me is what is leading to this desire to unionize. People obviously don’t feel like they’re getting fair pay and fair benefits, and that’s something that really needs to be looked at across companies.

BBC

Yes. And that is what seems to be a legacy of the pandemic, partly, wasn’t it? People went home, they were kind of laid off or furloughed for often long periods, they reflected, and there is a kind of militancy that seems to have left as a legacy.

Tony

What’s interesting to me is Starbucks is supportive of this, but they’re also the company that people want to unionize under. Right? And so they have the orientation toward doing that, but they’re not providing on their own the benefits and the pay that would keep people from unionizing. So I just think it’s an interesting circular discussion. Tesla is a different story. They’re an auto company in different parts of the country, automakers are highly unionized. So I don’t think it should be any surprise to Musk that that’s happening in Taiwan.

BBC

Thank you so much for all your thoughts, your words, and your wisdom. And to Tony nash there at Complete Intelligence in Houston, Texas. My name is Ed Butler.

Categories
QuickHit Visual (Videos)

QuickHit: There are a quarter billion barrels of oil headed to China right now

Co-Founder of TankerTrackers.com Samir Madani joins us for this week’s QuickHit episode where he talked about where the oil is coming and going, explained the volatility around oil and VLCCs, and if China has the capacity to store the quarter billion barrels of oil that they are buying on the cheap.

 

TankerTrackers.com is a service that Sam started with a couple of friends from four years ago. They track tankers that carry crude oil and gas condensates, to give the moms and pops of this world a heads up on what’s happening in the oil flow situation. The company aims to deviate from the black-and-white narrative in mass media to show the world the grey area that oil is not always the cause of war.

 

Follow Tony on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TonyNashNerd

Follow Sam on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Samir_Madani

Check out the CI Futures platform to forecast currencies, commodities, and equity indices: https://www.completeintel.com/ci-futures/

 

***This QuickHit episode was recorded on September 2, 2020.

Last week’s QuickHit was with political economic consultant Albert Marko where he explained about this “perceived recovery” and the artificial market.

 

The views and opinions expressed in this QuickHit episode are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any content provided by our guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.

 

Show Notes

 

TN: Crude oil and trade have a lot to do with economic health globally. We’ve just gone through COVID. We’ve gone through a lot of government-mandated closures and there’s been quite a lot of discussion about the rate at which economies are coming back. You see this every day, right? You see the crude trade, you see international trade. How do things look from your perspective?

 

SM: What we’ve noticed is that since January to now, exports have (except the USA) fell from 19 million barrels a day in exports to around 14 million barrels a day. 4.5 million barrels a day in drop between January and now. That’s a lot. That’s 120 million barrels a month, which is not shipped out now.

 

We see immense amount of barrels heading over to China because they are buying on the cheap. We saw around a quarter billion barrels of oil headed towards China right now. And of that quarter billion, half of it is already in their Anchorage area. They have over 100 million barrels that are just floating and waiting to get on to shore.

 

The reason for this is because of the flooding in China, which slows down consumption of gasoline. But it picks up consumption of diesel for the heavy machines that are going to move on the land and so on.

 

Refinery runs worldwide right now are much lower than the year on year because of the fact that gasoline consumption is down.

 

What I’m waiting for in the EIA report is not how much inventory has been removed or added, but the refinery runs. How much gasoline is being created out of the food processing? So I’m waiting for a moving average because you shouldn’t rely on the weekly numbers. You should look for the moving average. Wait for that number to cross 15 million barrels per day. That’s my threshold to say that the U.S. economy and the whole thing is coming back roaring again. So because there’s only a small window between 15 and 18 and around 17.5, 18 when it was actually at peak. So I’m very positive that we’ll come across 15 probably in the new year for sure.

 

TN: In the new year. So Q1, you think things are coming back?

 

SM: Definitely. Definitely.

 

TN: Brent is in the mid 40s now. We see both Brent and WTI climbing slowly through the end of the year. Our view is that pricing will tick up in Q1 and then we see it trailing off a little bit later in the year. But we really do see a build through Q1. So it’s good. Thank you for confirming what we’re seeing.

