Markets Weekly August 24, 2024

Hello my friends, today is August 24th and this is Markets Weekly. So this week another good weekend markets, it looks like the major indexes are just slightly below all time highs. Is this going to be a double top or are we just going to break through and zoom on to infinity and beyond? I have no idea, we'll find out in the coming weeks but it looks like we're at a pretty interesting juncture. Today I want to talk about three things. First, of course we have to talk about what happened at Jackson Hole where Chair Powell officially pivoted towards a rate cutting regime. Let's hear what he said. Secondly, what set out to me the most the past week was the US dollar, just relentlessly, relentlessly sold against major currencies. Let's talk about what can be driving that and what that might mean. And lastly, on the economic news front, the big news last week was the downward revision in US jobs created by about 800,000. That's a very big downward revision. Let's talk about what could be driving that and ponder whether or not that's politically motivated.

你好，朋友们，今天是8月24日，这里是《市场周报》。这个周末市场表现良好，看起来主要指数稍低于历史新高。这是双顶形态，还是我们将突破并无限上升？我不知道，我们将在未来几周内见分晓，但目前看起来这是一个相当有趣的时刻。今天我想谈三件事。首先，我们必须讨论杰克逊霍尔会议上鲍威尔主席正式转向降息的决策。让我们听听他怎么说的。其次，上周让我印象最深的是美元，对主要货币持续贬值。让我们谈谈可能的原因和其意义。最后，在经济新闻方面，上周的大新闻是美国新增就业人数被下调了大约80万。这是一个非常大的下调幅度。让我们讨论一下可能的驱动因素，和这是否存在政治动机。

Alright, starting with Jackson Hole. Now for some context, Jackson Hole is a very, very beautiful place in the state of Wyoming. And every year central bankers around the world fly over there and basically have a big party. Oftentimes at those events they have also very important policy-oriented speeches. A couple years ago, Chair Powell was at Jackson Hole and he gave the speech saying that there would be some pain. He was going to high-grates a lot, probably cause a recession and he was going to bring inflation down. Now this week's Chair Powell was basically the opposite of the Chair Powell a couple years ago. Let's hear what he said. The upside risks to inflation have diminished and the downside risks to employment have increased. As we highlighted in our last FOMC statement, we are attentive to the risks to both sides of our dual mandate. The time has come for policy to adjust. The direction of travel is clear and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, evolving outlook and the balance of risks.

好的，从杰克逊霍尔开始。首先介绍一下背景，杰克逊霍尔是位于怀俄明州的一个非常非常美丽的地方。每年，世界各地的央行行长都会飞到那里，基本上就是参加一个盛大的聚会。通常在这些活动上，他们也会发表一些非常重要的政策性演讲。几年前，鲍威尔主席在杰克逊霍尔的演讲中指出未来会有一些痛苦，他将大幅提高利率，可能引发经济衰退，但他要把通货膨胀降下来。 而本周的鲍威尔主席则基本上与几年前的鲍威尔主席相反。让我们来听听他说了什么：“通货膨胀上行的风险已经减弱，而就业下降的风险则增加了。正如我们在上次联邦公开市场委员会声明中所强调的，我们关注的是双重目标的两面风险。是时候调整政策了。我们的前进方向是明确的，降息的时机和速度将取决于即将到来的数据、不断变化的前景和风险的平衡。”

So the time has come. He is telling everyone, unambiguously, that he is going to be cutting rates at the next meeting and how much he is going to cut and to what extent it is going to be data dependent. Let's think about what brought him here. Now a couple years ago, inflation was very high but over the past few months has come down a lot. The Fed's favorite measure of inflation, PCE, is about 2.7%. So that's just a little bit above the Fed's target. The Chair Powell has been saying over the past few meetings that he wanted to have more confidence that inflation was getting to 2%. Today he said that he had that confidence. What he's thinking about right now though is not so much inflation, which he thinks is going to get to 2%. What he's thinking about is the labor market. Now the labor market, the unemployment rate was at multi-decade lows not too long ago but the unemployment rate has been teeing up steadily and is now around 4.3%. One of the notable quotes in this speech was that the Chair Powell felt that the labor market today was actually weaker than it was in 2019. So that is a clear signal that between his two mandates, full employment and priceability, he's becoming more concerned about full employment and so he's going to pivot.

