Markets Weekly November 23, 2024

Hello my friends, today is November 23rd and this is Markets Weekly. So this past week was a pretty good weekend markets. We had a nice rally in the S&P 500 which is trading just a little bit below all time highs. I think we'll find out pretty soon if we make new all time highs. But today let's talk about three things. First, this past week the Fed released their latest financial stability report which is always a wealth of quote charts and information. Let's talk about some highlights.

你好，朋友们，今天是11月23日，这是《市场周报》。过去一周的市场表现相当不错。标准普尔500指数出现了不错的反弹，目前交易价格略低于历史高点。我认为我们很快就会知道是否能够创下新的历史高点。不过，今天我们要谈三件事。首先，过去一周美联储发布了最新的金融稳定报告，这份报告总是包含丰富的图表和信息。让我们来看看一些亮点。

Secondly, what caught my eye in markets the past week was of course Bitcoin, basically surging every single day and just knocking at that 100k key threshold. Let's talk about what's driving this rally. And lastly, the other price action that caught my eye was the Euro which looks like it's absolutely imploding trading below 1.05. Let's talk about some of the headwinds the Euro is facing.

其次，上周在市场中引起我注意的当然是比特币，它几乎每天都在猛涨，正逼近10万的大关。我们来说说是什么推动了这次涨势。最后，另一个引起我注意的价格变动是欧元，它似乎正在崩溃，交易价格已跌破1.05。我们来谈谈欧元面临的一些不利因素。

Okay, starting with the financial stability report. Now as many of you know, the Fed releases this report semiannually and it's basically their assessment of various corners in the financial system. So let's start with equities. Now when you look at equities there are various valuation metrics.

好的，我们先从金融稳定报告开始。很多人都知道，美联储每半年会发布这份报告，主要是他们对金融系统各个方面的评估。那么我们先来看股票市场。在股票市场中，有各种估值指标。

Some of the traditional ones are looking at it from a fundamental perspective, PE and stuff like that and others are looking at it from a relative perspective comparing say the earnings yield to treasury yields, something like the equity risk premium. Now the Fed staff does calculations using these metrics and suggests that equity evaluations are historically elevated. But also when you look at this chart you'll notice that sometimes things can get expensive, can become even more expensive and stay expensive for many years and things that are cheap can become cheaper and stay very, very cheap for many years. So when I look at these valuation metrics, it seems to me obviously not very helpful. But what I did think was super interesting in their every section was this chart about equity market liquidity.

一些传统的方法是从基本面角度来看，比如市盈率等，而其他方法则是从相对角度进行比较，比如将收益率与国债收益率对比，类似权益风险溢价之类的指标。美联储的工作人员利用这些指标进行计算并指出，股票估值历史上处于较高水平。但当你查看这张图表时，你会注意到，有时价格高的东西可以变得更高，并且可能会维持高价很多年，而便宜的东西可能会变得更便宜，并持续处于非常低的价格很多年。因此，当我查看这些估值指标时，显然觉得它们帮助不大。不过，我认为他们每部分中关于股票市场流动性的图表非常有趣。

Now they seem to be focusing on S&P 500 many futures, but they're suggesting that equity market liquidity is pretty poor. Again, this is a sign of fragility in the markets where let's see if we have a negative event, markets can go down quite a bit simply because with liquidity is poor, small amounts and volumes can have outsized price actions. But of course you can also look at this from another perspective, smaller amounts of buying could also have outsized upwards movement in price. So things like crash up, which I would say that we've been seeing over the past several months, every market is up significantly this past year, could also play out as well. Something to keep in mind as we move into the historically quite positive December month.

