Leggendo i quotidiani, ascoltando i TG Economia, e scorrendo quello che viene scritto sul Web, spesso ci si imbatte nel termine “euforia”.

Il termine “euforia” viene utilizzato in associazione con i “nuovi record delle Borse”. I nuovi record delle Borse, ed in particolare della Borsa di New York, sarebbero il riflesso di un clima di “euforia tra gli investitori”.

Ci sembra utile, per i nostri lettori, mettere in evidenza almeno due punti, a questo proposito:

il clima sui mercati, ed in Borsa in particolare, oggi è molto diverso da quello prevalente nella prima parte del 2021: qualche mese fa, dominava una visione del futuro tutta improntata all’ottimismo; pochi mesi fa sui mercati si registrava un ampio consenso sul boom economico in arrivo, ed uguale consenso dominava in materia di inflazione, che a fine 2021 avrebbe dovuto ritornare al 2% (e che in ogni caso non sarebbe stato un problema); oggi, a novembre 2021, entrambe queste due previsioni sono state smentite, in modo brutale, dai fatti e dalla realtà; ma le Borse sono salite ancora: come si spiega? ne scriviamo poco più in basso; prima mettiamo in evidenza un secondo punto
il clima forse è di “euforia” in Borsa, ma sicuramente non è di euforia negli altri comparti del mercato finanziario internazionale: e noi oggi ne scriviamo, in modo ampio, in altri Post

Nel grafico qui sopra, mettiamo alla vostra attenzione un dato che poi viene ripreso anche in altri Post pubblicati oggi: la linea di colore rosso è l’indice della volatilità del mercato delle obbligazioni, mentre quella di colore verde è la volatilità della Borsa di New York. Come tutti vedete, da una parte c’è un’impennata, dall’altra parte (la linea di colore verde) il dato rimane stabile.

Dell’impennata che vedete qui sopra, scriviamo oggi in altri Post. In questo Post, ci dedichiamo alla linea di colore verde.

Che nel grafico sotto vedete di nuovo, nel grafico del Financial Times che racconta proprio la medesima storia.

Bloomberg scrive qui sotto: “I problemi delle obbligazioni non hanno coinvolto le azioni”. Il grafico che vedete nell’immagine qui sotto è di particolare interesse per noi investitori, perché segnala un valore estremo nella statistica che si chiama “Z”, statistica che da sempre ha un buon potere previsivo sull’evoluzione dei mercati finanziari.

In questo Post, tenteremo di aiutare chi ci legge a comprendere la ragione per la quale abbiamo tutti visto, nell’ultimo mese, una nuova fase di rialzo dei prezzi di Borsa, e quali sono le motivazioni sottostanti a questo movimento verso l’alto. Motivazioni che, non c’è dubbio, hanno nulla a che vedere con il “boom economico” ed hanno nulla a che vedere con la “inflazione transitoria”.

E allora?
E allora, Recce’d vi propone la spiegazione offerta pochi giorni fa dal settimanale The Economist: che nel suo titolo qui sotto dice “TINA tiene azioni ed obbligazioni su due strade opposte”.

Che cosa è TINA?. TINA sta per “there is no alternative”, e significa che “è giusto comperare azioni perché le obbligazioni rendono nulla”.

Questo argomento ha funzionato, e funziona ancora, perché si è volutamente lasciato credere alla massa degli investitori che non esiste (più) il rischio di ribasso delle azioni, quel rischio di ribasso che negli ultimi 20 anni si è chiaramente manifestato, e concretizzato, in (almeno) tre macroscopiche fasi di ribasso.

Le Autorità vogliono però che il grande pubblico rimanga all’oscuro, e continui a mantenere la convinzione che le azioni “non possono scendere”, perché “ci pensa la Federal Reserve”.

Restiamo del parere che già conoscete: questa è una sciocchezza enorme, e lo dimostriamo proprio oggi negli altri Post.

