Markets Weekly July 20, 2024

Hello my friends today is July 20th and this is markets weekly. So this week I'm on the road here in San Francisco speaking at the Monotrium conference Monotrium is a conference put up by the reserve protocol, which is a cool new way of issuing asset-back tokens very interesting stuff But since I was on the road, I thought that I would just do this agent Zion style and use my cell phone There will be no slides in today's chat So I think the biggest news in markets the past week was the ascension of JD Vance Senator from Ohio to be Trump's running mate for for a vice president of the United States of America Now this is a really big deal because it significantly increases its probability that going forward the US could depreciate its currency Now let's review a little bit though Now during Trump's first term Trump was all about trying to make US exports more attractive and trading jobs back home to help the American worker The way that he was doing this was increasing tariffs on imports from other countries like China The logic being that if imports become more expensive because of tariffs then well, maybe companies will instead build in America Now the architect behind that plan was Trump's top trade representative Robert Lydizer

你好，朋友们，今天是7月20日，这里是每周市场快报。本周我正在旧金山参加Monotrium会议，Monotrium是由Reserve Protocol主办的一个会议，展示了一种非常有趣的新方式——发行由资产支持的代币。既然我在外出差，我决定以Agent Zion的风格，使用手机来完成这次交流。因此，今天的对话没有任何幻灯片。 我认为过去一周市场上最大的新闻是俄亥俄州参议员JD Vance成为特朗普的竞选伙伴，竞选美国副总统。这是一件非常重要的事情，因为它显著增加了未来美国可能贬值其货币的概率。 让我们回顾一下。在特朗普的第一个任期内，他一直致力于让美国的出口更加有吸引力，并且将工作机会带回国内，以帮助美国工人。他实现这一目标的方法是增加对其他国家（如中国）的进口关税。其逻辑是，如果由于关税的存在，进口变得更贵，那么公司可能会选择在美国本土建厂。 这个计划的幕后策划者是特朗普的顶级贸易代表罗伯特·莱因泽（Robert Lighthizer）。

Recently just a few months ago, there is a really interesting interview in political about Robert Lydizer citing that Robert Lydizer noted that you know in the past we used tariffs but this time around we could also use currency depreciation in our toolbox So the logic being will put up tariffs make imports more expensive and we will depreciate our currency So that our exports become more attractive again. The whole goal here is trying to find ways for businesses Build in America create American jobs and so forth This is really really standard tool kits that's been used by countries for since the beginning of time So Trump this time around if you look at the bidding odds It's looking like he has a pretty good chance of becoming the next president of the United States Now his opponent president Biden right now, you know, there's a lot of Trump though in the democratic party There's a lot of pressure for president Biden to step down president Biden doesn't seem to want to step down So it's not super clear who the democratic nominee really will be and when the final nominee appears The odds have changed but so far it seems like the markets are pretty confident that there's a very good chance Let's say above 60 percent that president Trump will have another term So president trump says a whole lot of things How do we know that he really means it? Well, one way that we know that he might be really serious about a currency evaluation is by picking jadey vance Jadey vance is offered up He's a one because build this political career basically being a champion of the American Well

最近几个月前，在《政治》杂志上有一个非常有趣的采访，采访的是罗伯特·莱特希泽。罗伯特·莱特希泽提到，过去我们使用关税，而这次我们也可以使用货币贬值作为工具。逻辑是，我们提高关税，使进口商品变得更贵，同时贬值我们的货币，以使我们的出口商品再次更具吸引力。这样做的目标是寻找方法让企业在美国建厂，创造美国的就业机会。这一套工具自古以来一直被各国使用。 目前来看，如果看竞选赔率，特朗普有很大的机会成为美国下一任总统。而他的对手，现任总统拜登，现在在民主党内部面临很大的压力，迫使他下台。然而，拜登似乎不愿意下台。所以现在还不明确最终的民主党候选人会是谁。当最终候选人确定时，赔率可能会改变，但到目前为止，市场对特朗普再次当选持有非常高的信心，认为他有超过60%的机会再获得一任总统职位。 特朗普经常发表很多言论，我们怎么知道他是否真的认真呢？一个可能的迹象是他提名了J.D.万斯。J.D.万斯是一个政治新星，因为他一直以美国工人的代言人身份构建自己的政治事业。

We have And in case he seems like the kind of person would be totally open That suggests that there's really a strong topology that president trump will want to do this policy Okay, now that if president trump wants to do this policy can he depreciate the currency now i've been seeing that Commenting in uh social media and that really surprises me because depreciating a currency is the easiest thing in the world throughout Just looking across the world people have trouble countries have trouble Keeping their currency strong. They don't have any problems keeping their currency weak. That's really the easiest thing in the world Let me just talk about a few ways this could happen First off, uh, you should know that The currency policy has been in the purview of the u.s. Treasury that is to say the white house Since the 1930s when president roosevelt devalued the dollar against gold. So this is something that is totally Totally within the right of the u.s. U.s. President