现在，他们似乎把注意力放在了标普500指数的期货上，但他们指出股市的流动性相当差。这再次显示了市场的脆弱性，当出现负面事件时，由于流动性不足，小额交易和成交量就会导致价格大幅波动。当然，从另一个角度来看，少量的买入也可能导致价格大幅上涨。因此出现"暴涨"的可能性也存在，我认为在过去几个月里，我们已经看到这种情况发生，因为今年每个市场的涨幅都很大。在我们即将进入历史上通常表现积极的12月份时，这一点值得注意。

Now moving to credit, now as we all know, credit spreads have been very, very tight. Now one interesting way that the Fed is looking at this is something they call the excess bond premium, which is to say they're decomposing credit spreads into more, I guess, more components. So for example, when you look at high yield credit spreads, high yield being anything that trades below investment grade, that could be WB, that could be single B, that could be single B minus and so forth. So even within these categories of investment grade or high yield, there are finer distinctions that they can make.

现在来谈谈信用，正如我们所知，信用利差一直非常紧张。美国联邦储备委员会（美联储）正在用一种有趣的方式观察这点，他们称之为超额债券溢价。这意味着他们将信用利差分解成更多的组成部分。比如，当你查看高收益信用利差时，这些高收益债券是指低于投资级的债券，例如WB、B级或B级减等等。因此，即使在投资级或高收益类别中，他们也能做出更精细的区分。

Now the Fed staff is trying to control for all these different distinctions, these characteristics, and they come out with a measure called excess bond premium, which is a bit more refined than credit spreads. And according to this, the excess bond premium is just around where it is historically. So maybe that tightness we see in credit spreads couldn't be simply about the composition of the underlying borrowers rather than say financial market exuberance, which, but of course it could be, I'm sure both play some role.

美联储的工作人员现在正在努力控制各种不同的差异和特征，并提出了一种叫做超额债券溢价的指标，这个指标比信用利差更为精细。根据这一指标，超额债券溢价目前大致处于其历史水平。因此，我们在信用利差中看到的紧缩可能不仅仅是由于借款人构成，而不是金融市场的亢奋。当然，这两者可能都起到了一定的作用。

One other thing that I thought was pretty interesting about credit markets was the interest covered ratio. Now the market has been taking out more and more Fed cuts. So interest rates have been rising the past few weeks. Now according to this chart, companies, even though interest rates remain elevated, are easily able to afford these higher interest rates, right?

关于信贷市场，我觉得另一个非常有趣的点是利息覆盖率。最近，市场预期美联储的降息措施有所减少，所以过去几周利率一直在上涨。不过，根据这张图表显示，即使利率保持较高水平，各家公司依然能够轻松应对这些更高的利率，对吧？

That's what interest covered ratio measures. Again, although interest rates are historically high, nominal GDP growth continues to be strong and there doesn't seem to be a recession at the moment. Moving on to real estate, the report suggests that as we all know, residential real estate seems to be very, very overvalued. Now, residential real estate prices continue to rise, but according to this valuation metric, where the Fed is looking at rental yields comparing them to interest rates, that residential real estate appears to be historically elevated in valuations.

这就是利息覆盖率所衡量的内容。尽管利率处于历史高位，但名义GDP增长依然强劲，目前看起来没有出现经济衰退的迹象。接下来是房地产，报告指出，正如我们所知，住宅房地产似乎被严重高估。现在，住宅房地产价格继续上涨，但根据美联储使用的这一估值指标，通过将租金收益与利率进行比较来看，住宅房地产的估值似乎处于历史高位。