In questo Post, però, vogliamo completare l’esame dei recenti rialzi degli indici di Borsa, offrendovi in lettura proprio qui sotto l’integrale riproduzione dell’articolo di The Economist che abbiamo già citato.

Notate che abbiamo messo in evidenza il passaggio nel quale The Economist accenna al “parametro K di Marshall”: non c’è in questo Post lo spazio per un approfondimento, ma vi invitiamo a indagare su questo parametro e sulle sue implicazioni. Come sempre se ci contatterete saremo felici di integrare con ulteriori informazioni.

LONDON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The readout from this week's brutal selloff in government bond markets seems clear: rising inflation will hustle central banks into panicky interest rate rises, quashing economic growth.

Yet stocks, currencies and corporate bonds are sending a different picture: keep calm. Maybe even buy more.

Time will tell who has it right. What's for sure is many bond investors were caught out by fears that central banks, despite their inflation-is-transitory mantra, may end up tightening policy sooner than signalled.

A timid message from the European Central Bank, a hawkish one in Canada and the Reserve Bank of Australia's reluctance to defend its 0.1% T-bill yield target all helped light a fire under short-dated debt yields. Those in Germany and the United States zipped to their highest since last March while Australian bill yields saw their biggest three-day surge since 1996.

Ordinarily, such moves would cause significant disruption across asset classes.

But instead they have barely registered, with the S&P 500 equity index hitting a record high on Thursday. While stocks fell on Friday, losses are relatively muted and Lipper data shows that in the week to Wednesday, investors purchased equities at the fastest pace since March.

Currency and equity volatility (.DBCVIX) remain subdued, with Wall Street's "fear gauge", the VIX index (.VIX), just off 2021 lows. In Europe, rates volatility has rocketed, while stocks have remained calm.

Some attribute the sanguine reaction to falling yields on longer-dated bonds, which has flattened yield curves and appears to signal that swift central bank action will in time quash inflationary pressures.

And "real" bond yields, adjusted for inflation, remain deeply negative: despite a surge on Friday they remain around -1% and -2% in the United States and Germany respectively , .

"It's surprising that stocks have not responded more but with real yields so negative, markets are not too worried," said Charles Diebel, head of fixed income at Mediolanum International Funds.

"If you decompose the forward curve on inflation it's about the near-term pressure on inflation ... so breakevens are moving up but central banks are starting to respond, which means slower activity and meaning inflation will not be a problem in the longer-term."

Breakevens refer to the difference between nominal and inflation-linked bond yields and are often used as a market gauge of inflation expectations.

Nor do riskier corporate debt markets seem spooked. The risk premiums they pay on top of government bonds remain historically low. ,

"(Low real rates), I think that is having an effect on markets in the sense that it's creating the 'TINA' effect: There Is No Alternative to buy higher-yielding securities," said Barnaby Martin, head of credit strategy at BofA in London.

TYPICAL MID-CYCLE

The short-dated bond moves are also partly down to positioning. Traders caught out by the yield rise had to dump their positions, exacerbating the selloff and making some pricing look far-fetched.

Traders now expect the United Kingdom and Canada to raise interest rates by more than 100 basis points over the next 12 months. Even the ultra-dovish European Central Bank is seen hiking twice by October 2022.

Chris Iggo at AXA Investment Managers expects higher rates to tighten financial conditions a little but said it would be akin to "normalisation, in a sense because we're going to pre-COVID conditions".

"It's typical mid-cycle type of economic conditions, where inflation has gone up a bit, rates have gone up, growth starts to slow, but it's not a recession yet."

And if serious growth concerns do emerge, many remain confident of the central bank "put".

"The real widening (in stocks and corporate spreads) would come on a recession, not so much rates risk, just because we've seen time and time again that if markets begin struggling because of interest rate fears, central banks try to push back dovishly again," Martin of BofA said.

But bond repricing should eventually ripple out more broadly, meaning some pain is inevitable.

"Expect tantrums in risk if central banks respond to inflation - and tantrums in bonds if they don't," Citi strategist Matt King told clients.

