Dabi2 personal page - To The Moon

Dabi2

No personal profile

1Follow

0Followers

0Topic

0Badge

2021-06-20

Nice!

Sorry, the original content has been removed

2021-06-23

Like and comment

The Fed In A Box, Part 1: They Cannot Raise Interest Rates

2021-06-21

Huat ah

Sorry, the original content has been removed

2021-06-20

Good!

Sorry, the original content has been removed

2021-06-21

Nice!

Nike, FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, Darden, and Other Stocks for Investors to Watch This Week

2021-06-22

Hi

Sorry, the original content has been removed

2021-06-20

Nice read!

Answering the great inflation question of our time

2021-06-23

Nice read

Chinese Education Stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday

2021-06-22

I need T

Sorry, the original content has been removed

2021-06-20

Like and share

Sorry, the original content has been removed

2021-06-23

Nice

Sorry, the original content has been removed

2021-06-22

Good

Sorry, the original content has been removed

Go to Tiger App to see more news

{"i18n":{"language":"en_US"},"userPageInfo":{"id":"3581839854871924","uuid":"3581839854871924","gmtCreate":1618746120533,"gmtModify":1618746120533,"name":"Dabi2","pinyin":"dabi2","introduction":"","introductionEn":null,"signature":"","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","hat":null,"hatId":null,"hatName":null,"vip":1,"status":2,"fanSize":0,"headSize":1,"tweetSize":12,"questionSize":0,"limitLevel":999,"accountStatus":4,"level":{"id":1,"name":"萌萌虎","nameTw":"萌萌虎","represent":"呱呱坠地","factor":"评论帖子3次或发布1条主帖（非转发）","iconColor":"3C9E83","bgColor":"A2F1D9"},"themeCounts":0,"badgeCounts":0,"badges":[],"moderator":false,"superModerator":false,"manageSymbols":null,"badgeLevel":null,"boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"favoriteSize":0,"symbols":null,"coverImage":null,"realNameVerified":"success","userBadges":[{"badgeId":"1026c425416b44e0aac28c11a0848493-1","templateUuid":"1026c425416b44e0aac28c11a0848493","name":"Debut Tiger","description":"Join the tiger community for 500 days","bigImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0e4d0ca1da0456dc7894c946d44bf9ab","smallImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0f2f65e8ce4cfaae8db2bea9b127f58b","grayImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c5948a31b6edf154422335b265235809","redirectLinkEnabled":0,"redirectLink":null,"hasAllocated":1,"isWearing":0,"stamp":null,"stampPosition":0,"hasStamp":0,"allocationCount":1,"allocatedDate":"2022.09.03","exceedPercentage":null,"individualDisplayEnabled":0,"backgroundColor":null,"fontColor":null,"individualDisplaySort":0,"categoryType":1001},{"badgeId":"a83d7582f45846ffbccbce770ce65d84-1","templateUuid":"a83d7582f45846ffbccbce770ce65d84","name":"Real Trader","description":"Completed a transaction","bigImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2e08a1cc2087a1de93402c2c290fa65b","smallImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4504a6397ce1137932d56e5f4ce27166","grayImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4b22c79415b4cd6e3d8ebc4a0fa32604","redirectLinkEnabled":0,"redirectLink":null,"hasAllocated":1,"isWearing":0,"stamp":null,"stampPosition":0,"hasStamp":0,"allocationCount":1,"allocatedDate":"2021.12.21","exceedPercentage":null,"individualDisplayEnabled":0,"backgroundColor":null,"fontColor":null,"individualDisplaySort":0,"categoryType":1100}],"userBadgeCount":2,"currentWearingBadge":null,"individualDisplayBadges":null,"crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"location":null,"starInvestorFollowerNum":0,"starInvestorFlag":false,"starInvestorOrderShareNum":0,"subscribeStarInvestorNum":0,"ror":null,"winRationPercentage":null,"showRor":false,"investmentPhilosophy":null,"starInvestorSubscribeFlag":false},"baikeInfo":{},"tab":"hot","tweets":[{"id":121802873,"gmtCreate":1624457820992,"gmtModify":1703837365431,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Nice","listText":"Nice","text":"Nice","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/121802873","repostId":"2145950390","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2192,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":121177842,"gmtCreate":1624457726186,"gmtModify":1703837355081,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Like and comment","listText":"Like and comment","text":"Like and comment","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/121177842","repostId":"1191722749","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1191722749","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624455982,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1191722749?lang=en_US&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-23 21:46","market":"us","language":"en","title":"The Fed In A Box, Part 1: They Cannot Raise Interest Rates","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1191722749","media":"zerohedge","summary":"3 Key Takeaways\n\nThe US Government has over $28 Trillion in Debt\nMuch of the debt is short-term, mak","content":"<p><b>3 Key Takeaways</b></p>\n<ol>\n <li>The US Government has over $28 Trillion in Debt</li>\n <li>Much of the debt is short-term, making it extra sensitive to higher rates</li>\n <li>Higher Interest Rates would immediately start putting strain on the Federal Budget</li>\n</ol>\n<p><b>Introduction</b></p>\n<p>The US has over $28 Trillion dollars in debt and it continues to grow at an alarming rate. Even before COVID-19, the problem was becoming unwieldy. Ironically, despite adding $4T+ in debt over the last year, the pandemic may have given the US Government short-term reprieve as it gave the Federal Reserve a green light to drop rates back to zero.</p>\n<p>First and foremost, this took pressure off the Treasury as it refinanced the ballooning short-term debt outstanding at lower rates. However, even more relief occurred as the Federal Reserve absorbed +90% of the long term debt issued since last March. This allowed more room in the private markets to purchase the issuance of new short-term Treasury Bills. Because the Fed pays interest revenue back to the Treasury, and since interest rates on Treasury Bills are sitting at 0%, this has effectively given the Treasury a&nbsp;<b>$4.5T loan at 0% interest</b>&nbsp;in 15 months!</p>\n<p>While this sounds like a great deal, it comes with major risks and has now put the Fed in a box. This will be explained in detail over two articles. Part 1 will explain why the Fed can no longer raise interest rates, and Part 2 will show how the Fed is unable to taper and may even need to increase Treasury purchases to maintain control over the long end of the yield curve.</p>\n<p><b>$28 Trillion and Growing</b></p>\n<p>The US Government cannot stop spending money. Spending is now far in excess of what is being collected in tax revenues. The US economy continues to experience nominal increases in growth, which has increased Federal Tax receipts, but Federal Spending is growing far faster. Figure 1 below, shows this clear trend.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8b5576e9901f1f8310629d45af16836a\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p>Excess spending has to be paid for using debt. This massive excess in spending has led to proliferate borrowing by the Federal Government resulting in over $28T in total debt outstanding. See figure 2 below.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ed345b06ec4a35726fe7d9847937cf34\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p>For anyone struggling to wrap their mind around the size of $1T, please see this great&nbsp;visual. Now, multiply that by 28!</p>\n<p>For most governments, this would be unsustainable as interest rates would rise. This puts pressure on a borrower to bring down spending. The US Government has benefited from three major advantages that are not available to most governments. First, it has the exorbitant privilege of issuing the global reserve currency (for now), which creates far more demand for dollars than would otherwise be the case. The&nbsp;petro-dollar&nbsp;should have its own dedicated article, so that will be skipped in this analysis.</p>\n<p>It is important to highlight two other key facts that have allowed spending and borrowing to continue unabated. It has been able to borrow from the Social Security Trust Fund, and the Federal Reserve has absorbed a large chunk of debt issuance in recent years. Not only does this equate to $11T in interest-free loans (as all interest payments return back to the Treasury), but it has prevented the private markets from absorbing all new debt issuance keeping interest rates lower. As Figure 3 below shows, since Jan 2010, the private markets have “only” had to absorb $9T of the $14.5T issued.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2dee6e735c0a3c1421eb321c0eae4b54\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov andhttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/</i></p>\n<p>Since Jan 2020, the numbers are even more stark. The Treasury has issued $4.5T, of which the Fed has taken on $2.6T (<i>Note: The Fed balance sheet has expanded by greater than $4T, but not all of this was Treasury Debt</i>). Looking deeper into the numbers shows the Fed had an even bigger appetite for longer-dated maturities. With Short Term rates at 0%, the Treasury can sell Treasury Bills to the private sector and still have an interest-free loan. Thus, it has been critical for the Fed to absorb almost all (~90%) the long-term debt issued by the Treasury to keep interest payments low!</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/89bf299c6c054e65d3317aa72d0f686a\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p><b>The Treasury has so far avoided higher interest payments</b></p>\n<p>Zooming back out, the three charts below show why the maneuvers over the last year have been so important. Take one more look at the US Debt load, this time categorized by vehicle. Non-Marketable is debt the government owes itself, Notes represent 1-10 year maturity, Bills less than 1 year, and Bonds &gt;10 years. The two charts below show both the absolute growth in debt and how the makeup of the debt has changed. Since 2008, Notes have experienced the largest growth increasing from 25% of total outstanding to 42%. Non-Marketable went the other way, shrinking from 45% to 25% as the Social Security Trust Fund is no longer a source to borrow from.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a144f0f9250c364637205e8bd0178bc0\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2c1851784731b81544c30c5338624a03\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p>It is important to notice the growth in Treasury Bills above. Bills are the highest risk to the Treasury because higher interest rates will affect Bills within months, so it is important to note that in 2015 during the last rate hike cycle they accounted for only $1.4T but now make up $4.3T. This means every .25% rate hike will almost immediately add $10B to Federal spending. The chart below clearly shows the impact of the last interest rate hike cycle. The Pink line shows how Bills followed the Fed hike cycle topping out near 2.25%.</p>\n<p>If the Fed attempted to raise rates in a similar fashion it would immediately add $100B to Federal Spending on ONLY interest due for Treasury Bills. In a scenario where the Fed shrunk its balance sheet back to $1T (no more interest free loans) AND raised interest rates back to 4%, the Treasury would incur an extra $160B in interest rates for Treasury Bills and a whopping $290B on Treasury Notes! This would not factor in any new debt added over that time, which now includes an extra $.5T a year just on interest payments!</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/04501c54f465fba412ffbf77b81a559f\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p>The chart below shows a much clearer impact of how falling interest rates have kept debt payments relatively stable for nearly 20 years. The chart shows the average weighted interest rate and the annualized monthly interest payments. The orange line (average weighted interest rate) is moving in direct opposition to the growth in debt seen above. In the last rate tightening cycle, the chart shows just how quickly higher interest rates increased the debt burden ($150B). The Fed owns very few Treasury Bills ($320B), so those interest payments are NOT returning to the Treasury.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c859933a1e991d3e6ba191ccb6a7609e\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p>One final chart to consider. How do these interest payments compare to tax revenue collected by the IRS? In this context, it becomes very clear how much impact the 2015 rate cycle increases had on debt payments.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/585708ace254d0b79ecddcc77c9c8ca0\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p><b>Wrapping Up</b></p>\n<p>Nothing in this article should be surprising to anyone who even closely watches the US Debt situation or follows financial markets. The charts and graphs attempted to show the trends and put hard numbers behind what most people already know anecdotally. This article does not even touch on how devastating higher interest rates would be on the housing market, corporate debt market, and consumer debt market. Instead it only focuses on the Treasury, which just so happens to be run by the old chair of the Federal Reserve (Janet Yellen).</p>\n<p>None of this math is overly complex, and all the data is freely available on the Treasury and Fed website. This begs the question, does the Fed realize interest rates cannot go up or are they only looking in the rear-view mirror and assuming that an increase to 2.25% will be similar to 2015 which was “only” derailed by COVID-19? To reiterate, the drop in interest rates gave the Treasury&nbsp;<i>relief</i>&nbsp;from the higher interest payments. Next time they might not even get halfway to 2% with the added debt burden.<b>Unfortunately, for the Fed, their box is tighter than most realize.</b>If the Fed hasn’t figured it out by now,<b>even before they fail to raise interest rates, they will be unable taper Quantitative Easing (debt monetization) much less shrink their balance sheet, without serious consequences.</b>That data will be reviewed in Part 2. Stay tuned!</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>The Fed In A Box, Part 1: They Cannot Raise Interest Rates</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\">\nThe Fed In A Box, Part 1: They Cannot Raise Interest Rates\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-23 21:46 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-box-part-1-they-cannot-raise-interest-rates><strong>zerohedge</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>3 Key Takeaways\n\nThe US Government has over $28 Trillion in Debt\nMuch of the debt is short-term, making it extra sensitive to higher rates\nHigher Interest Rates would immediately start putting strain ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-box-part-1-they-cannot-raise-interest-rates\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".SPX":"S&P 500 Index","SPY":"标普500ETF",".IXIC":"NASDAQ Composite",".DJI":"道琼斯"},"source_url":"https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-box-part-1-they-cannot-raise-interest-rates","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1191722749","content_text":"3 Key Takeaways\n\nThe US Government has over $28 Trillion in Debt\nMuch of the debt is short-term, making it extra sensitive to higher rates\nHigher Interest Rates would immediately start putting strain on the Federal Budget\n\nIntroduction\nThe US has over $28 Trillion dollars in debt and it continues to grow at an alarming rate. Even before COVID-19, the problem was becoming unwieldy. Ironically, despite adding $4T+ in debt over the last year, the pandemic may have given the US Government short-term reprieve as it gave the Federal Reserve a green light to drop rates back to zero.\nFirst and foremost, this took pressure off the Treasury as it refinanced the ballooning short-term debt outstanding at lower rates. However, even more relief occurred as the Federal Reserve absorbed +90% of the long term debt issued since last March. This allowed more room in the private markets to purchase the issuance of new short-term Treasury Bills. Because the Fed pays interest revenue back to the Treasury, and since interest rates on Treasury Bills are sitting at 0%, this has effectively given the Treasury a $4.5T loan at 0% interest in 15 months!\nWhile this sounds like a great deal, it comes with major risks and has now put the Fed in a box. This will be explained in detail over two articles. Part 1 will explain why the Fed can no longer raise interest rates, and Part 2 will show how the Fed is unable to taper and may even need to increase Treasury purchases to maintain control over the long end of the yield curve.\n$28 Trillion and Growing\nThe US Government cannot stop spending money. Spending is now far in excess of what is being collected in tax revenues. The US economy continues to experience nominal increases in growth, which has increased Federal Tax receipts, but Federal Spending is growing far faster. Figure 1 below, shows this clear trend.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nExcess spending has to be paid for using debt. This massive excess in spending has led to proliferate borrowing by the Federal Government resulting in over $28T in total debt outstanding. See figure 2 below.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nFor anyone struggling to wrap their mind around the size of $1T, please see this great visual. Now, multiply that by 28!\nFor most governments, this would be unsustainable as interest rates would rise. This puts pressure on a borrower to bring down spending. The US Government has benefited from three major advantages that are not available to most governments. First, it has the exorbitant privilege of issuing the global reserve currency (for now), which creates far more demand for dollars than would otherwise be the case. The petro-dollar should have its own dedicated article, so that will be skipped in this analysis.\nIt is important to highlight two other key facts that have allowed spending and borrowing to continue unabated. It has been able to borrow from the Social Security Trust Fund, and the Federal Reserve has absorbed a large chunk of debt issuance in recent years. Not only does this equate to $11T in interest-free loans (as all interest payments return back to the Treasury), but it has prevented the private markets from absorbing all new debt issuance keeping interest rates lower. As Figure 3 below shows, since Jan 2010, the private markets have “only” had to absorb $9T of the $14.5T issued.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov andhttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/\nSince Jan 2020, the numbers are even more stark. The Treasury has issued $4.5T, of which the Fed has taken on $2.6T (Note: The Fed balance sheet has expanded by greater than $4T, but not all of this was Treasury Debt). Looking deeper into the numbers shows the Fed had an even bigger appetite for longer-dated maturities. With Short Term rates at 0%, the Treasury can sell Treasury Bills to the private sector and still have an interest-free loan. Thus, it has been critical for the Fed to absorb almost all (~90%) the long-term debt issued by the Treasury to keep interest payments low!\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nThe Treasury has so far avoided higher interest payments\nZooming back out, the three charts below show why the maneuvers over the last year have been so important. Take one more look at the US Debt load, this time categorized by vehicle. Non-Marketable is debt the government owes itself, Notes represent 1-10 year maturity, Bills less than 1 year, and Bonds >10 years. The two charts below show both the absolute growth in debt and how the makeup of the debt has changed. Since 2008, Notes have experienced the largest growth increasing from 25% of total outstanding to 42%. Non-Marketable went the other way, shrinking from 45% to 25% as the Social Security Trust Fund is no longer a source to borrow from.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nIt is important to notice the growth in Treasury Bills above. Bills are the highest risk to the Treasury because higher interest rates will affect Bills within months, so it is important to note that in 2015 during the last rate hike cycle they accounted for only $1.4T but now make up $4.3T. This means every .25% rate hike will almost immediately add $10B to Federal spending. The chart below clearly shows the impact of the last interest rate hike cycle. The Pink line shows how Bills followed the Fed hike cycle topping out near 2.25%.\nIf the Fed attempted to raise rates in a similar fashion it would immediately add $100B to Federal Spending on ONLY interest due for Treasury Bills. In a scenario where the Fed shrunk its balance sheet back to $1T (no more interest free loans) AND raised interest rates back to 4%, the Treasury would incur an extra $160B in interest rates for Treasury Bills and a whopping $290B on Treasury Notes! This would not factor in any new debt added over that time, which now includes an extra $.5T a year just on interest payments!\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nThe chart below shows a much clearer impact of how falling interest rates have kept debt payments relatively stable for nearly 20 years. The chart shows the average weighted interest rate and the annualized monthly interest payments. The orange line (average weighted interest rate) is moving in direct opposition to the growth in debt seen above. In the last rate tightening cycle, the chart shows just how quickly higher interest rates increased the debt burden ($150B). The Fed owns very few Treasury Bills ($320B), so those interest payments are NOT returning to the Treasury.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nOne final chart to consider. How do these interest payments compare to tax revenue collected by the IRS? In this context, it becomes very clear how much impact the 2015 rate cycle increases had on debt payments.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nWrapping Up\nNothing in this article should be surprising to anyone who even closely watches the US Debt situation or follows financial markets. The charts and graphs attempted to show the trends and put hard numbers behind what most people already know anecdotally. This article does not even touch on how devastating higher interest rates would be on the housing market, corporate debt market, and consumer debt market. Instead it only focuses on the Treasury, which just so happens to be run by the old chair of the Federal Reserve (Janet Yellen).