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2021-06-22
Ok forget now
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2021-06-20
Buy more stock to beat inflation
Answering the great inflation question of our time
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2021-02-19
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2021-06-18
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forget now","listText":"Ok forget now","text":"Ok forget now","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/129130380","repostId":"1177499959","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1177499959","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624344919,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1177499959?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-22 14:55","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Forget Everything You Know: Morgan Stanley Reveals The Only Metric That Determines What The Market Will Do Next","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1177499959","media":"zerohedge","summary":"Traders of a certain age may recall that back in 2013, around the time the Fed's \"Taper Tantrum\" spa","content":"<p>Traders of a certain age may recall that back in 2013, around the time the Fed's \"Taper Tantrum\" sparked a surge in yields and led to a risk asset selloff, a big (if entirely artificial) debate emerged within financial media, where the Fed muppets and their media puppets would argue that \"tapering is not tightening\" while anyone with half a brain realized knew that this was total BS.</p>\n<p>Fast forward to today when Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson opens up an old wound for clueless Fed apologists, saying in his latest Weekly Warm Up note that \"Tapering<i><b>is</b></i>Tightening\"... but then adds that contrary to the market's shocked reaction to last week's Fed meeting, tightening actually began months ago.</p>\n<p>Elaborating on this point, Wilson - who several months ago turned into Wall Street's most bearish strategist (again)- writes this morning that while the Fed's pivot to \"begin\" the tightening discussion caught most by surprise, in reality markets began discounting this inevitable process months ago as price action had indicated. It's exactly this discounting of the coming tightening, that is what Michael Wilson's mid-cycle transition is all about, and as the strategist adds, \"<b>fits nicely with our narrative for choppier equity markets and a 10-20% correction for the broader indices this year.\"</b></p>\n<p>Or to paraphrase Lester Burnham,<b>\"it's all downhill from here\"...</b>and as Wilson predicts, that won't change until M2 growth is done decelerating; or in other words, until the Fed unleashes another liquidity burst into the system \"<b><i>the transition is incomplete.\"</i></b></p>\n<p>Highlights aside, Wilson then elaborates on each point, noting that while last week's Fed meeting brought more uncertainty to markets one thing is becoming more obvious:<b>\"we are on the other side of the mountain with respect to monetary accommodation for this cycle.</b>\"</p>\n<p>Furthermore, having repeatedlywarned that the US is now mid-cycle...</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d95f296e4d1300cd3c95485a2333d270\" tg-width=\"906\" tg-height=\"571\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">... Wilson then takes a victory lap writing that what the Fed is doing is \"classic mid cycle transition behavior so investors really shouldn't be too surprised that the Fed would try to begin the long process of tightening.\"</p>\n<blockquote>\n After all, the US economy is booming and expected to grow close to 10 percent this year in nominal terms, a feat last witnessed in 1984. Meanwhile, no matter what one's view is on inflation being transient or not, prices are up significantly and likely higher than what the Fed, or most others were expecting 6 months ago. In other words, the facts and data have changed; therefore, so should Fed policy.\n</blockquote>\n<p>Nevertheless, as discussed here extensively, markets reacted as if this was a complete shock with both bonds and stocks trading as if the Fed had hiked rates already (instead of leaving over $2TN in QE still on deck) after the Fed meeting. Starting with bonds, both nominal 10 year yields and breakevens fell significantly. However, breakevens fell more leaving 10 year real rates higher by almost 20 bps Wednesday afternoon.</p>\n<p>While real rates did settle back a bit on Thursday and Friday, they have formed what appears to be a very solid base from which they are likely to rise as the economy continues to recover and the Fed appropriately pivots. In Wilson's view, \"<b>this looks very similar to 2013, the year after Peak Fed. Back then, Peak Fed was QE3 which was announced on September 12, 2012. This time Peak Fed was the announcement of Average Inflation Targeting last summer.\"</b></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/670f9e23e34953726583276c32a7b3f9\" tg-width=\"843\" tg-height=\"445\"></p>\n<p>That said, there is one notable difference between the taper tantrum and today: in 2013 \"tapering\" QE was a novel concept to markets and it came more abruptly with Bernanke's surprise mention during his congressional testimony on May 22, 2013.<b>This time, the markets understand what tapering is and see its arrival as inevitable as the economy recovers.</b>Therefore, while the path higher for real rates is unlikely to be as dramatic as witnessed in 2013, it is still likely to be higher from here and that is a change that will affect all risk markets, including equities, in Morgan Stanley's view.</p>\n<p>Wilson makes one final observation from the chart above, which is how real rates moved substantially<b>before</b>Bernanke's testimony in May 2013, prompting Wilson to notes that \"<i>perhaps it wasn't as much of a surprise as believed, at least to markets. We think it's the same situation today.\"</i></p>\n<blockquote>\n In our view, the data has been so strong, it would be naive not to think the Fed wasn't moving closer to tapering over the past several months. In fact, the idea that the Fed hasn't been thinking and/or talking about it seems absurd. Surely the market understands this, making the events of the past week not so much of a surprise. It's all part of the mid cycle transition that has been ongoing for months and fits with the choppier price action and unstable market leadership we have been witnessing.\n</blockquote>\n<p>The underperformance of early cycle stocks is another classic signal the market \"gets it.\" Nevertheless, in talking with clients the past few days, this view is still out of consensus. Most haven't been ready for tighter monetary policy, nor did they think it's something they needed to worry about, until now.</p>\n<p>Wrapping up the Fed \"surprise\" part of his note, Wilson writes that contrary to the FOMC shock,<b>monetary tightening actually began months ago if one is looking at the right metric, which to the top Morgan Stanley equity strategist - who emerges as yet another closet Austrian - is</b><b><u>money supply growth</u></b><b>:</b></p>\n<blockquote>\n <i>In a world where all of the major developed market central banks are stuck at the zero bound, or lower,</i>\n <i><b>the primary metric that determines if monetary policy is getting more or less accommodative is Money Supply Growth.</b></i>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Realizing that to most Keynesian this will be a controversial statement to say the least, Wilson digs in and says that \"it's absolutely the case and financial markets seem to agree.\" He explains:</p>\n<blockquote>\n <i>When money supply is accelerating, the more speculative / riskier assets tend to outperform and when it's decelerating these assets have more trouble. As noted here several times over the past few months, the Fed's balance sheet (M1) growth peaked in mid February and that coincided with a top in many of the most expensive/speculative stocks in the equity market just like the acceleration in the Fed's balance sheet in the prior 12 months contributed to their spectacular performance. Interestingly, the recently flattening out of the growth in M1 has coincided with more stability in these stocks, although they remain well below prior highs (Exhibit 2).</i>\n</blockquote>\n<p>And visually:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/392b34be32740b00458d59adb2bb80a6\" tg-width=\"852\" tg-height=\"486\"></p>\n<p>But wait there's more, and also an explanation why the Fed has made it virtually impossible to track the weekly change in M2 (the aggregate is now updated only monthly).</p>\n<p>Taking Wilson's argument a step further,<b>M2 growth might be even more important to monitor than M1 because that's the net liquidity available to the economy</b><b><i>and</i></b><b>markets.</b>On that front, the deceleration also began at the end of February<b>but has not yet flattened out and appears to have much further to fall to a more \"normal\" level of annual growth</b>— i.e., 7-8%</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/dd5f46571e7e27f9c00fed0a2d310a3c\" tg-width=\"610\" tg-height=\"376\"></p>\n<p>More ominously, this also suggests<b>liquidity is likely to tighten further from here whether the Fed's begins tapering later this year or next.</b></p>\n<p>Finally, when we look at M2 data on a global basis, we get the same picture.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c77fa806a6775bc562b18346590d26c9\" tg-width=\"613\" tg-height=\"376\"></p>\n<p>Wilson concludes that even ahead of last week's \"shock\" FOMC, the market had already started to de-rate lower into a mid-cycle transition as Fed balance sheet growth has materially slowed. Meanwhile, M2 is slowing just as rapidly and has further to fall, especially when the Fed begins to taper later this year or early next. Finally, global money supply growth is also slowing from elevated levels and every major region is contributing.</p>\n<p>This to Wilson<b>\"looks reminiscent of 2014 and 2018 when markets went through a rolling correction of risky assets\"</b>and he thinks 2021 will prove to be similar in that regard with the highest beta regions falling first (Kospi, China, Japan) and ending with the most defensive (US).</p>\n<p>Putting it all together, the MS strategist writes that \"tapering is tightening but the tightening process began with the rate of change in money supply growth. The good news is that<b>the market already knows it.</b>The bad news is that<b>a majority of investors seem to be just catching on with the Fed's \"surprise\" announcement this past week.</b>This means asset prices are far from done correcting as witnessed with the more cyclical, reflationary assets taking their turn the past few weeks.\"</p>\n<p>And while we completely agree with Wilson's newly discovered Austrian view of markets - funny how on a long enough timeline everyone turns Austrian - the real question is what will catalyze the next M2 boosting cycle, how high will it push stocks, and will the Fed be forced to come out and start buying equities this time after having nationalized the bond market back in 2020.</p>\n<p>We expect that the answer will be revealed after the next 20% drop at which point all of the Fed's hawkishness will evaporate, and Powell (or his replacement Kashkari) will shift to an uber dovish mode as they prepare to unleash the final and biggest asset bubble of all...</p>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Forget Everything You Know: Morgan Stanley Reveals The Only Metric That Determines What The Market Will Do Next</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; 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color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nForget Everything You Know: Morgan Stanley Reveals The Only Metric That Determines What The Market Will Do Next\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-22 14:55 GMT+8 <a href=https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/forget-everything-you-know-morgan-stanley-reveals-only-metric-determines-what-market-will><strong>zerohedge</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Traders of a certain age may recall that back in 2013, around the time the Fed's \"Taper Tantrum\" sparked a surge in yields and led to a risk asset selloff, a big (if entirely artificial) debate ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/forget-everything-you-know-morgan-stanley-reveals-only-metric-determines-what-market-will\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯",".SPX":"S&P 500 Index","SPY":"标普500ETF",".IXIC":"NASDAQ Composite"},"source_url":"https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/forget-everything-you-know-morgan-stanley-reveals-only-metric-determines-what-market-will","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1177499959","content_text":"Traders of a certain age may recall that back in 2013, around the time the Fed's \"Taper Tantrum\" sparked a surge in yields and led to a risk asset selloff, a big (if entirely artificial) debate emerged within financial media, where the Fed muppets and their media puppets would argue that \"tapering is not tightening\" while anyone with half a brain realized knew that this was total BS.\nFast forward to today when Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson opens up an old wound for clueless Fed apologists, saying in his latest Weekly Warm Up note that \"TaperingisTightening\"... but then adds that contrary to the market's shocked reaction to last week's Fed meeting, tightening actually began months ago.\nElaborating on this point, Wilson - who several months ago turned into Wall Street's most bearish strategist (again)- writes this morning that while the Fed's pivot to \"begin\" the tightening discussion caught most by surprise, in reality markets began discounting this inevitable process months ago as price action had indicated. It's exactly this discounting of the coming tightening, that is what Michael Wilson's mid-cycle transition is all about, and as the strategist adds, \"fits nicely with our narrative for choppier equity markets and a 10-20% correction for the broader indices this year.\"\nOr to paraphrase Lester Burnham,\"it's all downhill from here\"...and as Wilson predicts, that won't change until M2 growth is done decelerating; or in other words, until the Fed unleashes another liquidity burst into the system \"the transition is incomplete.\"\nHighlights aside, Wilson then elaborates on each point, noting that while last week's Fed meeting brought more uncertainty to markets one thing is becoming more obvious:\"we are on the other side of the mountain with respect to monetary accommodation for this cycle.\"\nFurthermore, having repeatedlywarned that the US is now mid-cycle...