Per noi è fonte di sostentamento: e per questo, il mercato finanziario noi di Recce’d lo trattiamo sempre con rispetto, massimo rispetto, ed in modo molto serio.

Per operare in modo profittevole sul mercato finanziario, però, è importante, ed anzi deciso, riconoscere anche i (pochi, ma ricorrenti) aspetti del suo funzionamento che risultano tutt’altro che seri: risultano al contrario ridicoli.

Molti esempi, li abbiamo evidenziati nel corso degli ultimi dieci anni nel nostro Blog. Oggi, ve ne propioniamo un ennesimo.

Richiamiamo la vostra attenzione sul tema delle “materie prime 2021”, ed in particolare sul tema del “petrolio 2021”.

Il tema è caldo, anzi caldissimo: tutti i media ci si buttano a pesce, sapendo che aumenta il numero di click, e questo perché dal petrolio si ricavano beni di uso comune, come benzina, gasolio e carburanti per il riscaldamento domestico.

L’immagine qui vicino è una recentissima copertina del settimanale The Economist, ma anche sui quotidiani e TG nazionali i termini “shock energetico” sono di uso comune.

Qualcuno avrà fatto i conti? Qualcuno avrà aggiornato le previsioni? E su che cosa? E chi? Qualcuno, almeno qualcuno, avrà idea di che cosa si sta esaminando, di che cosa si parla?

Boh.

Recce’d la settimana scorsa, nel proprio quotidiano The Morning Brief, ha fornito al proprio Cliente una serie ordinata e selezionata di dati concreti, in particolare sul petrolio.

Poi ha spiegato nel dettaglio al Cliente, con riferimento alle nostre attuali posizioni di portafoglio, perché questo allarme sullo “shock energetico”, benché preso in modo molto serio, non modifica le nostre scelte di portafoglio.

In questo Post, in modo molto più sintetico, vogliamo regalare ai lettori un aiuto concreto: vogliamo aiutare i lettori a rispondere alla domanda “Che cosa cambia nella gestione del mio portafoglio con il petrolio a 80$?”

Prima di tutto, e come facciamo sempre, vogliamo aiutare il lettore a ricordare: vogliamo aiutare i nostri lettori a ricordare che negli ultimi cinque anni le oscillazioni del prezzo del petrolio sono state molto frequenti e molto ampie in assoluto (dollari) ed in percentuale (50-60-70%). Lo vedete sotto nel grafico.

Non c’è nulla di singolare, di unico, di “senza precedenti” nel recente rialzo del prezzo del petrolio greggio. Se soffrite di ansie da volatilità, tenetevi alla larga, o se siete almeno un po’ equilibrati, limitate la vostra esposizione.

Sempre richiamando in causa la vostra memoria, riguardatevi il grafico dell’oro qui sotto.

Tornate con la memoria a 12 mesi fa: ricordate? Ogni dubbio era svanito, e tutto era chiarissimo: l’oro avrebbe potuto … soltanto salire.

Come il petrolio oggi.

Ritornando per un attimo all’oro: vi sarà utile ricordare anche un po’ più indietro, e guardare qui sotto il grafico di lungo periodo.

Le materie prime hanno, tutte, un utile effetto, che potremmo dire da “equilibratore” ovvero “ammortizzatore” nei vostri portafogli. ma attenzione: non sono un Bancomat. proprio quando credete “adesso lo so, che guadagno”, loro scattano nella direzione opposta. Un investitore VINCENTE lo sa che è necessaria pazienza, se si vogliono fare veri guadagni.

E qui arriviamo al ridicolo, ovvero a quei momenti ridicoli dei mercati finanziari, e soprattutto di chi opera sui mercati ed intorno ai mercati.

Sui mercati ed intono ai mercati, da sempre, c’è chi spinge sulle materie prime come “occasioni di facili guadagni”, facili e soprattutto veloci.

Basterà avere capito “a che punto è il ciclo”.

Lo scorso mese di maggio, come vedete sopra, era chiaro che un “super-ciclo” delle materie prime, petrolio in testa, era già iniziato. Le ragioni erano evidenti a tutti: stimolo all’economia e dollaro USA debole.

Ora, vediamo: dollaro USA debole, mmmmm …

E poi lo stimolo all’economia, beh …. mmmmm … vediamo, dunque …

Ma allora era comunque chiaro a tutti: persino a settimanali autorevoli come The Economist.

Nel mese di agosto, e quindi due mesi dopo, i toni vengono in parte moderati: e si scrive, come vedete qui sotto, che “Forse” ma solo forse, il “Superciclo” esiste davvero. Forse.

Poi arriva settembre. Sono trascorsi appena 90 giorni. E cosa accede?

Arriva la triste notizia di un lutto.

Sta morendo, il Superciclo, ci dice il Wall Street Journal.

Che cautamente aggiunge, però, che “Non è detta l’ultima parola”.

Da allora, dalla morte del Superciclo, è trascorso solo un mese. ma chi se ne ricorda? E chissenefrega? Le grandi banche globali, insieme con i TG e i quotidiani, devono spingere qualcuna a fare, qualcuno a aprire nuove posizioni, qualcun altro a chiudere posizioni già in essere, qualcuno almeno a scrivere nella chat oppure mandare un messaggino ad un amico oppure fare click sul sito.

Fare, fare, fare. come se stesse davvero succedendo qualcosa.

E così arriviamo ad oggi. Il petrolio WTI tratta a 82 dollari USA, ed è chiaro che può andare in una sola direzione, e per quali ragioni (ah, no, non il dollaro debole, e no, neppure il boom economico) … e fesso chi non c’era.

Per nostra fortuna, noi in Recce’d abbiamo sufficiente esperienza, e nervi saldi, per leggere questi episodi per quello che sono nella realtà. Episodi dell’avanspettacolo, poi arriverà lo spettacolo quello vero.

Intanto voi, amici lettori, tenetevi questo Post in memoria: ne riparleremo sicuramente, come sempre facciamo, ritornando sui nostri Post, anche di anni prima. Lo facciamo anche oggi, negli altri due Post con la medesima data.