\nNone of this math is overly complex, and all the data is freely available on the Treasury and Fed website. This begs the question, does the Fed realize interest rates cannot go up or are they only looking in the rear-view mirror and assuming that an increase to 2.25% will be similar to 2015 which was “only” derailed by COVID-19? To reiterate, the drop in interest rates gave the Treasury relief from the higher interest payments. Next time they might not even get halfway to 2% with the added debt burden.Unfortunately, for the Fed, their box is tighter than most realize.If the Fed hasn’t figured it out by now,even before they fail to raise interest rates, they will be unable taper Quantitative Easing (debt monetization) much less shrink their balance sheet, without serious consequences.That data will be reviewed in Part 2. Stay tuned!","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{".IXIC":0.9,"SPY":0.9,".SPX":0.9,".DJI":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2742,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":121172904,"gmtCreate":1624457666008,"gmtModify":1703837350724,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Nice read&nbsp;","listText":"Nice read&nbsp;","text":"Nice read","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/121172904","repostId":"1170395888","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1170395888","kind":"news","weMediaInfo":{"introduction":"Providing stock market headlines, business news, financials and earnings ","home_visible":1,"media_name":"Tiger Newspress","id":"1079075236","head_image":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba"},"pubTimestamp":1624457324,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1170395888?lang=en_US&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-23 22:08","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Chinese Education Stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1170395888","media":"Tiger Newspress","summary":"(June 23) Most of Chinese education stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday.\n\nDo Hedge Funds Thin","content":"<p>(June 23)&nbsp;Most&nbsp;of&nbsp;Chinese education stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/57df6b30357b75fb3994787c3780885e\" tg-width=\"281\" tg-height=\"241\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p><b>Do Hedge Funds Think EDU Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?</b></p>\n<p>At first quarter's end, a total of 45 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 5% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards EDU over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money's positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an \"upper tier\" of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/055cab6f7b38ad60f8784706fac000bf\" tg-width=\"680\" tg-height=\"433\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">The largest stake in New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) was held byD1 Capital Partners, which reported holding $350.5 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by GQG Partners with a $319.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Tiger Global Management LLC, Farallon Capital, and Alkeon Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Serenity Capital allocated the biggest weight to New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU), around 42.13% of its 13F portfolio.Kylin Managementis also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 18.73 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EDU.</p>\n<p>As industrywide interest jumped, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Thunderbird Partners, managed by David Fear, established the most valuable position in New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU). Thunderbird Partners had $16.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Eduardo Costa'sCalixto Global Investorsalso made a $14.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new EDU positions are Matthew Hulsizer's PEAK6 Capital Management, Campbell Wilson'sOld Well Partners, and Daryl Smith's Kayak Investment Partners.</p>\n<p>Let's now review hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) but similarly valued. These stocks are Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU), Nucor Corporation (NYSE:NUE), Franco-Nevada Corporation (NYSE:FNV), Fortive Corporation (NYSE:FTV), The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG), Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB), and Trip.com Group Limited (NASDAQ:TCOM). All of these stocks' market caps are closest to EDU's market cap.</p>\n<p>As you can see these stocks had an average of 32.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1239 million. That figure was $2188 million in EDU's case. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EDU is 70.7. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly positive signal but we'd rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed thattop 5 most popular stocksamong hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&amp;P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and beat the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately EDU wasn't nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on EDU were disappointed as the stock returned -45.8% since the end of March (through 6/18) and underperformed the market.</p>\n<p><b>TAL Education: Not Ready To Handle A New Wave Of Market Rivalry</b></p>\n<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>FY2Q2021 revenue and XRS online growth fell below consensus expectations.</li>\n <li>In 2020, the online K12 education market size in China reached CNY 89 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 37.6%.</li>\n <li>Unlike its nemesis New Oriental, TAL's investment amount into other firms has been continuously decreasing since 2016.</li>\n <li>With COVID-19 reshaping the market, tech giants have started to make big moves into the digital education industry.</li>\n <li>We do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>TAL Education Group (also known as Tomorrow Advanced Learning) (TAL) is an education company that focuses on K12 students in China. It also has business segments in adult education, early education &amp; parenting and education informatization. The firm takes quality education and extracurricular tutoring as the carrier system to serve on a global scale. Founded in 2003, it went public on NYSE in 2010.</p>\n<p>In China, TAL competes with New Oriental (EDU), a company founded back in 1993. It can be said that both firms are leading China's education industry; for one, the market coverage of the two is evenly matched. From the latest information, New Oriental has active businesses in a total of 98 cities in China and one foreign city (Toronto). TAL has laid its business in a total of 90 cities across China.</p>\n<p>As parents in the fast-growing country pay more and more attention to their children's basic education and e-learning is increasingly popular, the vast field of primary and secondary education and online education has eventually become a battleground for companies.</p>\n<p><b>Decent financial results</b></p>\n<p>TAL's 2Q 2021financial resultsweren't very impressive, as the firm earned USD 1.10 billion (up 20.8% year-on-year) compared to analysts' expectations of USD 1.12 billion for the quarter. However, it reported USD 0.08 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of USD 0.05 by USD 0.03. TAL Education Group had a return on equity of 0.21% and a net margin of 1.35% compared to 8.97% in 1Q 2021 due to strong competition presented in the primary education segment. It includes local pure online education companies such asYuanfudaoandZuoyebangthat recently completed mega-rounds of investment. Meanwhile, the non-GAAP operating margins were down to -1.1% compared to 9.8% in 2Q 2020 as customer acquisition costs rose backed by the fierce competition.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e0bea7dc26e41fa05c9d8fef1c355e7d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"382\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"><b>New market opportunities</b></p>\n<p>In the past five to six years, with the support of the state, the development of technology, and the inflow of capital, China's online K12 education industry has undergone rapid development. In 2020, the overall online K12 education market size in China reached approximately CNY 89 billion, with a year-over-year increase of 37.6%.</p>\n<p>In 2019, the penetration rate of K12 online education in China was about 15%. As COVID-19 struck during the beginning of 2020, the advantages of online education have been very apparent. The penetration rate of online K12 education reached its peak in March 2020. Although the industry is still in the stage of consumption popularization in China, there are obvious trends. This field consistently demonstrates a long-term massive demand as an emerging way of obtaining education information and services. Hence, the industry penetration rate has huge room for improvement in the future. According to thepredictionof the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the penetration rate of the K12 online education industry may exceed 55% by 2022.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6c29976387d48527f1570b7fbf255f1e\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"351\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>The fact that TAL owns 871 learning centers (offline tutoring centers), 648 Peiyou (好未来培优) centers and 128 one-on-one centers is the reason why we believe TAL is not pandemic-proof. Possible closure of these centers by the government in order to control the spread of COVID-19 will lead to huge declines in the firm's financials.</p>\n<p>TAL does own online education apps – but they can't compete with the likes of VIPKID, Yuanfudao, and Zuoyebang, even though there has been an increase in revenue contribution of Xueersi TAL’s online app from 17% in FY2Q2020 to 26% in FY2Q2021.</p>\n<p>The re-emergence of COVID-19 in China is a headwind for TAL's offline classroom-based training business. Although the vaccine has emerged, children below the age of 18 are not allowed to administer it. TAL's stock price might soon fall when most investors realize that the company still focused on formal or classroom-based tutorials and training.</p>\n<p>TAL has had stable growth since getting listed about nine years ago. Revenue has increased about 30 times, at a compound annual rate of 45.7% since then and gross margins averaged as high as 50.8%.</p>\n<p>Results from the last fiscal year ending February were materially affected by COVID-19 induced restrictions which had started early in China. Offline operations, primarily core Peiyou small classes, had to be quickly transferred to online platforms. As a result, some revenue was lost due to the lower selling prices for online classes, the total revenue in Q4 grew just 6.2% compared to 44.1% the previous year. Student enrollments were still up on aggregate with a rate of, 56.6% year-over-year.</p>\n<p><b>Less venture investment presence</b></p>\n<p>Since 2017, the number of investments by TAL has been decreasing. New Oriental has been more aggressive compared to TAL since 2018. TAL's financing has dropped sharply from 24 in 2016 to only two in 2020. The two investments were made on an interactive learning SaaS platform UMU and an online children's math tutoring app.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6af6af29d7cc826e97357d73c53b7a51\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"398\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p><b>The entrance of tech giants</b></p>\n<p>Sales and marketing expenses surged as the competition got tough for online players in the summer. Sales and marketing expenses surged 64% year-on-year and made up 22% of the total revenue, up 4.9% year-on-year.</p>\n<p>With upstarts raising mega-rounds, things might get even tougher for TAL as more companies with huge capital to spend on marketing will try to grab market share. Other than that, Chinese giants such as Alibaba(NYSE:BABA), NetEase(NASDAQ:NTES), Tencent(OTCPK:TCEHY), ByteDance and Baidu(NASDAQ:BIDU)engage their businesses into online education. TAL needs to upgrade its online education business to stay afloat.</p>\n<p>The education field is likely to be divided up by companies outside of this industry. It is also worth mentioning that the firm's key competitiveness is its in-depth application of technologies such as big data and live broadcast intelligence in China's online education industry. The firm has not spent much on research and development in terms of proprietary tuition-based technology. There are few existing barriers to entry. Teaching staff and market share could be theoretically purchased by new entrants.</p>\n<p><b>Allegation probe</b></p>\n<p>In April 2020,TAL became one of the scandalous US-listed Chinese firmsafter admitting to inflate sales figures driven by employee wrongdoing, further hindering market confidence after Luckin Coffee's(OTCPK:LKNCY)USD 310 million fraud.</p>\n<p>Two years before this event, Muddy Waters released areportnaming the company 'A Real Business With Fake Financials.' The report claimed that \"TAL commits fraud in the financials for its core Peiyou business. The Peiyou fraud is more difficult to quantify, but our research suggests fraudulent overstatement of approximately 25% to 30% of the company’s revenue.\"</p>\n<p><b>Bottom line</b></p>\n<p>This might not be a suitable time to invest in TAL Education. We give a neutral rating to the stock because we do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth. Therefore, TAL does have a chance to enhance its online business and compete with newcomers and experienced enterprises, including the likes of Zuoyebang, Yuanfudao, Baidu and NetEase.</p>\n<h3>Gaotu Group: Policy Overhang Keeps The Risk-Reward Balanced</h3>\n<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>The longer-term outlook remains bright for Gaotu Group (formerly GSX TechEdu).</li>\n <li>Adverse regulatory changes remain the key risk for the near-term outlook, but a healthier longer-term dynamic should benefit profitability.</li>\n <li>Growth drivers such as alternative student acquisition channels and increased contribution from adult education should help as well.</li>\n <li>Despite the discounted EV/Sales multiple, I would hold off on initiating a position for now pending clearance of the policy overhang.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Newly rebranded Gaotu Group’s (GOTU/GSX) recently heldinvestor eventfeatured an interesting tour of its operation and top management strategy presentations, which offered timely insight into the longer-term outlook. In particular, GSX emphasized its continued focus on teaching excellence, service quality, and technology investments as key differentiators. However, policy risks remains the biggest concern, and if government intervention in the online after-school tutoring space turns out to be stricter than expected, I see material downside risks to GSX’s near-term growth trajectory. On the flip side, it could also result in a healthier industry dynamic, which should drive narrowing losses as well. While the policy reform overhang makes it difficult to turn bullish, GSX’s discounted c. 3x EV/Sales multiple also looks undemanding, keeping the risk/reward fairly balanced.</p>\n<p><b>Growing Importance of Alternative Student Acquisition Channels</b></p>\n<p>Worryingly, GSX has seen reduced traffic acquisition in FQ4 ‘20 and FQ1 ‘21, with a whopping c. 20% lower sales lead cost in Jan-Feb 2021 (down from the Nov-Dec 2020 period). The recent decline is likely attributable to regulatory uncertainties around online traffic acquisition triggered by a recent Ministry of Education (MOE)interviewearlier this year. The significantly pressured new enrolment growth in FQ1 ‘21 may have been one of the reasons for the lower-than-expected top-line guidance as well. In response, management is exploring new student acquisition channels to offset the pressure – this includes the offline, short video, and live streaming e-commerce channels, among others. The good news is that successful expansion here could see the student acquisition cost lowered by over 50%, which is positive for the margin outlook (GSX is currently loss-making at the operating level).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e2602f4695bfb8d694d546b29bca897a\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"288\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source:GSX Investor Presentation Slides</p>\n<p>However, GSX is not alone in this regard – other online AST players have initiated similar moves, from online one-on-one and small-class players such as 51talk (COE), VIPKID, and New Oriental subsidiary Koolearn, whose large-class coverage has reached c.100 cities. Similarly, online large-class after-school tutoring players have also started expanding into offline acquisition through partnerships, with TAL Education (TAL) subsidiaryXueersi.comalsotying upwith Lenovo (OTCPK:LNVGY) in recent months. And with private players like Zuoyebang alsobuildingoffline traffic acquisition teams, the competitive pressures could drive downside to the near-term outlook.</p>\n<p><b>Adult Education Set to be Another Top-Line Growth Driver</b></p>\n<p>Within the Chinese education market, adult education is also emerging as a potential growth opportunity as people are increasingly looking to upskill in an uncertain job market. Alongside income level rises, people are also spending more on education to better prepare themselves for career development. As a result, gross billings have grown at a CAGR of 24.5% and are expected to grow further at 22.4% CAGR into fiscal 2023, reaching RMB265 billion.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/98361534c62ba1d36e6adf2696116a49\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"200\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source:GSX Listing Prospectus Filing</p>\n<p>Notably, while GSX currently expects fiscal 2021 revenue growth to be in the range of 70-80% Y/Y, the adult education business is guided to be a key growth driver at +100% Y/Y revenue growth. Considering that adult education accounted for over 10% of GSX’s revenue in fiscal 2020, I expect the contribution to continue rising over time. Key areas of growth here include English training, graduate school admission exam prep, and finance-related courses. Longer-term, I think the adult education business could even see higher gross margins than K-12 after-school tutoring due to the higher enrolment/tutor ratio.</p>\n<p><b>Online Regulations Remain the Key Concern</b></p>\n<p>Looking ahead, potential online regulations in the after-school tutoring space are concerning, with likely measures including a fake advertising ban, increased control over marketing spend in education, and more stringent quality requirements for institutions and instructors. On the flip side, these measures will also be beneficial to the overall industry development longer-term, allowing online after-school tutoring players to reinvest more dollars into improving the product and teaching quality. While clarity around the new regulations for both the offline/online markets remains lacking, I see a more positive outcome than the prior industry experience in 2018.</p>\n<p>Any restrictions on marketing limitation will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and sales growth in the near term but will also benefit margins due to the lower marketing spending. In turn, this should improve the longer-term economics of the business and drive narrowing losses in the upcoming quarter. Another key positive from the slower growth is that GSX will be able to focus on improving its product/service quality and extract more student lifetime value while also preserving its robust balance sheet. As of end-2020, GSX had a c. RMB8.2 billion cash position (including liquid investments), which should allow it to weather any unforeseen negative policy impacts.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a96e5d1f7d5a8fb561314a81180e06dd\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"280\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source: GSX Investor Presentation Slides</p>\n<p><b>Final Take</b></p>\n<p>Overall, regulations on marketing will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and top-line growth but should also lead to a healthier operating dynamic and narrowing losses ahead. With GSX also focused on alternative acquisition channels and tapping into markets such as adult education, I think the company could surprise positively in the upcoming quarters. While the GSX share price has suffered due to the Archegos Capital event and policy concerns, its forward EV/Sales multiple has declined significantly to c. 3x, and the widening relative discount to peers like TAL and EDU likely means the negatives have been priced in. Until the policy overhang has been lifted, however, I see the risk/reward as balanced at current levels.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/dd579bffc2a24fd55d7ccc3346eae7cb\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"436\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Data by YCharts</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>Chinese Education Stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday</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\">\nChinese Education Stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n<a class=\"head\" href=\"https://laohu8.com/wemedia/1079075236\">\n\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\n<p class=\"h-name\">Tiger Newspress </p>\n<p class=\"h-time\">2021-06-23 22:08</p>\n</div>\n\n</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<p>(June 23)&nbsp;Most&nbsp;of&nbsp;Chinese education stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/57df6b30357b75fb3994787c3780885e\" tg-width=\"281\" tg-height=\"241\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p><b>Do Hedge Funds Think EDU Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?</b></p>\n<p>At first quarter's end, a total of 45 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 5% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards EDU over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money's positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an \"upper tier\" of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/055cab6f7b38ad60f8784706fac000bf\" tg-width=\"680\" tg-height=\"433\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">The largest stake in New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) was held byD1 Capital Partners, which reported holding $350.5 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by GQG Partners with a $319.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Tiger Global Management LLC, Farallon Capital, and Alkeon Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Serenity Capital allocated the biggest weight to New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU), around 42.13% of its 13F portfolio.Kylin Managementis also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 18.73 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EDU.</p>\n<p>As industrywide interest jumped, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Thunderbird Partners, managed by David Fear, established the most valuable position in New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU). Thunderbird Partners had $16.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Eduardo Costa'sCalixto Global Investorsalso made a $14.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new EDU positions are Matthew Hulsizer's PEAK6 Capital Management, Campbell Wilson'sOld Well Partners, and Daryl Smith's Kayak Investment Partners.