 

You’re saying China’s got a quarter billion barrels in Anchorage and in transit, right? What’s their storage capacity? Is their storage capacity in excess of that, or will this stuff stay in floating storage?

 

SM: We did an actual manual survey. We went to storage farm of the storage farm with satellite imagery. And as compared to 2 years ago, you will actually see on Google Earth around 250 to 300 million barrels more than what it had. We have day-fresh images from Planet Labs and we were able to go in and see that year on year, China has the ability to add around a quarter billion barrels of free space. This is a drag and drop method with the standard size storage tanks of 100,000 cubic meters, which is 620,000 barrels. They just drop farms and you see just a whole new farm will pop up.

 

Since the consumption is down, there’s no pressure for them to do more. But we saw around 1.4 billion barrels of space and 1.1 billion barrels of occupancy. That was two years ago.

 

TN: Two years ago. It just seems like there’s so much supply and burning off that supply is still a challenge. We spoke with somebody from the Panama Canal about a month ago when she was talking about how LNG was redirected from the US to China to Europe or something. Are you still seeing redirection of shipments? Or are we back to almost normal trade patterns?

 

SM: In crude oil, we actually see a dog-eat-dog situation going on right now. For instance, Venezuela’s exports are down. It’s a toilet flush. It went down to a quarter million barrels a day now in our latest report. We’re using visual confirmation and I’ve never seen the number that low out of Venezuela. But here we are, we’re under 300 thousand for sure. For the average this year, it was around over half a million barrels a day.

 

But now lately, what happened is it just completely plummeted. A lot of the exports are going just to other countries so that they can bring in gasoline in exchange. It’s a barter.

 

What happens is, because they are shipping heavy sour crude oil, somebody else is going to eat their lunch. China wants to import that. India wants to import that. A lot of other countries in the Far East, they have heavy sour because they need the asphalt, they need the diesel. Why? Because they’re expanding their infrastructure.

 

What happened is that Iran started sending off a lot of the heavy sour lately. I noticed a lot of barrels heading out over that way. They’re getting assistance from other fleets from outside the country. The Chinese refiners and so on, they are dispatching vessels to pick up the oil. It’s not just the national running tanker company that’s delivering the oil.

 

TN: I’m really interested in that Iran-China trade lane. And you covered that a lot. With the circumvention of different agreements and embargoes, I see a lot of coverage of that. Do you see a growing dependence on Iranian oil out of China or does that seem to be declining? Do you see a diversity of suppliers? Of course, China has never had a single supplier. But do you see a growing number of suppliers and a growing dependence, say on Iranian crude? Or is it the other way around? Is Iran becoming increasingly dependent on China as an export market?

 

SM: Iran is growing more dependent on China because they’ve had four decades to prepare the whole Plan B for sanctions and so on. So they’ve really polished it up. They’ve smoothened out all the rough edges when it comes to sanctions so they know what they’re doing. But now, when I see how many barrels are leaving the country, and they look at the ratios of where it’s being sent, yes, they do send a lot to Syria, but it’s no more than usually around 100,000 barrels a day.

 

Once in March, a saw over a quarter million barrels a day. That’s because they have so much production going on in Iran and so little storage space. They have to get rid of it. And they are shipping a lot. So the current media narrative is that they’re exporting about somewhere between 70,000 and 200,000 barrels a day. That’s because those factories are only using AIS data, which is automatically picked up by systems. But what we do is the visual confirmation with satellite imagery, and we see around three to five times that. Somewhere between 600 and a million. And 600,000 barrels a day, that’s a lot. That’s 30 million barrels a month.

 

And so they have to get rid of these barrels because if they don’t, their production will have to drop even more to a point where they can’t revive those mature oil wells. It’s very costly to kick them back into action once sanctions do get listed.

 

And with the virus, what they do is they consume a lot domestically. They make it very cheap. And, because they’ve got to get rid of it, they store as much as they can. If they ran out of storage space on land, they put it on the vessel and they put on many vessels.

 

But now I’ve seen that the floating storage has dropped and shipped out a lot. China is the big buyer and there’s so many ways to deliver it to China. You can either go straight or you can meet another vessel halfway in the Strait of Malacca and so it’s a ship to ship transfer.