Solo così si vince, nel gioco degli investimenti. Non rincorrendo i titoli dei siti e dei quotidiano, come quelli che a campione vi abbiamo riportato nel nostro Post. Investire è una cosa seria, più seria di questi titoli: che sono solo … pinzellacchere.

In questo ottobre del 2021, è utile ed opportuno farsi delle domande.

In particolare, per tutti gli investitori, è arrivato il momento di chiedersi che cosa non ha funzionato. E se c’è mai stata, davvero, la possibilità ragionevole che potesse funzionare. Oppure se abbiamo assistito ad una ubriacatura collettiva, come accade la notte del Capodanno.

In questo ottobre 2021, un mese nel quale tutti voi lettori leggete sul quotidiano di preferenza che l’economia rallenta, l’inflazione aumenta, e siamo destinati alla stagflazione, è diventato inevitabile chiedersi che cosa non ha funzionato, di una manovra di politica economica (fiscale e monetaria) che solo qualche mese fa prometteva “boom della crescita” e benessere economico per un tempo illimitato.

Ricordiamolo: negli Stati Uniti, le nuove risorse messe a disposizione dalla politica monetaria (Federal Reserve) e politica fiscale hanno raggiunto, sommate, il 25% del PIL annuale di quella economia. A pochi mesi di distanza, siamo tutti qui a ragionare di una crescita al 2%. Se va tutto bene.

Qualcosa non è andato come previsto. Almeno, come era stato previsto dalle banche globali di investimento e dalla totalità dei promotori finanziari, dei wealth managers, dei private bankers, dei consulenti addetti alla vendita.

Recce’d, al contrario, nell’agosto 2020 aveva illustrato, anche in questo Blog, le ragioni per le quali si andava già allora verso uno scenario di stagflazione.

Noi restiamo del parere che sia questa, l’essenza del nostro lavoro: gestire il portafoglio dei Clienti sulla base di quello che, di lì a poco, succederà nella realtà dei fatti: senza lasciarsi trascinare dalle mode che prevalgono in quel momento sui mercati finanziari.

L’illusione di ricchezza per tutti ed a costo zero, creata da politiche economiche poco ragionate e mal calcolate, che si stanno manifestando per quelle che sono, ovvero dannose per l’economia, mettono in pericolo la stabilità dei mercati finanziari ed anche il benessere finanziario di ogni singola famiglia.

La ricchezza ed il benessere, infatti, non possono essere “creati per decreto”, ed i valori sui mercati finanziari non possono essere fatti “salire per legge”. Siamo, e saremo forse in futuro, tutti più ricchi unicamente nel caso in cui i soldi che noi andiamo ad investire produrranno nel futuro un miglioramento della situazione sottostante, della realtà dell’economia.

In questo specifico caso, del post-pandemia, non è andata così e non andrà così: tutta la ricchezza che è stata “creata dal Parlamento” verrà inevitabilmente cancellata dalla realtà dei fatti: tutto quello che resta, già oggi, è una ricchezza di carta, come quella dello Zio Paperone.

La consapevolezza di questo stato di cose ormai la trovate in prima pagina su tutti i quotidiani, e ne sentite parlare in televisione al TG Economia.

Un esempio ve lo forniamo qui sotto, dove leggete un titolo di un articolo pubblicato la settimana scorsa dal quotidiano Wall Street Journal, che parla di “ripresa economica messa in pericolo dai problemi nella catena di produzione globale”.

Il fatto notevole, per noi investitori, è che si possa legittimamente affermate che “la ripresa economica viene messa in pericolo” a pochi mesi di distanza dai titoli sul “boom economico”, che anche il quotidiano in questione, come ogni altro quotidiano, aveva ripetutamente utilizzato fino a poche settimane fa.

A voi, amici lettori ed amici investitori, risulta credibile il fatto che nssuno, al mondo, ci avesse pensato in agosto? Luglio? Giugno? Maggio? O anche prima?

Nessuno, con l’eccezione di noi di Recce’d: vi pare credibile?

Cosa è, che non è andato come previsto? Come venivano fatte, le previsioni solo qualche settimana fa? E soprattutto: quali interessi andavano ad alimentare, quelle previsioni di “felicità eterna” che dominavano sui mercati finanziari fino a qualche settimana fa?

Questa, detta in estrema sintesi, è la ragione per la quale ogni investitore dovrebbe chiedersi “che cosa non ha funzionato”. Comprendere le ragioni che ci hanno portato a questa situazione è essenziale, se vi interessa (e dovrebbe interessarvi) di comprendere come la situazione potrà evolversi, da oggi in poi.

Il suggerimento di Recce’d è il seguente: andate a cercarvi l’articolo del Wall Street Journal, che vedete citato nell’immagine più in alto, e che qui noi no riportiamo per ragioni di spazio in questo Post.

Leggete con attenzione quell’articolo, e poi leggete subito dopo l’articolo che segue, che noi abbiamo trovato nel settimanale The Economist. Il settimana ha scelto di etichettare lo stato attuale dell’economia come “shortage economy”, l’economia del razionamento. sarà proprio questo, il futuro che ci attende?

La lettura combinata dei due articoli vi sarà utile per comprendere in che modo la situazione delle economia si modificherà e si evolverà nei prossimi mesi.

Una volta completata questa lettura, avrete le idee molto più chiare: noi di Recce’d più in basso riprendiamo l’analisi delle implicazioni di questa “shortage economy” per gli investimenti e per la gestione del portafoglio titoli.

For a decade after the financial crisis the world economy’s problem was a lack of spending. Worried households paid down their debts, governments imposed austerity and wary firms held back investment, especially in physical capacity, while hiring from a seemingly infinite pool of workers. Now spending has come roaring back, as governments have stimulated the economy and consumers let rip. The surge in demand is so powerful that supply is struggling to keep up. Lorry drivers are getting signing bonuses, an armada of container ships is anchored off California waiting for ports to clear and energy prices are spiralling upwards. As rising inflation spooks investors, the gluts of the 2010s have given way to a shortage economy.

