Markets Weekly August 31, 2024

Hello my friends, today is August 31st and this is Markets Weekly. So finally August is drawing to a close and it's been an exciting month. Now remember not too long ago it seemed like the world was falling apart but today here we are spitting distances from all-time highs. Now whether or not this is a double talk or we're just going to blast through I think it's going to come down to the jobs market report this coming Friday. But until then let's talk about three things.

你好，朋友们，今天是8月31日，欢迎收听《每周市场》。八月终于接近尾声了，这个月真是充满了激情。不久前，还感觉整个世界好像要崩溃了，但今天我们离历史新高已经很接近了。现在，不管这是“双重谈话”还是我们会突破历史新高，我认为关键在于本周五即将发布的就业市场报告。但在此之前，让我们先聊聊三件事。

First let's talk about some of the important economic data we got the past week where it seems like overall the US economy continues to do well but there are some definite cracks. Secondly as we enter into September market participants over the past say hundred years have noticed that September tends to be a pretty bad month for stocks and for gold. So let's talk a little bit about seasonality. And lastly there's some really interesting research from the Fed just out the past week on the internationalization of the Chinese R&B where the R&B whereas far from being an international reserve currency is making definite strides towards that direction.

首先，让我们谈谈过去一周我们收到的一些重要经济数据，总的来看，美国经济表现良好，但也存在一些明显的问题。其次，步入九月，在过去大约一百年里，市场参与者注意到九月通常对股票和黄金来说是一个表现不太好的月份。所以，我们可以聊聊季节性因素。最后，美联储刚刚发布了一些关于人民币国际化的有趣研究，尽管人民币离成为国际储备货币还有一段距离，但在这方面已取得了明显进展。

Okay starting with the economic data. So last week I think the most important economic data was the GDP data where the second quarter GDP data was revised from 2.8% up to 3%. Now at the same time we also got consumer spending data that was better than expected and inflation data that was lower than expected. So the Fed's favorite measure of inflation core PCE printed out 2.6% where it's been for the past few months. 2.6% obviously just a little bit above their 2% target. Now the Atlanta Fed's GDP now has the website which takes into account all the latest economic data try to forecast what current quarter GDP is was revised higher from 2% to 2.5%.

好的，我们先从经济数据开始。上周，最重要的经济数据应该是GDP数据，第二季度的GDP数据从2.8%修正到3%。同时，我们还得到了一些消费者支出数据，这些数据好于预期，以及通胀数据，低于预期。美联储最喜欢的通胀指标核心PCE维持在2.6%，已经连续几个月保持在这个水平。2.6%显然稍高于他们2%的目标。现在，亚特兰大联储的GDP预测网站“GDPNow”根据所有最新的经济数据，将当前季度的GDP预测从2%上调到2.5%。

So looking across the totality of this macroeconomic data suggests that the US economy continues to do fine. Obviously if we're growing at 3.3.0% the past quarter we are not in a recession full stop and as inflation gradually comes down it looks like we're not in danger of a resurgence in inflation either at the moment. Of course things could change going forward but so far I think it's very clear that the US economy continues to be in a soft landing. But that's not the only interesting data that we got the past week.

综观这些宏观经济数据，可以看出美国经济表现良好。显然，如果上季度的经济增长达到3.3%，我们就不会陷入衰退。此外，随着通货膨胀逐渐回落，目前看起来也没有通货膨胀再次上升的风险。当然，未来情况可能会发生变化，但到目前为止，我认为很明显美国经济仍然在实现软着陆。不过，这并不是我们上周得到的唯一有趣的数据。

Now what caught my eye was the earnings report from Dollar General. Now Dollar General reported their earnings the past week and their stock totally imploded by about 30%. For those of you who aren't familiar with Dollar General they're basically a chain of discount grocery stores that serve let's say primarily rural areas in the US. Now the United States is a ginormous country and there are many say towns with only a few hundred people there. At those towns there's usually just one grocery store and it's usually the Dollar General or one of its competitors.