 

So, yes, Iran is more dependent on China than vice versa. And China does report their barrels is coming in from whoever the last port call was. So it’ll be Malaysia, it’ll be Indonesia, or someplace in between. It’s not coming in as Iranian anymore. Although in the latest monthly report, they had to show something, because this was obviously direct.

 

TN: You mentioned floating storage and VLCC market and it’s gone from a quarter million dollars a day back in April to like 6,000 dollars a day now. What happened there and why is that price just collapsed?

 

SM: It just deflated so rapidly. That thing was so much more volatile than Bitcoin back in 2017, 2016. The first thing you heard was the sanctions scare, the volume type of fleets back when, it’s almost a year ago or so. And so the Dalian Tanker Fleet was a large fleet or VLCC supertankers. 2 million dollars a piece and about 40 of them. So that created a scare hype in the market that there’ll be a shortage of vessels which were allowed to go to certain ports or most ports.

 

What happened was that the US, they used that as a means to improve the negotiation when it comes to the Phase 1 Trade Deal. And so they loosened up on those waivers, and eventually that was the main issue.

 

Then came the floating storage situation as a result of COVID and then that spike the price again. After that, it has come down quite a lot. So that’s moving a lot of oil back in Q2. And then it just quickly plummeted because Saudi just went from over 9 million barrels a day down to 6. That killed off the demand.

 

We saw occupancy of the VLCCs go from more than 50% down to early 40s. And these are 802 operating VLCCs worldwide, 600 something Suezmas and 1,053 Aframax. It’s a lot of barrel space out there available still today. So obviously, the prices have dropped.

Categories
News Articles

US and China: The odd couple, decoupled

This article is originally published at https://www.euromoney.com/article/b1n39tw56vk8fs/us-and-china-the-odd-couple-decoupled

 

The US and China are growing apart by the day, and whether Trump or Biden is in the White House come January may make no difference. What does this mean for financial institutions everywhere?

 

In March 2001, America’s hawkish defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld handed a report to George W Bush. It urged the new US president to see not Russia but China as the primary threat, and to redeploy more military resources to Asia.

 

Doing so would have altered history, but that had other plans. The September 11 attacks redirected Washington’s gaze from Beijing to west Asia. Three months after that, China joined the World Trade Organization and began its rise to become a trading superpower.

 

For 15 years, relations between the two powers were mostly cordial. Then Donald Trump came to power.

 

By now, America’s 45th president’s act is a known quantity. There is a lot of huffing and puffing, but most of it is hot air.

 

Except when it comes to China.

 

On the campaign trail, Trump accused Beijing of currency manipulation, stealing intellectual property and being “neither an ally or a friend” to America.

 

After the election, he dialled up the narrative, appointing Peter Navarro, author of ‘Death by China’, as his trade adviser. Later, he installed secretary of state Mike Pompeo and commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, China hawks both.

 

A trade war followed, then sanctions. Washington imposed tariffs of $360 billion on Chinese goods; Beijing retaliated with $110 billion in tariffs on US products.

 

All of that, it seems, was just a warm-up.

 

Trump banned smartphone firm Huawei from buying US semiconductors; in August, the firm said it was running short of processor chips. He then slapped sanctions on officials in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

 

Beijing scoffed, but its banks didn’t. Terrified of being cut out of the dollar-funded financial system, lenders including Bank of China and China Construction Bank (CCB) are reportedly weighing up whether to do business with the officials.

 

 

Continuous hits

 

And the hits keep coming. Over the summer, as Covid cases continued intermittently to spike, the White House zeroed in on the financial markets.

 

On August 6, the president’s working group on financial markets – a set of powerful US regulators – said firms might need to de-list from US bourses by January 2022 if they do not provide access to their audit papers.

 

China is the only nation named in the report, and it follows a host of accounting scandals involving US-listed mainland firms, including Luckin Coffee.

 

On August 19, the US state department told American colleges and universities to sell any holdings of Chinese securities in their endowments.

 

It said all endowments, whose total market value is more than $600 billion, had a “moral obligation and perhaps a fiduciary duty” to manage “clean investments and clean endowment funds”, a phrase it left vague – perhaps intentionally so.

 

There are some who dismiss this is as grandstanding, noting the rise in rhetoric in the lead-up to the Republican Party’s convention, taking place now.