The immediate cause is covid-19. Some $10.4trn of global stimulus has unleashed a furious but lopsided rebound in which consumers are spending more on goods than normal, stretching global supply chains that have been starved of investment. Demand for electronic goods has boomed during the pandemic but a shortage of the microchips inside them has struck industrial production in some exporting economies, such as Taiwan. The spread of the Delta variant has shut down clothing factories in parts of Asia. In the rich world migration is down, stimulus has filled bank accounts and not enough workers fancy shifting from out-of-favour jobs like selling sandwiches in cities to in-demand ones such as warehousing. From Brooklyn to Brisbane, employers are in a mad scramble for extra hands.

Yet the shortage economy is also the product of two deeper forces. First, decarbonisation. The switch from coal to renewable energy has left Europe, and especially Britain, vulnerable to a natural-gas supply panic that at one point this week had sent spot prices up by over 60%. A rising carbon price in the European Union’s emissions-trading scheme has made it hard to switch to other dirty forms of energy. Swathes of China have faced power cuts as some of its provinces scramble to meet strict environmental targets. High prices for shipping and tech components are now triggering increased capital expenditure to expand capacity. But when the world is trying to wean itself off dirty forms of energy, the incentive to make long-lived investments in the fossil-fuel industry is weak.

The second force is protectionism. As our special report explains, trade policy is no longer written with economic efficiency in mind, but in the pursuit of an array of goals, from imposing labour and environmental standards abroad to punishing geopolitical opponents.

This week Joe Biden’s administration confirmed that it would keep Donald Trump’s tariffs on China, which average 19%, promising only that firms could apply for exemptions (good luck battling the federal bureaucracy). Around the world, economic nationalism is contributing to the shortage economy. Britain’s lack of lorry drivers has been exacerbated by Brexit. India has a coal shortage in part because of a misguided attempt to cut imports of fuel. After years of trade tensions, the flow of cross-border investment by companies has fallen by more than half relative to world gdp since 2015.

All this might seem eerily reminiscent of the 1970s, when many places faced petrol-pump queues, double-digit price rises and sluggish growth. But the comparison gets you only so far. Half a century ago politicians got economic policy badly wrong, fighting inflation with futile measures like price controls and Gerald Ford’s “whip inflation now” campaign, which urged people to grow their own vegetables. Today the Federal Reserve is debating how to forecast inflation, but there is a consensus that central banks have the power and the duty to keep it in check.

For now, out-of-control inflation seems unlikely. Energy prices should ease after the winter. In the next year the spread of vaccines and new treatments for covid-19 should reduce disruptions. Consumers may spend more on services. Fiscal stimulus will wind down in 2022: Mr Biden is struggling to get his jumbo spending bills through Congress and Britain plans to raise taxes. The risk of a housing bust in China means that demand could even fall, restoring the sluggish conditions of the 2010s. And an investment boost in some industries will eventually translate into more capacity and higher productivity.

But make no mistake, the deeper forces behind the shortage economy are not going away and politicians could easily end up with dangerously wrong-headed policies. One day, technologies such as hydrogen should help make green power more reliable. But that will not plug shortages right now. As fuel and electricity costs rise, there could be a backlash. If governments do not ensure that there are adequate green alternatives to fossil fuels, they may have to meet shortages by relaxing emissions targets and lurching back to dirtier sources of energy. Governments will therefore have to plan carefully to cope with the higher energy costs and slower growth that will result from eliminating emissions. Pretending that decarbonisation will result in a miraculous economic boom is bound to lead to disappointment.

The shortage economy could also reinforce the appeal of protectionism and state intervention. Many voters blame empty shelves and energy crises on the government. Politicians can escape responsibility by excoriating fickle foreigners and fragile supply chains, and by talking up the false promise of boosting self-reliance. Britain has already bailed out a fertiliser plant to maintain the supply of carbon dioxide, an input for the food industry. The government is trying to claim that labour shortages are good, because they will raise economy-wide wages and productivity. In reality, putting up barriers to migration and trade will, on average, cause both to fall.

The wrong lessons at the wrong time

Disruptions often lead people to question economic orthodoxies. The trauma of the 1970s led to a welcome rejection of big government and crude Keynesianism. The risk now is that strains in the economy lead to a repudiation of decarbonisation and globalisation, with devastating long-term consequences. That is the real threat posed by the shortage economy. 

Ritorniamo adesso alla domanda che apriva il nostro Post: che cosa è, che non ha funzionato? Semplicemente, non ha funzionato la politica economica adottata in risposta alla pandemia.

Ci sono almeno due millenni di storia, a dimostrare che mettere in circolazione più moneta NON fa stare meglio l’economia e NON rende più ricchi tutti quanti a costo zero.

Non esiste, un modo di rendere più ricchi tutti quanti a costo zero: l’intera storia dell’economia insegna che la ricchezza dei popoli è aumentata grazie alla scoperta di nuove risorse naturali ed all’aumento della produttività.

La quantità di moneta in circolazione non ha mai cambiato, né mai cambierà, la realtà dei fatti.

Lo spiega in modo perfetto la lettura che chiude il nostro Post: in questo articolo si parla, a nostro giudizio correttamente, di “uno shock strutturale e secolare” che ha nulla a che vedere con il ciclo economico e che non sarà risolto da politiche del tipo “regaliamo più soldi a tutti”.

Recce’d aveva scritto, come abbiamo ricordato in più occasioni, già nell’agosto 2020: chi allora decise di seguire le nostre indicazioni oggi può guardare al futuro con serenità, ottimismo e prospettive di guadagno molto sostanziose.

Ma soprattutto ha ben compreso la fondamentale differenza tra i “guadagni di carta” ed i “guadagni che restano” nella gestione del proprio portafoglio di investimenti.

Per tutti gli altri, che tra gennaio e giugno si sono fatti attirare come le falene dalla luce di una candela, adesso è probabilmente troppo tardi.

Perché siamo già oltre: tutto ciò che leggete in questo Post è il presente, ed il passato. Ma un buon investitore deve sapere guardare sempre al futuro. Alla prossima fase, quella che sta per iniziare.