\n... Wilson then takes a victory lap writing that what the Fed is doing is \"classic mid cycle transition behavior so investors really shouldn't be too surprised that the Fed would try to begin the long process of tightening.\"\n\n After all, the US economy is booming and expected to grow close to 10 percent this year in nominal terms, a feat last witnessed in 1984. Meanwhile, no matter what one's view is on inflation being transient or not, prices are up significantly and likely higher than what the Fed, or most others were expecting 6 months ago. In other words, the facts and data have changed; therefore, so should Fed policy.\n\nNevertheless, as discussed here extensively, markets reacted as if this was a complete shock with both bonds and stocks trading as if the Fed had hiked rates already (instead of leaving over $2TN in QE still on deck) after the Fed meeting. Starting with bonds, both nominal 10 year yields and breakevens fell significantly. However, breakevens fell more leaving 10 year real rates higher by almost 20 bps Wednesday afternoon.\nWhile real rates did settle back a bit on Thursday and Friday, they have formed what appears to be a very solid base from which they are likely to rise as the economy continues to recover and the Fed appropriately pivots. In Wilson's view, \"this looks very similar to 2013, the year after Peak Fed. Back then, Peak Fed was QE3 which was announced on September 12, 2012. This time Peak Fed was the announcement of Average Inflation Targeting last summer.\"\n\nThat said, there is one notable difference between the taper tantrum and today: in 2013 \"tapering\" QE was a novel concept to markets and it came more abruptly with Bernanke's surprise mention during his congressional testimony on May 22, 2013.This time, the markets understand what tapering is and see its arrival as inevitable as the economy recovers.Therefore, while the path higher for real rates is unlikely to be as dramatic as witnessed in 2013, it is still likely to be higher from here and that is a change that will affect all risk markets, including equities, in Morgan Stanley's view.\nWilson makes one final observation from the chart above, which is how real rates moved substantiallybeforeBernanke's testimony in May 2013, prompting Wilson to notes that \"perhaps it wasn't as much of a surprise as believed, at least to markets. We think it's the same situation today.\"\n\n In our view, the data has been so strong, it would be naive not to think the Fed wasn't moving closer to tapering over the past several months. In fact, the idea that the Fed hasn't been thinking and/or talking about it seems absurd. Surely the market understands this, making the events of the past week not so much of a surprise. It's all part of the mid cycle transition that has been ongoing for months and fits with the choppier price action and unstable market leadership we have been witnessing.\n\nThe underperformance of early cycle stocks is another classic signal the market \"gets it.\" Nevertheless, in talking with clients the past few days, this view is still out of consensus. Most haven't been ready for tighter monetary policy, nor did they think it's something they needed to worry about, until now.\nWrapping up the Fed \"surprise\" part of his note, Wilson writes that contrary to the FOMC shock,monetary tightening actually began months ago if one is looking at the right metric, which to the top Morgan Stanley equity strategist - who emerges as yet another closet Austrian - ismoney supply growth:\n\nIn a world where all of the major developed market central banks are stuck at the zero bound, or lower,\nthe primary metric that determines if monetary policy is getting more or less accommodative is Money Supply Growth.\n\nRealizing that to most Keynesian this will be a controversial statement to say the least, Wilson digs in and says that \"it's absolutely the case and financial markets seem to agree.\" He explains:\n\nWhen money supply is accelerating, the more speculative / riskier assets tend to outperform and when it's decelerating these assets have more trouble. As noted here several times over the past few months, the Fed's balance sheet (M1) growth peaked in mid February and that coincided with a top in many of the most expensive/speculative stocks in the equity market just like the acceleration in the Fed's balance sheet in the prior 12 months contributed to their spectacular performance. Interestingly, the recently flattening out of the growth in M1 has coincided with more stability in these stocks, although they remain well below prior highs (Exhibit 2).\n\nAnd visually:\n\nBut wait there's more, and also an explanation why the Fed has made it virtually impossible to track the weekly change in M2 (the aggregate is now updated only monthly).\nTaking Wilson's argument a step further,M2 growth might be even more important to monitor than M1 because that's the net liquidity available to the economyandmarkets.On that front, the deceleration also began at the end of Februarybut has not yet flattened out and appears to have much further to fall to a more \"normal\" level of annual growth— i.e., 7-8%\n\nMore ominously, this also suggestsliquidity is likely to tighten further from here whether the Fed's begins tapering later this year or next.\nFinally, when we look at M2 data on a global basis, we get the same picture.\n\nWilson concludes that even ahead of last week's \"shock\" FOMC, the market had already started to de-rate lower into a mid-cycle transition as Fed balance sheet growth has materially slowed. Meanwhile, M2 is slowing just as rapidly and has further to fall, especially when the Fed begins to taper later this year or early next. Finally, global money supply growth is also slowing from elevated levels and every major region is contributing.\nThis to Wilson\"looks reminiscent of 2014 and 2018 when markets went through a rolling correction of risky assets\"and he thinks 2021 will prove to be similar in that regard with the highest beta regions falling first (Kospi, China, Japan) and ending with the most defensive (US).\nPutting it all together, the MS strategist writes that \"tapering is tightening but the tightening process began with the rate of change in money supply growth. The good news is thatthe market already knows it.The bad news is thata majority of investors seem to be just catching on with the Fed's \"surprise\" announcement this past week.This means asset prices are far from done correcting as witnessed with the more cyclical, reflationary assets taking their turn the past few weeks.\"\nAnd while we completely agree with Wilson's newly discovered Austrian view of markets - funny how on a long enough timeline everyone turns Austrian - the real question is what will catalyze the next M2 boosting cycle, how high will it push stocks, and will the Fed be forced to come out and start buying equities this time after having nationalized the bond market back in 2020.\nWe expect that the answer will be revealed after the next 20% drop at which point all of the Fed's hawkishness will evaporate, and Powell (or his replacement Kashkari) will shift to an uber dovish mode as they prepare to unleash the final and biggest asset bubble of all...","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":207,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164690073,"gmtCreate":1624197807992,"gmtModify":1703830490948,"author":{"id":"3574646274260668","authorId":"3574646274260668","name":"VT28","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e88d459467a394321b4dd4ababe11aba","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3574646274260668","authorIdStr":"3574646274260668"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Buy more stock to beat inflation ","listText":"Buy more stock to beat inflation ","text":"Buy more stock to beat inflation","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164690073","repostId":"1133385197","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1133385197","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624151969,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1133385197?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-20 09:19","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Answering the great inflation question of our time","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1133385197","media":"finance.yahoo","summary":"Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up","content":"<p>Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.</p>\n<p>Unfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these days—is conjecture. And that’s vexing, not just for the dismal scientists (aka economists), but for all of us, because whether or not prices are really rising, by how much and for how long, has massive implications in our lives. Or as Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says: “Inflation is one of the mysteries of economic study and thought. A difficult thing to gauge and forecast and get right. That’s why the risks are high.”</p>\n<p>The current debate over inflation really revolves around two questions: First, is this current spate of inflation, just that, a spate—or to use Wall Street’s buzzword of the moment, “transitory,”—or not? (Just to give you an idea of how buzzy, when I Google the word “transitory” the search engine suggests “inflation” after it.) And second, transitory (aka temporary) inflation or not, what does it suggest for the economy and markets?</p>\n<p>Before I get into that, let me lay out what’s going on with prices right now. First, know that inflation,which peaked in 1980 at an annualized rate of 13.55%,has been tame for quite some time, specifically 4% or less for nearly 30 years. Which means that anyone 40 years old or younger has no experience with inflation other than maybe from an Econ 101 textbook. Obviously that could be a problem.</p>\n<p>As an aside I remember President Ford in 1974 trying to jawbone inflation down with his \"Whip Inflation Now\" campaign, which featured“Win” buttons,earringsand evenugly sweaters.None of this worked and it took draconian measures by Fed Chair Paul Volcker (raising rates and targeting money supply,as described by Former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, William Poole)to eventually tame inflation and keep it under wraps for all those years.</p>\n<p>Until now perhaps. Last week theLabor Department reported that consumer prices (the CPI, or consumer price index) rose 5% in May,the fastest annual rate in nearly 13 years—which was when the economy was overheating from the housing boom which subsequently went bust and sent the economy off a cliff and into the Great Recession. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was up 3.8%, the biggest increase since May 1992. (For the record, the likelihood of the economy tanking right now is de minimis.)</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/87f75dfcb98fb5a0e7c3f9d3f8d336e2\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"412\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Used car and truck prices are a major driver of inflation, climbing 7.3% last month and 29.7% over the past year. New car prices are up too, which have pushed upshares of Ford and GM a remarkable 40% plus this year.Clearly Americans want to buy vehicles to go on vacation and get back to work. And Yahoo Finance’sJanna Herron reportsthat rents are rising at their fastest pace in 15 years.</p>\n<p>To be sure, not all prices are climbing.As Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman points out,prices are not up much at all for health care, education and are basically flat for technology, including computers, smartphones and internet service (an important point which we’ll get back to.)</p>\n<p>But that’s the counterpoint really. Americans are obsessed with cars, housing is critical and many of us are experiencing sticker shock booking travel this summer. Higher prices are front and center. Wall Street too is in a tizzy about inflation, and concerns about it and more importantly Federal Reserve policy in response to inflation (see below), sent stocks lower with the S&P 500 down 1.91% this week, its worst week since February.</p>\n<p>Given this backdrop, the tension (such as it is) was high when the Fed met this week to deliver its forecast and for Chair Jay Powell to answer questions from the media. Or at least so said hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones,who characterized the proceedings on CNBCas “the most important meeting in [Chairman] Jay Powell’s career, certainly the most important Fed meeting of the past four or five years.” Jones was critical of the Fed, which he believes is now stimulating the economy unnecessarily by keeping interest rates low and by buying financial assets. Unnecessarily, Jones says, because the economy is already running hot and needs no support. The Fed (which is in the transitory camp when it comes to inflation) risks overheating the economy by creating runaway inflation, according to PTJ.</p>\n<p>Now I don’t see eye to eye with Jones on this, though I should point out, he's a billionaire from investing in financial markets, and let’s just say I’m not. I should also point out that Jones, 66, is in fact old enough to remember inflation, never mind that as a young man he called the 1987 stock market crash. So we should all ignore Jones at our peril.</p>\n<p>As for what the Fed put forth this past Wednesday, well it wasn’t much, signaling an expectation ofraising interest rates twice by the end of 2023(yes, that is down the road.) And Powell, who’s become much more adept at not rippling the waters these days after some rougher forays earlier in his tenure, didn’t drop any bombshells in the presser.</p>\n<p>Which brings us to the question of why the Federal Reserve isn’t so concerned about inflation and thinks it is mostly—here’s that word again—transitory. To answer that, we need to first address why prices are rising right now, which can be summed up in one very familiar abbreviation: COVID-19. When COVID hit last spring the economy collapsed, which crushed demand in sectors like leisure, travel and retail. Now the economy is roaring back to life and businesses can raise prices, certainly over 2020 levels.</p>\n<p>“We clearly should’ve expected it,” says William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and a professor of economics at Howard University. “You can’t shut down the economy and think you turn on the switch [without some inflation].”</p>\n<p>“We had a pandemic that forced an artificial shutdown of the economy in a way that even the collapse of the financial system and the housing market didn’t, and we had a snapback at a rate we’ve never seen before—not because of the fundamentals driving recovery but because of government,” says Joel Naroff, president and chief economist of Naroff Economics.