Markets Weekly March 22, 2025

Hello, my friends. Today is March 22nd, and this is Markets Weekly. So last week, the biggest event was Chair Powell, but other than that, markets were pretty range-bound. Overall, Major Equity Indexes had some volatility day-to-day, but didn't really change on a week-to-week basis, similarly for rates, similarly for basically everything. Oh, well, Gold did get a good bid on the back of geopolitical tensions, but did give some of that back on Friday. And also, it was a pleasure to see some of you at the Digital Asset Summit. Thanks for tuning in.

你好，朋友们。今天是3月22日，欢迎来到《每周市场概览》。上周最大的事件就是鲍威尔主席的发言，不过除此之外，市场整体上变化不大。主要股票指数每天都有些波动，但从周到周来看并没有太大变化，利率也是如此，基本上其他方面也是如此。不过，由于地缘政治紧张局势，黄金的确获得了不错的买盘，但周五又回落了一些。另外，很高兴在数字资产峰会上见到你们中的一些人。感谢收听。

So today, let's talk about three things. First, let's talk a little bit more about inflation expectations, since that could potentially have some impact on the scope of monetary policy going forward. Secondly, let's talk a little bit about inflation in Japan, because honestly, it's kind of strange to see Japanese inflation actually higher than US inflation. And lastly, let's talk a little bit about some interesting work from the New York Fed about how consumers are prioritizing their debt repayments and why that suggests that housing doomers are going to be wrong.

今天，让我们来谈谈三件事。首先，我们稍微聊一下通胀预期，因为这可能会对未来的货币政策范围产生影响。其次，我们来谈谈日本的通胀，因为说实话，日本的通胀居然高于美国的通胀，这有点奇怪。最后，我们讨论一下纽约联储的一些有趣研究，这些研究表明消费者在优先偿还债务时的行为，以及这为何意味着对房地产市场持悲观态度的人可能会错。

OK, starting with inflation expectations. So there's been a lot of publicity about inflation expectations recently, because the University of Michigan survey is showing that consumer inflation expectations are surging. Now, this could matter to monetary policy, because if you go to economist school, they'll tell you that if consumer expectations are high, that suggests that going forward, we could actually have higher inflation. The reason being that if everyone expects prices to be higher next year or in the future than today, then they'll start buying stuff today. And that increase in demand will actually push prices higher.

好的，关于通胀预期。最近关于通胀预期有很多报道，因为密歇根大学的调查显示消费者的通胀预期正在飙升。这可能会影响货币政策，因为如果你接受过经济学教育，他们会告诉你，如果消费者的预期很高，这意味着未来我们可能会有更高的通胀。这是因为如果每个人都预期明年或未来的价格会高于今天，那么他们就会开始提前购买商品。这样的需求增加实际上会推动价格上升。

Now, this is a totally reasonable sounding theory, but like most economic theories, I don't think it's true. I mean, if you think back about, let's say, the past few years, during heading to COVID, for example, inflation expectations very well anchored. In fact, in the beginning of COVID, everyone was expecting massive deflation. OK, inflation expectations very low, anchored, and yet we had tremendous, generationally high inflation. OK, as CPI ticked up to multi-decade highs, consumer inflation expectations went through the roof. Everyone was thinking that, man, everything's going to fall apart when they have high inflation for a long period of time, but then inflation came down. Right? So you can just immediately see over the past few years this theory is just not true.

现在，这是一个听起来非常合理的理论，但就像大多数经济理论一样，我认为它不符合事实。我的意思是，如果你回想一下，比如说过去几年，在 COVID 来临时，通货膨胀预期非常稳定。实际上，在 COVID 刚开始时，每个人都预期会有大规模的通货紧缩。好吧，通货膨胀预期很低，很稳定，但我们却经历了剧烈的、创时代高的通货膨胀。好，当消费者物价指数（CPI）上升到几十年来的高点时，消费者的通货膨胀预期也大幅上升。每个人都以为，如果高通胀持续很长时间，一切都会崩溃，但随后通胀又下降了。对吧？所以你可以立即看到，在过去几年里，这个理论显然是不成立的。

But in any case, the central bankers being classically trained believe this to be true. And so if they see inflation expectations ticking higher, maybe the Fed won't have as much scope to cut rates to support the economy as we thought. Now, when you look closely at the University of Michigan inflation expectations, you'll notice that there is a huge partisan difference where Democrats are thinking that inflation is going to go out of control, whereas Republicans are honestly looking something close to 0.1% inflation, basically almost deflation. So there is that aspect there that we have to be mindful of.