 

But this ignores Trump’s record on China. He targets its frailties with laser precision. Beijing has to import high-end semiconductors, so he cuts off that source. China is more dependent on trade with the US than vice versa, so hits that, too.

 

The same is true with those sanctions. No bank, even one run by Beijing, wants to be unable to raise money and lend in US dollars. Until the renminbi is a strong international currency, that will also be an Achilles heels.

 

“The folks advising the White House on China are very smart,” says Tony Nash, a former adviser to think tanks in Washington and Beijing, and founder and CEO of Complete Intelligence, an artificial intelligence and data analytics platform. “The bumbling act is not the reality. These people really know where its pain points are.”

 

 

Future flux

 

The future is in a state of flux and impossible to know, but a few thoughts occur.

 

Some level of US-China decoupling is inevitable. Firms are relocating factories from China to southeast Asia. Japan has set aside $2.2 billion to aid re-shoring.

 

Whoever is in the White House on January 20, rapprochement is unlikely. Relations between the two will be chilly if it’s Joe Biden or frosty if it’s Trump.

 

More Chinese firms will list in Hong Kong and on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style Star Market, but not all will abandon the US, which offers capital, specialist investors and a chance to get personal wealth far from Beijing’s prying eyes. On August 10, wealth management portal Lufax filed to raise up to $3 billion in a US IPO by year’s end.

 

Will the two countries financially decouple? That is far harder to answer. China will surely seek to make the RMB more globally relevant.

 

Trump may twist the arm of a few college endowments, but it is hard to see big institutional investors dumping their mainland holdings, experts say.

 

If anything, the financial rapport between the two is closer than ever. US investment banks are lining up to buy a majority stake in their China joint ventures. On Monday, China’s banking regulator, the CBIRC, approved a wealth management joint venture owned by BlackRock, CCB and Singapore’s Temasek.

 

Beijing, desperate for fresh sources of capital and for better capital markets, has a few options on the table.

 

“The brilliant move would be to open its stock markets completely to foreign investors,” says one US-based lawyer. “That would make the Nasdaq and NYSE less relevant, which is exactly what the Chinese want.”

 

Either way, after decades of bumping along in a relationship more co-dependent than harmonious, the world’s two great powers seem set to grow apart for good. Who knows if it’s what Trump wants, but it’s what he’s going to get.

Categories
Podcasts

US economy suffers sharpest contraction in decades

Tony Nash joins the BBC Business Matters to discuss the US economy contraction, Federal government’s cash subsidy, the upcoming US election and Trump’s issue on postal ballots, lithium batteries and electric vehicles, and Eid al-Adha.

 

This podcast first and originally appeared in BBC Business Matters at  https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172x18vhgd3z2p

 

BBC Notes

Official data shows that the world’s biggest economy contracted by 9.5% in three months. That’s worse than at any point since the US government started keeping quarterly records in 1947. We hear from Professor Tara Sinclair, an economist at George Washington University. Black Lives Matter protests have added to a continuing backlash against brands selling skin-whitening creams in South Asia; Nikhil Inamdar reports from Mumbai on an industry under threat. We talk to listener, Elizabeth Pendleton, in Colorado Springs about the unemployment picture in Colorado. The BBC’s Ed Butler reports on the world’s biggest lithium deposit; it’s in Bolivia and is worth billions of dollars to a world scrambling to reduce its reliance on carbon. Plus, we’re joined throughout the programme by Tony Nash, co-founder and Chief Economist at Complete Intelligence in Houston, Texas and from Lahore in Pakistan, Mehmal Safraz, co-founder of The Current PK.

 

Show Notes

 

BBC: Talk about Houston for us.

 

TN: Just on my block, I have 6 houses for sale. If that tells you anything about the oil and gas down turn as a result of COVID, we really are starting to see some action on the real estate side. It is a seasonal thing partly because of summer. But we are the epicenter of epicenter of oil and gas. And the oil and gas went to receptical in May. We’re still seeing the after-shock of that even though we’re back above $40 for WTI and Brent. Something interesting is that I’m speaking recently with somebody from Panama Canal today and they were telling me about the volume in trade and what they’ve seen. They’ve reflected what Samara said and that things kept slowing down until June and then in July, they’ve started to come back. I really thought that April and May was the worst of it, but things kept declining into June, which was really difficult.

