Molti (noi di Recce’d siamo tra le eccezioni) nella settimana appena conclusa sono stati colpiti dalla reazione della Borsa di New York alle notizie di un rischio di guerra aperta tra Stati Uniti ed IRAN, di cui oggi parliamo anche nella pagina settimana di ricapitolazione su questo sito.

Fin dal primo giorno, a proposito di questa vicenda, noi abbiamo scritto e detto ai Clienti di attendere e vedere: sarebbe stato del tutto sbagliato correre a conclusioni prima del tempo.

In particolare non ci sorprende che da parte dell’IRAN sia stata adotta una strategia di attesa: ciò che Trump cercava era proprio una giustificazione per alzare ulteriormente i toni dello scontro, e (dal loro punto di vista) giustamente gli iraniani non sono cascati in questa trappola ed hanno preso altro tempo. Temporeggiare in alcuni casi è la tattica vincente.

Tutto ciò detto, sarebbe un errore gravissimo ignorare il fatto che la reazione della Borsa di New York, la settimana scorsa, va spiegata anche con riferimento ad altri fattori, oltre che alla geopolitica.

In particolare, noi ci riferiamo alla reazione della Federal Reserve, che (dopo avere rallentato per due settimane) proprio negli ultimi cinque giorni di mercato ha rimesso l’acceleratore, sollecitata dalle stesse banche USA, riaprendo i rubinetti della liquidità sul mercato americano dei fondi interbancari.

Siamo più che certi (e non siamo solo noi a pensarlo) che non si è trattato di una coincidenza temporale.

Per un maggiore dettaglio di informazioni, abbiamo selezionato per voi il brano che segue qui sotto, le cui conclusioni sono a nostro giudizio particolarmente azzeccate.

Two days after we reported that a disturbance may be brewing below the surface of the repo market again, after the first oversubscribed term repo in over three weeks, when on Jan 7 the Fed received $41.1BN in submissions for its $35BN two week repo, we got another indication just how strong the market's addition to the Fed's easy repo money has become, when moments ago the Fed announced that its latest 2-week term repo operation was also almost oversubscribed, as $34.3BN in securities ($23.3BN in TSYs, $11BN in MBS) were submitted for today's $35 billion operation, as dealers continue to scramble to the Fed for liquidity which they are no longer using for merely "regulatory" year-end purposes (since it is no longer year-end obviously), but are instead using it to pump markets directly.

Today's operation, which was just shy of the maximum $35BN allowed, was the second highest term repo since Dec 16, and suggests that as repos are now maturing at a rapid burst, dealers remain as desperate as ever to roll this liquidity into newer term operations.

And just in case there was any doubt that the liquidity shortage isn't getting better, moments later the Fed announced that in its daily Overnight repo operation, it also accepted $48.825BN in securities ($24.2BN TSYs, $24.625BN in MBS) ... for a total liquidity injection of just over $83 billion!

The problem, as Skyrm explained, is that the market had gotten addicted to the easy Fed liquidity unleashed in September (via temporary repo ops), and then again in October (via permanent T-Bill purchases): "it's easy to see how the Repo market can get addicted to easy cash from the Fed when the stop-out rates for the RP operations are 1.55% - behind the offered side of the market." But, as the repo strategist added, as the Fed keeps injecting cash, the market gets used to it.

Which is great in the short-term as it sends risk assets soaring, but become a major issue over the long-term: "The long-term problem is that the some investor cash (real money cash) that was once going into the Repo market is now going elsewhere", Skyrm explains.

Indeed, the problem is that repo rates are trading in the lower end of the fed funds target range. When GC rates were higher in the range, Repo general collateral, as an investment, was more competitive than other overnight rates. But now that cash has gone to other markets.

In short, just as the market got addicted to QE and the result was a 20% drop in the S&P in late 2018 when markets freaked out about Quantitative Tightening, the Fed's shrinking balance sheet, and declining liquidity, Skyrm cautions that "it will take pain to wean the Repo market off of cheap Fed cash" since "it's a circle" which can be described as follows:

For the Fed to end daily RP ops, they need outside cash to come back into the Repo market. For the Repo market to attract cash, Repo rates need to move higher. For rates to move higher, the Fed needs to stop RP ops.

The problem is that stopping RP ops could spark another repo market crisis, especially with $259BN in liquidity pumped currently - more than at year end - via Repo. It also means that the Fed is now unilaterally blowing a market bubble with its repo and "NOT QE" injections, and yet the longer it does so the more impossible it becomes for the Fed to extricate itself from the liquidity pathway without causing a crash.