无论如何，经过经典训练的中央银行家们相信这一观点。因此，如果他们观察到通胀预期上升，美联储可能没有我们想象的那样多余地来降息以支持经济。当你仔细查看密歇根大学的通胀预期时，会注意到有明显的党派差异：民主党人认为通胀将失控，而共和党人则预估通胀接近0.1%，基本上是接近通缩的水平。因此，这也是我们需要关注的一个方面。

But Chair Powell, looking at this stuff, pushed back against it pretty strongly at his press conference. He's telling everyone that he's not too worried about these inflation expectations, because what he cares about is not shorter-dated inflation expectations. It's longer-dated. And by his measure, those inflation expectations are well anchored. So what is he actually looking at? So first off, let's look at the New York Fed's own survey of consumers' inflation expectations. And you can see that based on their own surveys, it seems to have ticked up just a little bit. But I would say that it's not that much.

但是鲍威尔主席在新闻发布会上对此进行了强烈反驳。他告诉大家，他对这些通胀预期并不太担心，因为他关注的不是短期的通胀预期，而是长期的。根据他的衡量标准，那些通胀预期是稳定的。那么，他到底在看什么呢？首先，让我们看看纽约联储对消费者通胀预期的调查。从他们的调查来看，通胀预期似乎略有上升。但我认为，这并没有太大变化。

And you can still say that inflation expectations, longer-term inflation expectations, are still pretty well anchored. Or at least you don't see that huge uptick you would see in the University of Michigan surveys. Now, looking beyond that, you can also look at market-based measures of inflation expectations. And that's largely through tips implied break events. Now, if you look at 10-year tips implied break events, you can see it doesn't seem to have really ticked up a bit. I mean, it doesn't really have to ticked up at all. I mean, it's very much range-bound.

你仍然可以说，长期的通胀预期还是相当稳定的。至少不像密歇根大学调查中显示的那样有巨大的增长。除此之外，你还可以关注基于市场的通胀预期指标，这主要通过通胀保值债券的隐含盈亏来体现。如果你查看10年期通胀保值债券的隐含盈亏，会发现它实际上并没有真正上升。换句话说，它基本上保持在一个稳定的范围内。

So looking at the New York Fed survey, looking at market pricing, the Fed is not concerned about inflation expectations becoming de-anchored. But let's look at some additional data that the New York Fed has also provided. So they've been doing some work, not just on consumers, but also on corporate business inflation expectations. And here you see a familiar pattern. So if you look at business inflation expectations, whether or not they're going to raise prices going forward, in the short term, yeah, you do see that businesses are thinking about raising prices a bit compared to the past. Nowhere as much as they did during the pandemic inflation surge. But yeah, you can see some uptick-insuredated business inflation expectations.

根据纽约联储的调查和市场定价来看，美联储并不担心通胀预期会脱离预期目标。但我们可以看看纽约联储提供的一些额外数据。他们不仅对消费者进行了研究，还关注了企业的通胀预期。在这方面，我们看到了一个熟悉的模式。具体来说，如果看企业的通胀预期，是否会在未来提价，短期内确实有迹象表明企业正在考虑提价，虽然没有像疫情通胀激增期间那么多。但确实可以看到企业的通胀预期有所上升。

But when you zoom out a bit and ask them about how they think about the future, you can see very clearly that the longer-dated inflation expectations for businesses really hasn't changed at all. So what we're seeing right now in the inflation expectations world seems to be two things. One is that there is a partisan divide. And secondly, the uptake in inflation expectations overall is mostly short-term and not long-term. And this kind of makes a lot of sense, because when you think about tariffs, because a lot of this is driven by perceptions of tariffs impacting the price level, let's say that you put it on a 10% tariff on something, yeah, the price of that could potentially go up a bit.