 

BBC: And that shipping, of course, is a crucial indicator, because we can track not just what China is doing, what US is doing. We can follow everybody’s trade globally by watching those boats.

 

TN: That’s right. And this is not a market failure. This was governments pulling the plug on economies and we say that personal consumption fell by 25% in the first quarter. But it’s no surprise because nobody can get out of their house because restaurants were closed, etc. On one hand these are shocking numbers, but on the other hand they are not shocking numbers when states and local governments pull hte plug on economies and people cannot get out, then this really isn’t a surprise. To be honest, I’m surprised that more data isn’t as bad or worse than the US because there were harsher lockdowns in a lot of other countries. I don’t understand it on some level.

 

BBC: In Houston, are we rising predictably to debate as the president proposes another idea by tweet?

 

TN: It’s more about his objection to postal ballots than it is about election day because there is a recent study done by CBS News in the US looking at potential fraud around election ballots and they found that something like 3% of them didn’t even arrive to the person and then fraudelent ballots that looked like what they’ve sent out, could have been sent similarly. I think what Trump is doing is trying to get the discussion going about fraud around postal ballots more than moving the election.

 

BBC: Has it always been a relatively tiny minority voting by post apart from those early voting?

 

TN: Well he said, and he said this several times. He doesn’t have an issue with what’s called absentee balloting, which is a slightly different process. But with mass postal balloting, there are several states like Oregon that do mass postal balloting. But fraud in US elections has become a very big concern. In the last election, ballots were found in the back of people’s cars. There was a rental car that was returned with ballots in it. Fraud in US elections has become a very big concern and I think Trump is voicing that concern a lot of people.

 

BBC: In Texas, dig into the nitty gritty of the state level.

 

TN: What ends tomorrow in the US is Americans are getting $600 a week additional from the Federal government on top of the state funds, unemployment funds, that they get, which are lower, like $350 a week. The $600 a week is extraordinary. I know people who don’t even make that much money when they are working fulltime, who are getting $600 a week. But at the local level, the problem is, you have the state and local governments who are closing things down. But it’s actually the Feds who have had to pay more money and it’s a lot of money to help make up for the economic decisions that were made at the state and local level. This is really where, through the whole COVID thing, and I said this many, many times to people, the state and local governments don’t have the resources to pay back for the decisions taht they’ve made. The decisions are made at the lower level. But it’s really only the Fed who has the money to provide this level of income to allow the economy to keep moving forward.

 

TN: Obviously, the environment is a big concern. But I think the payoff is also a big concern. It really all depends on how quickly the battery industry grows. If the payback isn’t there, it’s like looking at the Tarzans in Canada. Relatively expensive way to pull up oil, but oil now is too cheap for the Tarzans to function. If they pull it out in a very expensive way, the question really is not just environmental sustainability but economic sustainability as well.

 

BBC: I take your point on the environment, but compared to some of the alternatives. What I thought I knew in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo had the lithium mines, which is the other resource to be tapped, leading to headlines a couple of years ago in Financial Times, “Congo child labor in you electric car”, makes up that whole sector really problematic.

 

TN: Absolutely. Look, if it’s a better way, it’s great. I mean, the problem then is the supply chains and figuring out how to get it to market, which those are never easy. But if it’s a better way, more humane, then great.

 

BBC: Were you surprised by the little footnote in the report that it’s China that has the downstream value chain sewn up.

 

TN: No, not at all. China has a very high profile electric car program. And really a lot of subsidies for electric vehicles. So that actually doesn’t surprise me at all. It is the largest market.

 

BBC: And this is why the developments happen, right? Because I read recently, I probably get the numbers slightly wrong, but it said there’s a new battery coming that can run something like a million miles over 16 years instead of a couple of hundred thousand miles in 5 years.

 

TN: Yeah. But people will get bored by their car by then. People want to sell their car after a couple hundred thousand miles. If it can change hands multiple times, great.

 

BBC: This is something not widely celebrated in the US, but certainly a lot of Muslims in the US will bring this extremely to heart today.