But of course, this does not mean that we're going to crash or anything like that. There are also many structural forces as we all know that are involved. For example, if you look at home owner equity in the residential real estate market, basically everyone is sitting on tons of equity, right? Prices have gone straight up for the past few years, especially during the high inflation times. And so when everyone has positive equity and many people have mortgages that are, say, below 4%, then there's really no need for anyone to be forced a forced seller. And so that takes out a lot of tail risk. And there are many arguments that say that the US has underbuilt housing and so forth, which there are two sides to this, of course. But the bottom line is that the home prices continue to increase, even though mortgage rates are around 7%. One other thing that I'll mention in the report is about auto loan and credit card delinquencies. So even though, as we know, unemployment rates remain relatively low and GDP growth remains above trend, there have been increases in delinquencies in certain consumer loans. Now, auto loan delinquencies, credit card delinquencies have ticked up. They are, I guess, relatively elevated compared to the past 10 years, though have plateaued over the past couple months. And the report suggests that this is really driven by a narrow segment of consumers that are really struggling. The report suggests that most people are actually totally fine, but there is this segment that is not, and this seems to confirm the case-shaped recovery that many people talk about. Whereas, I guess, people who own assets have been riding the wave higher, but people who don't have assets have been really struggling. So let's see if this improves as the Fed potentially cuts rates in the coming months.

当然，这并不意味着我们会崩溃或发生类似的情况。正如我们所知，还有许多结构性因素在起作用。比如，如果你看看住宅房地产市场的房主权益，几乎每个人都拥有大量的权益，对吗？过去几年的价格上涨非常迅猛，尤其是在高通胀时期。因此，当每个人都拥有正权益，并且许多人的抵押贷款利率都在4%以下时，实际上没有人需要被迫出售房产，从而减少了很多尾部风险。此外，有很多论点认为美国住房供应不足，虽然这方面有不同的看法，但重要的是，即使抵押贷款利率约为7%，房价仍在继续上涨。 报告中还提到关于汽车贷款和信用卡违约的情况。虽然我们知道失业率保持在相对较低的水平，并且GDP增长高于趋势，但某些消费贷款的违约有所增加。目前，汽车贷款和信用卡违约率有所上升，与过去10年相比相对较高，不过在过去几个月有所稳定。报告表明，这实际上是由一小部分陷入困境的消费者所导致的。大多数人其实没有问题，但这一小部分人确实在挣扎，这似乎证实了许多人所说的“K型复苏”现象。也就是说，拥有资产的人一直在享受财富增长的好处，而没有资产的人则面临困境。让我们看看如果美联储在未来几个月可能降息的话，情况是否会有所改善。

Okay, the second thing that I want to talk about is, of course, Bitcoin. Now, just looking at that Bitcoin chart, that momentum is undeniable. It looks like a rocket ship going to the moon. Now, what is driving this? So I think there are three interesting developments that happened recently that is driving this upward surge in Bitcoin. One, of course, is the launch of options for Bitcoin ETFs. Now, not too long ago, it was permitted to have cash Bitcoin ETFs. That is to say, you put money into an ETF, and the ETF goes and buys Bitcoin in the spot market previously. The ETFs were buying Bitcoin futures. Now, now that we have these spot Bitcoin ETFs, the SEC is also allowing people to trade options on them. And as you guys know, when you have options, you can often have these frenzies where everyone goes and buys a whole bunch of co-options and maybe squeezes the asset higher. Now, looking at the options that are trading on these Bitcoin ETFs, it does seem to be largely call options. So that could be, of course, squeezing up the price of ETFs, maybe forcing that the ETFs to go by Bitcoin, which of course increases sentiment further. And looking at the inflows into these Bitcoin ETFs, they have been very positive over the past couple of weeks.

好的，我想讲的第二件事当然是比特币。看看比特币的走势图，那种势头无可否认。它看起来就像一艘飞船正在飞向月球。那么，是什么推动了这种上涨趋势呢？我认为最近发生了三个有趣的发展推动了比特币的上涨。首先，当然是比特币ETF的期权推出。之前不久，允许推出现金比特币ETF。这就是说，你把钱投入一个ETF，ETF就去现货市场购买比特币。以前，ETF是购买比特币期货。现在，有了这些现货比特币ETF，美国证券交易委员会（SEC）也允许人们对其进行期权交易。正如你们所知，一旦有了期权，通常会出现一阵狂热，大家纷纷去买入大量的看涨期权，这可能会把资产价格推得更高。看看这些比特币ETF上交易的期权，似乎主要是看涨期权。所以，这当然可能推高ETF的价格，迫使ETF去购买比特币，这进一步增强了市场情绪。看看最近几周注入这些比特币ETF的资金流入，非常积极。