现在，引起我注意的是Dollar General的财报。上周，Dollar General公布了他们的财报后，他们的股票暴跌了大约30%。对于那些不熟悉Dollar General的人来说，他们基本上是一家折扣杂货店连锁，主要服务于美国的农村地区。美国是一个非常大的国家，有很多只有几百人的小镇。在这些小镇上，通常只有一家杂货店，通常是Dollar General或它的竞争对手。

So Dollar General is a good I guess a good inside good window into how the lower income consumers are doing. Now management of Dollar General at through their press release noted that they are observing that their clients are getting stretched. So it seems like even as the aggregate US economy continues to do well more and more people among the lower income segment are struggling. It may be over time that will gradually expand in effect consumers higher up in the construction as well. Now when we look at consumer sentiment data it looks like structurally speaking consumer sentiment basically it has been lower over the past few months than we would see in earlier years and also consumeristic feeling that it's more and more difficult to find a job.

所以，Dollar General（美元通超市）可以被认为是了解低收入消费者状况的一个好窗口。据了解，Dollar General 管理层在他们的新闻发布会上指出，他们的客户正面临越来越大的经济压力。这表明，即使美国整体经济表现良好，越来越多的低收入人群仍在苦苦挣扎。从长期来看，这种情况可能会逐渐影响到较高收入阶层。当我们查看消费者情绪数据时，可以发现，从结构上看，过去几个月的消费者情绪普遍低于往年水平，而且消费者普遍觉得找工作变得越来越困难。

Now this suggests that again as we all see the US economy well not intercession at the moment is definitely slowing and I think whether or not we actually do tip into recession is probably going to do come down to what happens in November where we have potentially huge policy shifts but heading into that there's going to be more uncertainty and people are probably going to cut back. So we're likely going to be in a slow patch for the coming months as I wrote about in my blog the past week. Okay the second thing that I want to talk about is seasonality.

这表明，就像我们所有人看到的那样，美国经济目前确实没有陷入衰退，但肯定在放缓。我认为是否真的会陷入衰退，可能要取决于11月会发生什么，那时可能会有巨大的政策变化。但在那之前，会有更多的不确定性，人们可能会减少消费。因此，未来几个月我们可能会进入一个缓慢的时期，就像我在过去一周的博客中写的那样。好了，第二件我想谈论的事情是季节性。

Now you know the funny thing is that the stock market actually has pretty predictable seasonality. For example the stock market tends to do very well in the beginning of the year. Now smart people like Jim Carzon have noted that you know this probably has to do with the fact that when asset managers come into the year they are flushed with assets new mandates and they have to put money to work. Now over the past say hundred years one of the things that we've reliably observed in the stock market is that September tends to be a pretty bad month. Now looking at this year to date returns over the past say almost hundred years you can see that soft market tends to go up go up go up earlier in the year and then when it comes to September and October tends to do pretty poorly.

现在你知道了一个有趣的事情，那就是股市实际上有相当可预测的季节性变化。比如说，股市在年初通常表现得很好。聪明的人，比如吉姆·卡尔森指出，这可能是因为资产管理人年初拥有大量新资金和新任务，他们需要将这些钱投入市场。而过去大约一百年的数据告诉我们，九月通常是一个表现不佳的月份。查看今年以来的回报率，过去近百年显示，股市在年初往往表现良好，但到了九月和十月，通常表现较差。

Now academics have also noticed this in the written papers on the seasonality aspect of the market not just in the US but looking across the world as well and the truth is no one really quite knows why we have this very obvious seasonality. Some people make hypotheses like for example a lot of market participants are away on vacation during summer as they come back in September they rebalanced their portfolios say maybe they want to do 60-40 and suddenly because the country market went up a lot they rebalanced by selling equities and buying more bonds or or something like that but basically as people come back to work maybe they they rebalanced their portfolio and that involved some selling.