</p>\n<p>Let's now review hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) but similarly valued. These stocks are Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU), Nucor Corporation (NYSE:NUE), Franco-Nevada Corporation (NYSE:FNV), Fortive Corporation (NYSE:FTV), The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG), Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB), and Trip.com Group Limited (NASDAQ:TCOM). All of these stocks' market caps are closest to EDU's market cap.</p>\n<p>As you can see these stocks had an average of 32.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1239 million. That figure was $2188 million in EDU's case. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EDU is 70.7. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly positive signal but we'd rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed thattop 5 most popular stocksamong hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&amp;P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and beat the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately EDU wasn't nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on EDU were disappointed as the stock returned -45.8% since the end of March (through 6/18) and underperformed the market.</p>\n<p><b>TAL Education: Not Ready To Handle A New Wave Of Market Rivalry</b></p>\n<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>FY2Q2021 revenue and XRS online growth fell below consensus expectations.</li>\n <li>In 2020, the online K12 education market size in China reached CNY 89 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 37.6%.</li>\n <li>Unlike its nemesis New Oriental, TAL's investment amount into other firms has been continuously decreasing since 2016.</li>\n <li>With COVID-19 reshaping the market, tech giants have started to make big moves into the digital education industry.</li>\n <li>We do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>TAL Education Group (also known as Tomorrow Advanced Learning) (TAL) is an education company that focuses on K12 students in China. It also has business segments in adult education, early education &amp; parenting and education informatization. The firm takes quality education and extracurricular tutoring as the carrier system to serve on a global scale. Founded in 2003, it went public on NYSE in 2010.</p>\n<p>In China, TAL competes with New Oriental (EDU), a company founded back in 1993. It can be said that both firms are leading China's education industry; for one, the market coverage of the two is evenly matched. From the latest information, New Oriental has active businesses in a total of 98 cities in China and one foreign city (Toronto). TAL has laid its business in a total of 90 cities across China.</p>\n<p>As parents in the fast-growing country pay more and more attention to their children's basic education and e-learning is increasingly popular, the vast field of primary and secondary education and online education has eventually become a battleground for companies.</p>\n<p><b>Decent financial results</b></p>\n<p>TAL's 2Q 2021financial resultsweren't very impressive, as the firm earned USD 1.10 billion (up 20.8% year-on-year) compared to analysts' expectations of USD 1.12 billion for the quarter. However, it reported USD 0.08 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of USD 0.05 by USD 0.03. TAL Education Group had a return on equity of 0.21% and a net margin of 1.35% compared to 8.97% in 1Q 2021 due to strong competition presented in the primary education segment. It includes local pure online education companies such asYuanfudaoandZuoyebangthat recently completed mega-rounds of investment. Meanwhile, the non-GAAP operating margins were down to -1.1% compared to 9.8% in 2Q 2020 as customer acquisition costs rose backed by the fierce competition.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e0bea7dc26e41fa05c9d8fef1c355e7d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"382\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"><b>New market opportunities</b></p>\n<p>In the past five to six years, with the support of the state, the development of technology, and the inflow of capital, China's online K12 education industry has undergone rapid development. In 2020, the overall online K12 education market size in China reached approximately CNY 89 billion, with a year-over-year increase of 37.6%.</p>\n<p>In 2019, the penetration rate of K12 online education in China was about 15%. As COVID-19 struck during the beginning of 2020, the advantages of online education have been very apparent. The penetration rate of online K12 education reached its peak in March 2020. Although the industry is still in the stage of consumption popularization in China, there are obvious trends. This field consistently demonstrates a long-term massive demand as an emerging way of obtaining education information and services. Hence, the industry penetration rate has huge room for improvement in the future. According to thepredictionof the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the penetration rate of the K12 online education industry may exceed 55% by 2022.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6c29976387d48527f1570b7fbf255f1e\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"351\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>The fact that TAL owns 871 learning centers (offline tutoring centers), 648 Peiyou (好未来培优) centers and 128 one-on-one centers is the reason why we believe TAL is not pandemic-proof. Possible closure of these centers by the government in order to control the spread of COVID-19 will lead to huge declines in the firm's financials.</p>\n<p>TAL does own online education apps – but they can't compete with the likes of VIPKID, Yuanfudao, and Zuoyebang, even though there has been an increase in revenue contribution of Xueersi TAL’s online app from 17% in FY2Q2020 to 26% in FY2Q2021.</p>\n<p>The re-emergence of COVID-19 in China is a headwind for TAL's offline classroom-based training business. Although the vaccine has emerged, children below the age of 18 are not allowed to administer it. TAL's stock price might soon fall when most investors realize that the company still focused on formal or classroom-based tutorials and training.</p>\n<p>TAL has had stable growth since getting listed about nine years ago. Revenue has increased about 30 times, at a compound annual rate of 45.7% since then and gross margins averaged as high as 50.8%.</p>\n<p>Results from the last fiscal year ending February were materially affected by COVID-19 induced restrictions which had started early in China. Offline operations, primarily core Peiyou small classes, had to be quickly transferred to online platforms. As a result, some revenue was lost due to the lower selling prices for online classes, the total revenue in Q4 grew just 6.2% compared to 44.1% the previous year. Student enrollments were still up on aggregate with a rate of, 56.6% year-over-year.</p>\n<p><b>Less venture investment presence</b></p>\n<p>Since 2017, the number of investments by TAL has been decreasing. New Oriental has been more aggressive compared to TAL since 2018. TAL's financing has dropped sharply from 24 in 2016 to only two in 2020. The two investments were made on an interactive learning SaaS platform UMU and an online children's math tutoring app.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6af6af29d7cc826e97357d73c53b7a51\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"398\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p><b>The entrance of tech giants</b></p>\n<p>Sales and marketing expenses surged as the competition got tough for online players in the summer. Sales and marketing expenses surged 64% year-on-year and made up 22% of the total revenue, up 4.9% year-on-year.</p>\n<p>With upstarts raising mega-rounds, things might get even tougher for TAL as more companies with huge capital to spend on marketing will try to grab market share. Other than that, Chinese giants such as Alibaba(NYSE:BABA), NetEase(NASDAQ:NTES), Tencent(OTCPK:TCEHY), ByteDance and Baidu(NASDAQ:BIDU)engage their businesses into online education. TAL needs to upgrade its online education business to stay afloat.</p>\n<p>The education field is likely to be divided up by companies outside of this industry. It is also worth mentioning that the firm's key competitiveness is its in-depth application of technologies such as big data and live broadcast intelligence in China's online education industry. The firm has not spent much on research and development in terms of proprietary tuition-based technology. There are few existing barriers to entry. Teaching staff and market share could be theoretically purchased by new entrants.</p>\n<p><b>Allegation probe</b></p>\n<p>In April 2020,TAL became one of the scandalous US-listed Chinese firmsafter admitting to inflate sales figures driven by employee wrongdoing, further hindering market confidence after Luckin Coffee's(OTCPK:LKNCY)USD 310 million fraud.</p>\n<p>Two years before this event, Muddy Waters released areportnaming the company 'A Real Business With Fake Financials.' The report claimed that \"TAL commits fraud in the financials for its core Peiyou business. The Peiyou fraud is more difficult to quantify, but our research suggests fraudulent overstatement of approximately 25% to 30% of the company’s revenue.\"</p>\n<p><b>Bottom line</b></p>\n<p>This might not be a suitable time to invest in TAL Education. We give a neutral rating to the stock because we do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth. Therefore, TAL does have a chance to enhance its online business and compete with newcomers and experienced enterprises, including the likes of Zuoyebang, Yuanfudao, Baidu and NetEase.</p>\n<h3>Gaotu Group: Policy Overhang Keeps The Risk-Reward Balanced</h3>\n<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>The longer-term outlook remains bright for Gaotu Group (formerly GSX TechEdu).</li>\n <li>Adverse regulatory changes remain the key risk for the near-term outlook, but a healthier longer-term dynamic should benefit profitability.</li>\n <li>Growth drivers such as alternative student acquisition channels and increased contribution from adult education should help as well.</li>\n <li>Despite the discounted EV/Sales multiple, I would hold off on initiating a position for now pending clearance of the policy overhang.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Newly rebranded Gaotu Group’s (GOTU/GSX) recently heldinvestor eventfeatured an interesting tour of its operation and top management strategy presentations, which offered timely insight into the longer-term outlook. In particular, GSX emphasized its continued focus on teaching excellence, service quality, and technology investments as key differentiators. However, policy risks remains the biggest concern, and if government intervention in the online after-school tutoring space turns out to be stricter than expected, I see material downside risks to GSX’s near-term growth trajectory. On the flip side, it could also result in a healthier industry dynamic, which should drive narrowing losses as well. While the policy reform overhang makes it difficult to turn bullish, GSX’s discounted c. 3x EV/Sales multiple also looks undemanding, keeping the risk/reward fairly balanced.</p>\n<p><b>Growing Importance of Alternative Student Acquisition Channels</b></p>\n<p>Worryingly, GSX has seen reduced traffic acquisition in FQ4 ‘20 and FQ1 ‘21, with a whopping c. 20% lower sales lead cost in Jan-Feb 2021 (down from the Nov-Dec 2020 period). The recent decline is likely attributable to regulatory uncertainties around online traffic acquisition triggered by a recent Ministry of Education (MOE)interviewearlier this year. The significantly pressured new enrolment growth in FQ1 ‘21 may have been one of the reasons for the lower-than-expected top-line guidance as well. In response, management is exploring new student acquisition channels to offset the pressure – this includes the offline, short video, and live streaming e-commerce channels, among others. The good news is that successful expansion here could see the student acquisition cost lowered by over 50%, which is positive for the margin outlook (GSX is currently loss-making at the operating level).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e2602f4695bfb8d694d546b29bca897a\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"288\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source:GSX Investor Presentation Slides</p>\n<p>However, GSX is not alone in this regard – other online AST players have initiated similar moves, from online one-on-one and small-class players such as 51talk (COE), VIPKID, and New Oriental subsidiary Koolearn, whose large-class coverage has reached c.100 cities. Similarly, online large-class after-school tutoring players have also started expanding into offline acquisition through partnerships, with TAL Education (TAL) subsidiaryXueersi.comalsotying upwith Lenovo (OTCPK:LNVGY) in recent months. And with private players like Zuoyebang alsobuildingoffline traffic acquisition teams, the competitive pressures could drive downside to the near-term outlook.</p>\n<p><b>Adult Education Set to be Another Top-Line Growth Driver</b></p>\n<p>Within the Chinese education market, adult education is also emerging as a potential growth opportunity as people are increasingly looking to upskill in an uncertain job market. Alongside income level rises, people are also spending more on education to better prepare themselves for career development. As a result, gross billings have grown at a CAGR of 24.5% and are expected to grow further at 22.4% CAGR into fiscal 2023, reaching RMB265 billion.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/98361534c62ba1d36e6adf2696116a49\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"200\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source:GSX Listing Prospectus Filing</p>\n<p>Notably, while GSX currently expects fiscal 2021 revenue growth to be in the range of 70-80% Y/Y, the adult education business is guided to be a key growth driver at +100% Y/Y revenue growth. Considering that adult education accounted for over 10% of GSX’s revenue in fiscal 2020, I expect the contribution to continue rising over time. Key areas of growth here include English training, graduate school admission exam prep, and finance-related courses. Longer-term, I think the adult education business could even see higher gross margins than K-12 after-school tutoring due to the higher enrolment/tutor ratio.</p>\n<p><b>Online Regulations Remain the Key Concern</b></p>\n<p>Looking ahead, potential online regulations in the after-school tutoring space are concerning, with likely measures including a fake advertising ban, increased control over marketing spend in education, and more stringent quality requirements for institutions and instructors. On the flip side, these measures will also be beneficial to the overall industry development longer-term, allowing online after-school tutoring players to reinvest more dollars into improving the product and teaching quality. While clarity around the new regulations for both the offline/online markets remains lacking, I see a more positive outcome than the prior industry experience in 2018.</p>\n<p>Any restrictions on marketing limitation will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and sales growth in the near term but will also benefit margins due to the lower marketing spending. In turn, this should improve the longer-term economics of the business and drive narrowing losses in the upcoming quarter. Another key positive from the slower growth is that GSX will be able to focus on improving its product/service quality and extract more student lifetime value while also preserving its robust balance sheet. As of end-2020, GSX had a c. RMB8.2 billion cash position (including liquid investments), which should allow it to weather any unforeseen negative policy impacts.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a96e5d1f7d5a8fb561314a81180e06dd\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"280\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source: GSX Investor Presentation Slides</p>\n<p><b>Final Take</b></p>\n<p>Overall, regulations on marketing will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and top-line growth but should also lead to a healthier operating dynamic and narrowing losses ahead. With GSX also focused on alternative acquisition channels and tapping into markets such as adult education, I think the company could surprise positively in the upcoming quarters. While the GSX share price has suffered due to the Archegos Capital event and policy concerns, its forward EV/Sales multiple has declined significantly to c. 3x, and the widening relative discount to peers like TAL and EDU likely means the negatives have been priced in. Until the policy overhang has been lifted, however, I see the risk/reward as balanced at current levels.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/dd579bffc2a24fd55d7ccc3346eae7cb\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"436\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Data by YCharts</p>\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"GOTU":"高途","TAL":"好未来","EDU":"新东方"},"is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1170395888","content_text":"(June 23) Most of Chinese education stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday.\n\nDo Hedge Funds Think EDU Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?\nAt first quarter's end, a total of 45 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 5% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards EDU over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money's positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an \"upper tier\" of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).\nThe largest stake in New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) was held byD1 Capital Partners, which reported holding $350.5 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by GQG Partners with a $319.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Tiger Global Management LLC, Farallon Capital, and Alkeon Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Serenity Capital allocated the biggest weight to New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU), around 42.13% of its 13F portfolio.Kylin Managementis also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 18.73 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EDU.\nAs industrywide interest jumped, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Thunderbird Partners, managed by David Fear, established the most valuable position in New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU). Thunderbird Partners had $16.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Eduardo Costa'sCalixto Global Investorsalso made a $14.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new EDU positions are Matthew Hulsizer's PEAK6 Capital Management, Campbell Wilson'sOld Well Partners, and Daryl Smith's Kayak Investment Partners.\nLet's now review hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) but similarly valued. These stocks are Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU), Nucor Corporation (NYSE:NUE), Franco-Nevada Corporation (NYSE:FNV), Fortive Corporation (NYSE:FTV), The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG), Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB), and Trip.com Group Limited (NASDAQ:TCOM). All of these stocks' market caps are closest to EDU's market cap.\nAs you can see these stocks had an average of 32.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1239 million. That figure was $2188 million in EDU's case. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EDU is 70.7. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly positive signal but we'd rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed thattop 5 most popular stocksamong hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and beat the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately EDU wasn't nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on EDU were disappointed as the stock returned -45.8% since the end of March (through 6/18) and underperformed the market.\nTAL Education: Not Ready To Handle A New Wave Of Market Rivalry\nSummary\n\nFY2Q2021 revenue and XRS online growth fell below consensus expectations.\nIn 2020, the online K12 education market size in China reached CNY 89 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 37.6%.\nUnlike its nemesis New Oriental, TAL's investment amount into other firms has been continuously decreasing since 2016.\nWith COVID-19 reshaping the market, tech giants have started to make big moves into the digital education industry.\nWe do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth.\n\nTAL Education Group (also known as Tomorrow Advanced Learning) (TAL) is an education company that focuses on K12 students in China. It also has business segments in adult education, early education & parenting and education informatization. The firm takes quality education and extracurricular tutoring as the carrier system to serve on a global scale. Founded in 2003, it went public on NYSE in 2010.\nIn China, TAL competes with New Oriental (EDU), a company founded back in 1993. It can be said that both firms are leading China's education industry; for one, the market coverage of the two is evenly matched. From the latest information, New Oriental has active businesses in a total of 98 cities in China and one foreign city (Toronto). TAL has laid its business in a total of 90 cities across China.\nAs parents in the fast-growing country pay more and more attention to their children's basic education and e-learning is increasingly popular, the vast field of primary and secondary education and online education has eventually become a battleground for companies.\nDecent financial results\nTAL's 2Q 2021financial resultsweren't very impressive, as the firm earned USD 1.10 billion (up 20.8% year-on-year) compared to analysts' expectations of USD 1.12 billion for the quarter. However, it reported USD 0.08 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of USD 0.05 by USD 0.03. TAL Education Group had a return on equity of 0.21% and a net margin of 1.35% compared to 8.97% in 1Q 2021 due to strong competition presented in the primary education segment. It includes local pure online education companies such asYuanfudaoandZuoyebangthat recently completed mega-rounds of investment. Meanwhile, the non-GAAP operating margins were down to -1.1% compared to 9.8% in 2Q 2020 as customer acquisition costs rose backed by the fierce competition.\nNew market opportunities\nIn the past five to six years, with the support of the state, the development of technology, and the inflow of capital, China's online K12 education industry has undergone rapid development. In 2020, the overall online K12 education market size in China reached approximately CNY 89 billion, with a year-over-year increase of 37.6%.\nIn 2019, the penetration rate of K12 online education in China was about 15%. As COVID-19 struck during the beginning of 2020, the advantages of online education have been very apparent. The penetration rate of online K12 education reached its peak in March 2020. Although the industry is still in the stage of consumption popularization in China, there are obvious trends. This field consistently demonstrates a long-term massive demand as an emerging way of obtaining education information and services. Hence, the industry penetration rate has huge room for improvement in the future. According to thepredictionof the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the penetration rate of the K12 online education industry may exceed 55% by 2022.