但是，当你放宽视角，询问他们对未来的看法时，你会非常清楚地发现，企业对长期通胀的预期实际上并没有改变。所以，目前我们在通胀预期方面看到的现象主要有两点：一是存在党派分歧，二是整体通胀预期的上升主要是短期的，而非长期的。这是有道理的，因为当你考虑关税时，会发现许多这种变化是由关税对价格水平的影响预期所驱动的。比方说，如果对某些商品征收10%的关税，那么这些商品的价格就可能会上涨一些。

But inflation is not the change in the price level, but the rate of change. So unless you think tariffs are going to continue to increase every year going forward, then you shouldn't expect tariffs to have an impact on the inflation rate. Just the one-time change in the level of prices. And surprisingly, well, to me at least, that it seems like the public broadly understands this, that maybe prices will go up a little bit this year. But beyond that, again, I don't think anyone is expecting tariffs to go up every year. Beyond that, there's not that much of an expectation. Now, given that, if the Fed were to see that the economy weakens going forward, they won't be constrained by inflation expectations and cutting, because they think that those, they are well anchored. So that's good news in case that we do have some hiccups in the economy.

通货膨胀不是指物价水平的变化，而是指变化的速度。因此，除非你认为关税每年都会持续上涨，否则你不应该期待关税对通货膨胀率产生影响。这只是一次性的物价水平变化。令人惊讶的是，至少对我来说，公众似乎普遍理解这一点，他们可能认为今年物价会略有上涨。但除此之外，我认为没有人预期关税会每年上涨。因此，除了这一点之外，并没有太多的预期。在这种情况下，如果美联储观察到经济在未来走弱，他们在降息时不会因为通胀预期而受到限制，因为他们认为这些预期是稳定的。这是个好消息，以防我们的经济出现一些波动。

All right, the second thing that I want to talk about is what's happening in Japan. Because what's happening in Japan is super, super interesting. CPI in Japan is actually higher than it is in the US. Now, this past week, we got the latest Japanese CPI data. And it retreated a little bit on a year of a year basis. But it was higher than expectations. And it's still, it's historically quite high for Japan. So at this time, the market is actually pressing in. Well, many people are expecting more hikes from the Bank of Japan, even as the market is increasingly expecting cuts from the Fed.

好的，我想谈的第二件事是日本正在发生的事情。因为日本的情况非常有趣。在日本，CPI（消费者物价指数）实际上比美国还高。就在上周，我们得到了最新的日本CPI数据。虽然按年计算略有回落，但仍高于预期，而且对日本来说，历史上一直处于较高水平。因此，目前市场普遍认为日本央行将会继续加息，即使市场日益预期美联储可能降息。

Now, looking at some of the drivers of Japanese inflation, a big driver is labor. So wage increases in Japan have been coming in pretty hot. This survey from its largest labor union is showing that wages are increasing at about 5% year over year. Now, zooming out more on the macro level, one of the big competing theories about the world is that as you have demographic aging, is it inflationary or is it deflationary? Now, as I've discussed in the past, I have strongly believed in line with that really smart person from the UK that a population aging is actually inflationary.

现在来看一些推动日本通货膨胀的因素，其中一个重要因素是劳动力。日本的工资增长一直相当显著。根据日本最大工会的调查显示，工资每年大约增长5%。从宏观层面来看，关于世界经济有一种重要的对立理论，那就是人口老龄化到底是引发通货膨胀还是通货紧缩？正如我以前所讨论的，我一直坚定地相信，和那位来自英国的聪明人士观点一致，人口老龄化实际上是通货膨胀的原因。

Because at the end of the day, when the population ages, you have less labor supply. So thinking about retirees, when they retire, they stop working, but they don't stop consuming. Many of them, especially the boomers, grew up in a world where house prices went up, equity markets went up. So they have a lot of financial assets that they could rely on to continue to spend, go on cruises, restaurants, and so forth. But they don't work anymore so they don't produce. That means demand for goods and services in the world doesn't change that much, but the supply of goods and services declines.