Coming out of the 2008 global financial crisis, it took too many too long to recognize that the economic shock was more structural and secular rather than cyclical. The result was a policy response that, while effective in dealing with the immediate emergency, proved insufficient for longer-term economic well-being.

Covid-19 has amplified the vulnerabilities of the disappointing recovery that followed, particularly when it comes to socioeconomic inequalities, co-opted institutions and distorted financial markets. Meanwhile, what took too long to happen a decade ago — recognition that the world faced a structural deficiency of aggregate demand — is now hindering timely responses to the latest challenges.

While demand is much less of a hindrance today because of the historic levels of fiscal transfers and liquidity injections by central banks, Covid-related factors have upended the supply side. The multifaceted efficiency of a just-in-time global economy has become a source of cascading fragilities and disruptions that haven’t yet sufficiently altered mindsets, let alone produced strong policy reactions. Meanwhile, the risks of continuing with pedal-to-the-metal monetary policy outweigh the benefits.

The need to address the content and mix of policies is urgent, both at the national and multilateral levels. Failure to do so could turn stagflationary winds — that disruptive mix of declining growth and higher inflation— into a much more disruptive phenomenon with economic, financial, institutional, political and social implications.

Among its many teachings, the 2008 crisis exposed the dangers of an economy over-reliant on finance. While in the run-up to the crisis policy makers were captivated by innovations that lowered the barriers to debt and leverage, including securitization and other risk-tranching techniques, an unconstrained and unencumbered financial sector went from funding genuine economic opportunities to fueling rampant speculation, most visibly in housing. Balance sheets ballooned as banks also sold a seemingly infinite range of leverage-heavy products to one another.

When it came to dealing with the inevitable consequences — the simultaneous popping of several financial bubbles — policy makers acted quickly to counter the disruptive spillback to the real economy and to rein in excessive risk-taking among banks. The presumption was that a “timely, targeted and temporary” policy intervention would restore conditions for durable socioeconomic prosperity.

Yet what ailed the global economy went deeper than just excessive and irresponsible finance. The “financialization” of the economy itself had sidelined pro-growth initiatives.

Genuine productivity-enhancing activities, such as infrastructure modernization and agile labor enabling and retooling, became boring and old-fashioned compared with what sophisticated financial engineering seemed to unleash. As such, it did not take long for economies to suffer a new normal of disappointing growth, significant inequalities and endless rounds of exceptional central bank interventions to maintain financial stability, albeit of the artificial variety.

With growth repeatedly falling short of what was expected and needed, the initial over-cyclical mindset of many economists and policy makers transitioned to being laser focused on addressing deficient aggregate demand. Unfortunately, Covid has turned this into a weakness given that supply side issues now dominate.

An early economic lesson of Covid is that its drivers of structural fluidity have transformed the efficiency of a just-in-time global economy from a strength into a notable fragility. Tightly woven cross-border supply chains suddenly fell victim to Covid-related closings in one or more ports. Shipping and container disruptions turned cost-effective value chains into loss-makers. Seeking greater resilience, companies have started to rewire their supply chains, amplifying short-term vulnerabilities. It’s hard to quickly build and bring a new production facility on line. It’s even harder when many try to do the same thing at once.

Labor supply has also become an issue. The greater sensitivity of workers to health risks and lifestyle choices alter the propensity to work. Labor force participation has become less secure, fueling record increases in job vacancies. Labor costs inevitably start increasing across-the-board as companies’ efforts to attract new workers force them to also raise pay to retain those they already have.

While the on-the-ground evidence of supply disruptions is multiplying, the dominant macroeconomic mindset is still overly fixated on insufficient aggregate demand. Several of the recent policy remarks by the Federal Reserve serve, once again, as an example.

This will come as no surprise to behavioral scientists. Cognitive traps (rear-view framing, confirmation bias, blind spots, etc.) can slow the shift of policy makers’ focus to supply disruptions, which have become the main cause of the economic malaise of today and tomorrow. Instead, they reinforce some approaches, particularly in monetary policy, that inadvertently amplify the stagflationary winds that are starting to blow across a growing number of countries.

Cognitive biases are particularly problematic at a time of big changes in the operating environment. This was clear in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis with the overly cyclical economic mindset that delayed policy responses to what constituted a structural and secular shock several years in the making. We are seeing it today with one that is evolving too slowly from demand to supply.

The longer it takes for national and multilateral policy mindsets to adjust, the more likely we are to repeat the disappointment of the global financial crisis: Winning the war against the immediate enemy but failing to establish the peace of durable and inclusive socioeconomic prosperity, a platform for addressing dangerous secular challenges such as climate change, and anchoring genuine financial stability

Un anno fa, in questo Blog, noi di Recce’d abbiamo scritto “Fight The Fed”. Un anno dopo, si leggono messaggi twitter come quello che leggete qui sopra, scritto da un notissimo gestore di portafoglio, dove si afferma che la Federal Reserve per uscire dalla scomodissima situazione nella quale si trova oggi “ha bisogno di una crisi finanziaria”.

Ma soprattutto, ed è la ragione per la quale ci siamo decisi a scrivere questo Post, adesso nell’ottobre 2021 lo dice … persino la stessa Federal Reserve.

Essendo che una crisi finanziaria a moltissimi dei lettori di questo Post (non ai nostri Clienti) farebbe perdere tanti soldi, il tema merita la massima attenzione da parte dei nostri lettori. Molti tra i quali proprio non hanno capito che oggi la Federal Reserve è il principale nemico del loro benessere finanziario.

Molti tra i nostri lettori non lo hanno ancora capito: ed una parte importante di questi non intende proprio capirlo. Non vuole sentire: si sente di avere “diritto alla felicità” e non vuole vedere, assolutamente, la realtà intorno.

A questi lettori sognatori farà bene leggere l’articolo che segue. Perché … adesso anche la Federal Reserve dice “Fight the Fed"!”.

Nell’articolo si racconta che la stessa Federal Reserve, nelle scorse settimane, ha pubblicato un documento che critica le scelte della Federal Reserve post pandemia, e lascia quindi intravedere non soltanto l’esistenza di un conflitto interno alla Fed (che è cosa nota) ma pure un possibile cambio di strategia nella gestione della politica monetaria USA.