我们有……假如他看起来像是那种完全开放的人，这表明有很强的可能性特朗普总统会想要推行这项政策。那么，如果特朗普总统想要推行这项政策，他是否能够贬值货币呢？我在社交媒体上看到有人在评论这个问题，这真的让我感到惊讶，因为贬值货币是世界上最简单的事情。从全球来看，各国都遇到保持货币强势的困难，但保持货币贬值却毫无问题。这真的是世界上最容易的事情。 让我来谈谈几种可能的方式。首先，你应该知道，从上世纪30年代罗斯福总统将美元贬值对抗黄金以来，货币政策一直在美国财政部的管辖范围内，也就是说在白宫的掌控之中。所以，这是完全在美国总统的权力范围内的事情。

Now how they could do it? Well, we can look at what they did last in the in the 1980s during the plaza court at that time The dollar was super strong remember valker hiked rates tremendously super high interest rates in the u.s. Was making the dollar very strong and that was creating problems for u.s. Exporters so they all went to the congress they went to the white house they were lobbying And they came and the government came up with a plaza court which is a coordinated plan to devalue the dollar What the government did was basically go to uh the japanese of japanese at that time were Perceived to be the biggest uh, offender having a currency that was too weak What they did was they basically said hey You will devalue the yen against the dollar Or we will put up tariffs against you and the japanese obliged and the plaza court worked well The dollar definitely depreciated meaningfully. So again Easy to do we could do the same thing Uh President trump go with this trade representatives go across the world remember The u.s. Has a huge huge consumer economy. It imports a lot of stuff The u.s. Consumers are the clients clients have power they just go and say hey If you don't do something about your currency We're going to put tariffs and it's going to be hard for you to sell into the largest consumer market Uh in the world At least in dollar terms. So that's one way they can do this

他们是怎么做到的呢？我们可以看看他们在1980年代广场协议期间的做法。当时美元非常强劲，记得福尔克大幅提高了利率，超高的美国利率使得美元非常强势，这给美国出口商带来了麻烦。因此，他们都去找国会，去白宫游说。最后，政府提出了广场协议，这是一个协调的计划来让美元贬值。 政府当时做的基本上是去找日本人，因为当时日本被认为是最大的“罪魁祸首”，他们的货币太弱。他们基本上说：“你们会让日元对美元贬值，否则我们就会对你们加征关税。”日本人答应了，广场协议也奏效了，美元明显贬值了。所以，这个方法简单可行，我们可以再用同样的方法。 比如说，特朗普总统和他的贸易代表们走访全球。记住，美国有一个庞大的消费经济，它进口大量商品。美国消费者是顾客，顾客有力量。他们可以说：“如果你们不采取措施调整你们的货币，我们就会加征关税，这会使你们更难进入世界上最大的消费市场——至少在美元计价的规模上。”这就是他们一种可能的做法。

Another way is is actually just too sent to it. You know how the fed just talks about, you know I think it just rates should be high. I think it should be low I think i might be cutting rates and that moves markets now All you really need is for president trumped it to just go on twitter and say, you know usd jp y at 160 I don't like that. I think a good price is 100 Now, I don't know if that will get usd jp But I can tell you it will have a big market impact just having a white house make a whole lot of noise Telling the market they want to do this. I think what will have an impact Alternatively, you have other ways of doing a dollar depreciation It's going to require some more cooperation with other With with other organizations for example Maybe the trump could try to lean on the fed a little bit try to keep rates lower that will depreciate the currency And if the republicans sweep congress what we could do is and this was suggested by Brad tester We could just have a humongous humongous dollar sovereign wealth button. So what does that mean? So again, many countries have sovereign wealth funds. The united states does not hasn't really needed one still doesn't But if you wanted to depreciate the dollar, let's say congress says that we should have a trillion dollar Sovereign you united states wealth fund. Okay, so we would go and we would borrow a trillion dollars in the market issue a bunch of treasuries again, pretty treasuries depreciate the currency And then take those dollars and just sell them in the markets by euros by yen And you know that that's just going to we're going to end up with a lot of euros and yen and other foreign currencies But it's going to depreciate the dollar against other currencies So this is like something that totally totally easy to do uh, the the problem of course is that eventually Eventually when it gets too weak and usually historically it it will it does get too weak. How do we make it stronger? That's the hard part

另一种方法其实就是直接发出信号。你知道，美联储经常谈论利率问题，比如我认为利率应该高，我认为利率应该低，我可能会降息，这些都会对市场产生影响。现在，所有你真正需要的，就是让特朗普总统在推特上说，"你知道，美元兑日元在160，我不喜欢这个，我认为一个好的价格是100。" 我不知道这是否会让美元兑日元实际变成100，但我可以告诉你，这肯定会对市场产生巨大影响，只要白宫发出大量噪音告诉市场他们想做什么，我认为就会有影响。 另外，你还有其他办法让美元贬值。这需要与其他组织合作。例如，特朗普可以尝试施压美联储让利率保持低位，这样美元就会贬值。如果共和党在国会全面胜利，我们可以做的是——这是由布拉德·特斯特建议的——我们可以设立一个巨大的主权财富基金。那么，这意味着什么呢？你知道，许多国家都有主权财富基金，美国没有——实际上也不需要一个。但是，如果你想让美元贬值，假设国会说我们应该有一个一万亿美元的美国财富基金。好吧，我们会在市场上借一万亿美元，发行大量国债，国债贬值货币，然后把那些美元在市场上卖掉，买欧元、日元，你知道这样我们就会有大量的欧元、日元和其他外币，但这会让美元兑其他货币贬值。这种操作非常容易做，但问题在于，最终当它变得太弱时（历史上通常确实会变得太弱），我们如何让它重新变强？这才是难点。