Or stated simply, the longer the Fed avoids pulling the repo liquidity band-aid, the bigger the market fall when (if) it finally does. The question then becomes whether Powell can keep pushing on the repo string until the November election, because a market crash in the months preceding it, especially since it will be of the Fed's own doing, will result in a very angry president

La nostra Lettera al Cliente spedita oggi si concentra sul tema dei rimpianti. I rimpianti che non ci sono, i rimpianti che non abbiamo.

Ma partiamo dal valore dell’esperienza. L’esperienza aiuta: in particolare, è utile nelle fasi di massima eccitazione.

Nelle fasi di massima eccitazione sui mercati finanziari, aiuta ricordare ciò che si diceva, ciò che si leggeva, ciò che si ascoltava nelle precedenti fasi di massima eccitazione. Le e-mail che circolavano a quei tempi, le considerazioni che ci venivano rivolte allora, le conclusioni alle quali molti arrivavano in quei momenti. In qualche caso, rileggerle fa sorridere.

Sul piano professionale, quotidianamente, noi di Recce’d ci imponiamo un esame di coscienza: se abbiamo lavorato a sufficienza, nel modo giusto, e nella totale trasparenza vero il Cliente.

Questo esame di coscienza è più faticoso e doloroso nelle fase nelle quali per noi le cose vanno BENE. In quei momenti, si sente fortissima la paura di sbagliare.

Al contrario, se le cose non vanno come noi vorremmo, se le cose vanno meno BENE, l’esame di coscienza risulta MENO difficile per noi. Dal punto di vista della coerenza, del rigore professionale, della trasparenza verso il Cliente, nella gran parte dei casi ci sentiamo a posto (anche se si potrebbe sempre fare di più, ovvio).

Oggi, ad esempio, gennaio 2020, la situazione ci risulta chiarissima: e non abbiamo alcun rimpianto.

Avremmo potuto fare di meglio? Sempre e comunque, ogni giorno, si potrebbe fare di più. E questo che cosa dimostra? Solo che non siamo né maghi né fenomeni. E allora?

Avremmo DOVUTO fare scelte di portafoglio diverse, forse? No, nel modo più assoluto. Su questo, abbiamo le idee chiarissime. Non è mica qui ed oggi, che si tira la riga: il film non è ancora finito.

In Recce’d abbiamo le idee chiarissime sul film, e su come finirà: su dove siamo oggi, e su dove andremo nel prossimo futuro. La situazione di oggi è quella che viene riassunta, in modo perfetto, dall’articolo che leggete di seguito.

Oggi, le cose sono queste: non si tratta di idee oppure opinioni, questi sono i fatti, i fatti duri e concreti, quelli che si toccano con mano ogni mattina andando in ufficio, sui mezzi pubblici, nel traffico, sul treno oppure sull’aereo. La realtà.

Avremmo potuto ignorare questi fatti, e “andare con l’onda”? Si, avremmo potuto. Lo facciamo? No. Lo faremo in futuro? mai.

Perché? Perché è contrario all’interesse dei nostri Clienti.

Chi oggi suggerisce al Cliente di “andare con l’onda” fa il danno del suo Cliente, commette un gesto irresponsabile, e dimostra scarsa professionalità.

Perché? Perché i fatti sono quelli descritti qui sotto nell’articolo a firma Mohamed El Erian, uno del massimi commentatori al Mondo di cose finanziarie. Non c’è bisogno di dilungarsi oltre. Ma durante la prossima settimana, questi stessi temi saranno sviluppati nel nostro The Morning Brief che dedichiamo ovviamente ai nostri Clienti.

(E, per una volta, non vi costringeremo a tradurre dall’inglese!)

SEATTLE – Dopo un anno che ha visto una delle più grandi inversioni di rotta nella recente storia della politica monetaria, adesso le banche centrali sperano di avere pace e tranquillità nel 2020. Ciò è particolarmente vero per la Banca Centrale Europea e la Federal Reserve degli Stati Uniti, le due più potenti istituzioni monetarie. Ma la realizzazione di pace e quiete dipende sempre meno dal loro diretto controllo; e le loro speranze sarebbero facilmente vanificate se i mercati dovessero soccombere a una qualsiasi delle numerose incertezze a medio termine, molte delle quali si estendono ben oltre l’economia e la finanza fino ai regni della geopolitica, delle istituzioni e delle condizioni sociali e politiche nazionali.