因为最终，当人口老龄化时，劳动力供给会减少。考虑退休人员，当他们退休后，他们停止工作，但并没有停止消费。许多退休人员，尤其是婴儿潮一代，是在房价和股票市场上涨的年代成长起来的。所以他们有很多可以依靠的金融资产，能够继续消费，比如乘游轮、去餐厅等等。然而，他们不再工作，所以不再生产。这意味着世界对商品和服务的需求变化不大，但商品和服务的供给会减少。

And so as the population ages, labor becomes scarce, wages go up, and that can be inflationary. And that actually looks like it's playing out in Japan, and that could be a preview of what happens in places like Euroland or the US. Again, it can be short-circuited by immigration policies and so forth. It seems like they are trying to do that. But if they don't do that, and of course, immigration comes with all sorts of other social issues and political issues as well, but if they don't do that, it seems like labor costs will continue to rise as we see in Japan, which doesn't have a lot of migration.

随着人口老龄化，劳动力变得稀缺，工资上涨，这可能引发通货膨胀。这种情况已经在日本出现，并可能成为欧元区或美国等地区的预演。当然，移民政策等措施可以打破这一局面。他们似乎正在尝试这样做。但如果不采取这些措施——当然，移民也会带来各种社会和政治问题——那么在缺乏大量移民的情况下，劳动力成本似乎会继续上升，正如我们在日本看到的那样。

And that is actually showing that maybe an aging population is actually inflationary. OK. Now, as the market is looking at this, you have this really interesting divergence where two-year yields, again, short-dated yields are a better view of the expectation of monetary policy than long-dated yields. So you can see that the Japanese two-year staying pretty high, maybe going up a little bit the past week. But at the same time, the two-year yield in the US has been declining as US growth data and equity markets have been disappointing. Strangely enough, though, the Japanese yen hasn't really been super sensitive to this so far. Looks like it's around 150 right now, but it's been strengthening, and then now it's been weakening over the past couple of weeks. So that strikes me as something that is a anomaly.

这说明老龄化人口实际上可能会导致通货膨胀。好的。目前市场关注到一个有趣的分歧现象：两年期收益率，即短期收益率，比长期收益率更能反映对货币政策的预期。我们可以看到，日本的两年期收益率保持在较高水平，过去一周可能略有上升。但与此同时，由于美国的经济增长数据和股市表现不佳，美国的两年期收益率却在下降。奇怪的是，日元对这些变化的反应并不是很敏感。目前日元汇率大约在150左右，但最近几周先是走强，然后又开始走弱。这让我觉得这是一个异常现象。

And you would expect that as monetary policy diverges going forward, and again, as you all know, I expect the Fed to cut much more than the market is pricing in. I wonder if this currency could potentially be mispriced. OK. The last thing that I want to talk about is this really interesting work from the New York Fed about how so debt payment prioritization. So let's look at this chart that they have here. So what we think that we've noticed is that credit card delinquencies have been rising, rising a lot. But at the same time, mortgage delinquencies have been very low.

您可以预期，随着未来货币政策的分化，再加上正如大家所知，我预计美联储的降息幅度会比市场预期的更大。我在想，这是否可能导致某种货币被错误定价。好的，最后我想谈谈纽约联储的一项非常有趣的研究，即关于债务还款优先顺序的问题。让我们看一下他们的图表。我们注意到信用卡逾期率在不断上升，幅度很大。但与此同时，房贷的逾期率却一直很低。

So as a household gets squeezed, maybe someone loses their job, or maybe they're just falling on hard times, they got doged or something like that. They have limited resources and outstanding bills. What do households do when they are in this situation? It looks increasingly like they are lowering the priority and paying credit card bills and prioritizing things like autos and mortgages. And that could be part of the reason why we see credit card delinquencies rise. Now, the New York Fed is looking deeply into this data and trying to figure out why.

当一个家庭陷入困境时，比如有人失业了，或者他们遇到了其他麻烦，比如生病之类的，他们的资源有限，账单却在不断增加。那么在这种情况下，家庭会怎么做呢？看起来他们越来越倾向于降低信用卡账单的优先级，而更优先支付汽车贷款和房贷。这可能是信用卡违约率上升的一部分原因。现在，纽约联邦储备银行正在深入研究这些数据，试图找出原因。

Now, historically speaking, you would expect, in the US, at least, households to highly prioritize autos, actually, above all else. So I used to work in auto credit. And the thinking was that in the US, you really need a car. Everything is there’s no really good public transportation. So even if you wanted to buy groceries, or even if you wanted to drive, if you wanted to go interview for a job, you'd have to get into a car and drive. And at the end of the day, you can always sleep in your car. So it was always thought that people would always, always, no matter what, repay their auto loans.