Cambio che, se si realizzasse, prenderebbe il mercato del tutto di sorpresa: come già accadde, ma nella direzione opposta, nel gennaio 2019, e quindi poco più di due anni fa.

Vi lasciamo alla lettura per poi procedere più in basso con uno sguardo verso il futuro.

It seemed last week that the Federal Reserve may have avoided a taper tantrum when it signaled that an announcement on the slowing of the rate of bond purchases may come as soon as November, with the buying stopping altogether by the middle of 2022.

The typical market reaction didn’t happen—the yield curve actually flattened at first. Even when that reversed and yields began to jump, stocks were unaffected. That all changed Tuesday, as the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite tumbled 2.8% on its worst day since March and the S&P 500 declined 2%.

So is this a delayed taper tantrum? It might seem that way, but there’s plenty more going on. Investors are becoming increasingly worried about inflation, particularly in light of surging energy prices, and the prospect of rising interest rates. The Fed now sees the first rate increase next year, while St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said Tuesday there could be two increases in 2022.

There’s also just a lot of uncertainty. Global concerns over the China Evergrande situation may have eased but the crisis has yet to be resolved. There’s the issue of the U.S. debt ceiling, a potential government shutdown, and the question marks over Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s second term were catapulted back into focus Tuesday as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said she would oppose Powell’s renomination, calling him a “dangerous man” for making the banking system less safe.

It could also be a dangerous time for investors. The 10-year yield, in the 2013 tantrum, took about seven months to peak.

—Callum Keown

A day after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said at a press conference that “inflation expectations are terribly important,” Jeremy Rudd, a senior Fed economist who has served at the central bank since 1999, released a new paper.

The title: “Why Do We Think That Inflation Expectations Matter for Inflation? (And Should We?)” His answer to the parenthetical question was a resounding no.

Fed watchers had varying interpretations of Rudd’s paper. Some saw it as validating the new policy framework around inflation, which aims for observed price growth that modestly overshoots 2% for some time rather than making decisions based on potentially erroneous forecasts. Others viewed it as a warning: Counting on surveys that show stable longer-term inflation expectations runs the risk of missing a real-time regime shift in the economy. 

The summary of the paper creates room for reading between the lines. “Economists and economic policymakers believe that households’ and firms’ expectations of future inflation are a key determinant of actual inflation,” it says. “This belief rests on extremely shaky foundations, and a case is made that adhering to it uncritically could easily lead to serious policy errors.”

It’s not until Page 16 that Rudd lays out the practical and policy implications of his argument. Once he does, it’s hard not to read it as expressing doubt about the Fed’s new policy framework and advocating for vigilance and humility about understanding what might be in store for the U.S. economy. The analysis comes at a critical time for the central bank: On Monday, both Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren and Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said they would retire within the next two weeks.

This is what Rudd suggests on monitoring for evidence of an inflation regime shift:  

“One development to watch for would be any evidence that a renewed concern with price inflation was starting to affect wage determination — either in statistical form ... or in the form of anecdotes. To the extent possible, we might also try to determine whether quit rates were starting to rise in a manner that was less tied to the state of the labor market and more correlated with consumer price developments, or whether wage increases for new hires were starting to rise appreciably relative to wage increases for workers in continuing employment relationships (the argument being that wages for new hires are more flexible and hence more responsive to economic conditions).”

Yes, the shocks from the Covid-19 pandemic have made parsing economic data trickier than ever. But the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, shows that the quits rate remains near a record high at 2.7%. The number of job openings in the U.S. exceeded hires by 4.3 million in July, the most in data going back to 2000. Employees clearly hold the cards — anecdotes abound about businesses scrambling to offer higher wages and one-time bonuses, laying the foundation for the disparity between new employees and existing workers that Rudd highlighted. For now, this is a welcome change, given the power dynamics have favored employers over the past few decades.

Should the quits rate stay elevated for many more months, however, it might raise concern that cost-of-living increases are starting to become front and center in the minds of workers. As my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Noah Smith wrote earlier this month, even though U.S. wages have been rising strongly as of late, on an inflation-adjusted basis, they’re lower than they were in May 2020.

Powell, for his part, said last week that “inflation expectations had drifted down, and it was good to see them get back up a bit.” That was in response to a question about a New York Fed survey, which showed Americans’ median expected inflation rate over the next three years is 4%, the highest ever in data going back to 2013. According to Rudd’s analysis, central bankers’ attempts to influence these kinds of forecasts are a waste of time at best — and dangerous at worst:

It is far more useful to ensure that inflation remains off of people’s radar screens than it would be to attempt to “reanchor” expected inflation at some level that policymakers viewed as being more consistent with their stated inflation goal. In particular, a policy of engineering a rate of price inflation that is high relative to recent experience in order to effect an increase in trend inflation would seem to run the risk of being both dangerous and counterproductive inasmuch as it might increase the probability that people would start to pay more attention to inflation and—if successful—would lead to a period where trend inflation once again began to respond to changes in economic conditions.

Rudd also adds that by assuming inflation expectations are what ultimately drives price growth, “the illusion of control is arguably more likely to cause problems than an actual lack of control.” He warns that “given the huge boon to stabilization policy that results from a stable long-run inflation trend, actions that might jeopardize that stability would appear to face an unusually high cost-benefit hurdle.”

To be clear, the Fed wants to talk a big game on inflation and push expectations higher because policy makers believe that will keep price growth above their 2% target. Rudd argues that:

1. Inflation expectations are relatively meaningless.

2. Policy makers should strive to keep inflation off people’s radar.

3. Engineering above-target inflation risks being dangerous and counterproductive.

“I view Rudd’s policy implications as an indictment of the Fed’s new policy framework,” Tim Duy, a former Bloomberg Opinion contributor who’s now chief U.S. economist at SGH Macro Advisors, wrote in a report. “There is clearly some internal conflict.”