</p>\n<p>COVID had other secondary effects on the economy though, besides just ultimately producing a snapback. For one thing, the pandemic throttled supply chains, specifically the shipping of parts and components from one part of the globe to another. It also confused managers about how much to produce and therefore how many parts to order.</p>\n<p>A prime example here is what happened to the chip (semiconductor) and auto industrieswhich I wrote about last month.Car makers thought no one would buy vehicles during the pandemic and pared back their orders with chipmakers, (which were having a tough time shipping their chips anyway.) Turned out the car guys were wrong, millions of people wanted cars and trucks, but the automakers didn’t have enough chips for their cars and had to curb production. Fewer vehicles and strong demand led to higher new car prices, which cascaded to used car prices then to car rental rates. Net net, all the friction and slowness of getting things delivered now adds to costs which causes companies to raise prices.</p>\n<p>Another secondary effect of COVID which has been inflationary comes from employment,which I got into a bit last week.We all know millions were thrown out of work by COVID last year, many of whom were backstopped by government payments that could add up to $600 a week (state and federal.) These folks have been none too keen on coming back to work for minimum wage, or $290 a week. So to lure them back employers are having to pay more, which puts more money in people's pockets which allows stores for example to raise prices.</p>\n<p><b>Anti-inflation forces</b></p>\n<p>But here’s the big-time question: If COVID was temporary, and therefore its effects are temporary and inflation is one of its effects then doesn’t it follow, ipso facto, that inflation is (OK I’ll say it again), transitory?</p>\n<p>I say yes, (with a bit of a caveat.) And most economists, like Claudia Sahm, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and a former Federal Reserve economist, agree. “‘Transitory’ has become a buzzword,” she says. “It is important to be more concrete about what we mean by that. We’re probably going to see in the next few months inflation numbers that are bigger than average, but as long as they keep stepping down, that’s the sign of it being transitory. If we didn’t see any sign of inflation stepping down some, it would’ve started feeling like ‘Houston, we have a problem.’”</p>\n<p>To buttress my argument beyond that above \"if-then\" syllogism, let’s take a look at why inflation has been so low for the past three decades.</p>\n<p>To me this is mostly obvious. Prices have been tamped down by the greatest anti-inflation force of our lifetime, that being technology, specifically the explosion of consumer technology. Think about it. The first wave of technology, a good example would be IBM mainframes, saved big companies money in back-office functions, savings which they mostly kept for themselves (higher profits) and their shareholders. But the four great landmark events in the advent of consumer technology; the introduction ofthe PC in 1974 (MITS Altair),the Netscape IPO of 1995,Google search in 1998,and the launch of theiPhone in 2007(I remember Steve Jobs demoing it to me like it was yesterday), greatly accelerated, broadened and deepened this deflationary trend.</p>\n<p>Not only has technology been pushing down the cost of everything from drilling for oil, to manufacturing clothes to farming, and allowing for the creation of groundbreaking (and deflationary) competitors like Uber, Airbnb and Netflix, but it also let consumers find—on their phones—the most affordable trip to Hawaii, the least expensive haircut or the best deal on Nikes.</p>\n<p>So technology has reduced the cost of almost everything and will continue to do so the rest of our lifetime. Bottom line: Unless something terrible happens, the power of technology will outweigh and outlive COVID.</p>\n<p>There is one mitigating factor and that is globalism, which is connected to both technology and COVID. Let me briefly explain.</p>\n<p>After World War II, most of humanity has become more and more connected in terms of trade, communication, travel, etc. (See supply chain above.) Technology of course was a major enabler here; better ships, planes and faster internet, all of which as it grew more potent, accelerated globalism. Another element was the introduction of political constructs like the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. (I think of the Clinton administration andChina joining the WTO in 2001as perhaps the high-water marks of globalization.)</p>\n<p>Like its technological cousin, globalism has deflationary effects particularly on the labor front as companies could more and more easily find lowest cost countries to produce goods and source materials. And like technology, globalization seemed inexorable, which it was, until it wasn’t. Political winds, manifested by the likes of Brexit and leaders like Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Duterte and of course Donald Trump have caused globalism to wane and anti-globalism and nationalism to wax.</p>\n<p>The internet too, once seen as only a great connector, has also become a global divider, as the world increasingly fractures into Chinese, U.S. and European walled digital zones when it comes to social media and search for example. Security risks, privacy, spying and hacking of course divide us further here too.</p>\n<p>So technology, which had made globalism stronger and stronger, now also makes it weaker and weaker.</p>\n<p>COVID plays a role in rethinking globalism as it exposes vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Companies that were rethinking their manufacturing in China but considering another country, are now wondering if it just makes sense to repatriate the whole shebang. Supply chains that were optimized for cost only are being rethought with security and reliability being factored in and that costs money.</p>\n<p>How significant is this decline in globalization and how permanent is it? Good questions. But my point here is whether or not \"globalism disrupted\" is transitory (!) or not, it could push prices up, (in the short and intermediate run at least), as cost is sacrificed for predictability. Longer term I say Americans are a resourceful people. We’ll figure out how to make cost effective stuff in the U.S. It’s also likely that globalism will trend upward again, though perhaps not as unfettered as it once was.</p>\n<p>More downward pressure on pricing could come from shifts in employment practices. Mark Zandi points out that “the work-from-anywhere dynamic could depress wage growth and prices. If I don’t need to work in New York anymore and could live in Tampa, it stands to reason my wage could get cut or I won’t get the same wage increase in the future.”</p>\n<p>And so what is Zandi’s take on transitory? “What we’re observing now is prices going back to pre-pandemic,” he says. “The price spikes we’re experiencing now will continue for the next few months through summer but certainly by the end of year, this time next year, they will have disappeared. I do think underlying inflation will be higher post-pandemic than pre-pandemic, but that’s a feature not a bug.”</p>\n<p>I don’t disagree. To me it’s simple: The technology wave I’ve described above is bigger than COVID and bigger than the rise and fall of globalism. And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I believe inflation will be transitory, certainly in the long run. (Though I’m well aware of whatJohn Maynard Keynes said about the long run.)</p>","source":"lsy1612507957220","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Answering the great inflation question of our time</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nAnswering the great inflation question of our time\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-20 09:19 GMT+8 <a href=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html><strong>finance.yahoo</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.\nUnfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯"},"source_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1133385197","content_text":"Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.\nUnfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these days—is conjecture. And that’s vexing, not just for the dismal scientists (aka economists), but for all of us, because whether or not prices are really rising, by how much and for how long, has massive implications in our lives. Or as Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says: “Inflation is one of the mysteries of economic study and thought. A difficult thing to gauge and forecast and get right. That’s why the risks are high.”\nThe current debate over inflation really revolves around two questions: First, is this current spate of inflation, just that, a spate—or to use Wall Street’s buzzword of the moment, “transitory,”—or not? (Just to give you an idea of how buzzy, when I Google the word “transitory” the search engine suggests “inflation” after it.) And second, transitory (aka temporary) inflation or not, what does it suggest for the economy and markets?\nBefore I get into that, let me lay out what’s going on with prices right now. First, know that inflation,which peaked in 1980 at an annualized rate of 13.55%,has been tame for quite some time, specifically 4% or less for nearly 30 years. Which means that anyone 40 years old or younger has no experience with inflation other than maybe from an Econ 101 textbook. Obviously that could be a problem.\nAs an aside I remember President Ford in 1974 trying to jawbone inflation down with his \"Whip Inflation Now\" campaign, which featured“Win” buttons,earringsand evenugly sweaters.None of this worked and it took draconian measures by Fed Chair Paul Volcker (raising rates and targeting money supply,as described by Former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, William Poole)to eventually tame inflation and keep it under wraps for all those years.\nUntil now perhaps. Last week theLabor Department reported that consumer prices (the CPI, or consumer price index) rose 5% in May,the fastest annual rate in nearly 13 years—which was when the economy was overheating from the housing boom which subsequently went bust and sent the economy off a cliff and into the Great Recession. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was up 3.8%, the biggest increase since May 1992. (For the record, the likelihood of the economy tanking right now is de minimis.)\n\nUsed car and truck prices are a major driver of inflation, climbing 7.3% last month and 29.7% over the past year. New car prices are up too, which have pushed upshares of Ford and GM a remarkable 40% plus this year.Clearly Americans want to buy vehicles to go on vacation and get back to work. And Yahoo Finance’sJanna Herron reportsthat rents are rising at their fastest pace in 15 years.\nTo be sure, not all prices are climbing.As Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman points out,prices are not up much at all for health care, education and are basically flat for technology, including computers, smartphones and internet service (an important point which we’ll get back to.)\nBut that’s the counterpoint really. Americans are obsessed with cars, housing is critical and many of us are experiencing sticker shock booking travel this summer. Higher prices are front and center. Wall Street too is in a tizzy about inflation, and concerns about it and more importantly Federal Reserve policy in response to inflation (see below), sent stocks lower with the S&P 500 down 1.91% this week, its worst week since February.\nGiven this backdrop, the tension (such as it is) was high when the Fed met this week to deliver its forecast and for Chair Jay Powell to answer questions from the media. Or at least so said hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones,who characterized the proceedings on CNBCas “the most important meeting in [Chairman] Jay Powell’s career, certainly the most important Fed meeting of the past four or five years.” Jones was critical of the Fed, which he believes is now stimulating the economy unnecessarily by keeping interest rates low and by buying financial assets. Unnecessarily, Jones says, because the economy is already running hot and needs no support. The Fed (which is in the transitory camp when it comes to inflation) risks overheating the economy by creating runaway inflation, according to PTJ.\nNow I don’t see eye to eye with Jones on this, though I should point out, he's a billionaire from investing in financial markets, and let’s just say I’m not. I should also point out that Jones, 66, is in fact old enough to remember inflation, never mind that as a young man he called the 1987 stock market crash. So we should all ignore Jones at our peril.\nAs for what the Fed put forth this past Wednesday, well it wasn’t much, signaling an expectation ofraising interest rates twice by the end of 2023(yes, that is down the road.) And Powell, who’s become much more adept at not rippling the waters these days after some rougher forays earlier in his tenure, didn’t drop any bombshells in the presser.\nWhich brings us to the question of why the Federal Reserve isn’t so concerned about inflation and thinks it is mostly—here’s that word again—transitory. To answer that, we need to first address why prices are rising right now, which can be summed up in one very familiar abbreviation: COVID-19. When COVID hit last spring the economy collapsed, which crushed demand in sectors like leisure, travel and retail. Now the economy is roaring back to life and businesses can raise prices, certainly over 2020 levels.\n“We clearly should’ve expected it,” says William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and a professor of economics at Howard University. “You can’t shut down the economy and think you turn on the switch [without some inflation].”\n“We had a pandemic that forced an artificial shutdown of the economy in a way that even the collapse of the financial system and the housing market didn’t, and we had a snapback at a rate we’ve never seen before—not because of the fundamentals driving recovery but because of government,” says Joel Naroff, president and chief economist of Naroff Economics.\nCOVID had other secondary effects on the economy though, besides just ultimately producing a snapback. For one thing, the pandemic throttled supply chains, specifically the shipping of parts and components from one part of the globe to another. It also confused managers about how much to produce and therefore how many parts to order.