如今，不仅在美国，世界各地的学者们也在研究市场季节性特征方面的论文，并注意到了这一现象。但实际上，没有人真正知道为什么会有这种明显的季节性。一些人提出了一些假设，例如，很多市场参与者在夏季外出度假，等到九月份回来后，他们会重新平衡他们的投资组合。比如，他们可能希望保持60-40的比例，但由于国家市场大幅上涨，他们会通过卖出股票、买入更多债券来重新平衡投资组合或类似的操作。总的来说，随着人们回到工作岗位，他们可能会重新平衡自己的投资组合，这其中可能涉及一些抛售。

Some people also think that you know a lot of funds have their fiscal year end in September and maybe at that time they have some withdrawals, redemptions from their investor base and so they have to sell stuff and meet redemptions but in any case this seasonality is something that is is reliably observed so September can be a bad month for stocks and it certainly has been the past few years but in addition to that though September seems to be a pretty bad month for gold now it looks like as Bloomberg is writing that September has been a curse for gold over the past few years where you see actually pretty sizable drops in the price of gold by a few percent now I think this is particularly interesting because gold as we are looking at this chart now really has been going up a lot this year and it looks like it's just at the cusp of new all-time highs similarly with the stock market so we're hitting into a time where we have bad seasonality and if this month is like the past months it could be bad news but remember seasonality also suggests that things will get better as we enter into the last month of the year the Santa rally so to speak but in any case it's worth watching.

有些人认为，许多基金的财年在9月份结束，可能在那时会有一些撤资或赎回需求，因此他们不得不卖出资产以满足这些赎回需求。不管怎样，这种季节性现象是可靠存在的，所以9月对股票市场来说可能是个糟糕的月份，过去几年来确实如此。不仅如此，9月对黄金来说似乎也是一个相当糟糕的月份。根据彭博社的报道，过去几年来在9月黄金的价格通常会有几个百分点的显著下跌。 我认为这特别有趣，因为今年以来，从我们现在看到的图表上显示，黄金价格一直在大幅上涨，似乎正处于创下历史新高的边缘。股票市场也是如此，所以我们正处在一个季节性差的时期。如果这个月像过去几个月一样，那可能是个坏消息。但请记住，季节性规律也表明，随着我们进入今年的最后一个月，即传统的“圣诞老人行情”（Santa Rally），情况会好转。所以无论如何，这一切都值得关注。

Okay the last thing that I want to talk about is this really interesting research done by the Fed where this person I professor Berschwitz is doing a pretty comprehensive overview of the state of the Chinese R&B now how do you evaluate whether or not a currency is becoming an international currency well there's you know there's not one rule but usually people think of it across a few dimensions they can look at the share of farm reserves this this currency share of farm reserves or how often it's used in international transactions often it's used in international debt markets or international banking and so forth so they came up with this index on the internationalization of a currency and they noticed that compared to the dollar the Chinese R&B is you know not an international currency however though it's very clear that the pace the trajectory is clearly moving in that direction

好的，我最后要谈的是美联储进行的一项非常有趣的研究，其中一位教授Berschwitz对中国人民币的现状进行了全面的概述。如何评估一种货币是否正在成为国际货币呢？其实并没有一个固定的标准，但通常人们会从几个方面来看，比如这货币在外汇储备中的占比，或在国际交易中的使用频率，或者在国际债务市场和国际银行业务中的使用情况等等。所以他们提出了一个货币国际化的指数，发现与美元相比，中国人民币还算不上是国际货币。然而，很明显的是，人民币的国际化进程正在不断加快，并朝着这个方向前进。

now when you look at the role of China's GDP let's say relative to the world you know this that the Chinese R&B as a percentage of let's say influence in the world is disproportionately weaker than China's GDP as a proportion of the world so it doesn't make sense for this to continue to increase now looking deeper the the research suggests that across a number of dimensions the Chinese R&B is is definitely improving and the Chinese government is making a concerted attempt to try to improve the internationalization of the R&B out of they're doing this in a few ways they're setting up clearing banks across in different countries in the US it's JP Morgan as well as one of the major Chinese state banks and the Chinese are also setting up actually R&B swap lines with many countries interestingly not with the US so in case of course anyone needs R&B they can draw on.