好，时间到了。他明确告诉大家，在下次会议上他将降息，并说明了降多少以及在多大程度上依据数据来决定。让我们想想是什么把他带到这一步的。几年前，通货膨胀率非常高，但在过去几个月里已经大幅下降。美联储最喜欢的通胀指标——PCE（个人消费支出物价指数）现在大约是2.7%，只比美联储的目标高一点点。过去几次会议上，鲍威尔主席一直在说，他希望对通胀能达到2%更有信心。今天他说他已经有了这种信心。不过，他现在考虑的不只是通胀，他认为通胀会达到2%。他现在考虑的是就业市场。就业市场方面，失业率在不久前还处于几十年的低点，但现在已经稳步上升，约为4.3%。这次讲话中一个显著的观点是，鲍威尔主席认为当前的就业市场实际上比2019年要弱。所以这很明显地表明，在他的两个职责——充分就业和物价稳定之间，他越来越关注充分就业，因此他将转向这个方向。

Now the market of course has known this for some time. Well I'll say this. So there are different markets. You have equities, you have rates, you have commodities, you have FX. Every market has different people involved in it and so in the end they have different degrees of awareness of how the Fed works and how other regions work. Now the people who are most focused on the Fed are the short-term interest rate traders, stir traders for short. These guys, well the bets, basically what the Fed would do over the coming meetings.

当然，市场早就已经知道这一点了。我要说的是，不同的市场存在差异。你有股票市场、利率市场、大宗商品市场和外汇市场。每个市场都有不同的人参与其中，因此他们对美联储运作方式以及其他地区的运作方式的了解程度也各不相同。现在，对美联储最关注的人是短期利率交易员，简称 STIR 交易员。这些人主要是押注美联储在即将召开的会议上的决策。

So they're very attuned to how the Fed is thinking. Now heading into this meeting, the short-term interest rate futures were already pricing in cuts in September and about 100 basis points of cuts for the rest of the year. Now this speech did not have a big impact on them. They marginally priced in a little bit more cuts throughout the year but became more sure that we would get 25 basis points in September, some possibility of 50 basis points. The stir community of people like myself who have been telling you for some time that the Fed is going to cut in September, we already knew this.

所以，他们非常关注美联储的想法。现在在这次会议前，短期利率期货市场已经预示着9月份可能会降息，并且全年大约会有100个基点的降息。现在，这次讲话并没有对这个预期产生很大影响。他们略微增加了一些全年降息的预期，但更加确定9月份会有25个基点的降息，甚至有可能达到50个基点。像我这样的一群人一直在告诉大家，美联储将在9月份降息，我们早就知道这点了。

But it seems like the other markets were not as aware and so we had pretty notable moves in response to Jackson Hole. Equity markets obviously up a lot, equities like rate cuts. Notably though, the dollar sold off significantly. The thinking of course was that as the Fed lowers rates, interest rates are financials between the US and the rest of the world narrow and so the dollar sells off. Now it's unclear just how much rate cuts we will get throughout the year. I continue to think that we probably get 25 per meeting for 75 total but that's going to be completely data dependent.

但似乎其他市场并没有这么敏感，所以在杰克逊霍尔会议后出现了相当显著的波动。股市明显上涨了很多，因为股市喜欢降息。但尤为显著的是，美元大幅贬值。原因当然是，美联储降息后，美国与世界其他地方的利率差距缩小，导致美元走软。现在还不清楚今年我们会看到多少次降息。我仍然认为我们每次会议可能会降息25个基点，总计75个基点，但这将完全取决于数据。

Since the Fed has openly told us that they're more concerned about unemployment right now, the jobs market reports we get each month will be more important than the inflation reads. So all focus will be on the September jobs report number that we get the first week of September where if we have continuing rise in unemployment, I think we could very likely get 50 basis points in September. But if unemployment rate stays around 4.3% or even improves, which to note many people who watch this think that last month's rise in the unemployment rate was maybe a fluke.

由于美联储公开表示目前更关注失业问题，每个月发布的就业市场报告将比通胀数据更为重要。因此，所有的注意力都会集中在我们在九月第一周获得的九月就业报告上。如果失业率继续上升，我认为九月很可能会加息50个基点。但如果失业率保持在约4.3%或甚至有所改善，值得注意的是，许多关注这一数据的人认为上个月失业率的上升可能只是个偶发现象。

In any case, if unemployment rate stabilizes, I think we get 25 basis points and we'll just have to see. Honestly, I don't think the Fed knows they are really data dependent. Some other Fed speakers at Jackson Hole were articulating a framework of being steady and measured in their cuts. So that's really other Fed officials trying to lobby everyone else as to what the Fed will do. No one knows we'll have to wait for the data.