I wrote last week after the Federal Open Market Committee decision that Powell tried to walk back the central bank’s inflation fear, which was evident in the hawkish shift in the “dot plot.” The sort of questions raised by Rudd’s paper only increase the likelihood that policy makers will be leery of inflation that persistently exceeds 2% and that for all the talk about a “substantially more stringent test” to raise interest rates and the steadfast belief that price growth will be transitory, they’ll react similarly to the way they have in the past. 

Bond traders are grappling with what this all means, judging by recent market moves. Eurodollar futures are now pricing in 34 basis points of rate increases in 2022, up from about 25 basis points a week ago. The Treasury yield curve from five to 30 years experienced a rare bout of bear flattening on Monday — it’s just the third time since mid-June that yields on both tenors increased and the curve flattened. That could be seen as investors betting the Fed will raise interest rates in the coming years to avoid inflation that’s too hot.

When Powell revealed the Fed’s shift in strategy in August 2020, his argument went like this: “Inflation that runs below its desired level can lead to an unwelcome fall in long-term inflation expectations, which, in turn, can pull actual inflation even lower, resulting in an adverse cycle of ever-lower inflation and inflation expectations. This dynamic is a problem because expected inflation feeds directly into the general level of interest rates.”

Rudd’s paper calls this whole premise into doubt. The main question investors should be asking: Is inflation high enough to affect Americans’ employment and purchasing decisions? As long as price pressures remain front and center for consumers, the risk remains that Fed officials will be late to notice a structural shift happening right in front of them.

La maggior parte degli investitori nel 2020 ha commesso il medesimo errore. che è quello di pensare che “le cose andranno avanti così per sempre” ed operare sui propri portafogli titoli di conseguenza. Il cambiamento di scenario che è intervenuto fra agosto e settembre 2021 li ha tutti colti di sorpresa, e fino ad oggi molti non si sono mossi solo perché terrorizzati.

Altri cambiamenti stanno arrivando, come spiega benissimo qui sotto William Buiter in un articolo per il Financial Times, e questi ulteriori cambiamenti costringeranno tutti a muoversi, a reagire, a proteggersi e quindi a modificare il proprio portafoglio titoli, come dice proprio in chiusura William Buiter..

The combination of extremely low and relatively stable US government bond yields has confounded many market watchers for quite a while now, also challenging traditional economic analyses. This has made the move up in yields over the past couple of weeks particularly notable, raising interesting questions for markets, policies and therefore the global economy. It is usual to characterise US benchmark government bond yields as the most important market indicator in the world.

Traditionally, they have signalled expectations about growth and inflation in the world’s most powerful economy. They have been the basis for pricing in many other markets around the world. Breaking with a long history, these benchmark measures decoupled in recent years from economic developments and prospects. Their longstanding correlations with other financial assets, including stocks, broke down. And their information content became distorted and less valuable.

Coming out of the 2008 global financial crisis, this was attributed to excess global savings that exerted consistent downward pressures on yields. With time, however, it became clear that the main driver was the ample and predictable purchasing of government bonds by the world’s most powerful central banks under quantitative easing programmes, particularly the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. One should never underestimate the power of central banks intervening in market pricing. The trillions of dollars of bonds purchased by the Fed and ECB have distorted the usual two-sided markets and encouraged many to buy a whole range of assets well beyond what they would normally do on the basis of fundamentals. After all, what is more assuring than a central bank with a fully-functioning printing press willing and able to buy assets at non-commercial levels.

Such purchases legitimatise previous private sector investments and provide assurance that there will be ready buyers of assets for those needing to sell to reposition portfolios. It is a set-up that encourages private sector “front-running” of purchases by central banks at prices that would have traditionally been deemed unattractive.

No wonder that even those convinced of a fundamental mispricing have been hesitant to be on the other side of a bond market dominated by central banks. While these factors remain in play, yields have slowly but consistently been migrating up in the past two weeks from 1.30 per cent for the 10-year bond to 1.50 per cent. With global growth prospects damping somewhat due to the Delta variant of Covid-19, the drivers have been a mix of mounting inflationary pressures and multiplying signs that central banks will struggle to maintain the era of “QE infinity” — that is, endlessly ultra loose financial conditions.

The signs in recent days have included statements from the Bank of England and higher rates in Norway adding to moves in some developing countries. The more rate volatility increases, the greater the risk of yields suddenly “gapping” upwards given that we are starting with a combination of very low yields and extremely one-sided market positioning. The greater the gapping, the bigger the threat to market functioning and financial stability, and the higher risk of stagflation — the combination of rising inflation and low economic growth.

Like a ball deeply submerged in water, a combination of market accident and policy mistake could result in a move up in yields that would be hard for many to handle. Importantly, this does not mean that central banks, and the Fed in particular, should delay what should have already started — that is, embarking on the tapering of what, curiously, is the same level of monthly asset purchases ($120bn) as at the height of the Covid-19 emergency 18 months ago.

On the contrary, the longer the Fed waits, the more markets will question its understanding of ongoing inflationary pressures, and the higher the risk of disorderly market adjustments undermining a recovery that needs to be strong, inclusive and sustainable. For their part, investors should recognise that the enormous beneficial impact on asset prices of prolonged central bank yield repression comes with a consequential possibility of collateral damage and unintended consequences. Indeed, they need only look at how hard it has become to find the type of reliable diversifiers that help underpin the old portfolio mix of return potential and risk mitigation.

Il titolo che leggete qui sopra è un po’ forte, va riconosciuto: ma lo abbiamo scelto come testimonianza del fatto che il clima, intorno ai cosiddetti titoli Big Tech, sta cambiando.

Come accade per le Banche Centrali, fino a pochi mesi fa giudicate dalla massa degli investitori come Infallibili ed Onnipotenti, anche per i grandi colossi del Big Tech l’epoca del Consenso Unanime è finita.

Come per le Banche Centrali, , anche per i Big Tech si apre una fase nuova, nella quale si perde l’unanime consenso ed aumentano invece in modo rapido le critiche.

Si tratta di critiche ormai diffuse, tanto che vengono raccolte anche dai più potenti mezzi di informazione: a testimonianza di questo fatto, oggi Recce’d sceglie di mettervi a disposizione un articolo del Financial Times della settimana scorsa.