从历史上看，至少在美国，人们通常会把汽车放在非常重要的位置，甚至优先于其他一切。我以前在汽车信贷行业工作。普遍认为，在美国，你真的需要一辆车。因为公共交通不是很好，所以即使你想去买日用品、面试工作，你都需要开车。而且，退一步说，你还可以在车里过夜。所以，一直以来，人们都认为无论如何他们都会优先偿还汽车贷款。

And that made auto credit a pretty good bet, usually. Now, it seems like over the past few months, people have still been paying down their autos, but increasingly prioritizing their mortgages. Now, this seems to be due to two things. First off, one of the things that the researchers found is that as house prices surged over the past few years, consumers have tremendous amounts of equity in their homes. And so they don't want to lose their homes.

这使得汽车信贷通常是一个相当不错的选择。而现在，过去几个月中，人们似乎仍在偿还汽车贷款，但越来越多地优先考虑按揭贷款。这似乎有两个原因。首先，研究人员发现，随着过去几年房价的飙升，消费者在房屋中积累了大量权益，因此他们不想失去自己的房子。

So let's say you bought a house a couple years ago, maybe you have 10, 20% equity in your house due to the COVID surge. So you don't want to lose that. So you've got to keep paying your bills. In contrast, during the great financial crisis, say in 2009, 2010, house prices absolutely imploded. And so for many households, the mortgage was actually worth more than the house. And so it made sense to just walk away. That's not the case here. And so everyone is paying down that mortgage to make sure that they can keep that equity.

假设你在几年前买了一套房子，由于新冠疫情期间房价上涨，你的房子现在有10%到20%的净值。因此，你不想失去这些净值，你必须继续还账单。相比之下，在金融危机期间，比如2009年和2010年，房价彻底崩盘，很多家庭的房贷甚至比房子的价值还高，所以选择放弃房子是合理的。但现在的情况不是这样。大家都在偿还房贷，以确保保住这些净值。

Secondly, and to support that, the researchers note that in zip codes where house prices have actually surged the most of the prioritization for mortgage payments has actually went up more than other jurisdictions. Now, in addition to that, there's also this mortgage locking effect. So if you got a mortgage the past few years in the early times of COVID, you're sitting at interest rates that could be generational lows, 3%, 2% and 1.5% mortgages.

其次，研究人员指出，在房价实际飙升最快的邮政编码区域，房贷支付的优先级实际上比其他地区更高。此外，还有所谓的“抵押锁定效应”。如果你在过去几年尤其是新冠疫情初期获得了房贷，利率可能是数十年来最低，只有3%、2%甚至1.5%。

And that is super, super valuable. And you don't want to give that up. So no matter what, you want to keep paying your mortgage so you can protect that really sweet mortgage rate. And maybe having a low mortgage rate also makes it easier to make those payments as well. So there is some evidence for that, but not as strong as the equity effect. So overall, what you're seeing is that a lot of people up and on the internet talking about the potential for mass foreclosures, big dooming in the housing crisis.

这非常非常有价值，你不想放弃它。所以无论如何，你都要继续支付房贷，以保护这个优惠的抵押贷款利率。而且，拥有较低的贷款利率可能也更容易让你按时还款。有一些证据支持这种观点，但不如股权效应那么强。因此，你会看到很多人在网上讨论可能出现的大规模房屋止赎和严重的住房危机。

But again, oftentimes the future does not look like the past. And given the path of the housing market the past few years, it looks like consumers are holding on to their homes at all costs. So there won't be any foreclosures. It won't be any mass foreclosure. And I think that this housing crisis that some people are talking about is just not going to happen.

但同样地，未来往往不会像过去那样。而且根据过去几年的房地产市场趋势，消费者似乎在不惜一切代价地保有他们的房子。因此，不会出现任何止赎的情况。不会有大规模的房屋被法拍。我认为一些人所说的房地产危机是不会发生的。

Yeah, something else could happen. But it looks like so far that the housing market seems pretty solid. All right, so that's all I prepared for today. Thanks so much for tuning in. And I'll talk to you all next week.

是的，可能会发生其他事情。但到目前为止，房地产市场看起来相当稳定。好的，这就是我今天准备的全部内容。非常感谢大家的收听。我们下周再聊。