\nA prime example here is what happened to the chip (semiconductor) and auto industrieswhich I wrote about last month.Car makers thought no one would buy vehicles during the pandemic and pared back their orders with chipmakers, (which were having a tough time shipping their chips anyway.) Turned out the car guys were wrong, millions of people wanted cars and trucks, but the automakers didn’t have enough chips for their cars and had to curb production. Fewer vehicles and strong demand led to higher new car prices, which cascaded to used car prices then to car rental rates. Net net, all the friction and slowness of getting things delivered now adds to costs which causes companies to raise prices.\nAnother secondary effect of COVID which has been inflationary comes from employment,which I got into a bit last week.We all know millions were thrown out of work by COVID last year, many of whom were backstopped by government payments that could add up to $600 a week (state and federal.) These folks have been none too keen on coming back to work for minimum wage, or $290 a week. So to lure them back employers are having to pay more, which puts more money in people's pockets which allows stores for example to raise prices.\nAnti-inflation forces\nBut here’s the big-time question: If COVID was temporary, and therefore its effects are temporary and inflation is one of its effects then doesn’t it follow, ipso facto, that inflation is (OK I’ll say it again), transitory?\nI say yes, (with a bit of a caveat.) And most economists, like Claudia Sahm, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and a former Federal Reserve economist, agree. “‘Transitory’ has become a buzzword,” she says. “It is important to be more concrete about what we mean by that. We’re probably going to see in the next few months inflation numbers that are bigger than average, but as long as they keep stepping down, that’s the sign of it being transitory. If we didn’t see any sign of inflation stepping down some, it would’ve started feeling like ‘Houston, we have a problem.’”\nTo buttress my argument beyond that above \"if-then\" syllogism, let’s take a look at why inflation has been so low for the past three decades.\nTo me this is mostly obvious. Prices have been tamped down by the greatest anti-inflation force of our lifetime, that being technology, specifically the explosion of consumer technology. Think about it. The first wave of technology, a good example would be IBM mainframes, saved big companies money in back-office functions, savings which they mostly kept for themselves (higher profits) and their shareholders. But the four great landmark events in the advent of consumer technology; the introduction ofthe PC in 1974 (MITS Altair),the Netscape IPO of 1995,Google search in 1998,and the launch of theiPhone in 2007(I remember Steve Jobs demoing it to me like it was yesterday), greatly accelerated, broadened and deepened this deflationary trend.\nNot only has technology been pushing down the cost of everything from drilling for oil, to manufacturing clothes to farming, and allowing for the creation of groundbreaking (and deflationary) competitors like Uber, Airbnb and Netflix, but it also let consumers find—on their phones—the most affordable trip to Hawaii, the least expensive haircut or the best deal on Nikes.\nSo technology has reduced the cost of almost everything and will continue to do so the rest of our lifetime. Bottom line: Unless something terrible happens, the power of technology will outweigh and outlive COVID.\nThere is one mitigating factor and that is globalism, which is connected to both technology and COVID. Let me briefly explain.\nAfter World War II, most of humanity has become more and more connected in terms of trade, communication, travel, etc. (See supply chain above.) Technology of course was a major enabler here; better ships, planes and faster internet, all of which as it grew more potent, accelerated globalism. Another element was the introduction of political constructs like the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. (I think of the Clinton administration andChina joining the WTO in 2001as perhaps the high-water marks of globalization.)\nLike its technological cousin, globalism has deflationary effects particularly on the labor front as companies could more and more easily find lowest cost countries to produce goods and source materials. And like technology, globalization seemed inexorable, which it was, until it wasn’t. Political winds, manifested by the likes of Brexit and leaders like Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Duterte and of course Donald Trump have caused globalism to wane and anti-globalism and nationalism to wax.\nThe internet too, once seen as only a great connector, has also become a global divider, as the world increasingly fractures into Chinese, U.S. and European walled digital zones when it comes to social media and search for example. Security risks, privacy, spying and hacking of course divide us further here too.\nSo technology, which had made globalism stronger and stronger, now also makes it weaker and weaker.\nCOVID plays a role in rethinking globalism as it exposes vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Companies that were rethinking their manufacturing in China but considering another country, are now wondering if it just makes sense to repatriate the whole shebang. Supply chains that were optimized for cost only are being rethought with security and reliability being factored in and that costs money.\nHow significant is this decline in globalization and how permanent is it? Good questions. But my point here is whether or not \"globalism disrupted\" is transitory (!) or not, it could push prices up, (in the short and intermediate run at least), as cost is sacrificed for predictability. Longer term I say Americans are a resourceful people. We’ll figure out how to make cost effective stuff in the U.S. It’s also likely that globalism will trend upward again, though perhaps not as unfettered as it once was.\nMore downward pressure on pricing could come from shifts in employment practices. Mark Zandi points out that “the work-from-anywhere dynamic could depress wage growth and prices. If I don’t need to work in New York anymore and could live in Tampa, it stands to reason my wage could get cut or I won’t get the same wage increase in the future.”\nAnd so what is Zandi’s take on transitory? “What we’re observing now is prices going back to pre-pandemic,” he says. “The price spikes we’re experiencing now will continue for the next few months through summer but certainly by the end of year, this time next year, they will have disappeared. I do think underlying inflation will be higher post-pandemic than pre-pandemic, but that’s a feature not a bug.”\nI don’t disagree. To me it’s simple: The technology wave I’ve described above is bigger than COVID and bigger than the rise and fall of globalism. And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I believe inflation will be transitory, certainly in the long run. (Though I’m well aware of whatJohn Maynard Keynes said about the long run.)","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":192,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":166646910,"gmtCreate":1624008337530,"gmtModify":1703826428474,"author":{"id":"3574646274260668","authorId":"3574646274260668","name":"VT28","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e88d459467a394321b4dd4ababe11aba","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3574646274260668","authorIdStr":"3574646274260668"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Up up up ","listText":"Up up up ","text":"Up up up","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/166646910","repostId":"1175693382","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1175693382","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1623978463,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1175693382?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-18 09:07","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Alibaba Stock: The Bottoming Process Looks To Be Forming Already","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1175693382","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Alibaba is probably the most undervalued growth stock right now.The company’s multiple growth drivers within a rapidly expanding market made its valuations look even more baffling.The short term technical picture may be turning bullish with a potential double bottom price action signal.When we take things into clearer perspective by comparing China’s growth rate and size of its market to that of the U.S. e-commerce market, we could see the huge differences in their sizes and growth rates as the ","content":"<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>Alibaba is probably the most undervalued growth stock right now.</li>\n <li>The company’s multiple growth drivers within a rapidly expanding market made its valuations look even more baffling.</li>\n <li>The short term technical picture may be turning bullish with a potential double bottom price action signal.</li>\n <li>We discuss the company’s multiple growth drivers and let investors judge for themselves.</li>\n</ul>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/05e63c77d4f3f3dc3d618e43044638bb\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"512\"><span>Yongyuan Dai/iStock Unreleased via Getty Images</span></p>\n<p><b>The Technical Thesis</b></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7febf6ed056b0e3bc038321cdaad9b1c\" tg-width=\"1280\" tg-height=\"782\"><span>Source: TradingView</span></p>\n<p>Alibaba’s stock price has endured a terrible 8 months ever since its Ant Financial IPO was pulled in early Nov 20, with the stock languishing in the doldrums 34% off its high. When considering the health of its long term uptrend, it’s clear that BABA has a relatively strong uptrend bias and has generally been well supported along its key 50W MA. The only other time in the last 4 years that it lost its key 50W MA support level was during the 2018 bear market where BABA dropped about 40%, but was still well supported above the important 200W MA, which we usually consider as the “last line of defense”. Right now BABA is somewhat facing a similar situation again: down 34%, lost the 50W MA, but looks to be well supported above the 200W MA. In addition to that, one interesting observation in price action analysis may lead price action traders/investors to be especially bullish: a potential double bottom formation. BABA's price is seemingly going through a double bottom like it did during the 2018 bear market before it rallied strongly thereafter. As a result, BABA’s current level may offer a possible technical buy entry point now.</p>\n<p><b>BABA's Fundamental Thesis: Rapidly Expanding Growth Drivers</b></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/eba49f5881708929949c30628eedc5d4\" tg-width=\"934\" tg-height=\"578\"><span>Annual GMV. Data source: Company filings</span></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a4d6c4ed3e2402f5af52b2dea8bab411\" tg-width=\"836\" tg-height=\"517\"><span>Annual e-commerce revenue. Data source: Company filings</span></p>\n<p>BABA’s GMV grew from 1.68T yuan to 7.49T yuan in just a matter of 7 years, which represented a CAGR of 23.8%, a truly amazing growth rate. We also saw its GMV growth being converted into revenue growth as its China commerce revenue grew from 7.67B yuan to 473.68B yuan, at a CAGR of 51% over the last 10 years. While its international footprint remains considerably smaller, it still grew at a CAGR of 30.42% over the last 10 years, which was by no means slow.</p>\n<p>Even though China’s e-commerce market is expected to grow considerably slower at a CAGR of 12.4% over the next three years, from 13.8T yuan, equivalent to $2.16T in 2021 to 19.6T yuan,equivalent to $3.06T by 2024, the massive size of the market still offers tremendous upside potential for BABA and its closest competitors to grow into.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ffe2dee43f267e1d1399c68e3ca60f36\" tg-width=\"600\" tg-height=\"371\"><span>E-commerce revenue in the U.S. Data source: Statista</span></p>\n<p>When we take things into clearer perspective by comparing China’s growth rate and size of its market to that of the U.S. e-commerce market, we could see the huge differences in their sizes and growth rates as the U.S. e-commerce market is only expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.67% from 2021 to 2025, which is significantly slower than China’s 12.4%. In addition, the U.S. market is also expected to reach about $563B in total revenue, which is 18% of what the China market is expected to be worth by then.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0d5a8d0d8a6a2dcdf667a6f33c6c9771\" tg-width=\"1280\" tg-height=\"702\"><span>Peers EBIT Margin and Projected EBIT Margin. Data source: S&P Capital IQ</span></p>\n<p>Even though Alibaba has been facing increased competitive pressures from its fast growing key competitors: JD.com(NASDAQ:JD)and Pinduoduo(NASDAQ:PDD), BABA has already been operating a much more profitable business (both EBIT and FCF), and is expected to continue delivering strong profitability moving forward, which should give the company tremendous flexibility to compete head on with JD and PDD in its quest to extend its leadership. Investors may observe that BABA’s EBIT margin was affected by the one-off administrative penalty of $2,782M that was reflected in its SG&A, and therefore skewed its EBIT margin to the downside.</p>\n<p>One important move was the company’s decision to further its investment in the Community Marketplace, which is PDD’s main e-commerce strategy that saw PDD gain a total of 823M AAC in its latest quarter as compared to BABA’s 891M AAC. PDD’s AAC growth is truly phenomenal considering it had only 100M AAC in Q2’C17 as compared to BABA’s 466M AAC in the same period.</p>\n<p>Therefore, the momentum of growth has surely swung over to the Community Marketplace segment and BABA would need to pull out its big guns (which it has) to compete for dominance with PDD and JD.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3b83b69b08b1f4b11a26393c8e6eead5\" tg-width=\"600\" tg-height=\"371\"><span>Market size of community group buying in China. Data source: iiMedia Research</span></p>\n<p>Even though the expected total market size of 102B yuan by 2022 represented only about 21.5% of BABA’s FY 21 China commerce revenue, the expected rapid CAGR of 44.22% over 3 years from 2019 to 2022 cannot be missed by BABA. Although the market is still relatively small, BABA cannot allow the current leader in this market: PDD to so easily dominate and gobble up the early high growth rates at the ignorance of everyone else. Certainly BABA must compete and fight for its place in this segment and strive for early leadership to prevent PDD from extending its lead.