Oggi Recce’d pubblica quattro nuovi Post. II quattro Post di oggi riprendono esattamente i temi dei quattro Post di sette giorni fa. Questo perché (ovviamente) i temi davvero importanti per voi e noi investitrori sono esattamente i medesimi: la settimana appena conclusa ha lasciato tutto com’era. Siamo preparando un nuovo Longform’d dedicato al tema dei tassi di interesse, dei rendimenti delle obbligazioni, e della Federal Reserve: verrà pubblicato … quando sarà stato completato. Non sentiamo l’urgenza di scriverne oggi (anche se si tratta del tema intorno al quale ruotano, e ruoteranno tutti i mercati finanziari di tutto il Mondo per tutto l’anno (ed oltre) per ila ragione che ne scrivemmo già quattrodici giorni fa, e che ne abbiamo scritto anticipando i fatti di queste settimane fino dallo scorso mese di agosto 2020.. Per questo siamo tranquilli: i nostri lettori hanno già oggi le idee chiarissime su ciò che sta per accedere.

Se vi fate distrarre dagli alti e bassi e poi di nuovo alti delle Borse, in una fase di mercato come questa, rischiate seriamente di finire rovinati dalle vostre stesse scelte e di farvi molto male con le vostre stesse mani.

Nel marzo 2021 il gioco si è fatto duro, molto duro.

Il dato che rende più evidente questo cambiamento dei mercati finanziari è l’aumento dei rendimenti delle obbligazioni.

Un aumento che nessuno (quasi nessuno, per la verità) aveva messo in conto.

Un aumento che le cosiddette Autorità non ci avevano preannunciato. Che le autorità proprio non vogliono. Che le Autorità si rifiutano di vedere. Che le Autorità cercano di dissimulare, con inimmaginabili capriole della dialettica.

I tassi salgono “per le buone ragioni”. I tassi salgono “perché il pubblico è più ottimista sul futuro”. I tassi salgono ma senza creare alcuna tensione negli altri mercati finanziari.,

Le due immagini qui sopra riportano due dei commenti più significativi letti la scorsa settimana, di Lagarde (BCE) e di Yellen (Tesoro USA). La linea ufficiale come leggete è centrata sulla parola “temporaneo”. Il rialzo dei tassi è temporaneo, l’aumento dell’inflazione è temporaneo.

Nell’immagine si fa (correttamente) notare la somiglianza con la situazione del settembre 2019, quando la Federal Reserve avviò una nuova operazione di QE, acquistando oltre 400 miliardi di dollari in T-bills, ma fece una martellante e quotidiana campagna di stampa per convincere il pubblico che “l’acquisto di 400 miliardi di T-bills non è un QE”.

Oggi è lo stesso: l’aumento dei prezzi “non è inflazione”. E’ soltanto … un “ruttino”, un rigurgito del sistema.

Se volete comprendere che cosa leggerete tra sei mesi, nel vostro rendiconto titoli, se avrete guadagnato oppure perso, fareste bene a riflettere su questo punto. E solo su questo: fatela finita, con i gossip su Twitter. Qui non siamo al Grande Fratello VIP, questa è roba seria, roba anche drammatica.

Per questo, Recce’d anche questa settimana ha lavorato, intensamente, per il suo pubblico di lettori.

Metteremo a vostra disposizione qui di seguito tre articoli, che riportano tre opinioni, tre punti di vista diversi fra loro.

Così che ogni nostro lettore possa formarsi una sua opinione. E soprattutto, così che ogni lettore possa prendere (velocemente) le giuste decisioni sui propri investimenti.

Faremo parlare, per rispetto dei più grossi, prima di tutto JP Morgan.

Bond sell-off is a foretaste of things to come Government debt simply cannot provide the kind of safe harbour it once did

Long-term US government bonds have lost more than 12 per cent this year

For many in bond markets, the sell-off across fixed-income assets since the start of year might appear a bracing foretaste of things to come. Markets are undergoing a pivotal shift. Where extraordinary support from central banks was a key driver for markets over the past nine months, economic fundamentals will take the lead this year. And bond market repricing sits at the nexus of this transition.

The repricing has already begun. Long-term US government bonds have lost more than 12 per cent this year amid rising volatility in fixed-income markets. Stronger fiscal stimulus in the US is weighing heavily on the bond market. While the sharp rise in yields hints at disorderly repricing, we should remember that most of the rise has come from a repricing of higher growth expectations. This is a good thing. And it is hard to call current financial conditions tight.