\n\nThe fact that TAL owns 871 learning centers (offline tutoring centers), 648 Peiyou (好未来培优) centers and 128 one-on-one centers is the reason why we believe TAL is not pandemic-proof. Possible closure of these centers by the government in order to control the spread of COVID-19 will lead to huge declines in the firm's financials.\nTAL does own online education apps – but they can't compete with the likes of VIPKID, Yuanfudao, and Zuoyebang, even though there has been an increase in revenue contribution of Xueersi TAL’s online app from 17% in FY2Q2020 to 26% in FY2Q2021.\nThe re-emergence of COVID-19 in China is a headwind for TAL's offline classroom-based training business. Although the vaccine has emerged, children below the age of 18 are not allowed to administer it. TAL's stock price might soon fall when most investors realize that the company still focused on formal or classroom-based tutorials and training.\nTAL has had stable growth since getting listed about nine years ago. Revenue has increased about 30 times, at a compound annual rate of 45.7% since then and gross margins averaged as high as 50.8%.\nResults from the last fiscal year ending February were materially affected by COVID-19 induced restrictions which had started early in China. Offline operations, primarily core Peiyou small classes, had to be quickly transferred to online platforms. As a result, some revenue was lost due to the lower selling prices for online classes, the total revenue in Q4 grew just 6.2% compared to 44.1% the previous year. Student enrollments were still up on aggregate with a rate of, 56.6% year-over-year.\nLess venture investment presence\nSince 2017, the number of investments by TAL has been decreasing. New Oriental has been more aggressive compared to TAL since 2018. TAL's financing has dropped sharply from 24 in 2016 to only two in 2020. The two investments were made on an interactive learning SaaS platform UMU and an online children's math tutoring app.\n\nThe entrance of tech giants\nSales and marketing expenses surged as the competition got tough for online players in the summer. Sales and marketing expenses surged 64% year-on-year and made up 22% of the total revenue, up 4.9% year-on-year.\nWith upstarts raising mega-rounds, things might get even tougher for TAL as more companies with huge capital to spend on marketing will try to grab market share. Other than that, Chinese giants such as Alibaba(NYSE:BABA), NetEase(NASDAQ:NTES), Tencent(OTCPK:TCEHY), ByteDance and Baidu(NASDAQ:BIDU)engage their businesses into online education. TAL needs to upgrade its online education business to stay afloat.\nThe education field is likely to be divided up by companies outside of this industry. It is also worth mentioning that the firm's key competitiveness is its in-depth application of technologies such as big data and live broadcast intelligence in China's online education industry. The firm has not spent much on research and development in terms of proprietary tuition-based technology. There are few existing barriers to entry. Teaching staff and market share could be theoretically purchased by new entrants.\nAllegation probe\nIn April 2020,TAL became one of the scandalous US-listed Chinese firmsafter admitting to inflate sales figures driven by employee wrongdoing, further hindering market confidence after Luckin Coffee's(OTCPK:LKNCY)USD 310 million fraud.\nTwo years before this event, Muddy Waters released areportnaming the company 'A Real Business With Fake Financials.' The report claimed that \"TAL commits fraud in the financials for its core Peiyou business. The Peiyou fraud is more difficult to quantify, but our research suggests fraudulent overstatement of approximately 25% to 30% of the company’s revenue.\"\nBottom line\nThis might not be a suitable time to invest in TAL Education. We give a neutral rating to the stock because we do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth. Therefore, TAL does have a chance to enhance its online business and compete with newcomers and experienced enterprises, including the likes of Zuoyebang, Yuanfudao, Baidu and NetEase.\nGaotu Group: Policy Overhang Keeps The Risk-Reward Balanced\nSummary\n\nThe longer-term outlook remains bright for Gaotu Group (formerly GSX TechEdu).\nAdverse regulatory changes remain the key risk for the near-term outlook, but a healthier longer-term dynamic should benefit profitability.\nGrowth drivers such as alternative student acquisition channels and increased contribution from adult education should help as well.\nDespite the discounted EV/Sales multiple, I would hold off on initiating a position for now pending clearance of the policy overhang.\n\nNewly rebranded Gaotu Group’s (GOTU/GSX) recently heldinvestor eventfeatured an interesting tour of its operation and top management strategy presentations, which offered timely insight into the longer-term outlook. In particular, GSX emphasized its continued focus on teaching excellence, service quality, and technology investments as key differentiators. However, policy risks remains the biggest concern, and if government intervention in the online after-school tutoring space turns out to be stricter than expected, I see material downside risks to GSX’s near-term growth trajectory. On the flip side, it could also result in a healthier industry dynamic, which should drive narrowing losses as well. While the policy reform overhang makes it difficult to turn bullish, GSX’s discounted c. 3x EV/Sales multiple also looks undemanding, keeping the risk/reward fairly balanced.\nGrowing Importance of Alternative Student Acquisition Channels\nWorryingly, GSX has seen reduced traffic acquisition in FQ4 ‘20 and FQ1 ‘21, with a whopping c. 20% lower sales lead cost in Jan-Feb 2021 (down from the Nov-Dec 2020 period). The recent decline is likely attributable to regulatory uncertainties around online traffic acquisition triggered by a recent Ministry of Education (MOE)interviewearlier this year. The significantly pressured new enrolment growth in FQ1 ‘21 may have been one of the reasons for the lower-than-expected top-line guidance as well. In response, management is exploring new student acquisition channels to offset the pressure – this includes the offline, short video, and live streaming e-commerce channels, among others. The good news is that successful expansion here could see the student acquisition cost lowered by over 50%, which is positive for the margin outlook (GSX is currently loss-making at the operating level).\n\nSource:GSX Investor Presentation Slides\nHowever, GSX is not alone in this regard – other online AST players have initiated similar moves, from online one-on-one and small-class players such as 51talk (COE), VIPKID, and New Oriental subsidiary Koolearn, whose large-class coverage has reached c.100 cities. Similarly, online large-class after-school tutoring players have also started expanding into offline acquisition through partnerships, with TAL Education (TAL) subsidiaryXueersi.comalsotying upwith Lenovo (OTCPK:LNVGY) in recent months. And with private players like Zuoyebang alsobuildingoffline traffic acquisition teams, the competitive pressures could drive downside to the near-term outlook.\nAdult Education Set to be Another Top-Line Growth Driver\nWithin the Chinese education market, adult education is also emerging as a potential growth opportunity as people are increasingly looking to upskill in an uncertain job market. Alongside income level rises, people are also spending more on education to better prepare themselves for career development. As a result, gross billings have grown at a CAGR of 24.5% and are expected to grow further at 22.4% CAGR into fiscal 2023, reaching RMB265 billion.\n\nSource:GSX Listing Prospectus Filing\nNotably, while GSX currently expects fiscal 2021 revenue growth to be in the range of 70-80% Y/Y, the adult education business is guided to be a key growth driver at +100% Y/Y revenue growth. Considering that adult education accounted for over 10% of GSX’s revenue in fiscal 2020, I expect the contribution to continue rising over time. Key areas of growth here include English training, graduate school admission exam prep, and finance-related courses. Longer-term, I think the adult education business could even see higher gross margins than K-12 after-school tutoring due to the higher enrolment/tutor ratio.\nOnline Regulations Remain the Key Concern\nLooking ahead, potential online regulations in the after-school tutoring space are concerning, with likely measures including a fake advertising ban, increased control over marketing spend in education, and more stringent quality requirements for institutions and instructors. On the flip side, these measures will also be beneficial to the overall industry development longer-term, allowing online after-school tutoring players to reinvest more dollars into improving the product and teaching quality. While clarity around the new regulations for both the offline/online markets remains lacking, I see a more positive outcome than the prior industry experience in 2018.\nAny restrictions on marketing limitation will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and sales growth in the near term but will also benefit margins due to the lower marketing spending. In turn, this should improve the longer-term economics of the business and drive narrowing losses in the upcoming quarter. Another key positive from the slower growth is that GSX will be able to focus on improving its product/service quality and extract more student lifetime value while also preserving its robust balance sheet. As of end-2020, GSX had a c. RMB8.2 billion cash position (including liquid investments), which should allow it to weather any unforeseen negative policy impacts.\n\nSource: GSX Investor Presentation Slides\nFinal Take\nOverall, regulations on marketing will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and top-line growth but should also lead to a healthier operating dynamic and narrowing losses ahead. With GSX also focused on alternative acquisition channels and tapping into markets such as adult education, I think the company could surprise positively in the upcoming quarters. While the GSX share price has suffered due to the Archegos Capital event and policy concerns, its forward EV/Sales multiple has declined significantly to c. 3x, and the widening relative discount to peers like TAL and EDU likely means the negatives have been priced in. Until the policy overhang has been lifted, however, I see the risk/reward as balanced at current levels.\nData by YCharts","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"GOTU":0.9,"EDU":0.9,"TAL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":1321,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":129607719,"gmtCreate":1624370205331,"gmtModify":1703834684304,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"I need T","listText":"I need T","text":"I need T","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/129607719","repostId":"1119119362","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2040,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":129602996,"gmtCreate":1624370101115,"gmtModify":1703834679124,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Good","listText":"Good","text":"Good","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/129602996","repostId":"1187133273","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":1599,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":129603872,"gmtCreate":1624370032496,"gmtModify":1703834673610,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Hi","listText":"Hi","text":"Hi","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/129603872","repostId":"2145056554","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2456,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":167583511,"gmtCreate":1624277299633,"gmtModify":1703832195944,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Huat ah","listText":"Huat ah","text":"Huat ah","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/167583511","repostId":"1136676913","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2606,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":167580401,"gmtCreate":1624277203503,"gmtModify":1703832193178,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Nice!","listText":"Nice!","text":"Nice!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/167580401","repostId":"1154249454","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1154249454","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624230573,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1154249454?lang=en_US&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-21 07:09","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Nike, FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, Darden, and Other Stocks for Investors to Watch This Week","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1154249454","media":"barrons","summary":"A handful of notable companies will release their latest results toward the end of this week.Nike,FedEx,andDarden Restaurantswill report on Thursday, followed by CarMax and Paychex on Friday. Wednesday will also feature analyst days and investor events from Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline,and Equinix.Economic data out this week include IHS’ Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ Indexes for June on Wednesday. Both are expected to hold near their record highs. The Census Bureau will r","content":"<p>A handful of notable companies will release their latest results toward the end of this week.Nike,FedEx,andDarden Restaurantswill report on Thursday, followed by CarMax and Paychex on Friday. Wednesday will also feature analyst days and investor events from&nbsp;Johnson &amp;&nbsp;Johnson,&nbsp;GlaxoSmithKline,and&nbsp;Equinix.</p>\n<p>Economic data out this week include IHS’ Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ Indexes for June on Wednesday. Both are expected to hold near their record highs. The Census Bureau will release the durable-goods report for May on Thursday. Orders—often seen as a decent proxy for business investment—are expected to rise 3.3% month over month.</p>\n<p>And on Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will report personal income and consumption for May. Spending is forecast to continue rising despite a drop off in income as stimulus checks finished being sent out in April.</p>\n<p>Monday 6/21</p>\n<p><b>The Federal Reserve Bank</b>of Chicago releases its National Activity index, a gauge of overall economic activity, for May. Expectations are for a 0.50 reading, higher than April’s 0.24 figure. A positive reading indicates economic growth that is above historical trends.</p>\n<p>Tuesday 6/22</p>\n<p><b>The National Association</b>of Realtors reports existing-home sales for May. Economists forecast a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.7 million homes sold, about 150,000 fewer than the April data. Existing-home sales have fallen for three consecutive months, as supply hasn’t been able to keep up with demand.</p>\n<p>Wednesday 6/23</p>\n<p>Equinix hosts its 2021 analyst day, when the company will update its long-term financial outlook.</p>\n<p>GlaxoSmithKline hosts a conference call, featuring its CEO, Emma Walmsley, to update investors on the company’s strategy for growth and shareholder value creation.</p>\n<p>Johnson &amp; Johnson hosts a webcast to discuss its ESG strategy.</p>\n<p><b>The Census Bureau</b>reports new residential construction data for May. Consensus estimate is for a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 875,000 new single-family homes sold, slightly higher than April’s 863,000. Similar to existing-home sales, new-home sales have fallen from their recent peak of 993,000 in January of this year.</p>\n<p><b>IHS Markitreports</b>both its Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ indexes for June. Expectations are for a 61.5 reading for the Manufacturing PMI, and a 69.8 figure for the Services PMI. Both projections are comparable to the May data as well as being near record highs for their respective indexes.</p>\n<p>Thursday 6/24</p>\n<p><b>The Bureau of Economic Analysis</b>reports the third and final estimate of first-quarter gross-domestic-product growth. Economists forecast a seasonally adjusted annual growth rate of 6.4%.</p>\n<p>Accenture,Darden Restaurants, FedEx, and Nike hold conference calls to discuss quarterly results.</p>\n<p><b>The Bank of England</b>announces its monetary-policy decision. The central bank is widely expected to keep its key interest rate at 0.1%.</p>\n<p><b>The Census Bureau</b>releases the durable-goods report for May. The consensus call is for new orders of manufactured goods to rise 2.8% month over month to $253 billion. Excluding transportation, new orders are projected at 1%, matching the April data.</p>\n<p>Friday 6/25</p>\n<p>CarMax and Paychex report earnings.</p>\n<p><b>The BEA reports</b>personal income and consumption for May. Income is expected to fall 3% month over month, after plummeting 13.1% in April. This reflects a dropoff in stimulus checks that first were sent out in March. Spending is seen rising 0.5%, comparable to the April data.</p>","source":"lsy1601382232898","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>Nike, FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, Darden, and Other Stocks for Investors to Watch This Week</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\">\nNike, FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, Darden, and Other Stocks for Investors to Watch This Week\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-21 07:09 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.barrons.com/articles/nike-fedex-johnson-johnson-darden-and-other-stocks-for-investors-to-watch-this-week-51624215603?mod=hp_LEAD_3><strong>barrons</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>A handful of notable companies will release their latest results toward the end of this week.Nike,FedEx,andDarden Restaurantswill report on Thursday, followed by CarMax and Paychex on Friday. ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.barrons.com/articles/nike-fedex-johnson-johnson-darden-and-other-stocks-for-investors-to-watch-this-week-51624215603?mod=hp_LEAD_3\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"FDX":"联邦快递","DRI":"达登饭店","JNJ":"强生","NKE":"耐克"},"source_url":"https://www.barrons.com/articles/nike-fedex-johnson-johnson-darden-and-other-stocks-for-investors-to-watch-this-week-51624215603?mod=hp_LEAD_3","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1154249454","content_text":"A handful of notable companies will release their latest results toward the end of this week.Nike,FedEx,andDarden Restaurantswill report on Thursday, followed by CarMax and Paychex on Friday. Wednesday will also feature analyst days and investor events from Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline,and Equinix.\nEconomic data out this week include IHS’ Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ Indexes for June on Wednesday. Both are expected to hold near their record highs. The Census Bureau will release the durable-goods report for May on Thursday. Orders—often seen as a decent proxy for business investment—are expected to rise 3.3% month over month.\nAnd on Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will report personal income and consumption for May. Spending is forecast to continue rising despite a drop off in income as stimulus checks finished being sent out in April.\nMonday 6/21\nThe Federal Reserve Bankof Chicago releases its National Activity index, a gauge of overall economic activity, for May. Expectations are for a 0.50 reading, higher than April’s 0.24 figure. A positive reading indicates economic growth that is above historical trends.\nTuesday 6/22\nThe National Associationof Realtors reports existing-home sales for May. Economists forecast a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.7 million homes sold, about 150,000 fewer than the April data. Existing-home sales have fallen for three consecutive months, as supply hasn’t been able to keep up with demand.\nWednesday 6/23\nEquinix hosts its 2021 analyst day, when the company will update its long-term financial outlook.\nGlaxoSmithKline hosts a conference call, featuring its CEO, Emma Walmsley, to update investors on the company’s strategy for growth and shareholder value creation.\nJohnson & Johnson hosts a webcast to discuss its ESG strategy.\nThe Census Bureaureports new residential construction data for May. Consensus estimate is for a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 875,000 new single-family homes sold, slightly higher than April’s 863,000. Similar to existing-home sales, new-home sales have fallen from their recent peak of 993,000 in January of this year.\nIHS Markitreportsboth its Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ indexes for June. Expectations are for a 61.5 reading for the Manufacturing PMI, and a 69.8 figure for the Services PMI. Both projections are comparable to the May data as well as being near record highs for their respective indexes.\nThursday 6/24\nThe Bureau of Economic Analysisreports the third and final estimate of first-quarter gross-domestic-product growth. Economists forecast a seasonally adjusted annual growth rate of 6.4%.\nAccenture,Darden Restaurants, FedEx, and Nike hold conference calls to discuss quarterly results.\nThe Bank of Englandannounces its monetary-policy decision. The central bank is widely expected to keep its key interest rate at 0.1%.\nThe Census Bureaureleases the durable-goods report for May. The consensus call is for new orders of manufactured goods to rise 2.8% month over month to $253 billion. Excluding transportation, new orders are projected at 1%, matching the April data.\nFriday 6/25\nCarMax and Paychex report earnings.\nThe BEA reportspersonal income and consumption for May. Income is expected to fall 3% month over month, after plummeting 13.1% in April. This reflects a dropoff in stimulus checks that first were sent out in March. Spending is seen rising 0.5%, comparable to the April data.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"JNJ":0.9,"FDX":0.9,"NKE":0.9,"DRI":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":3113,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164129697,"gmtCreate":1624182565019,"gmtModify":1703830282462,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Like and share&nbsp;","listText":"Like and share&nbsp;","text":"Like and share","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164129697","repostId":"1113942445","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":1624,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164120715,"gmtCreate":1624182532037,"gmtModify":1703830281005,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Good!","listText":"Good!","text":"Good!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164120715","repostId":"1126454279","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":3282,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164120695,"gmtCreate":1624182510817,"gmtModify":1703830280682,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Nice read!","listText":"Nice read!","text":"Nice read!