So the headline act the past week was obviously the Jay Powell show. We've already discussed that. So now we're going to talk about three other things that happened this week.
上周的焦点当然是杰伊·鲍威尔秀。我们已经讨论过了。现在我们要谈谈本周发生的其他三件事。
First, let's talk about how a quote unquote Fed pivot is filtering through the markets and how it might impact the real economy.
Secondly, now Jay Powell was without doubt the headline act this past week, but he wasn't the only one. We also got meetings from the ECB and the Bank of England. And it seems like everyone in the world is out hawking the Fed. Let's see what the other central banks said.
And lastly, we got some new research from the Fed about excess savings. Now, many people have been pointing out that there might be some quote unquote excess pandemic era savings that have been supporting consumer spending. Let's talk about that concept, what the work says, and why I think the excess savings concept is complete nonsense.
Okay, starting with the markets. So heading into the Fed meeting, the markets were pricing in about four rate cuts next year after the beating the market is pricing in about six rate cuts next year.
Now, the way that the Fed influences markets is of course through interest rate policy. The Fed can adjust the overnight rate up or down. And of course, it can also use its balance sheet.
Now, a lot of times though, the market listened to the Fed and comes to its own conclusions. But of course, the core nexus of course is through interest rates, since that's a tool that the Fed has most control over.
So to see the reaction in the markets from the Fed meeting, we've got to look at the bond market. Now, the 10 year yield absolutely crushed lower this past week, ending the week below 4%.
When we think about yields, we can break it down into two components. One of course is the markets expectation of the path of policy over the next say 10 years. The other is a premium the market is asking to hold 10 year treasuries.
Now, this crushed lower is basically entirely in the expected path of policy. Market is very aggressive in pricing in future rate cuts. And so the 10 year yield fail significantly, fail significantly. And this really surprised me. I was not expecting the market to be so aggressive. I was thinking that the 10 year yield had bottom, but it looks like the market had other ideas. Let's see how that plays out going forward.
Now, the Fed of course, most directly in plumes is interest rates, but interest rates bleed into other assets as well, most notably equity markets.
现在,美联储术语中最直接的是利率,但利率也会渗透到其他资产,尤其是股票市场。
Now, when we look at equities, well, of course, everything surged higher. The Dow Jones made an all time high NASDAQ made an all time high. And it looks like the S&P 500 is not far behind.
You can think of this through a couple lenses. You can be a traditional CFA guy and say, well, interest rates were lower. Thus, when you discount earnings with a lower discount rate, you obviously get end up with a higher net present value. And so equities are worth more.
Or you can simply say that there is some kind of asset allocation thing going on. A lot of people are looking at bonds. Well, bonds below 4%, not as attractive. Let me buy more stock. Or maybe I have a 60 40 portfolio. My bonds appreciate it significantly. So I'm going to rebalance and buy some equities.
Now, the financial markets aspect of a dovish Fed is pretty easy. Let's talk about how this might feed into the real economy.
现在,美联储持鸽派立场对金融市场的影响相当容易理解。现在让我们来探讨一下这可能如何影响实体经济。
Now interest rates impact the real economy in an uneven way. Now, just think about what happened the past two years. Interest rates went up significantly, but at the same time, the economy continues to go above trend. Some sectors of the economy are sensitive to interest rates, and some are not. The ones that are sensitive are obviously those sectors that borrow a lot of money.
Now, what immediately comes to mind, of course, is housing. Now, when people buy a house, they usually take out a mortgage loan. The mortgage rates are high, and they reached as high as 8% recently. Well, people can't afford to borrow a lot of money, so they don't have as much purchasing power. There's less demand for housing.
Now, though, that interest rates have come lower, that could begin whole another story.
现在,尽管利率已经降低,但这可能开启另一个全新的故事了。
Now, historically speaking, mortgage rates are about, let's say, 2% spread to the 10-year treasury yield.
现在,从历史角度来看,按照我们可以说,抵押贷款利率大约比10年期国债收益率高2%。
Now that the 10-year is below 4%, we could see mortgage rates with a 5% handout in the coming weeks.
现在10年期美国国债收益率低于4%,我们可能会在未来几周看到提供5%的按揭贷款利率。
And that might fundamentally change the game, because a lot of people have been on the sidelines wanting to buy a house, but not able to afford one with 8% mortgages, with a 5-handout that that could really, really reignite the housing market.
And if you take a look at home builder stocks, you can see that many people are anticipating this. An index of home builders looks like it's taking off to the moon.
Now, the strange thing that happened the past year is that even though mortgage rates have been high and housing transactions have been low, home prices have actually continued to increase at a national level.
So, with mortgage rates coming down sharply, we could really see this take off.
所以,随着抵押贷款利率大幅下降,我们真的可能看到这个市场起飞。
Now, many people are looking at this, and some of them are quite skeptical.
现在,很多人都在关注这个问题,其中一些人持怀疑态度。
I've heard smart people say that, you know, maybe with mortgage rates are lower, this might actually be bad for home prices.