Now, another interesting development is SEC Chair Gensler saying that he's going to step down and allowing Trump to appoint a new chair to the SEC. Now, many people in the crypto community perceive Chair Gensler as someone who was unfriendly to crypto. So on day one, I will fire Gary Gensler and appoint a new SEC chair. I didn't know it was that unpopular. Let me say it again. On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler. Gensler has described crypto as basically rife with all sorts of frauds and grifters, which to be clear, given what we know about things like FTX has truth to it. But in any case, the perception is that with a new Trump appointed SEC person there, the SEC will probably become more friendly towards crypto as an asset class. And that could of course prompt new inflows. In addition, there is discussion that there could be a role in the White House that is some kind of senior level of crypto advisor, a crypto czar or something like that, that could further have the link between the crypto community and the White House potentially having more positive encouraging policy again.

最近有一个有趣的消息：美国证券交易委员会（SEC）主席根斯勒（Gary Gensler）表示他将辞职，这使得特朗普有机会任命一位新的SEC主席。加密货币社区的很多人认为根斯勒对加密货币并不友好。因此，有人宣称一旦上任第一天就会解雇根斯勒，并指派新的主席。我对他有这么高的反对声浪感到意外，再强调一次，上任第一天就会解雇根斯勒。根斯勒曾形容加密货币行业充满各种欺诈和骗局，这在某种程度上是事实，比如FTX的案例。然而，人们普遍认为，如果由特朗普任命的新SEC主席上任，SEC可能会对加密货币作为一种资产类别表现得更加友好，这可能引发新的资金流入。此外，还有讨论称，白宫可能设置一个加密货币方面的高级顾问职位，类似“加密货币沙皇”的角色，这可能进一步增进加密货币社区与白宫之间的联系，并可能带来更加积极的政策推动。

Fundamentally, any asset class is about supply and demand. If you make the regulations more friendly, you're going to make it so people can more easily pour money into the asset class. And that is bullish for prices. And you can actually see this in an interesting announcement by Charles Swab. Swab of course is a very large retail oriented broker in the US. Now, Swab is suggesting that once the regulations are changed, they will allow people in the swap to trade spot Bitcoin on the swap platform. That is to say that anyone on the swap platform can log in and just click trade to buy Bitcoin. Again, making it easier for the public to buy Bitcoin. Don't have to go and I suppose create all these wallets and stuff like that. And with Swab being a big brokerage doing this, it's likely that other big and big brokers would also follow. So all in all, this whole past week, there's a lot of bullish news on the regulatory fraud for crypto. So seeing that surge in prices is not surprising. To be perfectly clear, I must emphasize that crypto assets, Bitcoin, these things are very, very high risk and I personally am a no-coiner.

从根本上说，任何资产类别都与供求有关。如果你让法规更友好，就会使人们更容易将资金投入这个资产类别。这对价格是利好的。你可以在Charles Schwab的一项有趣公告中看到这一点。Schwab是一家非常大的面向零售客户的美国经纪商。Schwab建议一旦法规改变，他们将允许客户在其平台上交易现货比特币。也就是说，Swap平台上的任何人都可以登录，点击交易来购买比特币。这样一来，公众购买比特币就更方便了，不再需要创建各种钱包之类的东西。鉴于Schwab作为一个大经纪商采取这种措施，很可能其他大型经纪商也会跟随。因此，过去一周，关于加密货币的监管有很多利好消息，因此看到价格上涨并不奇怪。需要明确的是，我必须强调，加密资产和比特币风险非常高，我个人不持有任何加密货币。