 

TN: Absolutely. And Houston is the most diverse city in the US, so we’ve got a very large Moslem population in Houston. I have friends in Austin who are celebrating, so it’s definitely all around here.

Categories
QuickHit Visual (Videos)

QuickHit: Manufacturers are bouncing back, but…

In this QuickHit episode, we are talking with Chad Moutray of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Chad is the Chief Economist for NAM, and he talks with manufacturers across the U.S. every day, to understand their issues and informs them of the the overall economic landscape. NAM has about 14,000 members that includes state manufacturing associations. Tony Nash discussed with Moutray the state of manufacturing especially in this time of the pandemic. What are they doing, thinking, and what are their plans? 

 

You can revisit our previous QuickHit episodes here:

 

We’re not going to normalize
How do we use up all the corn now?
How ready is the military to face COVID-19 and its challenges?

 

The views and opinions expressed in this QuickHit episode are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any content provided by our guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.

Show Notes

 

TN: Can you walk us through some of the manufacturing firms that you’ve been interacting with and how do they’ve come to understand the environment? What have they been thinking about? What have their priorities been? Because I think it’s been confusing for everybody. But from a manufacturing perspective, what have you been seeing?

 

CM: I’ll go through a couple of things here. Number one, just that dearth of data that we had early on, everyone was asking me, “What is the current capacity utilization for manufacturing right now in the State of Pennsylvania?” I don’t know. How would I know, right?

 

There was a lack of information early on, and the abruptness and the severity of this downturn just caught a lot of people [off guard]. The numbers are so heartbreaking and jaw-dropping. We’re starting to get a sense now of what those numbers really are, and the drastic-ness of these figures in terms of being the worst ever, or the worst since the Great Recession. But there was a lack of information early on that really just caught people by surprise.

 

Companies don’t know what to do. This is not just a business conversation. It’s also a life and death conversation. Do you keep operating? Do you not keep operating? Are you operating in a state where you’re forced to close? Are you deemed essential? A lot of those things early on really dominated manufacturers’ time in terms of whether to operate, what happens if someone gets sick in your facility? What do you do? Do you close everything down? There was a scramble early on just to figure out operationally “What am I doing?”.

 

It moved from there to the conversation about PPE, Personal Protective Equipment, masks or ventilators or whatever else.

 

One thing that really has dominated that manufacturing conversation over the last month has been the National Association of Manufacturers work with the administration [to understand] whether it’s FEMA or DOD or the Vice President’s Office to say, “Okay. What do we need in order for everything to come back to normal? How many masks do we need? How many ventilators do we need?” And then helping to identify manufacturers that can produce that. That really has dominated a lot of time for the NAM over the last month or so–getting a handle on what are those needs.

 

That has gravitated into the new normal. Everyone is [asking] what does manufacturing look like three months from now, six months from now, a year from now? How do you get back to a sense of normal, whether there’s a vaccine or not a vaccine?

 

Answering those questions will dominate much of my time from a research perspective. We asked on a survey “Are you re-engineering in your process to have social distancing in mind,” or “Are you going to let people work from home?” That’s not always possible on the shop floor. But in some cases it may be, right? So those types of questions are first and foremost.

 

We’re talking to a series of tire manufacturers. They have a huge retail operation and retail is just going to change dramatically. They not only look at the manufacturing side, but how retail is going to change, and then how they can react. It shows you just how dynamic this particular moment in time is in terms of dramatically changing the sector.

 

TN: I know you’re still in the process of doing your research but what’s your feeling now? Do you get the sense that people want to get back to kind of a normal-ish environment quickly? I know “there” is relative. But do you think there’s a desire to get back and get relatively normal business activity back say in Q2 or Q3? Do you get the sense that it’s going to be longer? What’s the drag? How long will this drag effect impact companies and impact manufacturers?

 

CM: I do think that we’ve passed the worst of it. I do think that in that late March, early April, that’s when things just really hit bottom. You’ve started to see a sense, especially from some of the more recent data, that things, while they’re still bad, are not as bad as they were several weeks ago. I do get a sense that you’re starting to see that bounce back in the marketplace, which is good.

 

In general, there is what we’ll call “quarantine fatigue” not just for consumers but for businesses as well. There is a sense that activity is going to start resuming.