Poco più di un anno fa, la BCE e la Fed erano in procinto di ridurre gradualmente i loro bilanci ampliati in modo massiccio, e la Fed stava aumentando i tassi di interesse dai livelli inizialmente adottati nel mezzo della crisi finanziaria globale. Entrambe le istituzioni stavano tentando di normalizzare le loro strategie monetarie dopo anni di politiche basate su tassi di interesse ultra bassi o negativi e acquisti di attività su larga scala. La Fed aveva elevato i tassi di interesse per quattro volte nel 2018, aveva segnalato ulteriori aumenti per il 2019, ed impostato l’assetto del proprio bilancio sul “pilota automatico”. Inoltre, la BCE aveva concluso la propria politica d’espansione di bilancio, ed iniziato a evitare ulteriori stimoli.

Un anno dopo, tutte queste misure sono state invertite. Invece di aumentare ulteriormente i tassi, la Fed li ha tagliati per tre volte nel 2019. Invece di ridurre il suo bilancio, negli ultimi quattro mesi dell’anno la Fed lo ha ampliato in misura ben superiore rispetto a qualsiasi periodo comparabile dopo la crisi. E lungi dal segnalare un’eventuale normalizzazione della sua struttura dei tassi, la Fed è passata con forza verso un paradigma di “tassi più bassi più a lungo”. Anche la BCE ha spinto ulteriormente la struttura dei tassi di interesse in territorio negativo e ha riavviato il programma di acquisto di attività. Di conseguenza, la Fed e la BCE hanno aperto la strada a numerosi tagli dei tassi di interesse in tutto il mondo, producendo alcune delle condizioni monetarie globali maggiormente accomodanti mai registrate.

Questa drammatica inversione di tendenza è stata particolarmente strana per due ordini di ragioni. In primo luogo, si è materializzata nonostante il crescente disagio – sia all’interno che all’esterno delle banche centrali – in merito al danno collaterale e alle conseguenze indesiderate di una prolungata dipendenza da una politica monetaria ultra espansiva. Anzi, questo disagio era cresciuto nel corso dell’anno, a causa dell’impatto negativo dei tassi bassissimi e negativi sul dinamismo economico e sulla stabilità finanziaria. In secondo luogo, la drammatica inversione non è stata la risposta ad un crollo della crescita globale, né tanto meno ad una recessione. Secondo la maggior parte delle stime, nel 2019 la crescita è stata di circa il 3% – rispetto al 3,6% dell’anno precedente – e molti osservatori prevedono una rapida ripresa nel 2020.

Invece di agire sulla base di chiari segnali economici, le principali banche centrali hanno ceduto ancora una volta alla pressione dei mercati finanziari. Basti citare, a titolo di esempio, il quarto trimestre del 2018, quando la Fed ha reagito ad un brusco selloff del mercato azionario che sembrava minacciare il funzionamento di alcuni mercati in tutto il mondo. Un altro esempio si è verificato a settembre 2019, quando la Fed ha risposto a una crisi improvvisa e imprevista sul mercato dei finanziamenti all’ingrosso (“repo”- “pronti contro termine”) – un segmento di mercato sofisticato e altamente specializzato che comporta una stretta interazione tra la Fed e il sistema bancario.

Ciò non significa che gli obiettivi delle banche centrali non fossero a rischio in ciascuna occasione. In entrambi i casi, tensioni generalizzate sui mercati finanziari avrebbero potuto compromettere la crescita economica e la stabilità dell’inflazione, creando le condizioni per un intervento di politica monetaria ancora più accentuato in futuro. Questo è il motivo per cui la Fed, in particolare, ha formulato la sua inversione di rotta in termini di “assicurazione”.

Ma le sfide che devono affrontare i banchieri centrali non si fermano qui. Consentendo nuovamente ai mercati finanziari di dettare i cambiamenti di politica monetaria, sia la BCE che la Fed hanno versato ulteriore carburante su un incendio che infuria da anni. I mercati finanziari sono stati spinti da un record all’altro, indipendentemente dai fondamentali economici sottostanti, perché i trader e gli investitori sono stati condizionati a credere che le banche centrali siano i loro “BFF” (“best friends forever”). Le banche centrali si sono dimostrate ripetutamente disponibili e in grado di intervenire per eliminare l’instabilità e mantenere elevati i prezzi di azioni e obbligazioni. Di conseguenza, la corretta strategia degli investitori è stata quella di acquistare ogni volta che il mercato scende, e di farlo sempre più rapidamente.