Leggere questo articolo vi sarà utilissimo, proprio per ciò che riguarda la gestione del vostro portafoglio in titoli.

Recce’d vi vuole riportare alla mente due fatti:

1. non ci sarebbe stato alcun rialzo degli indici di borsa globali, se non ci fosse stato il traino degli indici di Borsa degli Stati Uniti

2. non ci sarebbe stato alcun rialzo degli indici di Borsa neppure negli Stati Uniti, se non ci fosse stato un rialzo abnorme dei prezzi delle Società Big Tech come Apple, Amazon, Google e Facebook.

Se il titolo scelto dal New York Times, che dice “Facebook è più debole di ciò che pensate”, riflettesse la realtà, e diventasse il pensiero della massa degli investitori al dettaglio, le implicazioni per il futuro del vostro portafoglio titoli dovrebbero esservi evidenti.

Ad esempio, potreste andare a rivedere la storia di Borsa di Philip Morris, come suggerito dalla nostra immagine iniziale.

Published Oct. 4, 2021Updated Oct. 5, 2021, 9:02 a.m. ET

One possible way to read “The Facebook Files,” The Wall Street Journal’s excellent series of reports based on leaked internal Facebook research, is as a story about an unstoppable juggernaut bulldozing society on its way to the bank.

The series has exposed damning evidence that Facebook has a two-tier justice system, that it knew Instagram was worsening body-image issues among girls and that it had a bigger vaccine misinformation problem than it let on, among other issues. And it would be easy enough to come away thinking that Facebook is terrifyingly powerful, and can be brought to heel only with aggressive government intervention.

But there’s another way to read the series, and it’s the interpretation that has reverberated louder inside my brain as each new installment has landed.

Which is: Facebook is in trouble.

Not financial trouble, or legal trouble, or even senators-yelling-at-Mark-Zuckerberg trouble. What I’m talking about is a kind of slow, steady decline that anyone who has ever seen a dying company up close can recognize. It’s a cloud of existential dread that hangs over an organization whose best days are behind it, influencing every managerial priority and product decision and leading to increasingly desperate attempts to find a way out. This kind of decline is not necessarily visible from the outside, but insiders see a hundred small, disquieting signs of it every day — user-hostile growth hacks, frenetic pivots, executive paranoia, the gradual attrition of talented colleagues.

It has become fashionable among Facebook critics to emphasize the company’s size and dominance while bashing its missteps. In a Senate hearing on Thursday, lawmakers grilled Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, with questions about the company’s addictive product design and the influence it has over its billions of users. Many of the questions to Ms. Davis were hostile, but as with most Big Tech hearings, there was an odd sort of deference in the air, as if the lawmakers were asking: Hey, Godzilla, would you please stop stomping on Tokyo?

But if these leaked documents proved anything, it is how un-Godzilla-like Facebook feels. The documents, shared with The Journal by Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, reveal a company worried that it is losing power and influence, not gaining it, with its own research showing that many of its products aren’t thriving organically. Instead, it is going to increasingly extreme lengths to improve its toxic image, and to stop users from abandoning its apps in favor of more compelling alternatives.

You can see this vulnerability on display in an installment of The Journal’s series that landed last week. The article, which cited internal Facebook research, revealed that the company has been strategizing about how to market itself to children, referring to preteens as a “valuable but untapped audience.” The article contained plenty of fodder for outrage, including a presentation in which Facebook researchers asked if there was “a way to leverage playdates to drive word of hand/growth among kids?”

It’s a crazy-sounding question, but it’s also revealing. Would a confident, thriving social media app need to “leverage playdates,” or concoct elaborate growth strategies aimed at 10-year-olds? If Facebook is so unstoppable, would it really be promoting itself to tweens as — and please read this in the voice of the Steve Buscemi “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme — a “Life Coach for Adulting?”

The truth is that Facebook’s thirst for young users is less about dominating a new market and more about staving off irrelevance. Facebook use among teenagers in the United States has been declining for years, and is expected to plummet even further soon — internal researchers predicted that daily use would decline 45 percent by 2023. The researchers also revealed that Instagram, whose growth offset declining interest in Facebook’s core app for years, is losing market share to faster-growing rivals like TikTok, and younger users aren’t posting as much content as they used to.

A good way to think about Facebook’s problems is that they come in two primary flavors: problems caused by having too many users, and problems caused by having too few of the kinds of users it wants — culture-creating, trendsetting, advertiser-coveted young Americans.

The Facebook Files contains evidence of both types. One installment, for example, looked at the company’s botched attempts to stop criminal activity and human rights abuses in the developing world — an issue exacerbated by Facebook’s habit of expanding into countries where it has few employees and little local expertise.

But that kind of problem can be fixed, or at least improved, with enough resources and focus. The second type of problem — when tastemakers abandon your platforms en masse — is the one that kills you. And it appears to be the one that Facebook executives are most worried about.

Take the third article in The Journal’s series, which revealed how Facebook’s 2018 decision to change its News Feed algorithm to emphasize “meaningful social interactions” instead generated a spike in outrage and anger.

The algorithm change was portrayed at the time as a noble push for healthier conversations. But internal reports revealed that it was an attempt to reverse a yearslong decline in user engagement. Likes, shares and comments on the platform were falling, as was a metric called “original broadcasts.” Executives tried to reverse the decline by rejiggering the News Feed algorithm to promote content that garnered a lot of comments and reactions, which turned out to mean, roughly, “content that makes people very angry.”

“Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits,” said Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman. “To say we turn a blind eye to feedback ignores these investments, including the 40,000 people working on safety and security at Facebook and our investment of $13 billion since 2016.”

It’s far too early to declare Facebook dead. The company’s stock price has risen nearly 30 percent in the past year, lifted by strong advertising revenue and a spike in use of some products during the pandemic. Facebook is still growing in countries outside the United States, and could succeed there even if it stumbles domestically. And the company has invested heavily in newer initiatives, like augmented and virtual reality products, that could turn the tide if they’re successful.

But Facebook’s research tells a clear story, and it’s not a happy one. Its younger users are flocking to Snapchat and TikTok, and its older users are posting anti-vaccine memes and arguing about politics. Some Facebook products are actively shrinking, while others are merely making their users angry or self-conscious.