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164120695","repostId":"1133385197","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1133385197","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624151969,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1133385197?lang=en_US&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&amp;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&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<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\">Source 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,"symbols_score_info":{".DJI":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":747,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164120016,"gmtCreate":1624182458135,"gmtModify":1703830279709,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Nice!","listText":"Nice!","text":"Nice!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":6,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164120016","repostId":"1199331995","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":785,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"hots":[{"id":164120016,"gmtCreate":1624182458135,"gmtModify":1703830279709,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Nice!","listText":"Nice!","text":"Nice!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":6,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164120016","repostId":"1199331995","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":785,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":121177842,"gmtCreate":1624457726186,"gmtModify":1703837355081,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Like and comment","listText":"Like and comment","text":"Like and comment","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/121177842","repostId":"1191722749","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1191722749","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624455982,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1191722749?lang=en_US&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-23 21:46","market":"us","language":"en","title":"The Fed In A Box, Part 1: They Cannot Raise Interest Rates","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1191722749","media":"zerohedge","summary":"3 Key Takeaways\n\nThe US Government has over $28 Trillion in Debt\nMuch of the debt is short-term, mak","content":"<p><b>3 Key Takeaways</b></p>\n<ol>\n <li>The US Government has over $28 Trillion in Debt</li>\n <li>Much of the debt is short-term, making it extra sensitive to higher rates</li>\n <li>Higher Interest Rates would immediately start putting strain on the Federal Budget</li>\n</ol>\n<p><b>Introduction</b></p>\n<p>The US has over $28 Trillion dollars in debt and it continues to grow at an alarming rate. Even before COVID-19, the problem was becoming unwieldy. Ironically, despite adding $4T+ in debt over the last year, the pandemic may have given the US Government short-term reprieve as it gave the Federal Reserve a green light to drop rates back to zero.</p>\n<p>First and foremost, this took pressure off the Treasury as it refinanced the ballooning short-term debt outstanding at lower rates. However, even more relief occurred as the Federal Reserve absorbed +90% of the long term debt issued since last March. This allowed more room in the private markets to purchase the issuance of new short-term Treasury Bills. Because the Fed pays interest revenue back to the Treasury, and since interest rates on Treasury Bills are sitting at 0%, this has effectively given the Treasury a&nbsp;<b>$4.5T loan at 0% interest</b>&nbsp;in 15 months!</p>\n<p>While this sounds like a great deal, it comes with major risks and has now put the Fed in a box. This will be explained in detail over two articles. Part 1 will explain why the Fed can no longer raise interest rates, and Part 2 will show how the Fed is unable to taper and may even need to increase Treasury purchases to maintain control over the long end of the yield curve.</p>\n<p><b>$28 Trillion and Growing</b></p>\n<p>The US Government cannot stop spending money. Spending is now far in excess of what is being collected in tax revenues. The US economy continues to experience nominal increases in growth, which has increased Federal Tax receipts, but Federal Spending is growing far faster. Figure 1 below, shows this clear trend.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8b5576e9901f1f8310629d45af16836a\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p>Excess spending has to be paid for using debt. This massive excess in spending has led to proliferate borrowing by the Federal Government resulting in over $28T in total debt outstanding. See figure 2 below.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ed345b06ec4a35726fe7d9847937cf34\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p>For anyone struggling to wrap their mind around the size of $1T, please see this great&nbsp;visual. Now, multiply that by 28!</p>\n<p>For most governments, this would be unsustainable as interest rates would rise. This puts pressure on a borrower to bring down spending. The US Government has benefited from three major advantages that are not available to most governments. First, it has the exorbitant privilege of issuing the global reserve currency (for now), which creates far more demand for dollars than would otherwise be the case. The&nbsp;petro-dollar&nbsp;should have its own dedicated article, so that will be skipped in this analysis.</p>\n<p>It is important to highlight two other key facts that have allowed spending and borrowing to continue unabated. It has been able to borrow from the Social Security Trust Fund, and the Federal Reserve has absorbed a large chunk of debt issuance in recent years. Not only does this equate to $11T in interest-free loans (as all interest payments return back to the Treasury), but it has prevented the private markets from absorbing all new debt issuance keeping interest rates lower. As Figure 3 below shows, since Jan 2010, the private markets have “only” had to absorb $9T of the $14.5T issued.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2dee6e735c0a3c1421eb321c0eae4b54\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov andhttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/</i></p>\n<p>Since Jan 2020, the numbers are even more stark. The Treasury has issued $4.5T, of which the Fed has taken on $2.6T (<i>Note: The Fed balance sheet has expanded by greater than $4T, but not all of this was Treasury Debt</i>). Looking deeper into the numbers shows the Fed had an even bigger appetite for longer-dated maturities. With Short Term rates at 0%, the Treasury can sell Treasury Bills to the private sector and still have an interest-free loan. Thus, it has been critical for the Fed to absorb almost all (~90%) the long-term debt issued by the Treasury to keep interest payments low!</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/89bf299c6c054e65d3317aa72d0f686a\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p><b>The Treasury has so far avoided higher interest payments</b></p>\n<p>Zooming back out, the three charts below show why the maneuvers over the last year have been so important. Take one more look at the US Debt load, this time categorized by vehicle. Non-Marketable is debt the government owes itself, Notes represent 1-10 year maturity, Bills less than 1 year, and Bonds &gt;10 years. The two charts below show both the absolute growth in debt and how the makeup of the debt has changed. Since 2008, Notes have experienced the largest growth increasing from 25% of total outstanding to 42%. Non-Marketable went the other way, shrinking from 45% to 25% as the Social Security Trust Fund is no longer a source to borrow from.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a144f0f9250c364637205e8bd0178bc0\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2c1851784731b81544c30c5338624a03\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p>It is important to notice the growth in Treasury Bills above. Bills are the highest risk to the Treasury because higher interest rates will affect Bills within months, so it is important to note that in 2015 during the last rate hike cycle they accounted for only $1.4T but now make up $4.3T. This means every .25% rate hike will almost immediately add $10B to Federal spending. The chart below clearly shows the impact of the last interest rate hike cycle. The Pink line shows how Bills followed the Fed hike cycle topping out near 2.25%.</p>\n<p>If the Fed attempted to raise rates in a similar fashion it would immediately add $100B to Federal Spending on ONLY interest due for Treasury Bills. In a scenario where the Fed shrunk its balance sheet back to $1T (no more interest free loans) AND raised interest rates back to 4%, the Treasury would incur an extra $160B in interest rates for Treasury Bills and a whopping $290B on Treasury Notes! This would not factor in any new debt added over that time, which now includes an extra $.5T a year just on interest payments!</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/04501c54f465fba412ffbf77b81a559f\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p>The chart below shows a much clearer impact of how falling interest rates have kept debt payments relatively stable for nearly 20 years. The chart shows the average weighted interest rate and the annualized monthly interest payments. The orange line (average weighted interest rate) is moving in direct opposition to the growth in debt seen above. In the last rate tightening cycle, the chart shows just how quickly higher interest rates increased the debt burden ($150B). The Fed owns very few Treasury Bills ($320B), so those interest payments are NOT returning to the Treasury.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c859933a1e991d3e6ba191ccb6a7609e\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p>One final chart to consider. How do these interest payments compare to tax revenue collected by the IRS? In this context, it becomes very clear how much impact the 2015 rate cycle increases had on debt payments.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/585708ace254d0b79ecddcc77c9c8ca0\" tg-width=\"1024\" tg-height=\"512\"></p>\n<p><i>Source – Treasurydirect.gov</i></p>\n<p><b>Wrapping Up</b></p>\n<p>Nothing in this article should be surprising to anyone who even closely watches the US Debt situation or follows financial markets. The charts and graphs attempted to show the trends and put hard numbers behind what most people already know anecdotally. This article does not even touch on how devastating higher interest rates would be on the housing market, corporate debt market, and consumer debt market. Instead it only focuses on the Treasury, which just so happens to be run by the old chair of the Federal Reserve (Janet Yellen).</p>\n<p>None of this math is overly complex, and all the data is freely available on the Treasury and Fed website. This begs the question, does the Fed realize interest rates cannot go up or are they only looking in the rear-view mirror and assuming that an increase to 2.25% will be similar to 2015 which was “only” derailed by COVID-19? To reiterate, the drop in interest rates gave the Treasury&nbsp;<i>relief</i>&nbsp;from the higher interest payments. Next time they might not even get halfway to 2% with the added debt burden.<b>Unfortunately, for the Fed, their box is tighter than most realize.</b>If the Fed hasn’t figured it out by now,<b>even before they fail to raise interest rates, they will be unable taper Quantitative Easing (debt monetization) much less shrink their balance sheet, without serious consequences.</b>That data will be reviewed in Part 2. Stay tuned!</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>The Fed In A Box, Part 1: They Cannot Raise Interest Rates</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\">\nThe Fed In A Box, Part 1: They Cannot Raise Interest Rates\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-23 21:46 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-box-part-1-they-cannot-raise-interest-rates><strong>zerohedge</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>3 Key Takeaways\n\nThe US Government has over $28 Trillion in Debt\nMuch of the debt is short-term, making it extra sensitive to higher rates\nHigher Interest Rates would immediately start putting strain ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-box-part-1-they-cannot-raise-interest-rates\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".SPX":"S&P 500 Index","SPY":"标普500ETF",".IXIC":"NASDAQ Composite",".DJI":"道琼斯"},"source_url":"https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/fed-box-part-1-they-cannot-raise-interest-rates","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1191722749","content_text":"3 Key Takeaways\n\nThe US Government has over $28 Trillion in Debt\nMuch of the debt is short-term, making it extra sensitive to higher rates\nHigher Interest Rates would immediately start putting strain on the Federal Budget\n\nIntroduction\nThe US has over $28 Trillion dollars in debt and it continues to grow at an alarming rate. Even before COVID-19, the problem was becoming unwieldy. Ironically, despite adding $4T+ in debt over the last year, the pandemic may have given the US Government short-term reprieve as it gave the Federal Reserve a green light to drop rates back to zero.\nFirst and foremost, this took pressure off the Treasury as it refinanced the ballooning short-term debt outstanding at lower rates. However, even more relief occurred as the Federal Reserve absorbed +90% of the long term debt issued since last March. This allowed more room in the private markets to purchase the issuance of new short-term Treasury Bills. Because the Fed pays interest revenue back to the Treasury, and since interest rates on Treasury Bills are sitting at 0%, this has effectively given the Treasury a $4.5T loan at 0% interest in 15 months!\nWhile this sounds like a great deal, it comes with major risks and has now put the Fed in a box. This will be explained in detail over two articles. Part 1 will explain why the Fed can no longer raise interest rates, and Part 2 will show how the Fed is unable to taper and may even need to increase Treasury purchases to maintain control over the long end of the yield curve.\n$28 Trillion and Growing\nThe US Government cannot stop spending money. Spending is now far in excess of what is being collected in tax revenues. The US economy continues to experience nominal increases in growth, which has increased Federal Tax receipts, but Federal Spending is growing far faster. Figure 1 below, shows this clear trend.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nExcess spending has to be paid for using debt. This massive excess in spending has led to proliferate borrowing by the Federal Government resulting in over $28T in total debt outstanding. See figure 2 below.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nFor anyone struggling to wrap their mind around the size of $1T, please see this great visual. Now, multiply that by 28!\nFor most governments, this would be unsustainable as interest rates would rise. This puts pressure on a borrower to bring down spending. The US Government has benefited from three major advantages that are not available to most governments. First, it has the exorbitant privilege of issuing the global reserve currency (for now), which creates far more demand for dollars than would otherwise be the case. The petro-dollar should have its own dedicated article, so that will be skipped in this analysis.\nIt is important to highlight two other key facts that have allowed spending and borrowing to continue unabated. It has been able to borrow from the Social Security Trust Fund, and the Federal Reserve has absorbed a large chunk of debt issuance in recent years. Not only does this equate to $11T in interest-free loans (as all interest payments return back to the Treasury), but it has prevented the private markets from absorbing all new debt issuance keeping interest rates lower. As Figure 3 below shows, since Jan 2010, the private markets have “only” had to absorb $9T of the $14.5T issued.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov andhttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/\nSince Jan 2020, the numbers are even more stark. The Treasury has issued $4.5T, of which the Fed has taken on $2.6T (Note: The Fed balance sheet has expanded by greater than $4T, but not all of this was Treasury Debt). Looking deeper into the numbers shows the Fed had an even bigger appetite for longer-dated maturities. With Short Term rates at 0%, the Treasury can sell Treasury Bills to the private sector and still have an interest-free loan. Thus, it has been critical for the Fed to absorb almost all (~90%) the long-term debt issued by the Treasury to keep interest payments low!\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nThe Treasury has so far avoided higher interest payments\nZooming back out, the three charts below show why the maneuvers over the last year have been so important. Take one more look at the US Debt load, this time categorized by vehicle. Non-Marketable is debt the government owes itself, Notes represent 1-10 year maturity, Bills less than 1 year, and Bonds >10 years. The two charts below show both the absolute growth in debt and how the makeup of the debt has changed. Since 2008, Notes have experienced the largest growth increasing from 25% of total outstanding to 42%. Non-Marketable went the other way, shrinking from 45% to 25% as the Social Security Trust Fund is no longer a source to borrow from.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nIt is important to notice the growth in Treasury Bills above. Bills are the highest risk to the Treasury because higher interest rates will affect Bills within months, so it is important to note that in 2015 during the last rate hike cycle they accounted for only $1.4T but now make up $4.3T. This means every .25% rate hike will almost immediately add $10B to Federal spending. The chart below clearly shows the impact of the last interest rate hike cycle. The Pink line shows how Bills followed the Fed hike cycle topping out near 2.25%.\nIf the Fed attempted to raise rates in a similar fashion it would immediately add $100B to Federal Spending on ONLY interest due for Treasury Bills. In a scenario where the Fed shrunk its balance sheet back to $1T (no more interest free loans) AND raised interest rates back to 4%, the Treasury would incur an extra $160B in interest rates for Treasury Bills and a whopping $290B on Treasury Notes! This would not factor in any new debt added over that time, which now includes an extra $.5T a year just on interest payments!\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nThe chart below shows a much clearer impact of how falling interest rates have kept debt payments relatively stable for nearly 20 years. The chart shows the average weighted interest rate and the annualized monthly interest payments. The orange line (average weighted interest rate) is moving in direct opposition to the growth in debt seen above. In the last rate tightening cycle, the chart shows just how quickly higher interest rates increased the debt burden ($150B). The Fed owns very few Treasury Bills ($320B), so those interest payments are NOT returning to the Treasury.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nOne final chart to consider. How do these interest payments compare to tax revenue collected by the IRS? In this context, it becomes very clear how much impact the 2015 rate cycle increases had on debt payments.\n\nSource – Treasurydirect.gov\nWrapping Up\nNothing in this article should be surprising to anyone who even closely watches the US Debt situation or follows financial markets. The charts and graphs attempted to show the trends and put hard numbers behind what most people already know anecdotally. This article does not even touch on how devastating higher interest rates would be on the housing market, corporate debt market, and consumer debt market. Instead it only focuses on the Treasury, which just so happens to be run by the old chair of the Federal Reserve (Janet Yellen).\nNone of this math is overly complex, and all the data is freely available on the Treasury and Fed website. This begs the question, does the Fed realize interest rates cannot go up or are they only looking in the rear-view mirror and assuming that an increase to 2.25% will be similar to 2015 which was “only” derailed by COVID-19? To reiterate, the drop in interest rates gave the Treasury relief from the higher interest payments. Next time they might not even get halfway to 2% with the added debt burden.Unfortunately, for the Fed, their box is tighter than most realize.If the Fed hasn’t figured it out by now,even before they fail to raise interest rates, they will be unable taper Quantitative Easing (debt monetization) much less shrink their balance sheet, without serious consequences.That data will be reviewed in Part 2. Stay tuned!","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{".IXIC":0.9,"SPY":0.9,".SPX":0.9,".DJI":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2742,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":167583511,"gmtCreate":1624277299633,"gmtModify":1703832195944,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Huat ah","listText":"Huat ah","text":"Huat ah","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":2,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/167583511","repostId":"1136676913","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2606,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164120715,"gmtCreate":1624182532037,"gmtModify":1703830281005,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Good!","listText":"Good!","text":"Good!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164120715","repostId":"1126454279","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":3282,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":167580401,"gmtCreate":1624277203503,"gmtModify":1703832193178,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Nice!","listText":"Nice!","text":"Nice!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":1,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/167580401","repostId":"1154249454","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1154249454","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624230573,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1154249454?lang=en_US&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-21 07:09","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Nike, FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, Darden, and Other Stocks for Investors to Watch This Week","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1154249454","media":"barrons","summary":"A handful of notable companies will release their latest results toward the end of this week.Nike,FedEx,andDarden Restaurantswill report on Thursday, followed by CarMax and Paychex on Friday. Wednesday will also feature analyst days and investor events from Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline,and Equinix.Economic data out this week include IHS’ Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ Indexes for June on Wednesday. Both are expected to hold near their record highs. The Census Bureau will r","content":"<p>A handful of notable companies will release their latest results toward the end of this week.Nike,FedEx,andDarden Restaurantswill report on Thursday, followed by CarMax and Paychex on Friday. Wednesday will also feature analyst days and investor events from&nbsp;Johnson &amp;&nbsp;Johnson,&nbsp;GlaxoSmithKline,and&nbsp;Equinix.