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b97b2b4a8a182dc9846d8fb7e4039877\" tg-width=\"1280\" tg-height=\"770\"><span>PDD profitability metrics & revenue growth forecast. Data source: S&P Capital IQ</span></p>\n<p>We could observe from the above chart that PDD is expected to continue growing its revenue rapidly over the next few years, even though they are expected to normalize subsequently. More importantly, PDD is also expected to increasingly improve its EBIT and FCF profitability moving forward. This shows that the Community Marketplace segment is an highly important growth driver that BABA must use its strength to exploit in order to deny PDD’s claim to undisputed leadership so early on in the game.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3aadc32155b4108426a1a982e3b5b1c2\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"360\"><span>China public cloud spending. Source:China Internet Watch; Canalys</span></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1c1538b9f7bdc8d6d35a72d9acf8ecbc\" tg-width=\"600\" tg-height=\"371\"><span>Size of China public cloud market. Data source: CAICT; Sina.com.cn</span></p>\n<p>BABA has a 40% share in China’s public cloud market, way ahead of its key competitors. However, it’s important to note that despite this leadership, BABA is still in heavy investment mode to continue growing its market share as China’s public cloud market is expected to grow from 26.48B yuan in 2017 to 230.74B yuan by 2023, which would represent a CAGR of 43.4%, an incredibly stellar growth rate. This is especially clear when we compare China’s growth rate to the worldwide growth rate (see below) as public cloud spending worldwide is expected to grow from $145B in 2017 to $397B by 2022, that would represent a CAGR of 22.3%.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/06198c569504bc303c34563041dfb294\" tg-width=\"600\" tg-height=\"371\"><span>Worldwide public cloud spending. Data source: Gartner</span></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8482037f60575f964053ab732496bee3\" tg-width=\"1176\" tg-height=\"700\"><span>Worldwide public cloud market share. Source:CnTechPost; Gartner</span></p>\n<p>Therefore, I don’t find it surprising that Ali Cloud has continued to extend its lead over Alphabet’s(NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG)GCP with a market share of 9.5% in 2020. While AMZN remains the clear leader in the market, its market share has been coming down considerably as public cloud spending continues to expand, indicating that there is a huge potential for growth for multiple players to exist. With BABA’s leadership in the rapidly expanding Chinese market, I’m increasingly bullish on the future profit and FCF contribution from this segment to BABA’s performance over time. Although BABA’s cloud segment has not been EBIT profitable yet (FY 21 EBIT margin: -15%, FY 20 EBIT margin: -17.5%), it’s also useful to note that GCP has also not been profitable for Alphabet as well (FY 20 EBIT margin: -42.9%, FY 19 EBIT margin: -52%). Therefore, we need to give BABA some time to scale up its cloud services in APAC and in China where it is expected to have stronger leadership to allow it to grow faster and investors should expect this to be a highly profitable segment over time.</p>\n<p><b>BABA's Valuations Look Highly Compelling</b></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/62a087c4b3ef7efc2c5dde813e3b959d\" tg-width=\"1000\" tg-height=\"600\"><span>NTM TEV / EBIT 3Y range.</span></p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b2605c0e5ad364a7a43929fef204595c\" tg-width=\"1280\" tg-height=\"687\"><span>EV / Fwd EBIT and EV / Fwd Rev trend. Data source: S&P Capital IQ</span></p>\n<p>When we consider BABA's TEV / EBIT historical range, where the 3Y mean read 33.54x, BABA’s EV / Fwd EBIT trend certainly imply a hugely undervalued stock as BABA is still expected to grow its revenue and operating profits rapidly. However, as we wanted to obtain greater clarity over how its counterparts are also valued, we thought it would be useful if we value BABA’s EBIT over a set of benchmark companies that is presented below.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d27873e676dfb23c98d4a69aa5861e02\" tg-width=\"1280\" tg-height=\"1117\"><span>Peers EV / EBIT Valuations. Data source: S&P Capital IQ</span></p>\n<p>By using a blend of historical and forward EBIT, we could see that BABA’s EV / EBIT really looks undervalued when compared to the median value of the set of observed values from the benchmark companies. We derived a fair value range for BABA of $294.98 at the midpoint of the range, that represented a potential upside of 40.5% based on the current stock price of $210.</p>\n<p><b>Risks to Assumptions</b></p>\n<p>Now, it’s obviously baffling to watch how Mr. Market has decided to discount BABA to such an extent as if the company has lost all its key sources of growth, when in fact there is still so much potential upside coming from its commerce segment, the new marketplace initiatives and its growing Ali Cloud segment, among others. The main realistic reason that we identified for the stock's underperformance would simply be regulatory risk. We think investors should acknowledge that this risk is very real and at times huge Chinese companies have found themselves to be subjected to extra scrutiny (which is nothing new in fact) by the Chinese government. What’s critical here is that the Chinese government seemingly has significant clout over the behavior and actions of their tech behemoths that at times may be largely unpredictable. The market certainly hates unpredictability and therefore they may have significantly discounted BABA as a result of that. If investors are not able to handle uncertainty with regard to potentially unpredictable regulatory actions and their aftermath, then BABA may not be appropriate for you. However, if you believe that this is just a blip in BABA’s long journey, then you would surely find BABA's valuations extremely attractive right now, coupled with a long term mindset.</p>\n<p><b>Wrapping It All Up</b></p>\n<p>Alibaba has continued to deliver solid results that demonstrated the strong capability of the company to execute well. As the company continues to operate within a market with so many growth drivers that are expected to drive the company’s future growth, investors should find the current valuations highly attractive.</p>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Alibaba Stock: The Bottoming Process Looks To Be Forming Already</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nAlibaba Stock: The Bottoming Process Looks To Be Forming Already\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-18 09:07 GMT+8 <a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4435297-alibaba-stock-bottoming-process-forming-buy-now><strong>seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Summary\n\nAlibaba is probably the most undervalued growth stock right now.\nThe company’s multiple growth drivers within a rapidly expanding market made its valuations look even more baffling.\nThe short...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4435297-alibaba-stock-bottoming-process-forming-buy-now\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BABA":"阿里巴巴","09988":"阿里巴巴-W"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4435297-alibaba-stock-bottoming-process-forming-buy-now","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1175693382","content_text":"Summary\n\nAlibaba is probably the most undervalued growth stock right now.\nThe company’s multiple growth drivers within a rapidly expanding market made its valuations look even more baffling.\nThe short term technical picture may be turning bullish with a potential double bottom price action signal.\nWe discuss the company’s multiple growth drivers and let investors judge for themselves.\n\nYongyuan Dai/iStock Unreleased via Getty Images\nThe Technical Thesis\nSource: TradingView\nAlibaba’s stock price has endured a terrible 8 months ever since its Ant Financial IPO was pulled in early Nov 20, with the stock languishing in the doldrums 34% off its high. When considering the health of its long term uptrend, it’s clear that BABA has a relatively strong uptrend bias and has generally been well supported along its key 50W MA. The only other time in the last 4 years that it lost its key 50W MA support level was during the 2018 bear market where BABA dropped about 40%, but was still well supported above the important 200W MA, which we usually consider as the “last line of defense”. Right now BABA is somewhat facing a similar situation again: down 34%, lost the 50W MA, but looks to be well supported above the 200W MA. In addition to that, one interesting observation in price action analysis may lead price action traders/investors to be especially bullish: a potential double bottom formation. BABA's price is seemingly going through a double bottom like it did during the 2018 bear market before it rallied strongly thereafter. As a result, BABA’s current level may offer a possible technical buy entry point now.\nBABA's Fundamental Thesis: Rapidly Expanding Growth Drivers\nAnnual GMV. Data source: Company filings\nAnnual e-commerce revenue. Data source: Company filings\nBABA’s GMV grew from 1.68T yuan to 7.49T yuan in just a matter of 7 years, which represented a CAGR of 23.8%, a truly amazing growth rate. We also saw its GMV growth being converted into revenue growth as its China commerce revenue grew from 7.67B yuan to 473.68B yuan, at a CAGR of 51% over the last 10 years. While its international footprint remains considerably smaller, it still grew at a CAGR of 30.42% over the last 10 years, which was by no means slow.\nEven though China’s e-commerce market is expected to grow considerably slower at a CAGR of 12.4% over the next three years, from 13.8T yuan, equivalent to $2.16T in 2021 to 19.6T yuan,equivalent to $3.06T by 2024, the massive size of the market still offers tremendous upside potential for BABA and its closest competitors to grow into.\nE-commerce revenue in the U.S. Data source: Statista\nWhen we take things into clearer perspective by comparing China’s growth rate and size of its market to that of the U.S. e-commerce market, we could see the huge differences in their sizes and growth rates as the U.S. e-commerce market is only expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.67% from 2021 to 2025, which is significantly slower than China’s 12.4%. In addition, the U.S. market is also expected to reach about $563B in total revenue, which is 18% of what the China market is expected to be worth by then.\nPeers EBIT Margin and Projected EBIT Margin. Data source: S&P Capital IQ\nEven though Alibaba has been facing increased competitive pressures from its fast growing key competitors: JD.com(NASDAQ:JD)and Pinduoduo(NASDAQ:PDD), BABA has already been operating a much more profitable business (both EBIT and FCF), and is expected to continue delivering strong profitability moving forward, which should give the company tremendous flexibility to compete head on with JD and PDD in its quest to extend its leadership. Investors may observe that BABA’s EBIT margin was affected by the one-off administrative penalty of $2,782M that was reflected in its SG&A, and therefore skewed its EBIT margin to the downside.\nOne important move was the company’s decision to further its investment in the Community Marketplace, which is PDD’s main e-commerce strategy that saw PDD gain a total of 823M AAC in its latest quarter as compared to BABA’s 891M AAC. PDD’s AAC growth is truly phenomenal considering it had only 100M AAC in Q2’C17 as compared to BABA’s 466M AAC in the same period.\nTherefore, the momentum of growth has surely swung over to the Community Marketplace segment and BABA would need to pull out its big guns (which it has) to compete for dominance with PDD and JD.\nMarket size of community group buying in China. Data source: iiMedia Research\nEven though the expected total market size of 102B yuan by 2022 represented only about 21.5% of BABA’s FY 21 China commerce revenue, the expected rapid CAGR of 44.22% over 3 years from 2019 to 2022 cannot be missed by BABA. Although the market is still relatively small, BABA cannot allow the current leader in this market: PDD to so easily dominate and gobble up the early high growth rates at the ignorance of everyone else. Certainly BABA must compete and fight for its place in this segment and strive for early leadership to prevent PDD from extending its lead.\nPDD profitability metrics & revenue growth forecast. Data source: S&P Capital IQ\nWe could observe from the above chart that PDD is expected to continue growing its revenue rapidly over the next few years, even though they are expected to normalize subsequently. More importantly, PDD is also expected to increasingly improve its EBIT and FCF profitability moving forward. This shows that the Community Marketplace segment is an highly important growth driver that BABA must use its strength to exploit in order to deny PDD’s claim to undisputed leadership so early on in the game.\nChina public cloud spending. Source:China Internet Watch; Canalys\nSize of China public cloud market. Data source: CAICT; Sina.com.cn\nBABA has a 40% share in China’s public cloud market, way ahead of its key competitors. However, it’s important to note that despite this leadership, BABA is still in heavy investment mode to continue growing its market share as China’s public cloud market is expected to grow from 26.48B yuan in 2017 to 230.74B yuan by 2023, which would represent a CAGR of 43.4%, an incredibly stellar growth rate. This is especially clear when we compare China’s growth rate to the worldwide growth rate (see below) as public cloud spending worldwide is expected to grow from $145B in 2017 to $397B by 2022, that would represent a CAGR of 22.3%.\nWorldwide public cloud spending. Data source: Gartner\nWorldwide public cloud market share. Source:CnTechPost; Gartner\nTherefore, I don’t find it surprising that Ali Cloud has continued to extend its lead over Alphabet’s(NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG)GCP with a market share of 9.5% in 2020. While AMZN remains the clear leader in the market, its market share has been coming down considerably as public cloud spending continues to expand, indicating that there is a huge potential for growth for multiple players to exist. With BABA’s leadership in the rapidly expanding Chinese market, I’m increasingly bullish on the future profit and FCF contribution from this segment to BABA’s performance over time. Although BABA’s cloud segment has not been EBIT profitable yet (FY 21 EBIT margin: -15%, FY 20 EBIT margin: -17.5%), it’s also useful to note that GCP has also not been profitable for Alphabet as well (FY 20 EBIT margin: -42.9%, FY 19 EBIT margin: -52%). Therefore, we need to give BABA some time to scale up its cloud services in APAC and in China where it is expected to have stronger leadership to allow it to grow faster and investors should expect this to be a highly profitable segment over time.