After taking into account inflation, real 10-year yields remain deeply negative. Assets more sensitive to swings in risk appetite seem, by and large, to be taking the bond volatility in their stride. So-called value stocks with low valuations have fared well while small-cap stocks are at or near their highs. Even the Vix, the ultimate fear barometer, which measures investor expectations of equity market volatility, remains remarkably subdued. We can also expect verbal intervention from central banks to assuage markets should financial conditions start to tighten, which should smooth out volatility during this transition.

But this is not just about a few bad weeks for bondholders. The recent price action is a timely reminder of the challenges ahead for core fixed-income investors. As the global economy enters a new cycle, new risks are building. The prospect of sustained fiscal stimulus, rising inflation risks and diminished central bank support, collectively challenges the safe harbour that government bonds once provided. Investors are moving towards this realisation.

In a recent survey of more than 1,500 of our clients, more than 60 per cent of respondents were either reducing allocations to developed-market government bonds or employing more active tools to deal with volatility. Several factors are at play here. First, starting yields on government bonds in developed markets are low. As a result, the extent to which they can move lower and provide protection in times of stress is limited. Further, the policy mix is changing. Fiscal policy is being used more actively to stimulate growth and monetary policy is prioritising higher average inflation expectations. This implicitly imposes a floor for bond yields.

In short, stronger economic growth sparked by unprecedented stimulus or the return of inflation, will eventually lead to a pullback in liquidity support from central banks. Investors today, perhaps, are preoccupied with the risk that the economic recovery is too sharp, rather than not sharp enough. That is a fear that is not well hedged by a large allocation to sovereign bonds. There currently seems a low likelihood of a sharp hawkish pivot by central banks. But, today, with markets still pricing in significant policy accommodation, even a small recalibration can lead to volatility in bond markets. The doubling of the gap between two-year and 10-year Treasury yields in just a few weeks is a timely reminder of such sensitivity.

So how should investors approach these new risks? Ensuring equity exposure is geared towards a strong cyclical recovery makes sense. Investors could also, for example, increase allocations to assets that are linked to inflation and benefit from stronger growth. For investors able to bear the illiquidity costs, real assets such as infrastructure or property that provide inflation-adjusted income streams are attractive.

Market volatility last March posed the first real test of these assets during times of stress. The resilience of those exposed to green-energy investment and technology-related logistics was notable. Looking ahead, forecasts in our annual study on long-term returns across markets suggest US core real estate will offer an average return of 5.9 per cent for more than a 10- to 15-year period with more than 80 per cent of that sourced from high-quality, stable income streams. We expect that with leverage in real estate assets a mere fraction of the levels seen in the financial crisis, investors will increasingly be drawn to their income potential. As markets shift their focus from policy support to economic fundamentals, government bonds simply cannot provide the kind of safety they once did. Given the risks on the horizon, investors have no choice but to diversify sources of safety in portfolios.

Quello che avete appena letto, è il parere ufficiale di un operatore di mercato che non potrebbe essere più distante dalle logiche del business di Recce’d: noi, rispetto a loro, generiamo i nostri ricavi nel modo opposto.

E tuttavia, in questa specifica fase di mercato, ci troviamo a condividere almeno alcune delle osservazioni avanzate da JP Morgan. la descrizione di un punto di svolta, dopo un decennio di mercato sotto doping massiccio, è azzeccata.

E’ azzeccata anche la conseguenza, che JP Morgan indica: quest’anno conteranno i fondamentali.

Noi nel Blog abbiamo definito tutto questo in un modo molto chiaro e diretto: “Il 2021 è l’anno che risolve”.

Leggiamo ora insieme un parere diverso.

Some economists, including former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, have argued that the next impending injection of fiscal stimulus in the US will generate destabilising inflationary pressures. But investors are unconvinced. The US break-even curve, which tracks investors’ forecasts for inflation, has flipped upside down, with short-term rates eclipsing their long-term counterparts. This previously happened on a sustained basis in 2008, during the global financial crisis. The two-year break-even rate, which is derived from US inflation-protected government securities, now hovers at 2.7 per cent, while the five-year gauge recently hit 2.5 per cent. The 10-year rate has lagged slightly behind, at 2.3 per cent.

That suggests that even despite the $1.9tn rush of fiscal stimulus recently approved by Congress, investors think any pick-up in inflation will rapidly fade. “The break-even market is pricing in some risk the Federal Reserve will be able to engineer inflation to overshoot its target in the near term,” said Tiffany Wilding, a US economist at Pimco. “[But] there is very little risk of the type of 1970s-style outcomes that some economists and market participants have been alluding to.”