</p>\n<p>Economic data out this week include IHS’ Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ Indexes for June on Wednesday. Both are expected to hold near their record highs. The Census Bureau will release the durable-goods report for May on Thursday. Orders—often seen as a decent proxy for business investment—are expected to rise 3.3% month over month.</p>\n<p>And on Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will report personal income and consumption for May. Spending is forecast to continue rising despite a drop off in income as stimulus checks finished being sent out in April.</p>\n<p>Monday 6/21</p>\n<p><b>The Federal Reserve Bank</b>of Chicago releases its National Activity index, a gauge of overall economic activity, for May. Expectations are for a 0.50 reading, higher than April’s 0.24 figure. A positive reading indicates economic growth that is above historical trends.</p>\n<p>Tuesday 6/22</p>\n<p><b>The National Association</b>of Realtors reports existing-home sales for May. Economists forecast a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.7 million homes sold, about 150,000 fewer than the April data. Existing-home sales have fallen for three consecutive months, as supply hasn’t been able to keep up with demand.</p>\n<p>Wednesday 6/23</p>\n<p>Equinix hosts its 2021 analyst day, when the company will update its long-term financial outlook.</p>\n<p>GlaxoSmithKline hosts a conference call, featuring its CEO, Emma Walmsley, to update investors on the company’s strategy for growth and shareholder value creation.</p>\n<p>Johnson &amp; Johnson hosts a webcast to discuss its ESG strategy.</p>\n<p><b>The Census Bureau</b>reports new residential construction data for May. Consensus estimate is for a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 875,000 new single-family homes sold, slightly higher than April’s 863,000. Similar to existing-home sales, new-home sales have fallen from their recent peak of 993,000 in January of this year.</p>\n<p><b>IHS Markitreports</b>both its Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ indexes for June. Expectations are for a 61.5 reading for the Manufacturing PMI, and a 69.8 figure for the Services PMI. Both projections are comparable to the May data as well as being near record highs for their respective indexes.</p>\n<p>Thursday 6/24</p>\n<p><b>The Bureau of Economic Analysis</b>reports the third and final estimate of first-quarter gross-domestic-product growth. Economists forecast a seasonally adjusted annual growth rate of 6.4%.</p>\n<p>Accenture,Darden Restaurants, FedEx, and Nike hold conference calls to discuss quarterly results.</p>\n<p><b>The Bank of England</b>announces its monetary-policy decision. The central bank is widely expected to keep its key interest rate at 0.1%.</p>\n<p><b>The Census Bureau</b>releases the durable-goods report for May. The consensus call is for new orders of manufactured goods to rise 2.8% month over month to $253 billion. Excluding transportation, new orders are projected at 1%, matching the April data.</p>\n<p>Friday 6/25</p>\n<p>CarMax and Paychex report earnings.</p>\n<p><b>The BEA reports</b>personal income and consumption for May. Income is expected to fall 3% month over month, after plummeting 13.1% in April. This reflects a dropoff in stimulus checks that first were sent out in March. Spending is seen rising 0.5%, comparable to the April data.</p>","source":"lsy1601382232898","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>Nike, FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, Darden, and Other Stocks for Investors to Watch This Week</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\">\nNike, FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, Darden, and Other Stocks for Investors to Watch This Week\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-21 07:09 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.barrons.com/articles/nike-fedex-johnson-johnson-darden-and-other-stocks-for-investors-to-watch-this-week-51624215603?mod=hp_LEAD_3><strong>barrons</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>A handful of notable companies will release their latest results toward the end of this week.Nike,FedEx,andDarden Restaurantswill report on Thursday, followed by CarMax and Paychex on Friday. ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.barrons.com/articles/nike-fedex-johnson-johnson-darden-and-other-stocks-for-investors-to-watch-this-week-51624215603?mod=hp_LEAD_3\">Source Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"FDX":"联邦快递","DRI":"达登饭店","JNJ":"强生","NKE":"耐克"},"source_url":"https://www.barrons.com/articles/nike-fedex-johnson-johnson-darden-and-other-stocks-for-investors-to-watch-this-week-51624215603?mod=hp_LEAD_3","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1154249454","content_text":"A handful of notable companies will release their latest results toward the end of this week.Nike,FedEx,andDarden Restaurantswill report on Thursday, followed by CarMax and Paychex on Friday. Wednesday will also feature analyst days and investor events from Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline,and Equinix.\nEconomic data out this week include IHS’ Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ Indexes for June on Wednesday. Both are expected to hold near their record highs. The Census Bureau will release the durable-goods report for May on Thursday. Orders—often seen as a decent proxy for business investment—are expected to rise 3.3% month over month.\nAnd on Friday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis will report personal income and consumption for May. Spending is forecast to continue rising despite a drop off in income as stimulus checks finished being sent out in April.\nMonday 6/21\nThe Federal Reserve Bankof Chicago releases its National Activity index, a gauge of overall economic activity, for May. Expectations are for a 0.50 reading, higher than April’s 0.24 figure. A positive reading indicates economic growth that is above historical trends.\nTuesday 6/22\nThe National Associationof Realtors reports existing-home sales for May. Economists forecast a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.7 million homes sold, about 150,000 fewer than the April data. Existing-home sales have fallen for three consecutive months, as supply hasn’t been able to keep up with demand.\nWednesday 6/23\nEquinix hosts its 2021 analyst day, when the company will update its long-term financial outlook.\nGlaxoSmithKline hosts a conference call, featuring its CEO, Emma Walmsley, to update investors on the company’s strategy for growth and shareholder value creation.\nJohnson & Johnson hosts a webcast to discuss its ESG strategy.\nThe Census Bureaureports new residential construction data for May. Consensus estimate is for a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 875,000 new single-family homes sold, slightly higher than April’s 863,000. Similar to existing-home sales, new-home sales have fallen from their recent peak of 993,000 in January of this year.\nIHS Markitreportsboth its Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ indexes for June. Expectations are for a 61.5 reading for the Manufacturing PMI, and a 69.8 figure for the Services PMI. Both projections are comparable to the May data as well as being near record highs for their respective indexes.\nThursday 6/24\nThe Bureau of Economic Analysisreports the third and final estimate of first-quarter gross-domestic-product growth. Economists forecast a seasonally adjusted annual growth rate of 6.4%.\nAccenture,Darden Restaurants, FedEx, and Nike hold conference calls to discuss quarterly results.\nThe Bank of Englandannounces its monetary-policy decision. The central bank is widely expected to keep its key interest rate at 0.1%.\nThe Census Bureaureleases the durable-goods report for May. The consensus call is for new orders of manufactured goods to rise 2.8% month over month to $253 billion. Excluding transportation, new orders are projected at 1%, matching the April data.\nFriday 6/25\nCarMax and Paychex report earnings.\nThe BEA reportspersonal income and consumption for May. Income is expected to fall 3% month over month, after plummeting 13.1% in April. This reflects a dropoff in stimulus checks that first were sent out in March. Spending is seen rising 0.5%, comparable to the April data.","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"JNJ":0.9,"FDX":0.9,"NKE":0.9,"DRI":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":3113,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":129603872,"gmtCreate":1624370032496,"gmtModify":1703834673610,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Hi","listText":"Hi","text":"Hi","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/129603872","repostId":"2145056554","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2456,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164120695,"gmtCreate":1624182510817,"gmtModify":1703830280682,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Nice read!","listText":"Nice read!","text":"Nice read!","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":3,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164120695","repostId":"1133385197","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1133385197","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1624151969,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1133385197?lang=en_US&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&amp;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&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<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\">Source 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,"symbols_score_info":{".DJI":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":747,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":121172904,"gmtCreate":1624457666008,"gmtModify":1703837350724,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Nice read&nbsp;","listText":"Nice read&nbsp;","text":"Nice read","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/121172904","repostId":"1170395888","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1170395888","kind":"news","weMediaInfo":{"introduction":"Providing stock market headlines, business news, financials and earnings ","home_visible":1,"media_name":"Tiger Newspress","id":"1079075236","head_image":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba"},"pubTimestamp":1624457324,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1170395888?lang=en_US&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2021-06-23 22:08","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Chinese Education Stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1170395888","media":"Tiger Newspress","summary":"(June 23) Most of Chinese education stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday.\n\nDo Hedge Funds Thin","content":"<p>(June 23)&nbsp;Most&nbsp;of&nbsp;Chinese education stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/57df6b30357b75fb3994787c3780885e\" tg-width=\"281\" tg-height=\"241\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p><b>Do Hedge Funds Think EDU Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?</b></p>\n<p>At first quarter's end, a total of 45 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 5% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards EDU over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money's positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an \"upper tier\" of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/055cab6f7b38ad60f8784706fac000bf\" tg-width=\"680\" tg-height=\"433\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">The largest stake in New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) was held byD1 Capital Partners, which reported holding $350.5 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by GQG Partners with a $319.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Tiger Global Management LLC, Farallon Capital, and Alkeon Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Serenity Capital allocated the biggest weight to New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU), around 42.13% of its 13F portfolio.Kylin Managementis also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 18.73 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EDU.</p>\n<p>As industrywide interest jumped, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Thunderbird Partners, managed by David Fear, established the most valuable position in New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU). Thunderbird Partners had $16.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Eduardo Costa'sCalixto Global Investorsalso made a $14.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new EDU positions are Matthew Hulsizer's PEAK6 Capital Management, Campbell Wilson'sOld Well Partners, and Daryl Smith's Kayak Investment Partners.</p>\n<p>Let's now review hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) but similarly valued. These stocks are Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU), Nucor Corporation (NYSE:NUE), Franco-Nevada Corporation (NYSE:FNV), Fortive Corporation (NYSE:FTV), The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG), Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB), and Trip.com Group Limited (NASDAQ:TCOM). All of these stocks' market caps are closest to EDU's market cap.</p>\n<p>As you can see these stocks had an average of 32.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1239 million. That figure was $2188 million in EDU's case. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EDU is 70.7. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly positive signal but we'd rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed thattop 5 most popular stocksamong hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&amp;P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and beat the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately EDU wasn't nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on EDU were disappointed as the stock returned -45.8% since the end of March (through 6/18) and underperformed the market.</p>\n<p><b>TAL Education: Not Ready To Handle A New Wave Of Market Rivalry</b></p>\n<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>FY2Q2021 revenue and XRS online growth fell below consensus expectations.</li>\n <li>In 2020, the online K12 education market size in China reached CNY 89 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 37.6%.</li>\n <li>Unlike its nemesis New Oriental, TAL's investment amount into other firms has been continuously decreasing since 2016.</li>\n <li>With COVID-19 reshaping the market, tech giants have started to make big moves into the digital education industry.</li>\n <li>We do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>TAL Education Group (also known as Tomorrow Advanced Learning) (TAL) is an education company that focuses on K12 students in China. It also has business segments in adult education, early education &amp; parenting and education informatization. The firm takes quality education and extracurricular tutoring as the carrier system to serve on a global scale. Founded in 2003, it went public on NYSE in 2010.</p>\n<p>In China, TAL competes with New Oriental (EDU), a company founded back in 1993. It can be said that both firms are leading China's education industry; for one, the market coverage of the two is evenly matched. From the latest information, New Oriental has active businesses in a total of 98 cities in China and one foreign city (Toronto). TAL has laid its business in a total of 90 cities across China.</p>\n<p>As parents in the fast-growing country pay more and more attention to their children's basic education and e-learning is increasingly popular, the vast field of primary and secondary education and online education has eventually become a battleground for companies.</p>\n<p><b>Decent financial results</b></p>\n<p>TAL's 2Q 2021financial resultsweren't very impressive, as the firm earned USD 1.10 billion (up 20.8% year-on-year) compared to analysts' expectations of USD 1.12 billion for the quarter. However, it reported USD 0.08 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of USD 0.05 by USD 0.03. TAL Education Group had a return on equity of 0.21% and a net margin of 1.35% compared to 8.97% in 1Q 2021 due to strong competition presented in the primary education segment. It includes local pure online education companies such asYuanfudaoandZuoyebangthat recently completed mega-rounds of investment. Meanwhile, the non-GAAP operating margins were down to -1.1% compared to 9.8% in 2Q 2020 as customer acquisition costs rose backed by the fierce competition.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e0bea7dc26e41fa05c9d8fef1c355e7d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"382\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"><b>New market opportunities</b></p>\n<p>In the past five to six years, with the support of the state, the development of technology, and the inflow of capital, China's online K12 education industry has undergone rapid development. In 2020, the overall online K12 education market size in China reached approximately CNY 89 billion, with a year-over-year increase of 37.6%.</p>\n<p>In 2019, the penetration rate of K12 online education in China was about 15%. As COVID-19 struck during the beginning of 2020, the advantages of online education have been very apparent. The penetration rate of online K12 education reached its peak in March 2020. Although the industry is still in the stage of consumption popularization in China, there are obvious trends. This field consistently demonstrates a long-term massive demand as an emerging way of obtaining education information and services. Hence, the industry penetration rate has huge room for improvement in the future. According to thepredictionof the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the penetration rate of the K12 online education industry may exceed 55% by 2022.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6c29976387d48527f1570b7fbf255f1e\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"351\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>The fact that TAL owns 871 learning centers (offline tutoring centers), 648 Peiyou (好未来培优) centers and 128 one-on-one centers is the reason why we believe TAL is not pandemic-proof. Possible closure of these centers by the government in order to control the spread of COVID-19 will lead to huge declines in the firm's financials.</p>\n<p>TAL does own online education apps – but they can't compete with the likes of VIPKID, Yuanfudao, and Zuoyebang, even though there has been an increase in revenue contribution of Xueersi TAL’s online app from 17% in FY2Q2020 to 26% in FY2Q2021.</p>\n<p>The re-emergence of COVID-19 in China is a headwind for TAL's offline classroom-based training business. Although the vaccine has emerged, children below the age of 18 are not allowed to administer it. TAL's stock price might soon fall when most investors realize that the company still focused on formal or classroom-based tutorials and training.</p>\n<p>TAL has had stable growth since getting listed about nine years ago. Revenue has increased about 30 times, at a compound annual rate of 45.7% since then and gross margins averaged as high as 50.8%.</p>\n<p>Results from the last fiscal year ending February were materially affected by COVID-19 induced restrictions which had started early in China. Offline operations, primarily core Peiyou small classes, had to be quickly transferred to online platforms. As a result, some revenue was lost due to the lower selling prices for online classes, the total revenue in Q4 grew just 6.2% compared to 44.1% the previous year. Student enrollments were still up on aggregate with a rate of, 56.6% year-over-year.</p>\n<p><b>Less venture investment presence</b></p>\n<p>Since 2017, the number of investments by TAL has been decreasing. New Oriental has been more aggressive compared to TAL since 2018. TAL's financing has dropped sharply from 24 in 2016 to only two in 2020. The two investments were made on an interactive learning SaaS platform UMU and an online children's math tutoring app.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6af6af29d7cc826e97357d73c53b7a51\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"398\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p><b>The entrance of tech giants</b></p>\n<p>Sales and marketing expenses surged as the competition got tough for online players in the summer. Sales and marketing expenses surged 64% year-on-year and made up 22% of the total revenue, up 4.9% year-on-year.</p>\n<p>With upstarts raising mega-rounds, things might get even tougher for TAL as more companies with huge capital to spend on marketing will try to grab market share. Other than that, Chinese giants such as Alibaba(NYSE:BABA), NetEase(NASDAQ:NTES), Tencent(OTCPK:TCEHY), ByteDance and Baidu(NASDAQ:BIDU)engage their businesses into online education. TAL needs to upgrade its online education business to stay afloat.</p>\n<p>The education field is likely to be divided up by companies outside of this industry. It is also worth mentioning that the firm's key competitiveness is its in-depth application of technologies such as big data and live broadcast intelligence in China's online education industry. The firm has not spent much on research and development in terms of proprietary tuition-based technology. There are few existing barriers to entry. Teaching staff and market share could be theoretically purchased by new entrants.</p>\n<p><b>Allegation probe</b></p>\n<p>In April 2020,TAL became one of the scandalous US-listed Chinese firmsafter admitting to inflate sales figures driven by employee wrongdoing, further hindering market confidence after Luckin Coffee's(OTCPK:LKNCY)USD 310 million fraud.</p>\n<p>Two years before this event, Muddy Waters released areportnaming the company 'A Real Business With Fake Financials.' The report claimed that \"TAL commits fraud in the financials for its core Peiyou business. The Peiyou fraud is more difficult to quantify, but our research suggests fraudulent overstatement of approximately 25% to 30% of the company’s revenue.\"</p>\n<p><b>Bottom line</b></p>\n<p>This might not be a suitable time to invest in TAL Education. We give a neutral rating to the stock because we do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth. Therefore, TAL does have a chance to enhance its online business and compete with newcomers and experienced enterprises, including the likes of Zuoyebang, Yuanfudao, Baidu and NetEase.</p>\n<h3>Gaotu Group: Policy Overhang Keeps The Risk-Reward Balanced</h3>\n<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>The longer-term outlook remains bright for Gaotu Group (formerly GSX TechEdu).</li>\n <li>Adverse regulatory changes remain the key risk for the near-term outlook, but a healthier longer-term dynamic should benefit profitability.</li>\n <li>Growth drivers such as alternative student acquisition channels and increased contribution from adult education should help as well.