\nBABA's Valuations Look Highly Compelling\nNTM TEV / EBIT 3Y range.\nEV / Fwd EBIT and EV / Fwd Rev trend. Data source: S&P Capital IQ\nWhen we consider BABA's TEV / EBIT historical range, where the 3Y mean read 33.54x, BABA’s EV / Fwd EBIT trend certainly imply a hugely undervalued stock as BABA is still expected to grow its revenue and operating profits rapidly. However, as we wanted to obtain greater clarity over how its counterparts are also valued, we thought it would be useful if we value BABA’s EBIT over a set of benchmark companies that is presented below.\nPeers EV / EBIT Valuations. Data source: S&P Capital IQ\nBy using a blend of historical and forward EBIT, we could see that BABA’s EV / EBIT really looks undervalued when compared to the median value of the set of observed values from the benchmark companies. We derived a fair value range for BABA of $294.98 at the midpoint of the range, that represented a potential upside of 40.5% based on the current stock price of $210.\nRisks to Assumptions\nNow, it’s obviously baffling to watch how Mr. Market has decided to discount BABA to such an extent as if the company has lost all its key sources of growth, when in fact there is still so much potential upside coming from its commerce segment, the new marketplace initiatives and its growing Ali Cloud segment, among others. The main realistic reason that we identified for the stock's underperformance would simply be regulatory risk. We think investors should acknowledge that this risk is very real and at times huge Chinese companies have found themselves to be subjected to extra scrutiny (which is nothing new in fact) by the Chinese government. What’s critical here is that the Chinese government seemingly has significant clout over the behavior and actions of their tech behemoths that at times may be largely unpredictable. The market certainly hates unpredictability and therefore they may have significantly discounted BABA as a result of that. If investors are not able to handle uncertainty with regard to potentially unpredictable regulatory actions and their aftermath, then BABA may not be appropriate for you. However, if you believe that this is just a blip in BABA’s long journey, then you would surely find BABA's valuations extremely attractive right now, coupled with a long term mindset.\nWrapping It All Up\nAlibaba has continued to deliver solid results that demonstrated the strong capability of the company to execute well. As the company continues to operate within a market with so many growth drivers that are expected to drive the company’s future growth, investors should find the current valuations highly attractive.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":84,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":387840294,"gmtCreate":1613740306218,"gmtModify":1704884390437,"author":{"id":"3574646274260668","authorId":"3574646274260668","name":"VT28","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e88d459467a394321b4dd4ababe11aba","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3574646274260668","authorIdStr":"3574646274260668"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"How to spot one?","listText":"How to spot one?","text":"How to spot one?","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/387840294","repostId":"2112998868","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"2112998868","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1613654605,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/2112998868?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-02-18 21:23","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Here's Why High Dividend Stocks Remain An Attractive Choice","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2112998868","media":"Benzinga","summary":"According to analysts, global companies that have had a growing or stable dividend policy over the p","content":"<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0d7afe1a44f30cb4b329a54a77eed026\" tg-width=\"600\" tg-height=\"400\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p><i>According to analysts, global companies that have had a growing or stable dividend policy over the past 10 years could yield up to 5.41%, Fineco Asset Management's investment team says.</i></p>\n<p>The average yields on saving accounts across Europe are basically close to zero, while those of government bonds are mostly below 1% (for example, Italian 10-year BTPs currently yield less than 0.50%): such an environment makes investing in high dividend stocks an attractive choice.</p>\n<p><b>A Less Marked Dividend Decrease Compared To 2007-2009:</b> \"A valid consideration also in light of the economic crisis following the 2020 pandemic is that there was an impact on global dividends but to a lesser extent than it could be expected,\" as reported by the Fineco Asset Management Investment Team.</p>\n<p>As a matter of fact, although after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis the average dividend paid by global companies fell by 7.95% (between 2007 and 2009), the decline stopped at 3.4% between 2019 and 2020. Such divergence is due to the fact that not all market sectors were affected, and credit remained available thanks to unprecedented monetary and fiscal policy measures.</p>\n<p><b>Pepsi Co, Procter & Gamble,</b> <b>and Johnson & Johnson:</b> “While a number of industries - particularly those related to services, as well as non-online retail and travel industry - have suffered significantly, companies pertaining to other industries like <b>Pepsi Company Inc.</b> (NASDAQ: PEP), <b>Procter & Gamble Co.</b> (NYSE: PG) and <b>Johnson & Johnson</b> (NYSE: JNJ) managed to increase coupons in 2020,\" the team noted, adding, \"In other cases, companies like <b>Vodafone Group Plc</b> (NASDAQ: VOD) have maintained their dividend. On the other hand, the provisions imposed in the banking sector by the regulators resulted in the suspension of dividends, since it was preferred to maintain capital in banks as a precautionary measure.”</p>\n<p><b>Cautious Optimism:</b> Looking forward, expectations are based on cautious optimism — economies reopening and the global vaccination plan should lead to an increase in spending on services and capital goods. Such a scenario will inject confidence in the management boards, thus prompting companies to review their dividend policy.</p>\n<p><b>The Price/Earnings Ratio (P/E):</b> As for valuations, while stocks, in general, are not currently cheap relative to historical prices, it’s also true that high-yield dividend stocks are <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/AONE\">one</a> of the few areas of the stock market which are close to their historical averages.</p>\n<p>\"At the moment, the price-to-earnings (p/e) ratio of these stocks is 12.9 times the expected profits within the next 12 months, a level equal to their historical ten-year average and a much more reasonable level than the broader stock market, which trades at 18.2 times future profits against a ten-year average of 14.2. As for global growth stocks, the valuation is equal to 3.7 times 1-year sales, compared to only 1.5 times for the high-yield global stocks,” the Investment Team of Fineco Asset Management said.</p>\n<p><b>A 2% Return This Year And A 2.16% Return In 2022:</b> Which return will global stocks offer in 2021? After yielding an average of 1.84% in 2020, analysts expect global stocks can return 2% this year and 2.16% in 2022.</p>\n<p>\"For those global stock companies that have had a growing stable dividend for at least the last 10 years, analysts collectively expect they can yield up to 5.41% in 2021\", the investments team of Fineco Asset Management noted, considering these stocks have lagged the broader market in the past year and have not yet fully recovered from the 2020 correction.</p>","source":"lsy1606299360108","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Here's Why High Dividend Stocks Remain An Attractive Choice</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nHere's Why High Dividend Stocks Remain An Attractive Choice\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-02-18 21:23 GMT+8 <a href=https://www.benzinga.com/analyst-ratings/analyst-color/21/02/19725687/heres-why-high-dividend-stocks-remain-an-attractive-choice><strong>Benzinga</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>According to analysts, global companies that have had a growing or stable dividend policy over the past 10 years could yield up to 5.41%, Fineco Asset Management's investment team says.\nThe average ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.benzinga.com/analyst-ratings/analyst-color/21/02/19725687/heres-why-high-dividend-stocks-remain-an-attractive-choice\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/87fb97aa618ed176e9a1960545651e47","relate_stocks":{"JNJ":"强生"},"source_url":"https://www.benzinga.com/analyst-ratings/analyst-color/21/02/19725687/heres-why-high-dividend-stocks-remain-an-attractive-choice","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2112998868","content_text":"According to analysts, global companies that have had a growing or stable dividend policy over the past 10 years could yield up to 5.41%, Fineco Asset Management's investment team says.\nThe average yields on saving accounts across Europe are basically close to zero, while those of government bonds are mostly below 1% (for example, Italian 10-year BTPs currently yield less than 0.50%): such an environment makes investing in high dividend stocks an attractive choice.\nA Less Marked Dividend Decrease Compared To 2007-2009: \"A valid consideration also in light of the economic crisis following the 2020 pandemic is that there was an impact on global dividends but to a lesser extent than it could be expected,\" as reported by the Fineco Asset Management Investment Team.\nAs a matter of fact, although after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis the average dividend paid by global companies fell by 7.95% (between 2007 and 2009), the decline stopped at 3.4% between 2019 and 2020. Such divergence is due to the fact that not all market sectors were affected, and credit remained available thanks to unprecedented monetary and fiscal policy measures.\nPepsi Co, Procter & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson: “While a number of industries - particularly those related to services, as well as non-online retail and travel industry - have suffered significantly, companies pertaining to other industries like Pepsi Company Inc. (NASDAQ: PEP), Procter & Gamble Co. (NYSE: PG) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) managed to increase coupons in 2020,\" the team noted, adding, \"In other cases, companies like Vodafone Group Plc (NASDAQ: VOD) have maintained their dividend. On the other hand, the provisions imposed in the banking sector by the regulators resulted in the suspension of dividends, since it was preferred to maintain capital in banks as a precautionary measure.”\nCautious Optimism: Looking forward, expectations are based on cautious optimism — economies reopening and the global vaccination plan should lead to an increase in spending on services and capital goods. Such a scenario will inject confidence in the management boards, thus prompting companies to review their dividend policy.\nThe Price/Earnings Ratio (P/E): As for valuations, while stocks, in general, are not currently cheap relative to historical prices, it’s also true that high-yield dividend stocks are one of the few areas of the stock market which are close to their historical averages.\n\"At the moment, the price-to-earnings (p/e) ratio of these stocks is 12.9 times the expected profits within the next 12 months, a level equal to their historical ten-year average and a much more reasonable level than the broader stock market, which trades at 18.2 times future profits against a ten-year average of 14.2. As for global growth stocks, the valuation is equal to 3.7 times 1-year sales, compared to only 1.5 times for the high-yield global stocks,” the Investment Team of Fineco Asset Management said.\nA 2% Return This Year And A 2.16% Return In 2022: Which return will global stocks offer in 2021? After yielding an average of 1.84% in 2020, analysts expect global stocks can return 2% this year and 2.16% in 2022.\n\"For those global stock companies that have had a growing stable dividend for at least the last 10 years, analysts collectively expect they can yield up to 5.41% in 2021\", the investments team of Fineco Asset Management noted, considering these stocks have lagged the broader market in the past year and have not yet fully recovered from the 2020 correction.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":141,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"hots":[{"id":129130380,"gmtCreate":1624363903640,"gmtModify":1703834415313,"author":{"id":"3574646274260668","authorId":"3574646274260668","name":"VT28","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e88d459467a394321b4dd4ababe11aba","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3574646274260668","authorIdStr":"3574646274260668"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Ok forget now","listText":"Ok forget now","text":"Ok forget now","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/129130380","repostId":"1177499959","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":207,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164690073,"gmtCreate":1624197807992,"gmtModify":1703830490948,"author":{"id":"3574646274260668","authorId":"3574646274260668","name":"VT28","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e88d459467a394321b4dd4ababe11aba","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3574646274260668","authorIdStr":"3574646274260668"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Buy more stock to beat inflation ","listText":"Buy more stock to beat inflation ","text":"Buy more stock to beat inflation","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164690073","repostId":"1133385197","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1133385197","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624151969,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1133385197?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-20 09:19","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Answering the great inflation question of our time","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1133385197","media":"finance.yahoo","summary":"Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up","content":"<p>Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.