Market measures of inflation expectations, which are closely watched by monetary policymakers, have accelerated since the start of the year, as investors brace for a more robust economic rebound following the passage of the Biden administration’s relief programme. While policymakers and market participants are aligned that the coming months will bring a swift pick-up in consumer price increases, views diverge sharply about the durability of the move. Jay Powell, Federal Reserve chairman, has joined Janet Yellen, Treasury secretary, in playing down concerns.

Powell recently argued that any jump in inflation would be “neither large nor sustained” and underscored that the economy is still a long way off from the US central bank’s goal of average 2 per cent inflation. Its favourite gauge, the core personal consumption expenditures price index, currently languishes at 1.5 per cent.

Gregory Daco, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, is also of the view that inflationary pressures will mount this year, before ebbing away. “The most likely outcome is that after a spring peak, inflation will fall back while remaining above 2 per cent for longer than at any other time over the past decade,” he said. “By longer run historical standards, inflation is still set to remain relatively muted and a long way from spiralling out of control.”

Even economists at Morgan Stanley — who have pencilled in an above-consensus 7.3 per cent economic expansion this year and see sustained upward pressure in healthcare costs, house prices and those for some goods — acknowledge that inflation more broadly will be “transient”. They predict that core PCE will peak at 2.6 per cent on a year-on-year basis by April or May, before settling around 2.3 per cent by the end of this year and throughout 2022.

Despite the temporary nature of these expected consumer price increases, the prospects of higher inflation and the Fed potentially moving forward the timing of its interest rate adjustments has hit the $21tn market for US government debt hard. Trading conditions seized up last month as prices plummeted and yields rose sharply. The 10-year note now trades just shy of its one-year high, at 1.53 per cent, and strategists believe it is heading higher from here. Credit Suisse’s Jonathan Cohn now expects yields on the benchmark bond to rise to 1.9 per cent by the end of the year, having initially forecast 1.6 per cent. Goldman Sachs, Société Générale and TD Securities have also made similar revisions recently.

Questo articolo lo abbiamo scelto per rappresentarvi quale è oggi la narrativa ufficiale, ovvero la storia che oggi sia le banche globali di investimento sia le Reti di promotori finanziari e private banker preferiscono raccontare ai loro Clinti. Come vedete, è rassicurante al massimo: nessun problema all’orizzonte, nessuna difficoltà, niente disturberà la tranquillità dei mercati finanziari.

Un investitore consapevole, informato e razionale avrà a questo punto compreso quale è il punto debole di questa narrativa, di questa storia di vendita, di questa favoletta. Che cosa manca?

Manca il Piano-B.

Immaginate per un attimo che non succeda. Che non vada tutto come questi signori ci e vi raccontano..

E poi fatevi poi due domande:

prima domanda: in passato, quanto sono stati bravi, questi medesimi signori, ad anticiparvi quello che poi è accaduto?
e poi: perché insistere così tanto, in modo ossessivo e quotidiano, sempre sulle medesime parole, sempre sul medesimo scenario, sempre sui medesimi concetti? Perché al contrario non rassicurare il pubblico dicendo proprio che “se le cose non andassero in quel modo, abbiamo pronto un Piano B”?

La risposta è semplicissima: perché non saprebbero che cosa fare, e non potrebbero fare nulla.

Ci fermiamo qui: l’approfodnimento lo leggerete in questo Post quando pubblicheremo il nostro nuovo Longform’d (appena i mercati ce ne daranno il tempo).

Oggi chiudiamo con un intervento di Vanguard, la maggiore Società di ETF al Mondo, che scrive anche lei per rassicurare i suoi Clienti: l’intero articolo può essere letto come un appello a “non vendere gli ETF obbligazionari”, perché ovviamente si teme una reazione a catena e una valanga di vendite, dopo le perdite (qui sotto) dei primi due mesi e mezzo dell’anno.

Parere che Recce’d non condivide, ma che è utile come termine di confronto. Massimamente utile, poi riflettere sul suggesrimento di Vanguard di “non abbandonare la asset allocation 60/40” che è poi il classico portafoglio bilanciato.

Il vostro portafoglio, amici che leggete il Blog. Ed è da qui, da questo punto, che dovreste partire, sempre: sia quando valutate le performances passate, sia quando guardate alle vostre mosse future. Che in questo specifico caso sono anche molto urgenti.