Tuttavia, date le crescenti incertezze a medio termine, i banchieri centrali non possono presumere condizioni distese nel 2020. Sebbene una liquidità ampia e prevedibile possa aiutare a calmare i mercati, non rimuove le barriere esistenti ad una crescita sostenuta e inclusiva. L’economia della zona euro in particolare è attualmente soggetta a ostacoli strutturali che stanno erodendo la crescita della produttività. Inoltre ci sono profonde incertezze strutturali a lungo termine derivanti dai cambiamenti climatici, da stravolgimenti di carattere tecnologico, e dai trend demografici.

Inoltre, in tutto il mondo, si è verificata una perdita generalizzata di fiducia nelle istituzioni e nell’opinione degli esperti, nonché un profondo senso di emarginazione e alienazione tra segmenti significativi della società. La polarizzazione politica è più intensa e molte democrazie stanno attraversando transizioni incerte. Inoltre, sebbene le tensioni commerciali tra gli Stati Uniti e la Cina siano state temporaneamente alleviate da un accordo sulla cosiddetta “fase-uno”, le fonti di conflitto sottostanti difficilmente sono state rimosse. E il mondo si è trovato improvvisamente in ulteriore crisi allorché le tensioni tra gli Stati Uniti e l’Iran sono aumentate, con l’Iran che promette ulteriori ritorsioni per l’uccisione mirata da parte dell’America del suo principale leader militare.

Per il benessere economico a lungo termine e la stabilità finanziaria, questa litania di incertezze richiede una risposta politica che va ben oltre il mandato tradizionale delle banche centrali. Richiede un ampio impegno pluriennale con l’impiego di strumenti strutturali, fiscali e transfrontalieri. Senza questo, i mercati finanziari continueranno ad aspettarsi interventi da parte delle banche centrali, che un numero crescente di prove indica non solo come sempre più inefficaci per l’economia, ma anche potenzialmente controproducenti. Indipendentemente dal fatto che le banche centrali evitino i riflettori nel 2020, è probabile che debbano affrontare sfide ancora maggiori per l’autonomia politica e la credibilità di strategie tanto cruciali per la loro efficacia.

La settimana scorsa, in un Post con il medesimo titolo, abbiamo proposto alla vostra lettura una serie di considerazioni del premio Nobel Robert Shiller sullo stato della Borsa negli Stati Uniti.

A nostro giudizio quelle considerazioni (validissime e sempre più attuali) si completano con altre considerazioni, che ci viene riferito siano state sviluppate nell’annuale simposio degli economisti (professionali ed accademici insieme) degli Stati Uniti, organizzato ogni gennaio dalla American Economic Association.

Dopo avere parlato con un certo numero dei presenti a quella riunione, in Recce’d abbiamo una misura ancora più precisa della distanza, del gap tra sogni e realtà, quel gap che proprio grazie alla competenza verrà sfruttato, messo a frutto, tradotto in profitti da una parte degli investitori.

Per questa ragione, noi abbiamo selezionato per i lettori del Blog un articolo che propone il resoconto (sintetico) di quella lunga riunione. la distanza che noterete subito tra questo resoconto e i Tweet di Trump è esattamente la distanza che separa i sogni dalla competenza.

Scorrendo questa sintesi, ci troverete numerosi degli argomenti che vedrete finire in prima pagina, settimana dopo settimana, nel corso del 2020, e non perché ne scriverà Trump nei suoi Tweet, bensì perché la realtà dei fatti come sempre prenderà il sopravvento. Quindi, il suggerimento è di mettere pazienza e leggere con attenzione (anche se questo testo è in inglese: fate un piccolo sforzo).

• Published Jan. 8, 2020Updated Jan. 10, 2020, 8:36 a.m. ET

SAN DIEGO — The mood among economic forecasters gathered for their annual meeting last weekend was dark. They warned one another about President Trump’s trade war, about government budget deficits and, repeatedly, about the inability of central banks to fully combat another recession should one sweep the globe anytime soon.

Among the thousands of economists gathered for the profession’s annual meeting, there was little celebration of Mr. Trump’s economic policies, even though unemployment is at a 50-year low, wages are rising and the economy is experiencing its longest expansion on record.

Underlying their sense of foreboding was a widespread sentiment that the current expansion is built on a potentially shaky combination of high deficits and low interest rates — and when it ends, as it is bound to do eventually, it could do so painfully.