Okay, but the appreciating is the easy part now. What does that mean for markets? Now this is actually Would be a seismic shift in in the markets now remember as i've been saying before Going forward what you want to think about when you think about A public policy is to pay more attention on the fiscal side on congress on the executive. Let's say monetary policy That stuff is still important, but you know, we know how those guys behave So I actually think that if we have a big dollar depreciation, it's going to be very bearish for the market Now thinking of course is that well cheaper dollars sucks go up You can say earnings increase earnings from overseas increase and so forth And that's all true and maybe that would be true in the long run But the immediate impact is you have to think about and this is what I wrote about last week my blog There's a lot of good data and charts in that piece if you're interested in looking at details but basically there are a lot of foreigners who own a whole bunch of us dollar assets and You know, what are they going to do if The us government telling them we are going to depreciate the dollar Now over the past year the partners by us dollar assets have been in a really really good trade So The s&p gone from the moon dollar strengthened so you do make a double play Making money on the asset and on the current piece But let's say that the That said we're going to depreciate the dollar zoom what happens then is that larger? Are you the green items thing? I would have a guaranteed loss on my dollar investments. I gotta do something No, I could hedge So there's a lot of ways to hedge that current exposure But right now with short term interest rates around 5% It's not it doesn't make any sense

好的，但现在欣赏是容易的部分。这对市场意味着什么呢？这实际上会在市场上引起一场地震。记住，就像我之前说的那样，展望未来，当你考虑公共政策时，要更多关注财政方面，也就是国会和行政部门。让我们说说货币政策，那些东西仍然重要，但我们已经知道他们的行为方式。 所以我实际上认为，如果美元大幅贬值，对市场将非常不利。现在的想法是，更便宜的美元会使股票上涨，你可以说盈利增加，海外利润增加等等，这些都是对的，可能在长期内确实如此。但你必须考虑到的即时影响是，这正是我上周在博客中写到的内容，如果你对细节感兴趣，那里有很多好的数据和图表。 基本上，很多外国人持有大量美元资产。如果美国政府告诉他们我们将贬值美元，他们会怎么做呢？过去一年里，持有美元资产的投资者获得了非常非常好的回报，标普500指数一路上涨，美元走强，你在资产和现在的汇率上都赚了钱。 但如果我们说要贬值美元，那会发生什么呢？大的投资者会认为，我在美元投资上会有一个有保障的损失，我必须做点什么。我可以对冲，有很多方法对冲这个货币暴露，但现在的短期利率大约在5%左右，所以这样做毫无意义。

So what they could begin to do is begin to sell Sell their dollar assets and just bring the money home and you know We already have the Japanese large large spend of money in Japan Taking that they're going to sell some foreign currency assets invest in yen obviously a part of that is because Interest rates in Japan are higher part of that is to support their own currency But it's something that it makes total sense from a foreign investor perspective Now foreigners own tremendous tremendous amounts of us assets Especially especially recently equities now equity markets appreciate a lot So Because of that the foreign holdings have increased a lot and they don't hedge equity so I think that's a sizable risk factor Again, I think longer term obviously cheaper currency very bullish for us assets But before we get from here to over there, we have to go through this turmoil where the foreigners have to figure out what they're going to do and I think that could be That could be negative. It's a it's something to keep in mind But again, we have four months till To November a lot of things could happen

他们可能开始做的事情就是抛售他们的美元资产，把钱带回国内。我们已经看到日本在国内大规模花钱，他们将会卖掉一些外汇资产，投资于日元。部分原因是因为日本的利率更高，部分原因是为了支持他们自己的货币。从外国投资者的角度来看，这完全是合情合理的。 现在，外国人持有大量的美国资产，尤其是最近的股票市场显著上涨，因此外国持有的资产也大幅增加，而他们不对冲股票风险。所以我认为这是一个相当大的风险因素。我认为从长远来看，货币贬值对美国资产是非常利好的。但在我们从现在到达那个阶段之前，我们必须经历这个外国投资者需要决定他们将如何应对的动荡期。我认为这是一个需要注意的负面因素。 不过，我们距离11月还有四个月，很多事情都可能发生。

But this is something that should be on your radar What what it could mean for for basically Markets if we depreciate the currency. All right, so that's what I have for today If you're interested in hearing my thoughts check out my latest blog post at big guy.com and I'll talk to you guys next week.

但这是你应该关注的事情。货币贬值可能对市场产生的影响不容忽视。好了，这就是我今天要说的内容。如果你对我的观点感兴趣，可以查看我最新的博客文章，网址是bigguy.com。下周再聊！