Okay, the last thing that I want to talk about is the euro. Now the euro, man, just had a really, really bad week looking at that chart. It looks like it looks like it's melting straight down and many people in the market expect the euro to reach parity with the dollar. Now, the most recent bout of weakness has been driven by a weaker than expected PMI data. PMIs are basically a survey where the surveyor asks a whole bunch of businesses in a euroland is business better or getting worse. So it's really, it's a diffusion survey. It just measures direction. Are things getting better, saying the same or getting worse? Now the PMIs for euroland were unexpectedly poor this past week as suggesting contraction. And that really, really hit the euro hard because if the economy is doing poorly, then that suggests that the ECB is probably going to cut rates. And if the ECB is going to cut rates, obviously that's a downward pressure on the currency. Now, if you look at the interest rate difference between the US two-year yield and the German bond two-year, two-year German bond, you notice a pretty notable divergence as the US economy has been stronger than expected and optimism overtakes US businesses. We have fewer and fewer cuts priced in. So the US two-year yield has actually been rising. And at the same time, the market is increasingly bidding on a jumbo 50 basis point cut by the ECB in December. And so the German two-year yields have been declining. So that divergence, interest rate divergence is winding. So really, really putting a lot of downward pressure on the euro.

好的，最后我想谈谈欧元。最近，欧元的表现非常糟糕，从图表上看，似乎在直线下滑。市场上很多人预计欧元将达到与美元的平价。最近欧元疲软主要是由于PMI数据低于预期造成的。PMI基本上是一种调查，由调查员询问欧元区的企业业务是好转还是恶化，这实际上是一种判断方向的调查，主要衡量情况是改善、持平还是变糟。而上周欧元区的PMI数据意外差，暗示经济萎缩，这对欧元造成了严重打击。因为如果经济表现不佳，就可能意味着欧洲央行（ECB）会降息，而降息通常会给货币带来下行压力。现在，如果你比较美国两年期国债收益率和德国两年期债券收益率，就会注意到一个相当明显的差异，因为美国经济表现超出预期，乐观情绪推动美国企业的增长，市场预期的降息次数越来越少，因此美国两年期收益率在上升。同时，市场对欧洲央行在12月大幅降息50个基点的预期增加，导致德国两年期收益率下降。因此，这种利率差异正在扩大，对欧元施加了很大的下行压力。

But in addition to these poor economic news, you have two other things that really have been weighing on the euro as well. And that is gas prices. Now gas prices in euro land has been rising. Now, they're not at emergency levels that we saw a couple years ago. But when you look at the gas reserves in euro, you'll notice that they're actually depleting at a faster than historic pace. Now Europe seems to be pretty cold right now. And so that's adding demands for heating.

除了这些不佳的经济消息之外，还有另外两件事情对欧元造成了压力。首先是天然气价格。现在，欧元区的天然气价格正在上涨，虽然还没有达到几年前那种紧急的水平，但如果你观察欧元区的天然气储备，会发现它们正在以比历史更快的速度减少。现在欧洲的天气似乎很冷，这也增加了对供暖的需求。

Now if we have an even colder winter, that can, of course, suggest even more demand for gas and gas prices could go even higher. And that raises costs for businesses, raises costs for consumers. That's all money that is basically being sucked out of the euro economy and sent to whoever is selling them gas. Again, that is a dampener on European growth. Now the third thing that seems to be weighing on the euro is geopolitical risk. So the past couple of weeks, we've seen some escalation on the war in Ukraine, President Biden or someone in the White House seems to have authorized that Ukraine can use certain U.S. missiles to strike within Russia.