Those concerns were echoed on Wednesday by economists at the World Bank, who called the worldwide expansion “fragile” in their latest “Global Economic Prospects” report. The report forecasts a slight uptick in growth in 2020 after a sluggish year bogged down by trade tensions and weak investment. But it said “downside risks predominate,” including the potential escalation of trade fights, sharp slowdowns in the United States and other wealthy countries and financial disruptions in emerging markets like China and India.

“The materialization of these risks would test the ability of policymakers to respond effectively to negative events,” the report by the bank, which is led by David Malpass, a former Trump administration official, stated.

The bank’s warnings echoed the fears expressed by many economists in San Diego, both in small research-paper presentations and in ballroom discussions of the clouds on the global economic horizon.

Trade tensions between the United States and China have cooled at least temporarily, but they are escalating across the Atlantic as European nations begin to impose new taxes on technology companies that are largely based in the United States. Mr. Trump has already threatened tariffs on French goods in retaliation for a tech tax, and many analysts worry that separate trade talks between the United States and the European Union could end in a tariff war. Manufacturing is mired in a global slowdown, with the sector contracting in the United States.

At a packed room in San Diego last week, researchers presented estimates that tariffs imposed by the United States and China — which remain in place despite the recent truce in trade talks — have reduced wages for workers in both countries already.

The American economy appears to have grown by a little more than 2 percent in 2019, though the statistics are not yet fully compiled. That is likely to be the slowest rate of Mr. Trump’s presidency, and well below the growth he promised that his economic and regulatory policies would produce.

The World Bank estimates growth in the United States will slow to 1.8 percent this year and 1.7 percent next year. That would be nearly the lowest annual rate since the last recession ended in mid-2009. The bank said the forecast reflected fading stimulus from Mr. Trump’s signature 2017 tax cuts and from government spending increases he has signed into law.

The cuts, and to a lesser degree the additional spending, have helped push the federal budget deficit to nearly $1 trillion a year, even as unemployment lingers near a half-century low. Fiscal deficits remain high in several other wealthy nations, particularly given how far into an economic expansion those countries are.

Interest rates have been dropping across advanced economies, thanks to long-running trends like population aging. That leaves central banks — which usually stoke growth by making borrowing cheaper — with far less conventional power in a recession.

Economists have been “going through the stages of grief” as they accept that such low rates are likely to prevail, John C. Williams, who leads the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said at the weekend’s gathering.

After the 2007-09 recession, economists speculated that the conditions that plagued developed nations — low growth, low inflation and low interest rates — would be short-lived. Scars were still healing after the worst downturn since the Great Depression, they thought.

That view has slowly been replaced by a more pessimistic one, as the field acknowledged that economic gains were likely to remain muted across advanced countries. In 2019, the Fed had to step back from plans to raise rates further and cut borrowing costs instead, leaving its policy rate at less than half of its 2007 level and underlining just how diminished the new normal looks.

“It’s clear that more was, and still is, going on,” Janet L. Yellen, the former Federal Reserve chair said at the event. “Although monetary policy has a meaningful role to play in addressing future downturns, it is unlikely to be sufficient in years ahead for several reasons.”

Ms. Yellen emphasized that government spending would need to play a larger role in combating future downturns, calling for stronger automatic stabilizers, which increase government spending when the economy weakens and tax receipts fall. There is no imminent sign that Congress is ready to enact such policies, but hope for government action was a constant refrain in San Diego.

Sluggish growth in worker productivity has held back the economy, said Valerie A. Ramey, an economist at the University of California, San Diego. She called on lawmakers to increase spending on infrastructure and research and development in order to spur a productivity acceleration.

Ms. Yellen, who assumed the presidency of the American Economic Association at the meeting, oversaw its program of panels and presentations, assembling a lineup that included several papers assessing damage from tariffs and the trade war. She said she and her colleagues rejected four proposals for every five that were submitted, choosing some that showed the benefits to advanced economies of attracting immigrants, particularly highly skilled ones, in stark contrast to Mr. Trump’s hard line on immigration to the United States.

Few of the papers presented assessed Mr. Trump’s tax law, and none of them argued, as Mr. Trump’s advisers did at similar conferences in recent years, that the tax cuts were supercharging investment.

In an interview on Saturday morning, over a buffet breakfast in a hotel restaurant with a view of the swimming pool, Ms. Yellen said that she had a reason for picking the sessions she did, calling low interest rates the macroeconomic “issue of our times.” She said she shared other economists’ concerns about trade and economic policy in the current environment.

“You do see a number of sessions in the program about this,” Ms. Yellen said. “I organized the program, and I think it’s not an accident you’re seeing it. I think it’s very important.”