现在，当你看中国GDP在世界上的作用时，你会发现人民币在世界上的影响力相比中国的GDP比例来说是不成比例的。也就是说，人民币的国际影响力相对较弱，这种情况不该继续下去。深入研究表明，在多个方面，人民币确实在改善。中国政府正努力提升人民币的国际化。具体措施包括在不同国家设立清算银行，在美国是摩根大通以及一家主要的中国国有银行。中国还与许多国家建立了人民币互换额度，但有趣的是并没有与美国建立。这意味着在需要人民币的情况下，各国可以使用这些互换额度。

the R&B swap lines one interesting fact in the research is that basically when there's stress in the world people don't draw on their R&B swap lines what tends to happen actually is that countries who have very poor credit like Argentina draw on their R&B swap lines because they really need cash but you know that could change over time and so looking at looking deeper in this data you notice that now internationally global trade tends to be conducted in dollars but now Chinese exports they are increasingly being invoiced in R&B and that makes total sense of course if you are Chinese company and you're selling stuff I think it's reasonable to expect payment in your own currency so that is definitely increasing and you can see that overall over the past few years the share of farm reserves held in Chinese R&B is also still very low but the trend is higher and in addition to that when you look at the share of Chinese R&B used in ethics transactions it's gradually increasing and now is actually more than used more frequently than the Canadian dollar so this is painting a picture that the R&B is still you know very far from a reserve currency but they're making strategic steps to try to make its adoption increase

研究中的一个有趣事实是，当世界上出现压力时，人们通常不会动用他们的人民币互换额度。实际上，往往是那些信用极差的国家，比如阿根廷，会动用这些额度，因为他们真的需要现金。不过，这种情况可能随着时间的推移而改变。深入研究这些数据时，可以发现目前国际贸易通常使用美元进行结算，但现在中国的出口商品越来越多地以人民币计价。这完全符合逻辑，毕竟如果你是一家中国公司，卖东西时希望能以自己的货币收款是合乎情理的。因此，这种情况在不断增加。 此外，过去几年中，全球外汇储备中持有的人民币份额仍然很低，但呈上升趋势。而且，当你观察使用人民币进行外汇交易的比例时，会发现它正在逐渐增加，现在已超过加元的使用频率。总体来看，人民币离成为储备货币还有很长的路要走，但中国正在采取战略措施，努力提高人民币的国际采纳度。

now one major roadblock to the internationalization of the R&B is the capital account so China of course as we all know has a I guess managed currency where the R&B is allowed to appreciate or depreciate against the basket of currencies within a certain band now one way to implement this is to have capital controls where the government restricts how much money people can take out of the country now this has always been a sticking point for foreign investors because well let's say that you have a lot of R&B because you want to make R&B payments or maybe you want to invest in China well one day maybe it's how you run a fall of the government or maybe there's some serious stress in the markets maybe your account is limited where you can't withdraw money when you really need it this is a can to say gates and withdrawals from from an investor miss been fun say you put money investment fun but when you really need it suddenly because of gates you can't get your money back so capital controls are similar and obviously that's going to make international investors a bit more hesitant to invest invest in China

目前，推动人民币国际化的一个主要障碍是资本账户的问题。众所周知，中国实行的是一种管理汇率制度，人民币在一定范围内相对于一篮子货币可以升值或贬值。实现这一点的方法之一是实施资本管制，即政府限制人们可以带出国的资金量。这一直是外国投资者的一个难题。假设你有大量人民币，因为你想用人民币进行支付或投资中国。有一天，可能是因为你与政府发生了冲突，或者市场上出现了严重的压力，你的账户可能会被限制，导致你在最需要的时候无法提取资金。这就像投资基金中的“门和提款”问题：当你投入资金时，一切看起来很好，但当你真的需要用钱时，却发现由于“门限”的存在，你无法取回你的资金。资本管制类似，因此这势必会让国际投资者在投资中国时更加犹豫。

but that's something of course that can ultimately be changed in the future although that would require giving up power by the government which governments tend to not want to do all right so that's all I prepared for today thanks for much for tuning in and if you're interested in my thoughts remember to check out my blog at fat guy calm or if you're interested in learning more about markets check out my courses at central banking 101 calm talk to y'all next week

但这当然是未来可能会改变的事情，尽管这需要政府放弃权力，而政府通常不愿意这么做。好了，这就是我今天准备的全部内容。谢谢大家的收听，如果你对我的想法感兴趣，请访问我的博客 fat guy.com，或者如果你想了解更多关于市场的信息，请查看我的课程 central banking 101.com。下周见。