</p>\n<p>Unfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these days—is conjecture. And that’s vexing, not just for the dismal scientists (aka economists), but for all of us, because whether or not prices are really rising, by how much and for how long, has massive implications in our lives. Or as Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says: “Inflation is one of the mysteries of economic study and thought. A difficult thing to gauge and forecast and get right. That’s why the risks are high.”</p>\n<p>The current debate over inflation really revolves around two questions: First, is this current spate of inflation, just that, a spate—or to use Wall Street’s buzzword of the moment, “transitory,”—or not? (Just to give you an idea of how buzzy, when I Google the word “transitory” the search engine suggests “inflation” after it.) And second, transitory (aka temporary) inflation or not, what does it suggest for the economy and markets?</p>\n<p>Before I get into that, let me lay out what’s going on with prices right now. First, know that inflation,which peaked in 1980 at an annualized rate of 13.55%,has been tame for quite some time, specifically 4% or less for nearly 30 years. Which means that anyone 40 years old or younger has no experience with inflation other than maybe from an Econ 101 textbook. Obviously that could be a problem.</p>\n<p>As an aside I remember President Ford in 1974 trying to jawbone inflation down with his \"Whip Inflation Now\" campaign, which featured“Win” buttons,earringsand evenugly sweaters.None of this worked and it took draconian measures by Fed Chair Paul Volcker (raising rates and targeting money supply,as described by Former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, William Poole)to eventually tame inflation and keep it under wraps for all those years.</p>\n<p>Until now perhaps. Last week theLabor Department reported that consumer prices (the CPI, or consumer price index) rose 5% in May,the fastest annual rate in nearly 13 years—which was when the economy was overheating from the housing boom which subsequently went bust and sent the economy off a cliff and into the Great Recession. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was up 3.8%, the biggest increase since May 1992. (For the record, the likelihood of the economy tanking right now is de minimis.)</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/87f75dfcb98fb5a0e7c3f9d3f8d336e2\" tg-width=\"705\" tg-height=\"412\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Used car and truck prices are a major driver of inflation, climbing 7.3% last month and 29.7% over the past year. New car prices are up too, which have pushed upshares of Ford and GM a remarkable 40% plus this year.Clearly Americans want to buy vehicles to go on vacation and get back to work. And Yahoo Finance’sJanna Herron reportsthat rents are rising at their fastest pace in 15 years.</p>\n<p>To be sure, not all prices are climbing.As Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman points out,prices are not up much at all for health care, education and are basically flat for technology, including computers, smartphones and internet service (an important point which we’ll get back to.)</p>\n<p>But that’s the counterpoint really. Americans are obsessed with cars, housing is critical and many of us are experiencing sticker shock booking travel this summer. Higher prices are front and center. Wall Street too is in a tizzy about inflation, and concerns about it and more importantly Federal Reserve policy in response to inflation (see below), sent stocks lower with the S&P 500 down 1.91% this week, its worst week since February.</p>\n<p>Given this backdrop, the tension (such as it is) was high when the Fed met this week to deliver its forecast and for Chair Jay Powell to answer questions from the media. Or at least so said hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones,who characterized the proceedings on CNBCas “the most important meeting in [Chairman] Jay Powell’s career, certainly the most important Fed meeting of the past four or five years.” Jones was critical of the Fed, which he believes is now stimulating the economy unnecessarily by keeping interest rates low and by buying financial assets. Unnecessarily, Jones says, because the economy is already running hot and needs no support. The Fed (which is in the transitory camp when it comes to inflation) risks overheating the economy by creating runaway inflation, according to PTJ.</p>\n<p>Now I don’t see eye to eye with Jones on this, though I should point out, he's a billionaire from investing in financial markets, and let’s just say I’m not. I should also point out that Jones, 66, is in fact old enough to remember inflation, never mind that as a young man he called the 1987 stock market crash. So we should all ignore Jones at our peril.</p>\n<p>As for what the Fed put forth this past Wednesday, well it wasn’t much, signaling an expectation ofraising interest rates twice by the end of 2023(yes, that is down the road.) And Powell, who’s become much more adept at not rippling the waters these days after some rougher forays earlier in his tenure, didn’t drop any bombshells in the presser.</p>\n<p>Which brings us to the question of why the Federal Reserve isn’t so concerned about inflation and thinks it is mostly—here’s that word again—transitory. To answer that, we need to first address why prices are rising right now, which can be summed up in one very familiar abbreviation: COVID-19. When COVID hit last spring the economy collapsed, which crushed demand in sectors like leisure, travel and retail. Now the economy is roaring back to life and businesses can raise prices, certainly over 2020 levels.</p>\n<p>“We clearly should’ve expected it,” says William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and a professor of economics at Howard University. “You can’t shut down the economy and think you turn on the switch [without some inflation].”</p>\n<p>“We had a pandemic that forced an artificial shutdown of the economy in a way that even the collapse of the financial system and the housing market didn’t, and we had a snapback at a rate we’ve never seen before—not because of the fundamentals driving recovery but because of government,” says Joel Naroff, president and chief economist of Naroff Economics.</p>\n<p>COVID had other secondary effects on the economy though, besides just ultimately producing a snapback. For one thing, the pandemic throttled supply chains, specifically the shipping of parts and components from one part of the globe to another. It also confused managers about how much to produce and therefore how many parts to order.</p>\n<p>A prime example here is what happened to the chip (semiconductor) and auto industrieswhich I wrote about last month.Car makers thought no one would buy vehicles during the pandemic and pared back their orders with chipmakers, (which were having a tough time shipping their chips anyway.) Turned out the car guys were wrong, millions of people wanted cars and trucks, but the automakers didn’t have enough chips for their cars and had to curb production. Fewer vehicles and strong demand led to higher new car prices, which cascaded to used car prices then to car rental rates. Net net, all the friction and slowness of getting things delivered now adds to costs which causes companies to raise prices.</p>\n<p>Another secondary effect of COVID which has been inflationary comes from employment,which I got into a bit last week.We all know millions were thrown out of work by COVID last year, many of whom were backstopped by government payments that could add up to $600 a week (state and federal.) These folks have been none too keen on coming back to work for minimum wage, or $290 a week. So to lure them back employers are having to pay more, which puts more money in people's pockets which allows stores for example to raise prices.</p>\n<p><b>Anti-inflation forces</b></p>\n<p>But here’s the big-time question: If COVID was temporary, and therefore its effects are temporary and inflation is one of its effects then doesn’t it follow, ipso facto, that inflation is (OK I’ll say it again), transitory?</p>\n<p>I say yes, (with a bit of a caveat.) And most economists, like Claudia Sahm, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and a former Federal Reserve economist, agree. “‘Transitory’ has become a buzzword,” she says. “It is important to be more concrete about what we mean by that. We’re probably going to see in the next few months inflation numbers that are bigger than average, but as long as they keep stepping down, that’s the sign of it being transitory. If we didn’t see any sign of inflation stepping down some, it would’ve started feeling like ‘Houston, we have a problem.’”</p>\n<p>To buttress my argument beyond that above \"if-then\" syllogism, let’s take a look at why inflation has been so low for the past three decades.</p>\n<p>To me this is mostly obvious. Prices have been tamped down by the greatest anti-inflation force of our lifetime, that being technology, specifically the explosion of consumer technology. Think about it. The first wave of technology, a good example would be IBM mainframes, saved big companies money in back-office functions, savings which they mostly kept for themselves (higher profits) and their shareholders. But the four great landmark events in the advent of consumer technology; the introduction ofthe PC in 1974 (MITS Altair),the Netscape IPO of 1995,Google search in 1998,and the launch of theiPhone in 2007(I remember Steve Jobs demoing it to me like it was yesterday), greatly accelerated, broadened and deepened this deflationary trend.</p>\n<p>Not only has technology been pushing down the cost of everything from drilling for oil, to manufacturing clothes to farming, and allowing for the creation of groundbreaking (and deflationary) competitors like Uber, Airbnb and Netflix, but it also let consumers find—on their phones—the most affordable trip to Hawaii, the least expensive haircut or the best deal on Nikes.</p>\n<p>So technology has reduced the cost of almost everything and will continue to do so the rest of our lifetime. Bottom line: Unless something terrible happens, the power of technology will outweigh and outlive COVID.</p>\n<p>There is one mitigating factor and that is globalism, which is connected to both technology and COVID. Let me briefly explain.</p>\n<p>After World War II, most of humanity has become more and more connected in terms of trade, communication, travel, etc. (See supply chain above.) Technology of course was a major enabler here; better ships, planes and faster internet, all of which as it grew more potent, accelerated globalism. Another element was the introduction of political constructs like the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. (I think of the Clinton administration andChina joining the WTO in 2001as perhaps the high-water marks of globalization.)</p>\n<p>Like its technological cousin, globalism has deflationary effects particularly on the labor front as companies could more and more easily find lowest cost countries to produce goods and source materials. And like technology, globalization seemed inexorable, which it was, until it wasn’t. Political winds, manifested by the likes of Brexit and leaders like Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Duterte and of course Donald Trump have caused globalism to wane and anti-globalism and nationalism to wax.</p>\n<p>The internet too, once seen as only a great connector, has also become a global divider, as the world increasingly fractures into Chinese, U.S. and European walled digital zones when it comes to social media and search for example. Security risks, privacy, spying and hacking of course divide us further here too.</p>\n<p>So technology, which had made globalism stronger and stronger, now also makes it weaker and weaker.</p>\n<p>COVID plays a role in rethinking globalism as it exposes vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Companies that were rethinking their manufacturing in China but considering another country, are now wondering if it just makes sense to repatriate the whole shebang. Supply chains that were optimized for cost only are being rethought with security and reliability being factored in and that costs money.</p>\n<p>How significant is this decline in globalization and how permanent is it? Good questions. But my point here is whether or not \"globalism disrupted\" is transitory (!) or not, it could push prices up, (in the short and intermediate run at least), as cost is sacrificed for predictability. Longer term I say Americans are a resourceful people. We’ll figure out how to make cost effective stuff in the U.S. It’s also likely that globalism will trend upward again, though perhaps not as unfettered as it once was.</p>\n<p>More downward pressure on pricing could come from shifts in employment practices. Mark Zandi points out that “the work-from-anywhere dynamic could depress wage growth and prices. If I don’t need to work in New York anymore and could live in Tampa, it stands to reason my wage could get cut or I won’t get the same wage increase in the future.”</p>\n<p>And so what is Zandi’s take on transitory? “What we’re observing now is prices going back to pre-pandemic,” he says. “The price spikes we’re experiencing now will continue for the next few months through summer but certainly by the end of year, this time next year, they will have disappeared. I do think underlying inflation will be higher post-pandemic than pre-pandemic, but that’s a feature not a bug.”</p>\n<p>I don’t disagree. To me it’s simple: The technology wave I’ve described above is bigger than COVID and bigger than the rise and fall of globalism. And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I believe inflation will be transitory, certainly in the long run. (Though I’m well aware of whatJohn Maynard Keynes said about the long run.)</p>","source":"lsy1612507957220","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Answering the great inflation question of our time</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nAnswering the great inflation question of our time\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-20 09:19 GMT+8 <a href=https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html><strong>finance.yahoo</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.\nUnfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯"},"source_url":"https://finance.yahoo.com/news/answering-the-great-inflation-question-of-our-time-114153460.html","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1133385197","content_text":"Prices of everything; a house in Phoenix, a Ford F-150, a plane ticket to New York, have all gone up. That much is true.