Ben S. Bernanke, who was Fed chair during the 2007-09 recession, told the conference that a juiced-up monetary policy arsenal should be enough to combat the next downturn.

But "on one point we can be certain: The old methods won’t do,” he said. The Fed will need to use bond-buying and other tricks to supplement rate cuts.

And even economists’ most hopeful takes had a gray lining. Mr. Bernanke’s relative optimism hinged on the idea that interest rates would not continue to fall. Ms. Yellen’s hope for the future turned on greater activism from politicians to fight recessions.

If those things do not happen? The United States could look more like Japan, where inflation has slipped much lower, rates are rock bottom and the budget deficit much larger.

In good times, said Adam S. Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, that may not be the worst outcome. In a recession, though, the nation’s example may offer bad news. In the years since the financial crisis, Japan has rolled out an extremely active economic policy — both monetary and fiscal — to move its inflation rate back up, and it has succeeded only in averting outright price declines.

“It is wise to be cautious, and not assume that they will be as effective as we think,” Mr. Posen said of monetary policies. “We need to think about different ways of doing fiscal-monetary coordination.”

And while some economists, such as Harvard’s Lawrence H. Summers, extolled high fiscal deficits as a necessary weapon against slowdown or recession, others, such as Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw and Kenneth Rogoff and Stanford’s Michael J. Boskin, presented research warning that high levels of government debt could crimp growth.

Those papers echoed warnings that those economists issued earlier in the expansion that did not come to pass. But they argued that the large amounts of federal debt that have accumulated in the meantime posed a threat. In other words, the economists warned, it is only a matter of time.

Abbiamo ricordato l’importanza della Campagna Elettorale USA del 2020 inn numerose occasioni, inclusa oggi la nostra pagina settimanale di ricapitolazione (sul sito) e poi nella Lettera al Cliente che abbia spedito proprio in queste ore.

Anche noi di Recce’d “entriamo” nella campagna americana per le Elezioni Presidenziali, e lo facciamo oggi presentandovi qui sotto un editoriale pubblicato dal candidato Michael Bloomberg sui quotidiani ed i siti del gruppo Wall Street Journal (su posizioni vicine, il gruppo, a quelle di Donald J. Trump).

La lettura di questo intervento, che non vogliamo assolutamente alterare con una nostra traduzione dall’inglese, vi può essere utile nel senso che vi anticipa quello che sarà il tema centrale della fase più accesa della Campagna Elettorale.

Il tema è il seguente: il record della Borsa di New York è sufficiente a mascherare le (reali) difficoltà dell’economia reale degli Stati Uniti? Recce’d si aspetta che il dibattito sulla “migliore economia di ogni tempo” (ma lo è davvero, oppure non lo è?) possa con il passare delle settimane costituire il perno dell’intero dibattito elettorale.

Ed essendo che la Borsa è coinvolta, a voi lettori converrà di seguire il dibattito da vicino.

Premettiamo alla lettura dell’articolo una precisazione: è ovvio che Recce’d non si schiera né pro- né contro Trump. Non possiamo permetterci il lusso di “prendere una parte”. Il nostro lavoro ci impone di essere concreti: come dicono i cinesi, non importa se il gatto è rosso o blu, purché prenda il topo.

Ma il nostro dovere, a favore d tutti in nostri Clienti, è di distinguere la realtà dalla fantasia, il falso dal vero, la verità dalle bugie. E su questo fronte, il Presidente Trump ci tiene molto, molto, molto impegnati ogni giorno.

President Donald Trump says our economy is “the best it has ever been,” and he is planning to ride that false claim to a second term.

I won’t let him get away with it. I have the track record — in business and government — to show America what real economic leadership looks like.

Sure, the stock market is at an all-time high. But almost half the country doesn’t own any stocks. And, yes, the unemployment rate is low. But nearly half of all workers are in jobs that earn $18,000 at the median. In fact, the share of national income going to workers — rather than investors — is near an all-time low.

‘President Trump pushed through the biggest tax cut for the wealthy in history, and nearly all the money goes to people like me, who don’t need it.’

Too much wealth is in too few hands. And while a handful of big cities are doing well, a lot of the country is struggling; our middle class is being hollowed out; and working Americans are being squeezed by higher prices on everything from health care to housing.

As a candidate, Trump promised to take on these issues. As president, he has been in the pockets of the special interests that dominate Washington.

Remember when candidate Trump promised to deliver for regular people — the forgotten Americans?