</li>\n <li>Despite the discounted EV/Sales multiple, I would hold off on initiating a position for now pending clearance of the policy overhang.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Newly rebranded Gaotu Group’s (GOTU/GSX) recently heldinvestor eventfeatured an interesting tour of its operation and top management strategy presentations, which offered timely insight into the longer-term outlook. In particular, GSX emphasized its continued focus on teaching excellence, service quality, and technology investments as key differentiators. However, policy risks remains the biggest concern, and if government intervention in the online after-school tutoring space turns out to be stricter than expected, I see material downside risks to GSX’s near-term growth trajectory. On the flip side, it could also result in a healthier industry dynamic, which should drive narrowing losses as well. While the policy reform overhang makes it difficult to turn bullish, GSX’s discounted c. 3x EV/Sales multiple also looks undemanding, keeping the risk/reward fairly balanced.</p>\n<p><b>Growing Importance of Alternative Student Acquisition Channels</b></p>\n<p>Worryingly, GSX has seen reduced traffic acquisition in FQ4 ‘20 and FQ1 ‘21, with a whopping c. 20% lower sales lead cost in Jan-Feb 2021 (down from the Nov-Dec 2020 period). The recent decline is likely attributable to regulatory uncertainties around online traffic acquisition triggered by a recent Ministry of Education (MOE)interviewearlier this year. The significantly pressured new enrolment growth in FQ1 ‘21 may have been one of the reasons for the lower-than-expected top-line guidance as well. In response, management is exploring new student acquisition channels to offset the pressure – this includes the offline, short video, and live streaming e-commerce channels, among others. The good news is that successful expansion here could see the student acquisition cost lowered by over 50%, which is positive for the margin outlook (GSX is currently loss-making at the operating level).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e2602f4695bfb8d694d546b29bca897a\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"288\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source:GSX Investor Presentation Slides</p>\n<p>However, GSX is not alone in this regard – other online AST players have initiated similar moves, from online one-on-one and small-class players such as 51talk (COE), VIPKID, and New Oriental subsidiary Koolearn, whose large-class coverage has reached c.100 cities. Similarly, online large-class after-school tutoring players have also started expanding into offline acquisition through partnerships, with TAL Education (TAL) subsidiaryXueersi.comalsotying upwith Lenovo (OTCPK:LNVGY) in recent months. And with private players like Zuoyebang alsobuildingoffline traffic acquisition teams, the competitive pressures could drive downside to the near-term outlook.</p>\n<p><b>Adult Education Set to be Another Top-Line Growth Driver</b></p>\n<p>Within the Chinese education market, adult education is also emerging as a potential growth opportunity as people are increasingly looking to upskill in an uncertain job market. Alongside income level rises, people are also spending more on education to better prepare themselves for career development. As a result, gross billings have grown at a CAGR of 24.5% and are expected to grow further at 22.4% CAGR into fiscal 2023, reaching RMB265 billion.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/98361534c62ba1d36e6adf2696116a49\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"200\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source:GSX Listing Prospectus Filing</p>\n<p>Notably, while GSX currently expects fiscal 2021 revenue growth to be in the range of 70-80% Y/Y, the adult education business is guided to be a key growth driver at +100% Y/Y revenue growth. Considering that adult education accounted for over 10% of GSX’s revenue in fiscal 2020, I expect the contribution to continue rising over time. Key areas of growth here include English training, graduate school admission exam prep, and finance-related courses. Longer-term, I think the adult education business could even see higher gross margins than K-12 after-school tutoring due to the higher enrolment/tutor ratio.</p>\n<p><b>Online Regulations Remain the Key Concern</b></p>\n<p>Looking ahead, potential online regulations in the after-school tutoring space are concerning, with likely measures including a fake advertising ban, increased control over marketing spend in education, and more stringent quality requirements for institutions and instructors. On the flip side, these measures will also be beneficial to the overall industry development longer-term, allowing online after-school tutoring players to reinvest more dollars into improving the product and teaching quality. While clarity around the new regulations for both the offline/online markets remains lacking, I see a more positive outcome than the prior industry experience in 2018.</p>\n<p>Any restrictions on marketing limitation will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and sales growth in the near term but will also benefit margins due to the lower marketing spending. In turn, this should improve the longer-term economics of the business and drive narrowing losses in the upcoming quarter. Another key positive from the slower growth is that GSX will be able to focus on improving its product/service quality and extract more student lifetime value while also preserving its robust balance sheet. As of end-2020, GSX had a c. RMB8.2 billion cash position (including liquid investments), which should allow it to weather any unforeseen negative policy impacts.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a96e5d1f7d5a8fb561314a81180e06dd\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"280\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source: GSX Investor Presentation Slides</p>\n<p><b>Final Take</b></p>\n<p>Overall, regulations on marketing will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and top-line growth but should also lead to a healthier operating dynamic and narrowing losses ahead. With GSX also focused on alternative acquisition channels and tapping into markets such as adult education, I think the company could surprise positively in the upcoming quarters. While the GSX share price has suffered due to the Archegos Capital event and policy concerns, its forward EV/Sales multiple has declined significantly to c. 3x, and the widening relative discount to peers like TAL and EDU likely means the negatives have been priced in. Until the policy overhang has been lifted, however, I see the risk/reward as balanced at current levels.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/dd579bffc2a24fd55d7ccc3346eae7cb\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"436\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Data by YCharts</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>Chinese Education Stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday</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\">\nChinese Education Stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n<a class=\"head\" href=\"https://laohu8.com/wemedia/1079075236\">\n\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\n<p class=\"h-name\">Tiger Newspress </p>\n<p class=\"h-time\">2021-06-23 22:08</p>\n</div>\n\n</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<p>(June 23)&nbsp;Most&nbsp;of&nbsp;Chinese education stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/57df6b30357b75fb3994787c3780885e\" tg-width=\"281\" tg-height=\"241\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p><b>Do Hedge Funds Think EDU Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?</b></p>\n<p>At first quarter's end, a total of 45 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 5% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards EDU over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money's positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an \"upper tier\" of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/055cab6f7b38ad60f8784706fac000bf\" tg-width=\"680\" tg-height=\"433\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">The largest stake in New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) was held byD1 Capital Partners, which reported holding $350.5 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by GQG Partners with a $319.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Tiger Global Management LLC, Farallon Capital, and Alkeon Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Serenity Capital allocated the biggest weight to New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU), around 42.13% of its 13F portfolio.Kylin Managementis also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 18.73 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EDU.</p>\n<p>As industrywide interest jumped, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Thunderbird Partners, managed by David Fear, established the most valuable position in New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU). Thunderbird Partners had $16.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Eduardo Costa'sCalixto Global Investorsalso made a $14.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new EDU positions are Matthew Hulsizer's PEAK6 Capital Management, Campbell Wilson'sOld Well Partners, and Daryl Smith's Kayak Investment Partners.</p>\n<p>Let's now review hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) but similarly valued. These stocks are Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU), Nucor Corporation (NYSE:NUE), Franco-Nevada Corporation (NYSE:FNV), Fortive Corporation (NYSE:FTV), The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG), Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB), and Trip.com Group Limited (NASDAQ:TCOM). All of these stocks' market caps are closest to EDU's market cap.</p>\n<p>As you can see these stocks had an average of 32.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1239 million. That figure was $2188 million in EDU's case. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. New Oriental Education &amp; Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EDU is 70.7. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly positive signal but we'd rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed thattop 5 most popular stocksamong hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&amp;P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and beat the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately EDU wasn't nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on EDU were disappointed as the stock returned -45.8% since the end of March (through 6/18) and underperformed the market.</p>\n<p><b>TAL Education: Not Ready To Handle A New Wave Of Market Rivalry</b></p>\n<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>FY2Q2021 revenue and XRS online growth fell below consensus expectations.</li>\n <li>In 2020, the online K12 education market size in China reached CNY 89 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 37.6%.</li>\n <li>Unlike its nemesis New Oriental, TAL's investment amount into other firms has been continuously decreasing since 2016.</li>\n <li>With COVID-19 reshaping the market, tech giants have started to make big moves into the digital education industry.</li>\n <li>We do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>TAL Education Group (also known as Tomorrow Advanced Learning) (TAL) is an education company that focuses on K12 students in China. It also has business segments in adult education, early education &amp; parenting and education informatization. The firm takes quality education and extracurricular tutoring as the carrier system to serve on a global scale. Founded in 2003, it went public on NYSE in 2010.</p>\n<p>In China, TAL competes with New Oriental (EDU), a company founded back in 1993. It can be said that both firms are leading China's education industry; for one, the market coverage of the two is evenly matched. From the latest information, New Oriental has active businesses in a total of 98 cities in China and one foreign city (Toronto). TAL has laid its business in a total of 90 cities across China.</p>\n<p>As parents in the fast-growing country pay more and more attention to their children's basic education and e-learning is increasingly popular, the vast field of primary and secondary education and online education has eventually become a battleground for companies.</p>\n<p><b>Decent financial results</b></p>\n<p>TAL's 2Q 2021financial resultsweren't very impressive, as the firm earned USD 1.10 billion (up 20.8% year-on-year) compared to analysts' expectations of USD 1.12 billion for the quarter. However, it reported USD 0.08 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of USD 0.05 by USD 0.03. TAL Education Group had a return on equity of 0.21% and a net margin of 1.35% compared to 8.97% in 1Q 2021 due to strong competition presented in the primary education segment. It includes local pure online education companies such asYuanfudaoandZuoyebangthat recently completed mega-rounds of investment. Meanwhile, the non-GAAP operating margins were down to -1.1% compared to 9.8% in 2Q 2020 as customer acquisition costs rose backed by the fierce competition.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e0bea7dc26e41fa05c9d8fef1c355e7d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"382\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"><b>New market opportunities</b></p>\n<p>In the past five to six years, with the support of the state, the development of technology, and the inflow of capital, China's online K12 education industry has undergone rapid development. In 2020, the overall online K12 education market size in China reached approximately CNY 89 billion, with a year-over-year increase of 37.6%.</p>\n<p>In 2019, the penetration rate of K12 online education in China was about 15%. As COVID-19 struck during the beginning of 2020, the advantages of online education have been very apparent. The penetration rate of online K12 education reached its peak in March 2020. Although the industry is still in the stage of consumption popularization in China, there are obvious trends. This field consistently demonstrates a long-term massive demand as an emerging way of obtaining education information and services. Hence, the industry penetration rate has huge room for improvement in the future. According to thepredictionof the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the penetration rate of the K12 online education industry may exceed 55% by 2022.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6c29976387d48527f1570b7fbf255f1e\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"351\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>The fact that TAL owns 871 learning centers (offline tutoring centers), 648 Peiyou (好未来培优) centers and 128 one-on-one centers is the reason why we believe TAL is not pandemic-proof. Possible closure of these centers by the government in order to control the spread of COVID-19 will lead to huge declines in the firm's financials.</p>\n<p>TAL does own online education apps – but they can't compete with the likes of VIPKID, Yuanfudao, and Zuoyebang, even though there has been an increase in revenue contribution of Xueersi TAL’s online app from 17% in FY2Q2020 to 26% in FY2Q2021.</p>\n<p>The re-emergence of COVID-19 in China is a headwind for TAL's offline classroom-based training business. Although the vaccine has emerged, children below the age of 18 are not allowed to administer it. TAL's stock price might soon fall when most investors realize that the company still focused on formal or classroom-based tutorials and training.</p>\n<p>TAL has had stable growth since getting listed about nine years ago. Revenue has increased about 30 times, at a compound annual rate of 45.7% since then and gross margins averaged as high as 50.8%.</p>\n<p>Results from the last fiscal year ending February were materially affected by COVID-19 induced restrictions which had started early in China. Offline operations, primarily core Peiyou small classes, had to be quickly transferred to online platforms. As a result, some revenue was lost due to the lower selling prices for online classes, the total revenue in Q4 grew just 6.2% compared to 44.1% the previous year. Student enrollments were still up on aggregate with a rate of, 56.6% year-over-year.</p>\n<p><b>Less venture investment presence</b></p>\n<p>Since 2017, the number of investments by TAL has been decreasing. New Oriental has been more aggressive compared to TAL since 2018. TAL's financing has dropped sharply from 24 in 2016 to only two in 2020. The two investments were made on an interactive learning SaaS platform UMU and an online children's math tutoring app.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6af6af29d7cc826e97357d73c53b7a51\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"398\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p><b>The entrance of tech giants</b></p>\n<p>Sales and marketing expenses surged as the competition got tough for online players in the summer. Sales and marketing expenses surged 64% year-on-year and made up 22% of the total revenue, up 4.9% year-on-year.</p>\n<p>With upstarts raising mega-rounds, things might get even tougher for TAL as more companies with huge capital to spend on marketing will try to grab market share. Other than that, Chinese giants such as Alibaba(NYSE:BABA), NetEase(NASDAQ:NTES), Tencent(OTCPK:TCEHY), ByteDance and Baidu(NASDAQ:BIDU)engage their businesses into online education. TAL needs to upgrade its online education business to stay afloat.</p>\n<p>The education field is likely to be divided up by companies outside of this industry. It is also worth mentioning that the firm's key competitiveness is its in-depth application of technologies such as big data and live broadcast intelligence in China's online education industry. The firm has not spent much on research and development in terms of proprietary tuition-based technology. There are few existing barriers to entry. Teaching staff and market share could be theoretically purchased by new entrants.</p>\n<p><b>Allegation probe</b></p>\n<p>In April 2020,TAL became one of the scandalous US-listed Chinese firmsafter admitting to inflate sales figures driven by employee wrongdoing, further hindering market confidence after Luckin Coffee's(OTCPK:LKNCY)USD 310 million fraud.</p>\n<p>Two years before this event, Muddy Waters released areportnaming the company 'A Real Business With Fake Financials.' The report claimed that \"TAL commits fraud in the financials for its core Peiyou business. The Peiyou fraud is more difficult to quantify, but our research suggests fraudulent overstatement of approximately 25% to 30% of the company’s revenue.\"</p>\n<p><b>Bottom line</b></p>\n<p>This might not be a suitable time to invest in TAL Education. We give a neutral rating to the stock because we do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth. Therefore, TAL does have a chance to enhance its online business and compete with newcomers and experienced enterprises, including the likes of Zuoyebang, Yuanfudao, Baidu and NetEase.</p>\n<h3>Gaotu Group: Policy Overhang Keeps The Risk-Reward Balanced</h3>\n<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>The longer-term outlook remains bright for Gaotu Group (formerly GSX TechEdu).</li>\n <li>Adverse regulatory changes remain the key risk for the near-term outlook, but a healthier longer-term dynamic should benefit profitability.</li>\n <li>Growth drivers such as alternative student acquisition channels and increased contribution from adult education should help as well.</li>\n <li>Despite the discounted EV/Sales multiple, I would hold off on initiating a position for now pending clearance of the policy overhang.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Newly rebranded Gaotu Group’s (GOTU/GSX) recently heldinvestor eventfeatured an interesting tour of its operation and top management strategy presentations, which offered timely insight into the longer-term outlook. In particular, GSX emphasized its continued focus on teaching excellence, service quality, and technology investments as key differentiators. However, policy risks remains the biggest concern, and if government intervention in the online after-school tutoring space turns out to be stricter than expected, I see material downside risks to GSX’s near-term growth trajectory. On the flip side, it could also result in a healthier industry dynamic, which should drive narrowing losses as well. While the policy reform overhang makes it difficult to turn bullish, GSX’s discounted c. 3x EV/Sales multiple also looks undemanding, keeping the risk/reward fairly balanced.</p>\n<p><b>Growing Importance of Alternative Student Acquisition Channels</b></p>\n<p>Worryingly, GSX has seen reduced traffic acquisition in FQ4 ‘20 and FQ1 ‘21, with a whopping c. 20% lower sales lead cost in Jan-Feb 2021 (down from the Nov-Dec 2020 period). The recent decline is likely attributable to regulatory uncertainties around online traffic acquisition triggered by a recent Ministry of Education (MOE)interviewearlier this year. The significantly pressured new enrolment growth in FQ1 ‘21 may have been one of the reasons for the lower-than-expected top-line guidance as well. In response, management is exploring new student acquisition channels to offset the pressure – this includes the offline, short video, and live streaming e-commerce channels, among others. The good news is that successful expansion here could see the student acquisition cost lowered by over 50%, which is positive for the margin outlook (GSX is currently loss-making at the operating level).</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e2602f4695bfb8d694d546b29bca897a\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"288\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source:GSX Investor Presentation Slides</p>\n<p>However, GSX is not alone in this regard – other online AST players have initiated similar moves, from online one-on-one and small-class players such as 51talk (COE), VIPKID, and New Oriental subsidiary Koolearn, whose large-class coverage has reached c.100 cities. Similarly, online large-class after-school tutoring players have also started expanding into offline acquisition through partnerships, with TAL Education (TAL) subsidiaryXueersi.comalsotying upwith Lenovo (OTCPK:LNVGY) in recent months. And with private players like Zuoyebang alsobuildingoffline traffic acquisition teams, the competitive pressures could drive downside to the near-term outlook.</p>\n<p><b>Adult Education Set to be Another Top-Line Growth Driver</b></p>\n<p>Within the Chinese education market, adult education is also emerging as a potential growth opportunity as people are increasingly looking to upskill in an uncertain job market. Alongside income level rises, people are also spending more on education to better prepare themselves for career development. As a result, gross billings have grown at a CAGR of 24.5% and are expected to grow further at 22.4% CAGR into fiscal 2023, reaching RMB265 billion.