The primary role of government bonds in an investment portfolio is not to drive returns but to act as a stabiliser. It’s an important point to remember as we contemplate the broader potential fallout that might come if bond markets begin to reverse some of their strong performance of recent decades. So suggestions that the current bout of weakness in bonds should prompt a fundamental review of the place of fixed income in a portfolio are misconceived.

Thanks to the dependable income streams they offer, government bonds tend to be less volatile than shares. In the main, bond prices also move in the opposite direction to share prices, especially during periods of market turmoil. So, historically, they have helped to keep portfolios on a relatively even keel by smoothing out returns — which is especially important if you are close to retirement or relying on your investments to cover your living expenses. It’s why bonds provide clear diversification benefits and why we argue that the case for a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds, including the classic “60/40” portfolio, remains intact. Our research has found this holds even when yields are negative.

Whether yields are negative or positive, bond prices tend to rise when equities fall and this diversification benefit tends to come at the expense of foregone return. If an investor wants more return, they can get it by choosing a higher equity share and accepting higher portfolio volatility. It is true that recent price action hints at a fundamental reversal of fortunes for bond markets compared with recent years when yields were consistently falling and the value of bonds therefore rising.

The yield on 10-year US Treasuries — a bellwether for global bond markets — has risen by around half a percentage point since the start of the year. As well as dragging on other bond markets, it’s recently also knocked stock markets too, as concerns have grown over a possible rise in inflation and, by extension, interest rates. Investors seem worried about the potential fallout from excess policy stimulus and a post-pandemic consumer spending spree.

We recognise the risks of further sharp rate increases and even of higher inflation, but we also think such “bond vigilante” talk can be exaggerated. It is, in any case, besides the point, because government bonds, for us, would most likely continue to be indispensable diversifiers in a balanced portfolio even if bond markets started to underperform. Even if bond prices fall over the next year, investors should continue to hold them because they will continue to provide effective insurance against stock market volatility. Total returns from bonds, though lower than in the past, would also be likely to remain positive over the long term as cash flows from rising yields were reinvested. The dynamics between stock and bond market returns are often complex, but so too is the relationship between interest rates, inflation, economic growth and corporate profitability. Bond and share prices do sometimes fall at the same time, as we’ve seen recently and as we saw during the market slump of March 2020.

In fact, when we looked at market data covering the 20 years up to that global pandemic sell-off, we observed that it had happened about 29 per cent of the time. However, this changes nothing, since bonds, on the whole, still behave differently to shares and continue to act as important shock absorbers in a multi-asset investment portfolio. On average, when equities performed very poorly (a price decrease of 10 per cent or more from peak to trough), government bonds still helped to cushion the effects by returning positive returns. More severe equity downturns were associated with higher returns for bonds. Our research shows that in instances where bonds and shares perform in tandem, the causes are overwhelmingly shortlived. But once markets are given enough time to factor in the monetary policy responses, we observe that the usual inverse relationship between bonds and shares is re-established. Indeed, our analysis of recent prolonged market downturns suggests the longer a crisis drags on, the more likely bonds play a stabilising role, and this includes recent episodes when rates seemingly had no further to fall.

At Vanguard, we have been anticipating a low-return environment for some time. This does present a challenge but is not unique to the classic 60/40 portfolio of shares and bonds. Expected risk-adjusted returns are depressed for the full spectrum of investment strategies and we would be wary of any solution that promises an easy escape from this low-return environment via alternative strategies, such as real estate, which may appear to offer attractive returns but which come with additional liquidity risk. In a low-return environment, the solution is not about beating the 60/40 model, but about finding the right asset allocation that can give investors fair odds of achieving their goals

Prudent portfolio construction is about striking the right balance between different types of assets that historically offer different levels of potential risk and return, and then diversifying these investments in line with an investor’s goals. With shares and bonds you can do this, and easily.

The further away a goal, the more an investor is able to tolerate market swings and, hence, invest in higher-risk shares, and the less bond exposure is required. The older people get, the more their time horizon narrows and the more urgent is their need for lower-risk stabilisers. We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. Investors can dial up or down the risk-return profile of their portfolios depending on their investment goals, investment horizon, risk tolerance and a set of realistic expectations for asset returns (net of costs). In a low-return environment, the solution is not about beating the 60/40 model, but about finding the right asset allocation that can give investors fair odds of achieving their goals in the most efficient way. The last thing investors should be doing is to abandon the principles of good asset allocation. There isn’t a silver bullet alternative.

Peter Westaway is chief economist and head of investment strategy at Vanguard

Se hanno perso il controllo, voi che cosa farete? (parte 2)