Well, President Trump pushed through the biggest tax cut for the wealthy in history, and nearly all the money goes to people like me, who don’t need it.

Remember when candidate Trump stood in front of the GM factory in Lordstown, Ohio, and promised to keep it open?

In 2018, that plant closed down.

Remember when candidate Trump promised to “protect the farmers”?

Last year, farmers lost billions of dollars, and many lost their farms, as a direct result of his tariffs and trade wars.

Again and again, candidate Trump made economic promises to working people that he had no intention of keeping. And, sure enough, he has broken all of them.

In fairness, we faced serious economic problems before President Trump took office. That’s one of the reasons he won. He promised to fix them.

Instead, he has made them worse.

We need to elect a leader who can actually deliver real change — not just talk about it — and create more good jobs, with good salaries, all across America.

And I know I can do that, because I’ve done it.

Coming from a middle-class home, where my father never made more than $6,000 in a year, I was lucky to get a good education and work my way up from an entry-level job. When I got laid off, I started a company from scratch that now employs 20,000 people. We pay good salaries and provide the best health benefits money can buy, including six months of parental leave — at full pay.

As mayor of New York, I helped to create nearly 500,000 new jobs, most of them outside of Manhattan.

When I was first elected shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the question everyone asked us was: Can you rebuild Lower Manhattan?

Our answer: Yes, but that’s not enough.

We set out to rebuild every area of the city, starting with those outside Manhattan that had faced decades of industrial abandonment and decay. We spread good jobs with good salaries to those communities. I know we can bring about that kind of progress all across America.

This week, on the South Side of Chicago, I announced some of the core elements of the strategy I’ll take to create millions of good jobs where they are needed most, by investing in areas of the country that have been hurt by globalization and automation, and have been ignored by the federal government for too long.

To start, I will dramatically increase spending on research and development, by over $100 billion. Rather than sending that money to only a few places that already have massive research budgets, like Harvard and Stanford, we’ll spread it to places like Akron, Ohio, where I was Wednesday.

The way we’ll do it is by funding new “job factories” in Akron and around the country, with the goal of bringing opportunity to places that don’t have enough of it. We call them job factories because that’s what they’ll produce: jobs. They’ll do it by generating scientific breakthroughs in a wide variety of areas, which will generate millions of good jobs in everything from green energy and sustainable agriculture to advanced manufacturing and public health.

We’ll also make sure Americans have the skills they need to do the work — supporting community colleges, apprenticeships and job-training programs all across our country.

In addition to preparing people for good jobs, we will modernize the social contract between employee and employer — so laborers are protected, no matter where they work.

‘I have the track record — in business and government — to show America what real economic leadership looks like.’

We will do that by working to guarantee paid sick leave and paid family leave for all workers — just as we do at my company. We will support the right of all workers to organize and bargain collectively — including gig, contract and franchise employees, many of whom have to work two or three jobs to put food on the table.

I know a lot of candidates say they’re going to create good jobs. But, for me, creating good jobs is not something I just talk about. It’s what I’ve spent my whole career doing.

That’s a key part of the message we need to beat Trump. I’m ready to take it directly to him.

L’ampia fama di Robert Shiller deriva dal suo Premio Nobel così come dal suo best seller “Irrational Exhuberance”: ma per i nostri Clienti Shiller è da sempre un punto di riferimento soprattutto per il suo lavoro, la sua ricerca sui mercati finanziari, ed i rilevanti risultati ottenuti che hanno fatto da ispirazione anche per il nostro mestiere di gestori di portafoglio.

Il giorno 2 gennaio, il New York Times ha pubblicato un suo contributo di analisi sulla Borsa di New York, che noi oggi qui vi riproponiamo in lettura.

L’intero articolo è di grande interesse. Ma la frase che lo chiude è uno dei più utili consigli operativi a cui ispirare la propria strategia di investimento. Più chiaro di così, non si può proprio parlare.

E’ questo il regalo che Recce’d mette nella calza della befana di tutti i suoi numerosi, attenti ed affezionati lettori.

By Robert J. Shiller

• Jan. 2, 2020

The United States stock market is trading at a very high level today. The data show where the market stands, but don’t tell us how it got there. For an explanation of that, we need to take into account a factor that sound very unscientific: “animal spirits,” sometimes called “gut feelings.”