我听到聪明人说,也许房贷利率降低对房价来说可能是不利的。
Why? Well, because a lot of people who wanted to sell, because they want to move up, now they can finally sell.
为什么呢?好吧,因为很多想要卖房的人,因为他们想要升级,现在终于可以卖房了。
So, in fact, it will unlock a lot of supply, and this makes total sense.
事实上,这将会释放大量供应,而这完全是有道理的。
When people buy a home, sometimes they sell their current home, so that will increase supply.
当人们购买房屋时,有时会卖掉他们目前拥有的房屋,这会增加房屋供应量。
But I'm thinking this impact might not be as strong this time around, though, because many people, while they're locked in to a 3% or even 2.5% to 2.75% mortgage, when they buy a new home, they might not want to sell their old home, because that mortgage is so valuable.
So, for sure, some people will have to sell their home to get money to buy a new one, but I think a lot of people might want to just keep that old one and rent it out.
So, I think the impact of lower mortgage rates will be will increase demand more than supply.
因此,我认为较低的抵押贷款利率对需求的影响将大于对供应的影响。
And so, I think that still seems quite positive for home prices, and of course, you see that in the home builder stock as well.
所以,我认为房价仍然保持相当积极的趋势,当然,你也可以从房屋建筑商的股票中看到这一点。
Now, another really interesting sensitive segment of the economy is autos.
现在,经济中另一个非常有趣且敏感的部分是汽车行业。
A lot of people buy cars with auto loans.
许多人购买汽车时会选择使用汽车贷款。
Now, let's look at the stock of the one of the largest auto lenders, Ali Financial.
现在,让我们来看一下最大汽车贷款机构之一——蚂蚁金服的股票。
It looks like the home builder stock, right?
这看起来像是住宅建设商的股票,对吗?
It looks like it's going to the moon, because as rates come down, a lot of people will be able to now take out loans and buy cars again, and so that could be a boom for that sector.
And one final sector that I look at is people highly-levered companies.
还有一个我关注的最后一个行业是高杠杆公司。
Now, a good proxy of this is high yield spreads.
现在,一个很好的指标是高收益差价。
So, that's the spread you have to pay if you are a heavily indebted company with a low credit rating over Treasury securities.
那么,如果你是一个负债累累、信用评级较低且持有美国国债的公司,就必须支付这个利差。
And you can see from this graph that high yield spreads are basically plummeted after the Fed meeting.
你可以从这个图表看到,在联邦储备会议后,高收益差价基本上是暴跌的。
That's a market anticipating that as interest rates come lower, there's going to be less credit risk, because these companies are probably going to be able, well, at least with a higher probability, be able to handle their interest rate payments.
So, all in all, this is going to be a positive boost for the real economy, and it's going to push back against recession fears.
总而言之,这将对实体经济产生积极推动,并将抑制住衰退的担忧。
Again, recession is always coming.
再次强调,经济衰退总是在即。
That's just like death in taxes, but lowering interest rates, it seems, is going to push that further back.
这就像是死亡和税务一样不可避免,但降低利率似乎会进一步推迟这种情况的发生。
Okay, now let's talk about what else happened in the central baking world.
好的,现在让我们谈谈中央银行世界中发生的其他事情。
Again, as we all know, the Fed was perceived to be very dovish.
再次,众所周知,美联储被认为非常鸽派。
But what about the other central banks?
但是其他的中央银行呢?
We also got a meeting from the ECB.
我们还收到了欧洲央行的会议通知。
The second most important central bank in the world is the ECB going to be like the Fed and pull a dovish pivot.
世界上第二重要的中央银行是欧洲央行(ECB),它是否会像美联储一样开始实行鸽派政策转向呢?
Let's hear what Madame Lagarde has to say.
让我们听听拉加德女士有什么话要说。
We did not discuss rate cuts at all.
我们根本没有讨论降息的问题。
No discussion, no debate on this issue.
在这个问题上不讨论,不辩论。
Well, it looks like they're not thinking about rate cuts, and they shouldn't be, right?
嗯,看起来他们并没有考虑降息,而且他们也不应该考虑,对吧?
Their inflation is still above target, and as Madame Lagarde mentioned, they are, they wages still increase, and so maybe they're not where they want to be yet.
And they also made some very interesting remarks on the quantitative tightening program.
他们还对量化紧缩计划发表了一些非常有趣的言论。
They seem to be wanting to decouple their quantitative tightening program with their interest rate policy, which is also what the Fed seems to suggest as well, and which is what I will write about how the Fed's communications may have changed the QT timeline.
Now, in addition to the ECB, we also had a meeting from the Bank of England.
现在,除了欧洲央行外,我们还召开了英国银行的会议。
Is the Bank of England like the Fed going to dovishly pivot?
英格兰银行会像美联储一样去选择鸽派政策吗?
Well, they didn't have a press conference, so we didn't get a lot of color, but they did have a meeting and they did keep rates steady.
嗯,他们没有召开新闻发布会,所以我们没有得到太多细节,但他们确实举行了一次会议并保持了利率稳定。
In that meeting, though, there was a dissent.