如果我们遇到一个更加寒冷的冬季，这自然会导致对天然气的需求增加，天然气价格可能会进一步上涨。这会提高企业和消费者的成本，这些钱基本上是从欧洲经济中抽走，流向那些出售天然气的国家。这对欧洲的经济增长是一个抑制因素。现在，第三个影响欧元的因素似乎是地缘政治风险。过去几周，我们看到乌克兰战争有所升级，拜登总统或者白宫的某个人似乎已经授权乌克兰可以使用某些美国导弹对俄罗斯境内进行打击。

And recently the U.K. is also authorizing Ukraine to use certain British missiles to strike within Russia as well. Now Russia has been very clear that they perceive this to be a war as not so much between Ukraine and Russia, but a war between NATO and Russia. Of course, in order for Ukraine to use any of these missiles, they need the active cooperation and intelligence of NATO allies like the U.S. So for Russia to perceive that way, it is not unreasonable. Now this past week Russia did something new.

最近，英国也授权乌克兰使用某些英国导弹打击俄罗斯境内的目标。现在俄罗斯非常明确地表示，他们认为这场战争不仅仅是乌克兰与俄罗斯之间的冲突，而是北约与俄罗斯之间的战争。当然，为了使用这些导弹，乌克兰需要像美国这样的北约盟友的积极合作和情报支持。因此，俄罗斯这样认为并不无道理。在过去的一周，俄罗斯采取了新的行动。

They launched an experimental missile into Ukraine. There's a very interesting discussion between Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, former Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis and Professor Polstel of MIT, who was an expert on these ballistic missiles. And the professor notes that this is kind of a new weapon that cannot be intercepted by anti-missile defenses. It seems to be at very high speed. And what it does is it kind of, it's a big missile that basically launches several other smaller sub-monitions, so it's kind of like a missile that shoots out other smaller missiles.

他们向乌克兰发射了一枚试验性导弹。美国陆军中校丹尼尔·戴维斯（已退役）和麻省理工学院的弹道导弹专家波尔斯特教授之间有一个非常有趣的讨论。教授指出，这是一种新型武器，无法被反导防御系统拦截。它的特点是速度非常快。基本上，这是一枚大型导弹，可以释放出多个较小的子弹，因此可以说是“一枚发射其他更小导弹的导弹”。

And so it's basically impossible to intercept and it's also capable of having nuclear payloads. So what Russia is doing is basically suggesting to NATO that they have this weapon that could strike, you know, strike Berlin, strike Paris, strike London and warning them not to further escalate the conflict. Again this is a new development on the Ukraine war front and suggest heightened geopolitical risk. And so I think it's no surprise that let's say you have a lot of money in Euroland and there is some possibility of war.

因此，这基本上是不可能拦截的，而且它也能够携带核弹头。所以俄罗斯实际上是在向北约暗示，他们拥有这种可以打击柏林、巴黎、伦敦的武器，并警告他们不要进一步升级冲突。这是乌克兰战争前线的一个新进展，暗示着地缘政治风险的加剧。因此，我认为，如果你在欧元区有大量资金，并且战争有一定的可能性，这并不让人意外。

You would want to move some money out of, say Europe and maybe into a safer jurisdiction like the US. So you have all these really heavy whisks weighing down on the Euro and it looks like they are in a lot of trouble. So hopefully things will improve in the coming weeks as we get some new political direction. Okay, so that's all I prepared for this week. Thanks so much for tuning in. Remember to like and subscribe. And if you're interested in hearing more thoughts on markets, check out my blog, Fegai.com or my online courses on central banking 101.com.

您可能希望将一些资金从欧洲转移到像美国这样更安全的地区。目前看来，欧元正面临许多沉重的压力，情况似乎很糟糕。希望在接下来的几周里，随着一些新的政治动向，情况会有所改善。好了，这就是我本周准备的内容。非常感谢您的收听。记得点赞和订阅。如果您对市场有更多兴趣，可以访问我的博客Fegai.com，或者查看我在central banking 101.com上的在线课程。

Talk to you on. Well, actually next week is a holiday week in the US. It's usually very quiet. So we may not have an episode the next week unless something happens. But in any case, talk to you all soon.

和你们聊天。呃，其实下周是美国的假期周。通常会非常安静。所以我们下周可能不会有新的一集，除非有什么特殊情况。但不管怎样，很快再和大家聊。