无论如何，如果失业率稳定下来，我认为我们会看到加息25个基点，但我们还需要拭目以待。说实话，我觉得美联储自己也不知道具体会怎样，因为他们真的依赖数据来做决定。在杰克逊霍尔的会议上，一些美联储官员提到了一个稳健和审慎降息的框架。所以，这实际上是其他美联储官员在试图游说其他人，说明美联储的可能行动。没有人知道确切的结果，我们只能等着看数据。

Okay, the second thing that I thought was really noteworthy the past week was just the relentless weakening of the US dollar. Now if you look at the US dollar index, zoom out a bit, you notice that we're coming basically to the lower ranges now about 100, which in the past has been support. Now looking deeper against dollar crosses, you can see EuroUSD basically surging going to the moon, dollar against pound also surging going to the moon. So there's been very strong selling of the dollar over the past few weeks. And I'm kind of stretching my head a little bit because when I look at typical indicators of currency strength, it doesn't stand out to me why the dollar would be selling off so much.

好的，上周让我印象深刻的第二件事就是美元的持续疲软。如果你看看美元指数，放大一点会注意到现在已经降到大约100的低位，以前这里是一个支撑位。再深入看美元兑其他货币的情况，会发现欧元兑美元基本在飙升，美元兑英镑也在飙升。因此，在过去几周里出现了非常强劲的美元抛售。我有点困惑，因为当我查看通常衡量货币强弱的指标时，没有明显的理由说明为什么美元会被如此大量抛售。

Now typically people think, well, currencies are determined by interest rate differentials. So let's look at the two year yields of say the US of Germany of the UK and see how things have been going. Well, obviously the US is cutting rates and so the two-year yield is lower than the overnight rate. But if you notice what other countries are doing, they're also cutting rates as well. So even though rates, we are in a rate cutting cycle in the US, so is everyone else. So the interest rate differentials when you look at two to the two-year segment, not really changing all that much doesn't seem that would justify the tremendous dollar weakness.

现在通常人们认为货币是由利率差异决定的。所以我们来看一下比如美国、德国和英国的两年期收益率，看看情况如何发展。很明显，美国在降息，因此两年期收益率低于隔夜利率。但如果你注意到其他国家在做什么，他们也在降息。因此，尽管我们在美国处于降息周期，但其他国家也是如此。所以，当你看两年期收益率的差异时，变化不是很大，这似乎不足以解释美元的显著疲软。

I think some people whisper that US inflation is coming down. So US's disinflation is more than other countries and maybe that plays into a role. But I'm not too sure if currencies trade on real rates rather than nominal rates. Other way people look at currencies is basically through economic growth. Oftentimes countries that have strong economic growth see their currencies appreciate as investors pour into the country to try to invest. Now when you look at economic growth comparing the US with other countries, it's really clear that the US is doing a lot better. In fact, many other countries, Eurozone in particular, have been doing very poorly.

我觉得有些人悄悄地说美国的通胀正在下降。因此，美国的通缩情况比其他国家更明显，这可能发挥了一定作用。不过，我不太确定货币是按照实际利率还是名义利率进行交易的。另一种看待货币的方式是通过经济增长。通常，经济增长强劲的国家，其货币会升值，因为投资者会涌入该国进行投资。现在，如果你比较美国与其他国家的经济增长，就会发现美国的表现要好得多。事实上，许多其他国家，特别是欧元区，表现得非常差劲。

So it's strange looking at growth rate differentials to ponder why the dollar would be selling off so much. It could simply be just momentum, a lot of CTA's, seeing that the dollar is weakening and piling in. But I think it's an interesting thing that stood out to me. Now if the dollar continues to sell off, I think this would be quite negative for all dollar assets. The reason being as we've discussed before and I've written about in my blog is that there are many, many foreign investors in US assets. US capital markets, the deepest in the world. US has a lot of really cool stuff like technology, AI, you don't really have any cutting edge AI stuff in other countries. So a lot of foreign investors have been pouring in and buying US assets. Now they can hedge their currency exposure, but FX edging has been pretty expensive the past few years. So these guys are likely unhedged. Now even though they're making money on their equities or their treasury investments, they're losing money on their currency investments. And they've been losing a lot because the dollar has been depreciating a lot. Now on the margins, I would imagine that this could cause some foreign investors because of course they're having losses to sell out of their US equities or other trajectories and go back home.