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/98361534c62ba1d36e6adf2696116a49\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"200\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source:GSX Listing Prospectus Filing</p>\n<p>Notably, while GSX currently expects fiscal 2021 revenue growth to be in the range of 70-80% Y/Y, the adult education business is guided to be a key growth driver at +100% Y/Y revenue growth. Considering that adult education accounted for over 10% of GSX’s revenue in fiscal 2020, I expect the contribution to continue rising over time. Key areas of growth here include English training, graduate school admission exam prep, and finance-related courses. Longer-term, I think the adult education business could even see higher gross margins than K-12 after-school tutoring due to the higher enrolment/tutor ratio.</p>\n<p><b>Online Regulations Remain the Key Concern</b></p>\n<p>Looking ahead, potential online regulations in the after-school tutoring space are concerning, with likely measures including a fake advertising ban, increased control over marketing spend in education, and more stringent quality requirements for institutions and instructors. On the flip side, these measures will also be beneficial to the overall industry development longer-term, allowing online after-school tutoring players to reinvest more dollars into improving the product and teaching quality. While clarity around the new regulations for both the offline/online markets remains lacking, I see a more positive outcome than the prior industry experience in 2018.</p>\n<p>Any restrictions on marketing limitation will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and sales growth in the near term but will also benefit margins due to the lower marketing spending. In turn, this should improve the longer-term economics of the business and drive narrowing losses in the upcoming quarter. Another key positive from the slower growth is that GSX will be able to focus on improving its product/service quality and extract more student lifetime value while also preserving its robust balance sheet. As of end-2020, GSX had a c. RMB8.2 billion cash position (including liquid investments), which should allow it to weather any unforeseen negative policy impacts.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/a96e5d1f7d5a8fb561314a81180e06dd\" tg-width=\"602\" tg-height=\"280\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"></p>\n<p>Source: GSX Investor Presentation Slides</p>\n<p><b>Final Take</b></p>\n<p>Overall, regulations on marketing will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and top-line growth but should also lead to a healthier operating dynamic and narrowing losses ahead. With GSX also focused on alternative acquisition channels and tapping into markets such as adult education, I think the company could surprise positively in the upcoming quarters. While the GSX share price has suffered due to the Archegos Capital event and policy concerns, its forward EV/Sales multiple has declined significantly to c. 3x, and the widening relative discount to peers like TAL and EDU likely means the negatives have been priced in. Until the policy overhang has been lifted, however, I see the risk/reward as balanced at current levels.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/dd579bffc2a24fd55d7ccc3346eae7cb\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"436\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Data by YCharts</p>\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"GOTU":"高途","TAL":"好未来","EDU":"新东方"},"is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1170395888","content_text":"(June 23) Most of Chinese education stocks gained in morning trading Wednesday.\n\nDo Hedge Funds Think EDU Is A Good Stock To Buy Now?\nAt first quarter's end, a total of 45 of the hedge funds tracked by Insider Monkey were bullish on this stock, a change of 5% from one quarter earlier. Below, you can check out the change in hedge fund sentiment towards EDU over the last 23 quarters. With the smart money's positions undergoing their usual ebb and flow, there exists an \"upper tier\" of noteworthy hedge fund managers who were upping their holdings significantly (or already accumulated large positions).\nThe largest stake in New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) was held byD1 Capital Partners, which reported holding $350.5 million worth of stock at the end of December. It was followed by GQG Partners with a $319.8 million position. Other investors bullish on the company included Tiger Global Management LLC, Farallon Capital, and Alkeon Capital Management. In terms of the portfolio weights assigned to each position Serenity Capital allocated the biggest weight to New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU), around 42.13% of its 13F portfolio.Kylin Managementis also relatively very bullish on the stock, designating 18.73 percent of its 13F equity portfolio to EDU.\nAs industrywide interest jumped, some big names were breaking ground themselves. Thunderbird Partners, managed by David Fear, established the most valuable position in New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU). Thunderbird Partners had $16.7 million invested in the company at the end of the quarter. Eduardo Costa'sCalixto Global Investorsalso made a $14.7 million investment in the stock during the quarter. The other funds with brand new EDU positions are Matthew Hulsizer's PEAK6 Capital Management, Campbell Wilson'sOld Well Partners, and Daryl Smith's Kayak Investment Partners.\nLet's now review hedge fund activity in other stocks - not necessarily in the same industry as New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) but similarly valued. These stocks are Kansas City Southern (NYSE:KSU), Nucor Corporation (NYSE:NUE), Franco-Nevada Corporation (NYSE:FNV), Fortive Corporation (NYSE:FTV), The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG), Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB), and Trip.com Group Limited (NASDAQ:TCOM). All of these stocks' market caps are closest to EDU's market cap.\nAs you can see these stocks had an average of 32.1 hedge funds with bullish positions and the average amount invested in these stocks was $1239 million. That figure was $2188 million in EDU's case. The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG) is the most popular stock in this table. On the other hand Itau Unibanco Holding SA (NYSE:ITUB) is the least popular one with only 12 bullish hedge fund positions. New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. (NYSE:EDU) is not the most popular stock in this group but hedge fund interest is still above average. Our overall hedge fund sentiment score for EDU is 70.7. Stocks with higher number of hedge fund positions relative to other stocks as well as relative to their historical range receive a higher sentiment score. This is a slightly positive signal but we'd rather spend our time researching stocks that hedge funds are piling on. Our calculations showed thattop 5 most popular stocksamong hedge funds returned 95.8% in 2019 and 2020, and outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by 40 percentage points. These stocks gained 17.4% in 2021 through June 18th and beat the market again by 6.1 percentage points. Unfortunately EDU wasn't nearly as popular as these 5 stocks and hedge funds that were betting on EDU were disappointed as the stock returned -45.8% since the end of March (through 6/18) and underperformed the market.\nTAL Education: Not Ready To Handle A New Wave Of Market Rivalry\nSummary\n\nFY2Q2021 revenue and XRS online growth fell below consensus expectations.\nIn 2020, the online K12 education market size in China reached CNY 89 billion, with a year-on-year increase of 37.6%.\nUnlike its nemesis New Oriental, TAL's investment amount into other firms has been continuously decreasing since 2016.\nWith COVID-19 reshaping the market, tech giants have started to make big moves into the digital education industry.\nWe do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth.\n\nTAL Education Group (also known as Tomorrow Advanced Learning) (TAL) is an education company that focuses on K12 students in China. It also has business segments in adult education, early education & parenting and education informatization. The firm takes quality education and extracurricular tutoring as the carrier system to serve on a global scale. Founded in 2003, it went public on NYSE in 2010.\nIn China, TAL competes with New Oriental (EDU), a company founded back in 1993. It can be said that both firms are leading China's education industry; for one, the market coverage of the two is evenly matched. From the latest information, New Oriental has active businesses in a total of 98 cities in China and one foreign city (Toronto). TAL has laid its business in a total of 90 cities across China.\nAs parents in the fast-growing country pay more and more attention to their children's basic education and e-learning is increasingly popular, the vast field of primary and secondary education and online education has eventually become a battleground for companies.\nDecent financial results\nTAL's 2Q 2021financial resultsweren't very impressive, as the firm earned USD 1.10 billion (up 20.8% year-on-year) compared to analysts' expectations of USD 1.12 billion for the quarter. However, it reported USD 0.08 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of USD 0.05 by USD 0.03. TAL Education Group had a return on equity of 0.21% and a net margin of 1.35% compared to 8.97% in 1Q 2021 due to strong competition presented in the primary education segment. It includes local pure online education companies such asYuanfudaoandZuoyebangthat recently completed mega-rounds of investment. Meanwhile, the non-GAAP operating margins were down to -1.1% compared to 9.8% in 2Q 2020 as customer acquisition costs rose backed by the fierce competition.\nNew market opportunities\nIn the past five to six years, with the support of the state, the development of technology, and the inflow of capital, China's online K12 education industry has undergone rapid development. In 2020, the overall online K12 education market size in China reached approximately CNY 89 billion, with a year-over-year increase of 37.6%.\nIn 2019, the penetration rate of K12 online education in China was about 15%. As COVID-19 struck during the beginning of 2020, the advantages of online education have been very apparent. The penetration rate of online K12 education reached its peak in March 2020. Although the industry is still in the stage of consumption popularization in China, there are obvious trends. This field consistently demonstrates a long-term massive demand as an emerging way of obtaining education information and services. Hence, the industry penetration rate has huge room for improvement in the future. According to thepredictionof the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the penetration rate of the K12 online education industry may exceed 55% by 2022.\n\nThe fact that TAL owns 871 learning centers (offline tutoring centers), 648 Peiyou (好未来培优) centers and 128 one-on-one centers is the reason why we believe TAL is not pandemic-proof. Possible closure of these centers by the government in order to control the spread of COVID-19 will lead to huge declines in the firm's financials.\nTAL does own online education apps – but they can't compete with the likes of VIPKID, Yuanfudao, and Zuoyebang, even though there has been an increase in revenue contribution of Xueersi TAL’s online app from 17% in FY2Q2020 to 26% in FY2Q2021.\nThe re-emergence of COVID-19 in China is a headwind for TAL's offline classroom-based training business. Although the vaccine has emerged, children below the age of 18 are not allowed to administer it. TAL's stock price might soon fall when most investors realize that the company still focused on formal or classroom-based tutorials and training.\nTAL has had stable growth since getting listed about nine years ago. Revenue has increased about 30 times, at a compound annual rate of 45.7% since then and gross margins averaged as high as 50.8%.\nResults from the last fiscal year ending February were materially affected by COVID-19 induced restrictions which had started early in China. Offline operations, primarily core Peiyou small classes, had to be quickly transferred to online platforms. As a result, some revenue was lost due to the lower selling prices for online classes, the total revenue in Q4 grew just 6.2% compared to 44.1% the previous year. Student enrollments were still up on aggregate with a rate of, 56.6% year-over-year.\nLess venture investment presence\nSince 2017, the number of investments by TAL has been decreasing. New Oriental has been more aggressive compared to TAL since 2018. TAL's financing has dropped sharply from 24 in 2016 to only two in 2020. The two investments were made on an interactive learning SaaS platform UMU and an online children's math tutoring app.\n\nThe entrance of tech giants\nSales and marketing expenses surged as the competition got tough for online players in the summer. Sales and marketing expenses surged 64% year-on-year and made up 22% of the total revenue, up 4.9% year-on-year.\nWith upstarts raising mega-rounds, things might get even tougher for TAL as more companies with huge capital to spend on marketing will try to grab market share. Other than that, Chinese giants such as Alibaba(NYSE:BABA), NetEase(NASDAQ:NTES), Tencent(OTCPK:TCEHY), ByteDance and Baidu(NASDAQ:BIDU)engage their businesses into online education. TAL needs to upgrade its online education business to stay afloat.\nThe education field is likely to be divided up by companies outside of this industry. It is also worth mentioning that the firm's key competitiveness is its in-depth application of technologies such as big data and live broadcast intelligence in China's online education industry. The firm has not spent much on research and development in terms of proprietary tuition-based technology. There are few existing barriers to entry. Teaching staff and market share could be theoretically purchased by new entrants.\nAllegation probe\nIn April 2020,TAL became one of the scandalous US-listed Chinese firmsafter admitting to inflate sales figures driven by employee wrongdoing, further hindering market confidence after Luckin Coffee's(OTCPK:LKNCY)USD 310 million fraud.\nTwo years before this event, Muddy Waters released areportnaming the company 'A Real Business With Fake Financials.' The report claimed that \"TAL commits fraud in the financials for its core Peiyou business. The Peiyou fraud is more difficult to quantify, but our research suggests fraudulent overstatement of approximately 25% to 30% of the company’s revenue.\"\nBottom line\nThis might not be a suitable time to invest in TAL Education. We give a neutral rating to the stock because we do not see the company handling the upcoming tough competition within the industry but are rather optimistic about its business capabilities and steady growth. Therefore, TAL does have a chance to enhance its online business and compete with newcomers and experienced enterprises, including the likes of Zuoyebang, Yuanfudao, Baidu and NetEase.\nGaotu Group: Policy Overhang Keeps The Risk-Reward Balanced\nSummary\n\nThe longer-term outlook remains bright for Gaotu Group (formerly GSX TechEdu).\nAdverse regulatory changes remain the key risk for the near-term outlook, but a healthier longer-term dynamic should benefit profitability.\nGrowth drivers such as alternative student acquisition channels and increased contribution from adult education should help as well.\nDespite the discounted EV/Sales multiple, I would hold off on initiating a position for now pending clearance of the policy overhang.\n\nNewly rebranded Gaotu Group’s (GOTU/GSX) recently heldinvestor eventfeatured an interesting tour of its operation and top management strategy presentations, which offered timely insight into the longer-term outlook. In particular, GSX emphasized its continued focus on teaching excellence, service quality, and technology investments as key differentiators. However, policy risks remains the biggest concern, and if government intervention in the online after-school tutoring space turns out to be stricter than expected, I see material downside risks to GSX’s near-term growth trajectory. On the flip side, it could also result in a healthier industry dynamic, which should drive narrowing losses as well. While the policy reform overhang makes it difficult to turn bullish, GSX’s discounted c. 3x EV/Sales multiple also looks undemanding, keeping the risk/reward fairly balanced.\nGrowing Importance of Alternative Student Acquisition Channels\nWorryingly, GSX has seen reduced traffic acquisition in FQ4 ‘20 and FQ1 ‘21, with a whopping c. 20% lower sales lead cost in Jan-Feb 2021 (down from the Nov-Dec 2020 period). The recent decline is likely attributable to regulatory uncertainties around online traffic acquisition triggered by a recent Ministry of Education (MOE)interviewearlier this year. The significantly pressured new enrolment growth in FQ1 ‘21 may have been one of the reasons for the lower-than-expected top-line guidance as well. In response, management is exploring new student acquisition channels to offset the pressure – this includes the offline, short video, and live streaming e-commerce channels, among others. The good news is that successful expansion here could see the student acquisition cost lowered by over 50%, which is positive for the margin outlook (GSX is currently loss-making at the operating level).\n\nSource:GSX Investor Presentation Slides\nHowever, GSX is not alone in this regard – other online AST players have initiated similar moves, from online one-on-one and small-class players such as 51talk (COE), VIPKID, and New Oriental subsidiary Koolearn, whose large-class coverage has reached c.100 cities. Similarly, online large-class after-school tutoring players have also started expanding into offline acquisition through partnerships, with TAL Education (TAL) subsidiaryXueersi.comalsotying upwith Lenovo (OTCPK:LNVGY) in recent months. And with private players like Zuoyebang alsobuildingoffline traffic acquisition teams, the competitive pressures could drive downside to the near-term outlook.\nAdult Education Set to be Another Top-Line Growth Driver\nWithin the Chinese education market, adult education is also emerging as a potential growth opportunity as people are increasingly looking to upskill in an uncertain job market. Alongside income level rises, people are also spending more on education to better prepare themselves for career development. As a result, gross billings have grown at a CAGR of 24.5% and are expected to grow further at 22.4% CAGR into fiscal 2023, reaching RMB265 billion.\n\nSource:GSX Listing Prospectus Filing\nNotably, while GSX currently expects fiscal 2021 revenue growth to be in the range of 70-80% Y/Y, the adult education business is guided to be a key growth driver at +100% Y/Y revenue growth. Considering that adult education accounted for over 10% of GSX’s revenue in fiscal 2020, I expect the contribution to continue rising over time. Key areas of growth here include English training, graduate school admission exam prep, and finance-related courses. Longer-term, I think the adult education business could even see higher gross margins than K-12 after-school tutoring due to the higher enrolment/tutor ratio.\nOnline Regulations Remain the Key Concern\nLooking ahead, potential online regulations in the after-school tutoring space are concerning, with likely measures including a fake advertising ban, increased control over marketing spend in education, and more stringent quality requirements for institutions and instructors. On the flip side, these measures will also be beneficial to the overall industry development longer-term, allowing online after-school tutoring players to reinvest more dollars into improving the product and teaching quality. While clarity around the new regulations for both the offline/online markets remains lacking, I see a more positive outcome than the prior industry experience in 2018.\nAny restrictions on marketing limitation will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and sales growth in the near term but will also benefit margins due to the lower marketing spending. In turn, this should improve the longer-term economics of the business and drive narrowing losses in the upcoming quarter. Another key positive from the slower growth is that GSX will be able to focus on improving its product/service quality and extract more student lifetime value while also preserving its robust balance sheet. As of end-2020, GSX had a c. RMB8.2 billion cash position (including liquid investments), which should allow it to weather any unforeseen negative policy impacts.\n\nSource: GSX Investor Presentation Slides\nFinal Take\nOverall, regulations on marketing will likely have a negative impact on enrolment and top-line growth but should also lead to a healthier operating dynamic and narrowing losses ahead. With GSX also focused on alternative acquisition channels and tapping into markets such as adult education, I think the company could surprise positively in the upcoming quarters. While the GSX share price has suffered due to the Archegos Capital event and policy concerns, its forward EV/Sales multiple has declined significantly to c. 3x, and the widening relative discount to peers like TAL and EDU likely means the negatives have been priced in. Until the policy overhang has been lifted, however, I see the risk/reward as balanced at current levels.\nData by YCharts","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"GOTU":0.9,"EDU":0.9,"TAL":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":1321,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":129607719,"gmtCreate":1624370205331,"gmtModify":1703834684304,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"I need T","listText":"I need T","text":"I need T","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/129607719","repostId":"1119119362","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2040,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":164129697,"gmtCreate":1624182565019,"gmtModify":1703830282462,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Like and share&nbsp;","listText":"Like and share&nbsp;","text":"Like and share","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/164129697","repostId":"1113942445","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":1624,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":121802873,"gmtCreate":1624457820992,"gmtModify":1703837365431,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Nice","listText":"Nice","text":"Nice","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/121802873","repostId":"2145950390","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":2192,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":129602996,"gmtCreate":1624370101115,"gmtModify":1703834679124,"author":{"id":"3581839854871924","authorId":"3581839854871924","name":"Dabi2","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":11,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"authorIdStr":"3581839854871924","idStr":"3581839854871924"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Good","listText":"Good","text":"Good","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/129602996","repostId":"1187133273","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":1599,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"lives":[]}