\nUnfortunately pretty much everything else about inflation—a red hot topic these days—is conjecture. And that’s vexing, not just for the dismal scientists (aka economists), but for all of us, because whether or not prices are really rising, by how much and for how long, has massive implications in our lives. Or as Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says: “Inflation is one of the mysteries of economic study and thought. A difficult thing to gauge and forecast and get right. That’s why the risks are high.”\nThe current debate over inflation really revolves around two questions: First, is this current spate of inflation, just that, a spate—or to use Wall Street’s buzzword of the moment, “transitory,”—or not? (Just to give you an idea of how buzzy, when I Google the word “transitory” the search engine suggests “inflation” after it.) And second, transitory (aka temporary) inflation or not, what does it suggest for the economy and markets?\nBefore I get into that, let me lay out what’s going on with prices right now. First, know that inflation,which peaked in 1980 at an annualized rate of 13.55%,has been tame for quite some time, specifically 4% or less for nearly 30 years. Which means that anyone 40 years old or younger has no experience with inflation other than maybe from an Econ 101 textbook. Obviously that could be a problem.\nAs an aside I remember President Ford in 1974 trying to jawbone inflation down with his \"Whip Inflation Now\" campaign, which featured“Win” buttons,earringsand evenugly sweaters.None of this worked and it took draconian measures by Fed Chair Paul Volcker (raising rates and targeting money supply,as described by Former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, William Poole)to eventually tame inflation and keep it under wraps for all those years.\nUntil now perhaps. Last week theLabor Department reported that consumer prices (the CPI, or consumer price index) rose 5% in May,the fastest annual rate in nearly 13 years—which was when the economy was overheating from the housing boom which subsequently went bust and sent the economy off a cliff and into the Great Recession. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was up 3.8%, the biggest increase since May 1992. (For the record, the likelihood of the economy tanking right now is de minimis.)\n\nUsed car and truck prices are a major driver of inflation, climbing 7.3% last month and 29.7% over the past year. New car prices are up too, which have pushed upshares of Ford and GM a remarkable 40% plus this year.Clearly Americans want to buy vehicles to go on vacation and get back to work. And Yahoo Finance’sJanna Herron reportsthat rents are rising at their fastest pace in 15 years.\nTo be sure, not all prices are climbing.As Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman points out,prices are not up much at all for health care, education and are basically flat for technology, including computers, smartphones and internet service (an important point which we’ll get back to.)\nBut that’s the counterpoint really. Americans are obsessed with cars, housing is critical and many of us are experiencing sticker shock booking travel this summer. Higher prices are front and center. Wall Street too is in a tizzy about inflation, and concerns about it and more importantly Federal Reserve policy in response to inflation (see below), sent stocks lower with the S&P 500 down 1.91% this week, its worst week since February.\nGiven this backdrop, the tension (such as it is) was high when the Fed met this week to deliver its forecast and for Chair Jay Powell to answer questions from the media. Or at least so said hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones,who characterized the proceedings on CNBCas “the most important meeting in [Chairman] Jay Powell’s career, certainly the most important Fed meeting of the past four or five years.” Jones was critical of the Fed, which he believes is now stimulating the economy unnecessarily by keeping interest rates low and by buying financial assets. Unnecessarily, Jones says, because the economy is already running hot and needs no support. The Fed (which is in the transitory camp when it comes to inflation) risks overheating the economy by creating runaway inflation, according to PTJ.\nNow I don’t see eye to eye with Jones on this, though I should point out, he's a billionaire from investing in financial markets, and let’s just say I’m not. I should also point out that Jones, 66, is in fact old enough to remember inflation, never mind that as a young man he called the 1987 stock market crash. So we should all ignore Jones at our peril.\nAs for what the Fed put forth this past Wednesday, well it wasn’t much, signaling an expectation ofraising interest rates twice by the end of 2023(yes, that is down the road.) And Powell, who’s become much more adept at not rippling the waters these days after some rougher forays earlier in his tenure, didn’t drop any bombshells in the presser.\nWhich brings us to the question of why the Federal Reserve isn’t so concerned about inflation and thinks it is mostly—here’s that word again—transitory. To answer that, we need to first address why prices are rising right now, which can be summed up in one very familiar abbreviation: COVID-19. When COVID hit last spring the economy collapsed, which crushed demand in sectors like leisure, travel and retail. Now the economy is roaring back to life and businesses can raise prices, certainly over 2020 levels.\n“We clearly should’ve expected it,” says William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and a professor of economics at Howard University. “You can’t shut down the economy and think you turn on the switch [without some inflation].”\n“We had a pandemic that forced an artificial shutdown of the economy in a way that even the collapse of the financial system and the housing market didn’t, and we had a snapback at a rate we’ve never seen before—not because of the fundamentals driving recovery but because of government,” says Joel Naroff, president and chief economist of Naroff Economics.\nCOVID had other secondary effects on the economy though, besides just ultimately producing a snapback. For one thing, the pandemic throttled supply chains, specifically the shipping of parts and components from one part of the globe to another. It also confused managers about how much to produce and therefore how many parts to order.\nA prime example here is what happened to the chip (semiconductor) and auto industrieswhich I wrote about last month.Car makers thought no one would buy vehicles during the pandemic and pared back their orders with chipmakers, (which were having a tough time shipping their chips anyway.) Turned out the car guys were wrong, millions of people wanted cars and trucks, but the automakers didn’t have enough chips for their cars and had to curb production. Fewer vehicles and strong demand led to higher new car prices, which cascaded to used car prices then to car rental rates. Net net, all the friction and slowness of getting things delivered now adds to costs which causes companies to raise prices.\nAnother secondary effect of COVID which has been inflationary comes from employment,which I got into a bit last week.We all know millions were thrown out of work by COVID last year, many of whom were backstopped by government payments that could add up to $600 a week (state and federal.) These folks have been none too keen on coming back to work for minimum wage, or $290 a week. So to lure them back employers are having to pay more, which puts more money in people's pockets which allows stores for example to raise prices.\nAnti-inflation forces\nBut here’s the big-time question: If COVID was temporary, and therefore its effects are temporary and inflation is one of its effects then doesn’t it follow, ipso facto, that inflation is (OK I’ll say it again), transitory?\nI say yes, (with a bit of a caveat.) And most economists, like Claudia Sahm, a senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and a former Federal Reserve economist, agree. “‘Transitory’ has become a buzzword,” she says. “It is important to be more concrete about what we mean by that. We’re probably going to see in the next few months inflation numbers that are bigger than average, but as long as they keep stepping down, that’s the sign of it being transitory. If we didn’t see any sign of inflation stepping down some, it would’ve started feeling like ‘Houston, we have a problem.’”\nTo buttress my argument beyond that above \"if-then\" syllogism, let’s take a look at why inflation has been so low for the past three decades.\nTo me this is mostly obvious. Prices have been tamped down by the greatest anti-inflation force of our lifetime, that being technology, specifically the explosion of consumer technology. Think about it. The first wave of technology, a good example would be IBM mainframes, saved big companies money in back-office functions, savings which they mostly kept for themselves (higher profits) and their shareholders. But the four great landmark events in the advent of consumer technology; the introduction ofthe PC in 1974 (MITS Altair),the Netscape IPO of 1995,Google search in 1998,and the launch of theiPhone in 2007(I remember Steve Jobs demoing it to me like it was yesterday), greatly accelerated, broadened and deepened this deflationary trend.\nNot only has technology been pushing down the cost of everything from drilling for oil, to manufacturing clothes to farming, and allowing for the creation of groundbreaking (and deflationary) competitors like Uber, Airbnb and Netflix, but it also let consumers find—on their phones—the most affordable trip to Hawaii, the least expensive haircut or the best deal on Nikes.\nSo technology has reduced the cost of almost everything and will continue to do so the rest of our lifetime. Bottom line: Unless something terrible happens, the power of technology will outweigh and outlive COVID.\nThere is one mitigating factor and that is globalism, which is connected to both technology and COVID. Let me briefly explain.\nAfter World War II, most of humanity has become more and more connected in terms of trade, communication, travel, etc. (See supply chain above.) Technology of course was a major enabler here; better ships, planes and faster internet, all of which as it grew more potent, accelerated globalism. Another element was the introduction of political constructs like the World Trade Organization and NAFTA. (I think of the Clinton administration andChina joining the WTO in 2001as perhaps the high-water marks of globalization.)\nLike its technological cousin, globalism has deflationary effects particularly on the labor front as companies could more and more easily find lowest cost countries to produce goods and source materials. And like technology, globalization seemed inexorable, which it was, until it wasn’t. Political winds, manifested by the likes of Brexit and leaders like Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, Duterte and of course Donald Trump have caused globalism to wane and anti-globalism and nationalism to wax.\nThe internet too, once seen as only a great connector, has also become a global divider, as the world increasingly fractures into Chinese, U.S. and European walled digital zones when it comes to social media and search for example. Security risks, privacy, spying and hacking of course divide us further here too.\nSo technology, which had made globalism stronger and stronger, now also makes it weaker and weaker.\nCOVID plays a role in rethinking globalism as it exposes vulnerabilities in the supply chain. Companies that were rethinking their manufacturing in China but considering another country, are now wondering if it just makes sense to repatriate the whole shebang. Supply chains that were optimized for cost only are being rethought with security and reliability being factored in and that costs money.\nHow significant is this decline in globalization and how permanent is it? Good questions. But my point here is whether or not \"globalism disrupted\" is transitory (!) or not, it could push prices up, (in the short and intermediate run at least), as cost is sacrificed for predictability. Longer term I say Americans are a resourceful people. We’ll figure out how to make cost effective stuff in the U.S. It’s also likely that globalism will trend upward again, though perhaps not as unfettered as it once was.\nMore downward pressure on pricing could come from shifts in employment practices. Mark Zandi points out that “the work-from-anywhere dynamic could depress wage growth and prices. If I don’t need to work in New York anymore and could live in Tampa, it stands to reason my wage could get cut or I won’t get the same wage increase in the future.”\nAnd so what is Zandi’s take on transitory? “What we’re observing now is prices going back to pre-pandemic,” he says. “The price spikes we’re experiencing now will continue for the next few months through summer but certainly by the end of year, this time next year, they will have disappeared. I do think underlying inflation will be higher post-pandemic than pre-pandemic, but that’s a feature not a bug.”\nI don’t disagree. To me it’s simple: The technology wave I’ve described above is bigger than COVID and bigger than the rise and fall of globalism. And that is why, ladies and gentlemen, I believe inflation will be transitory, certainly in the long run. (Though I’m well aware of whatJohn Maynard Keynes said about the long run.)","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":192,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":387840294,"gmtCreate":1613740306218,"gmtModify":1704884390437,"author":{"id":"3574646274260668","authorId":"3574646274260668","name":"VT28","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e88d459467a394321b4dd4ababe11aba","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3574646274260668","authorIdStr":"3574646274260668"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"How to spot one?","listText":"How to spot one?","text":"How to spot one?","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/387840294","repostId":"2112998868","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":141,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":166646910,"gmtCreate":1624008337530,"gmtModify":1703826428474,"author":{"id":"3574646274260668","authorId":"3574646274260668","name":"VT28","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e88d459467a394321b4dd4ababe11aba","crmLevel":2,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3574646274260668","authorIdStr":"3574646274260668"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Up up up ","listText":"Up up up ","text":"Up up up","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/166646910","repostId":"1175693382","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":84,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"lives":[]}