所以，看着增长率差异来思考为何美元会大幅贬值是有些奇怪的。贬值可能仅仅是因为动量因素，很多商品交易顾问（CTA）看到美元走弱就开始大量涌入。不过，我觉得这是一个有趣的现象。如果美元继续贬值，我认为这对所有美元资产都是相当负面的。原因正如我们之前讨论过的，我在博客中也写到过，很多外国投资者持有美国资产。美国资本市场是全球最深的，美国拥有很多厉害的技术，比如人工智能，其他国家真的没有这种尖端的AI技术。所以，很多外国投资者一直在涌入并购买美国资产。 他们可以对冲汇率风险，但过去几年，对冲成本非常高。所以这些人可能没有进行对冲。尽管他们在股票或国债投资上赚钱，但在外汇投资上却亏钱。由于美元贬值，他们亏损了很多。在边际上，我想这可能会导致一些外国投资者由于亏损而抛售他们的美国股票或其他资产，然后回到本国市场。

So that's really a blow up of the current carry trade that we saw similar to earlier in the month. So I think that's a notable risk right now if the dollar continues to depreciate and reason for caution. The US honestly is a huge, huge, huge source of destination for foreign investment. And so there's a lot of potential selling that could happen. All right, the last thing that I want to talk about is the ginormous ginormous downward revision in jobs created. So the way that the jobs data works for the US every month, as we all know, we have the non-form payroll support where the bank, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the BLS goes and they surveys a lot of 119,000 companies accounting for about a third of all the jobs in the US. Now they survey, they don't survey everyone, they take a survey just a third instead of everyone. Obviously it's a statistical sample and based on that survey of 119,000 employers, they come up with an estimate as to how many jobs were created or lost each month. Now obviously this is just a sample and every now and then you have to update the model to make sure that what you're sampling continues to be representative of the economy as a whole. Now these updates come in the form of these benchmark revisions where instead of sampling the 119,000 they take the time and go through the state level unemployment claims and survey like about 95% of all the jobs created of all the employers in the US to get a better sense as to what's happening in the labor market. Now we got this new benchmark revision last week and it shows that the non-form payroll report has been over-sating jobs created by about 800,000 and that's huge, right? So the labor market is not as strong as people thought that it was. Now people who study this seem to think that a big reason for the overstatement of jobs has been what's called the birth-death model. So again these government agencies are trying to estimate how many jobs are created each month. However they know that sometimes a company is just let's say you start a company this month and you hire people but there's a lag between when that new company shows up in the data and when they initially hired people. So to account for that lag they have something called the birth-death model which refers not to people but to firms, say the creation of firms and the death of firms. Now that model appears to have been over-estimating the amount of jobs created, that is to say the amount of new businesses created that are hiring people over the past year. And that model I think has been having trouble estimating it because during the pandemic we had kind of a surge of entrepreneurship where a lot of people created new businesses and now that surge in entrepreneurship probably peter down and so the model is having trouble adjusting to just what kind of the regime there is when it comes to the founding of new firms and so that resulted in a significant over-estimation of the jobs number.

所以说，这实际上是本月早些时候我们看到的当前套利交易的爆发。所以我认为这是一个显著的风险，如果美元继续贬值的话，我们需要保持警惕。美国坦白说是外国投资的巨大的目的地。因此，有很多可能的抛售可能发生。好，最后我想谈的是就业创造的巨大下修。我们都知道，美国每个月的就业数据是通过非农就业报告得出的，其中劳工统计局（BLS）调查了大约11.9万家公司，这些公司大约占美国所有工作岗位的三分之一。他们不是调查每个人，而是调查三分之一的公司。显然这是一个统计样本，基于对这11.9万家雇主的调查，他们每个月估算创造或损失了多少就业岗位。 显然，这只是一个样本，每隔一段时间需要更新模型，以确保你的抽样继续能够代表整体经济状况。这些更新以基准修订的形式出现，而不是抽样11.9万家公司，他们花时间在州级别的失业申请上进行调查，覆盖大约95%的所有就业岗位，以更好地了解劳动力市场的情况。上周我们得到了这个新的基准修订，显示非农就业报告对新增就业岗位的估计超出了大约80万，这是很大的一数目。也就是说，劳动力市场并不像人们认为的那样强劲。 研究这个问题的人似乎认为，造成就业岗位超估的一个重要原因是所谓的“出生-死亡模型”。这些政府机构试图估算每个月创造了多少就业岗位。然而，他们知道，有时候公司刚刚成立，比如说你这个月成立了一家公司并雇用人手，但从新公司出现在数据中到他们最初雇用员工之间存在一个滞后。为了弥补这种滞后，他们有了一个叫做“出生-死亡模型”的东西，这里指的不是人，而是公司，即公司的创建和倒闭。 这个模型似乎在过去一年中高估了创造的就业岗位数量，即新公司创建并雇用人员的数量。由于在疫情期间，我们有一个创业热潮，很多人创建了新公司，而现在这种创业热潮可能已经消退，这个模型在调整方面遇到了麻烦，以反映新的公司创建情况，这导致了就业数字的显著高估。