 

The difference here is that yes people are going to come back to it but there’s still going to be some hesitance there. We don’t have a vaccine. So coming back to work is not the same as it was before. That’s true at the NAM, that’s true in every workplace in the country. People’s willingness to go out to restaurants and bars and go to Disney World has all changed a little bit.

 

I do think that we are bouncing back already. But in this new environment, there is still a little bit of hesitance about getting out in crowds and the workplace change. Yes, I can go back to the office maybe, but am I going to? Am I going to continue working from home? How much separation is there for me between me and my co-worker on the shop floor? We’ve already started to see that rebound. But it’s in a different place than it was two months ago.

 

TN: A lot of questions. Let me shift gears a little bit and ask you about trade. With COVID-19 and initially when this was hitting China hard, we saw a lot of supply chains stall out and slow down. We’ve been talking about the regionalization of supply chains for a few years at Complete Intelligence. Is that something that you’re seeing, and I know you’re not necessarily advocating a position. So I don’t expect you to be doing that. But are you seeing that happen or is that concept not seeing a lot of traction on yet?

 

CM: We were starting to see people re-evaluating their supply chains as a result of the Trade War. Last year, we were seeing a lot of that. It doesn’t mean all of it’s coming back to the U.S., but it certainly means production might be moving out of China and other places. This exacerbates that even more. There’s been this realization that we can’t depend on one country and one source to get all of our stuff anymore given the extremeness of this disaster economically.

 

People are going to be re-evaluating the supply chain. From the NAM point of view, we want as much of that to come back to the U.S. as possible so we’ll be advocating policies on on-shoring. Look for that coming from us. But the reality is, companies are going to locate where they locate. There’s a lot of reasons why companies locate wherever they do, and it’s where the customers are, that’s where their other suppliers are, that’s where the intelligence is. And some of it’s going to go to Mexico, or to the rest of Southeast Asia. There is definitely this understanding that we’ve got to re-evaluate that supply chain process in terms of who we’re buying from, making sure there’s duplication, and I think that’s a conversation that every firm is having right now.

 

TN: Very good. Chad, thank you so much for your time. I’d love to have you back in a few months to revisit some of these questions. As the unknowns dissipate, it’ll be very interesting to to look back and see what people did right, what mistakes people can avoid next time this happens.

Categories
News Articles

WSJ: China Loses Steam Because Of Trade War

This article is originally published at https://theschpiel.com/world/wsj-china-loses-steam-because-of-trade-war/

 

The mainstream experts stuck in their globalist mindset believed that President Donald Trump couldn’t take China on in a trade war and possibly win. Those naysayers are beginning to look rather foolish as China’s economic growth is falling without US cooperation. The parasitic relationship between the nations is no more!

The Wall Street Journal noted the progress that Trump is making as he uses his leverage to put the screws to the communist government of China:

 

An intensifying trade brawl with the U.S. is starting to take a heavier toll on China’s economy, as weakening foreign demand and sluggish domestic consumption cause Chinese manufacturers to significantly scale back production.

 

The manufacturing slowdown, detailed in reports released Sunday, raises the prospect that China’s leaders will step up economic stimulus measures to prop up growth.

 

The new data showed that privately owned makers of cars, machinery and other products stopped expanding in September, as export orders dropped the most in more than two years. At the same time, output by large, state-owned manufacturers continued to weaken.

 

The data, among the first major gauges of China’s economic performance for the third quarter, indicate that the U.S.-China trade fight is beginning to take a bigger bite out of the growth of the world’s second-largest economy.

 

After renegotiating NAFTA under more favorable terms with Canada and Mexico, Trump is now freed up to blast China with a united front throughout the North American continent. The master deal-maker’s grand plan is coming to fruition before our very eyes!

 

“China is having a fair amount of difficulty in their domestic economy … so I continue to believe China will come to the table with some significant concessions (although they may be downplayed) this month,” said Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence, to CNBC reporters.

 

Trump’s brilliance is playing out on the global stage, and his detractors have more and more egg on their faces as a result. The days of China becoming rich and prosperous while bleeding the US dry are quickly coming to an end due to the incredible leadership of 45.