Reporting by Yoruk Bahceli, Tommy Wilkes, Sujata Rao and Saikat Chatterjee; Editing by Sujata Rao and Catherine Evans

A measure of U.S. financial liquidity whose declines foreshadowed two of the decade’s worst equity routs is flashing alarms even before the Federal Reserve embarks on its planned winding down of asset purchases.

The signal is obscure, but has sent meaningful signs in the past. Roughly speaking, it’s the gap between the rates of growth in money supply and gross domestic product, an indicator known to eco-geeks as Marshallian K. It just turned negative for the first time since 2018, meaning GDP is rising faster than the government’s M2 account.

The shortfall comes from an expanding economy that’s quickly depleting the nation’s available money. The deficit could become a problem for markets at a time when excess liquidity is seen as underpinning rallies in everything from Bitcoin to meme stocks.

“Put another way, the recovering economy is now drinking from a punch bowl that the stock market once had all to itself,” Doug Ramsey, Leuthold Group’s chief investment officer, wrote in a note last week.

How big a threat is this? While stocks kept rising during frequent negative Marshallian K readings in the 1990s, the pattern since the 2008 global financial crisis -- a period when the central bank was in what Ramsey calls a “perpetual crisis mode” -- begs for caution.

The Marshallian K fell below zero in 2010, a year when the S&P 500 Index suffered a 16% correction. A similar dip in 2018 portended a selloff that almost killed that bull market.

The Leuthold study is the latest attempt to handicap the market’s outlook from the perspective of liquidity. But not everyone is worried. Ed Yardeni, the president and founder of Yardeni Research Inc., says he prefers to plot not the growth rates but the absolute level of M2 against GDP to measure liquidity. Based on that, liquidity stood near a record high.

“Some people start to freak out about the M2 growth rate,” he said in an interview on Bloomberg TV and Radio. “What they don’t really appreciate is M2 today is $5 trillion higher than it was before the pandemic. There is just a tremendous liquidity sitting there.”

Others see limited impact from Fed tapering on the equity market. In June, research from UBS Group AG showed that should the Fed turn off the spigot on its annual $1.4 trillion in quantitative-easing spending, the hit to the S&P 500 would be a paltry 3% decline in prices.

In 2013, when the Fed’s announcement on a reduction in stimulus sparked a taper tantrum that sent 10-year Treasury yields skyward, the S&P 500 pulled back almost 6% from its May peak that year. But stocks staged a full recovery within weeks and went on with a rally that eventually lifted the index 30% for the whole year.

Skeptics, however, are quick to point out one big difference: equity valuations.

“Back then, the stock market was trading at 15 times earnings. Now it’s 22 times earnings,” Matt Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak + Co., said in an interview on Bloomberg TV with Caroline Hyde. “It will be hard for the market to ignore it this time around.”

For now, a liquidity drain suggested by the Marshallian K data has done little damage to the market, at least on the index level. The S&P 500 is poised for a seventh straight monthly gain, reaching all-time highs almost every week.

But Ramsey warns investors shouldn’t let their guard down. While the broad market has been strong -- the S&P 500 closed Wednesday at a record for the 46th time this year -- fewer stocks are participating in the latest leg up. This could be blamed on falling liquidity, he says, and the days of abundant cash floating all stocks are likely gone.

The Marshallian K indicator just slumped into negative territory faster than ever. During the second quarter, M2 money expanded 12.7% from a year ago, trailing the nominal GDP growth rate of 16.7%. That came after four quarters of excessive liquidity where the spread stayed above 20 percentage points.

“The Marshallian K now shows liquidity not only deteriorating but actually contracting -- and at a time when hopes (as embedded in valuations) have never been higher,” Ramsey said. “If the Fed can drawdown QE in the next year without triggering a decline of those levels, it will truly have achieved something remarkable. But we’d rather invest based on the probable.”

(Updates with Yardeni’s comment starting in seventh paragraph.)

Borse: resta solo e soltanto TINA