Now this could have played into some consideration when the Fed is thinking about whether or not the cut rates, the labor market is not as strong as it thought but to be clear Fed officials have been suspecting this already. From the Fed minutes we got the last week it said that many Fed officials were thinking that maybe the jobs number is overstated. So I'm not sure if this number had too big of an impact since they were already suspecting this.

现在，当美联储在考虑是否降息时，这可能会成为一些考虑因素。劳动力市场并不像他们之前认为的那样强劲，但需要明确的是，美联储官员们早已对此有所怀疑。从我们上周获得的美联储会议纪要中可以看出，很多美联储官员认为就业数据可能被高估了。所以我不确定这个数字是否有太大的影响，因为他们已经在怀疑这一点了。

Now many people have also been pondering whether or not the BLS is including hoots with the Biden administration and trying to pump up the chances of a Harris presidency. Now to be clear I have no idea but I'll make a couple observations. Now government obviously run by people and people obviously have their own personal views, their biases. Now we know for example that former president of the New York Fed Bill Dudley very very strongly had a preference against Trump and so far was writing op-eds recommending that the Fed conduct policy in a way to make sure that Trump was not elected in 2020. Is it the same in the BLS? I don't know. But usually though when you have these really really high stakes issues of course the presidency, the ultimate, ultimate prize there's a lot of interest involved and that oftentimes incentivizes people to act in certain ways. So it's possible I don't know.

现在，许多人也在思考一个问题：美国劳工统计局（BLS）是否在与拜登政府合作，试图提高哈里斯担任总统的几率。我要明确说明，我对此毫无头绪，但我会做出一些观察。政府显然是由人组成的，人们显然有自己的个人观点和偏见。举个例子，前纽约联储主席比尔·杜德利非常强烈地反对特朗普，并撰写了多篇专栏建议美联储制定政策，确保特朗普在2020年大选中落选。BLS是否也存在类似情况？我不知道。但是通常来说，当涉及到如此重大高风险的议题，例如总统大选——最终的大奖——会有很多利益相关方，这往往会激励人们以某种方式行事。所以，这种情况是可能的，但我不清楚。

Now the second thing that I would observe is that many people say that well let's say that the BLS was conspiring to pump up the economy. Why would they just recently announce right before November that they actually had to revise away 800,000 jobs right that doesn't make any sense. Now that's totally reasonable but I would point to the markets reaction to tell you why it would actually still make sense. Because the market did not care at all about the 800,000 down revision. The market only cares about what happens every month. So if you were to overstate the job numbers every month, the market would like that right. But let's see later on revise those jobs away. The market doesn't care and so from let's say from the market standpoint it would still make sense to overstate jobs only to revise them away simply because the market doesn't care about revisions. So again no idea if this is happening but just pointing out that it's possible.

现在我要说的第二件事是，许多人会说，如果假设美国劳工统计局（BLS）密谋夸大经济，那为什么他们会在11月前宣布实际上需要修正减少80万个就业岗位，这不是自相矛盾吗？这听起来确实合理，但我会用市场的反应来解释为什么这依然有可能成立。因为市场根本不在意这80万个岗位的下调修正，市场只关心每个月的数据。因此，如果每个月都夸大就业数据，市场会喜欢，但如果后来再修正这些数据，市场也不在意。从市场的角度来看，只要市场不关心修正，夸大然后再修正就业数据依然是有意义的。所以，我并不是说这确实正在发生，只是指出这种可能性存在。

Alright so that's all I've prepared for today. Thanks so much for tuning in. Remember to like and subscribe and if you're interested in my thoughts check out my blog at FedGuy.com or if you're interested in learning more about markets check out my online courses at centralbanking101.com. Talk to you all next week.

好的，这就是我今天准备的所有内容。非常感谢大家的收看。别忘了点赞和订阅哦。如果你对我的想法感兴趣，可以查看我的博客 FedGuy.com；或者如果你想了解更多关于市场的信息，可以看看我在 centralbanking101.com 上的在线课程。下周再跟大家见面。