Facebook’s declining relevance with young people shouldn’t necessarily make its critics optimistic. History teaches us that social networks rarely age gracefully, and that tech companies can do a lot of damage on the way down. (I’m thinking of MySpace, which grew increasingly seedy and spam-filled as it became a ghost town, and ended up selling off user data to advertising firms. But you could find similarly ignoble stories from the annals of most failed apps.) Facebook’s next few years could be uglier than its last few, especially if it decides to scale back its internal research and integrity efforts in the wake of the leaks.

None of this is to say that Facebook isn’t powerful, that it shouldn’t be regulated or that its actions don’t deserve scrutiny. It can simultaneously be true that Facebook is in decline and that it is still one of the most influential companies in history, with the ability to shape politics and culture all over the globe.

But we shouldn’t mistake defensiveness for healthy paranoia, or confuse a platform’s desperate flailing for a show of strength. Godzilla eventually died, and as the Facebook Files make clear, so will Facebook.

Kevin Roose is a technology columnist and the author of “Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation.” @kevinroose • Facebook

I nostri promotori finanziari, i nostri wealth managers, i nostri private bankers, i nostri “consulenti addetti alla vendita”, vengono rimpinzati come le oche all’ingrasso con le pubblicazioni delle grandi banche globali di investimento: gli vengono spinti giù per la gola documenti di Goldman Sachs, di JP Morgan, di Morgan Stanley, di Bank of America, di UBS, di BNP Paribas, e di tutte le altre.

E’ proprio per questa ragione, che poi tutti tutti tutti la vedono alla stessa maniera: è il nuovo “pensiero unico socialista” dei mercati finanziari (perché poi le banche globali ripetono soltanto quello che “non disturba” la Banca Centrale oppure il Governo in carica).

E così che tutti ci crediamo in un medesimo “sol dell’avvenir”, tutti andiamo dalla stessa parte, tutti abbiamo la medesima opinione sul futuro.

Quello che poi mai si realizza.

E’ questa ragione che, nel nostro Blog, sono rarissime le citazioni delle analisi delle grandi banche di investimento. Ed è per questo che, sui portafogli dei nostri Clienti, è rarissimo che noi si faccia ciò che viene suggerito dalle banche come Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, UBS, BNP Paribas, e tutte le altre.

Oggi, in questo Post, facciamo una importante eccezione, e vi proponiamo un documento di JP Morgan. Perché?

Prima di tutto, perché riteniamo utile e corretto presentare ai nostri lettori, di tanto in tanto, anche l’opinione di chi NON legge i fatti ed i mercati nel modo in cui li leggiamo noi di Recce’d. E poi, in questo specifico caso, perché l’intero articolo, a nostro giudizio, serve a avvalorare la nostra tesi, che la prossima grande sorpresa sui mercati finanziari la vedremo arrivare dal mondo delle obbligazioni e non dal settore delle azioni.

E proprio per il fatto che molti, oggi, stanno ancora allineati dietro a JP Morgan. Incluso il vostro promotore finanziario.

Interest rates relative to inflation aren’t getting back to normal anytime soon.

That’s because institutions, including sovereign reserve managers, commercial banks, and pension funds are buying bonds for regulatory reasons or to match their future liabilities, breaking the relationship between a bond’s price and the underlying fundamentals, according to the newly formed Strategic Investment Advisory Group of J.P. Morgan Asset Management. 

“Central banks have backed themselves into a corner from which they will be unable to retreat,” according to the group's inaugural research publication. “The bond vigilantes are now outgunned by the bond pacifists.” The Strategic Investment Advisory Group is made up of the firm’s veteran CIOs, portfolio managers, and strategists, across asset classes and is chaired by Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment strategy. 

In the report, called “Getting Real About Rates: the post-war era of substantially positive real interest rates may be gone for good,” the manager detailed the reasons why the low or negative real interest rates are likely to persist for a long period of time.

For example, a weak recovery from the pandemic and an extended period of financial repression have forced real interest rates to deviate from where the Federal Reserve wants them to be. In the long term, the lack of a young workforce makes it hard for the U.S. government to reduce the current debt burden, which is conducive to depressed interest rates.

To adjust to the prolonged low-interest rate environment, institutional investors should consider investing in securitized credit, equities, and real assets, according to the report. 

For fixed income investors, the traditional strategies that protect them from inflation, such as the treasury inflation-protected securities, are “less likely to work well today because they are offering low or negative real yields,” according to Jared Gross, head of institutional portfolio strategy at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Instead, portfolio managers with the obligation to invest in fixed income should consider securitized credit backed by assets like cars, real estate, and mobile phone contracts because they are “linked to the health and credit of the American consumers.”

“We think the consumer balance sheet right now is quite healthy,” Gross said. “So securitized credit is a very interesting opportunity.”

Gross also noted that the current low-interest rate environment has made value stocks more attractive than growth stocks. In particular, companies with utility-like characteristics, such as wireless carriers and telecom companies, are a good source of return because their stock prices are less volatile.

“You might be receiving a nice, attractive dividend from a company with a high dividend stock, but the price changes can wipe out the gains from dividends very quickly,” Gross said.

Lastly, the report points out that institutional investors should consider investing in “core” real assets that offer stable real yields, such as real estate, infrastructure, natural resources, and transportation. 

“They have relatively low correlations to traditional stocks and bonds, and that is what really makes them compelling,” Gross said. 

Although these alternative assets are less liquid compared to traditional stocks and bonds, they deliver the returns that investors need in the low-interest rate environment, according to Gross.

“Most investors do have room to take on additional illiquidity,” Gross said. “In a market environment such as this one, where public liquid markets simply are unlikely to deliver returns that investors need, you have to do something.”

To conclude, the overarching investment strategy in the low-interest rate environment is to “own cash flows that rise with nominal GDP,” Gross said. 

“Investors seeking to maintain and grow the purchasing power of their portfolios in such a world do have choices, if they’ re prepared to embrace the full spectrum of fixed income and hybrid assets, dividend-paying stocks and core real assets,” the report said.