First, let’s look at some of the numbers. More than 30 years ago, the economist John Campbell and I developed what we have called the Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings (C.A.P.E.) ratio, a measure that enables the comparison of stock market valuations from different eras by averaging the earnings over ten years, thus reducing some of the short-term fluctuations of each market cycle. C.A.P.E. reached 33 in January 2018 and is almost as high now, at 31. That number might seem meaningless in itself, but it is significant when you consider that it has been as high or higher on only two occasions: 1929, just before the 85 percent stock market crash ending in 1932, and in 1999, just before the 50 percent drop at the beginning of the new millennium.

People will point this year to low interest rates to justify the high C.A.P.E. ratio. But interest rate levels historically have not correlated well at all with the C.A.P.E. For example, low long-term rates did not explain the high C.A.P.E. ratios in 1929 and 1999, nor did rising long-term interest rates explain subsequent market crashes.

That brings us to another factor, which John Maynard Keynes called “animal spirits.” It is a sense of optimism and ready energy to be entrepreneurial and take risks, and it has been adjudged to contribute to high stock market levels. Animal spirits are not adequately measured by business consumer confidence indexes, because the surveyors do not probe for such deep feelings.

High animal spirits in the stock market are often associated with the disparagement of traditional authority and expert opinion. This popular narrative often advocates relying on your “gut feelings” to try what experts say is doomed to failure.

President Trump uses this kind of language. Recently, for example, he said “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”

Make America Great Again (MAGA), Mr. Trump’s election slogan, remains on his supporters’ lips. The question for the market outlook hinges partly on how the Trump narrative — the notion that he and his followers are on the road to a triumphant future — will evolve.

Belief in the MAGA narrative would probably encourage people to buy into the stock market, even at elevated levels, thinking it will go up. It is more complicated to anticipate the actions of those who do not believe in Mr. Trump’s supposedly intelligent gut.

While skeptical themselves, they may well believe that enough other people believe, so the markets will thrive, at least in the short term. Investing for the short term — “speculating” is another word for this — tends to be influenced by thoughts that investors have about the thoughts of other investors.

The rise of an explicit belief in irrationality like this one is troubling on many levels. An essential element of a modern democracy is the wide dispersal of knowledge among a multitudes of experts. But there is reason to think that respect for science has been diminishing over the past decades. References to the “scientific method” peaked in news and newspapers in the 1940s, and are lower today. Instead, we have the phrases “gut feeling,” “visceral feeling,” and “trust your gut,” which are proliferating. None of these phrases had any currency before 1960, and they have been rising, going viral ever since.

This “gut feeling” narrative is not conterminous with the current bull market in its entirety, but seems to be an important factor permitting the United States economy and markets to move ahead amid widely reported fears of a coming global recession.

Long before the Trump presidency we saw milestones in public awareness of thinking that comes “from the gut.” For example, there is the 2001 best seller by Jack Welch, “Jack: Straight from the Gut,” (written with John A. Byrne) about his successes as chief executive of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. Mr. Welch described his management style as intuitive, and not relying on experts, whose analyses he viewed as often phony. Mr. Welch says, for example: “I crossed out the payback analysis on his last chart. I drew an “X” over the transparency and scrawled the word Infinite to make the point that the returns on our investment would last forever. I meant it.” Whether Mr. Welch’s supposed genius has been called into question by the sharp drop in share value of G.E. after he left the company is a matter of debate.

The 1997 book “Rich Dad Poor Dad, written by Robert Kiyosaki, with Sharon Lechter, described two fathers (one his own, the other a friend’s). The book’s publisher, Plata Publishing, reported that the book sold nearly 40 million copies as of 2017. His own, poor dad had college degrees, deferred to authority and told his son that many things were impossible. The uneducated but rich dad told him he should think about how he can make his dreams a reality. Donald Trump comes across to many many people rather like the rich dad. (Kiyosaki and Trump have co-authored two books, in 2006and 2011.)

Then there is the 2011 book “Steve Jobs,” by Walter Isaacson, which described the co-founder of Apple this way: “Jobs was more intuitive and romantic and had a greater instinct for making technology usable, design delightful, and interfaces friendly.”

We are being saturated with these kinds of narratives today: describing inspired young people, some of whom drop out of college, who surpass overly polite conformists pursuing dull, bureaucratic work lives. For people who buy into this dream, one simple step is to avoid the mistake of missing out, by acting like a rich person and buying stocks.

This is obviously not an explanation for the level of the entire market, but it is surely part of it.

We have a stock market today that is less sensible and orderly than usual, because of the disconnect between dreams and expertise.

Robert J. Shiller is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale. He is also a consultant to Barclays Bank on C.A.P.E. related indexes.