在那次会议上,然而出现了异议。
It was a 6-3 decision.
这是一个6比3的决定。
Now, what do those three dissenters say?
现在,那三个持不同意见的人说了什么呢?
Did they want to have a dovish pivot, but just couldn't overpower everyone else?
他们想要采取鸽派的立场转变,但却无法压倒其他人吗?
Well, actually, it looks like those three people who dissented wanted to hike rates. So no, the Bank of England is definitely not thinking about cutting rates.
实际上,看起来那三位持不同意见的人想要提高利率。因此,不,英格兰银行绝对不在考虑降息。
We also had some commentary from the Bank of Canada. Is Governor McLem over there thinking about cutting rates? Well, let's listen to him. We were not taking further increases off the table. If we need to do them, we will. We haven't yet been discussing rate cuts. I expect what we will be discussing is more how long do we need to stay elevated? No, it looks like he's not going to do a dovish pivot either.
Now, this whole whole host of communication should not be surprising. Inflation continues to be above target for many of these guys, and so they want to hold rates constant. What's really the odd man out is the Fed, and that actually really surprised me. If you look at a chart of global growth, you notice that in the US, growth is strong. Whereas in the Eurozone and in Canada, growth is not that great and it looks like they're falling into recession. So if anyone should be thinking of maybe cutting rates and being a bit dovish, it's these other central banks. And in addition to that, a lot of these people, a lot of the people in those countries, they have floating grid mortgages and they're filling a lot of pain. But things did not turn out the way I expected. And so it looks like it's a Fed that's going to be dovish, and that has tremendous impacts on currencies.
Now, if you look at the US dollar index, you can see that, well, this past week, the dollars, the past few weeks, actually, the dollar has sold off aggressively, and you can see correspondingly commodities like gold have been getting a bid.
Now, to be clear, the Fed realized that the market is probably getting ahead of itself and sent out John Williams, president of the New York Fed, the third most important person in the Fed to come and do some damage control in an interview with CNBC, trying to walk back the dovish comments. But, you know, if you just take a look at that interview, it's about eight minutes. What seems obvious to me is that President Williams seemed a bit nervous and was very obviously trying to get the market to price out some rate cuts, but simply wasn't very successful. And if you listen, you'll see that, you know, the sky is basically a dov pretending to be a hawk. So the market just didn't believe that. And I don't think there's much the Fed can do to walk it back. So I think they'll probably continue to try, but I don't think the market is going to buy it. So it's going to be very interesting going forward.
Now, the last thing I want to talk about is quote unquote excess savings. So during the pandemic, of course, there was tremendous amounts of stimulus, and a lot of people continue to make money. But because they were locked in their homes, they were not able to spend that money. This was actually especially true for upper income people who tend to spend their income on travel experiences and restaurants. So all that was closed during the pandemic. And so what happened was that people were saving a lot more money than they usually did. This was what people think of as quote unquote excess savings.
Now, after the pandemic, when everyone was able to go out and shop, a lot of people were kind of surprised by how strong the economy was and continues to be. One way of trying to resolve that was to think about excess savings. The thinking was that, well, these guys, they saved up a lot of money during the pandemic. And so that extra savings can continue to fuel their consumption. But watch out, because once those excess savings are done, well, you know, that means that maybe the economy is going to take a downturn because people aren't going to be able to afford all that spending.
Now, the way you calculate excess savings is kind of more art than science. Some people calculated by, let's say, you know, historically, you're saving 6% of your income. So anything above that is excess savings. Some people calculated based upon a level will historically the economy is saving, let's say, $50 billion a month. But because anything below anything above that is excess savings. Now, there's a lot of ways to calculate this. And more importantly, what's the timeframe we use to calculate the baseline? Is that just the past few years or is it the past few decades and so forth? So people come up with very different excess savings calculations when they, depending on their methodology. But regardless of what you use, though, you can bet that you can see that excess savings is basically coming down. So does that mean that the consumer is running out of gas? Well, I don't actually think so, because I think that the whole idea is complete nonsense.
Now, let's think about it from a household perspective. Let's say you earn money and you spend money and the difference between the two, you save. But the stuff that you save, though, sometimes it's just left in your bank account. And so you can think of that as, you know, let's say I earned $1,000, spend $500, I $500 in the bank account. That's my savings.
But for most people, though, it's not just in a bank account. You use that $500 and you can buy stuff. Maybe you buy stock, maybe you buy crypto, maybe you save up and you buy that house that you always wanted. So when you're talking about savings, what you're really talking about is wealth. And wealth is a dynamic number. It changes.
Let's say the quote unquote excess pandemic savings was on a spent on crypto, which many people did. Well, crypto prices have tanked and then gone to the moon, whatever it was spent on stocks. Well, stock prices have gone to the moon. So when you're talking about excess wealth, quote unquote, that's actually gone up significantly. Now, recent Fed data shows that as of the third quarter of this year, wealth was, you know, wealth was around all time highs. But since then, as we can see, stock market has gone higher. Bonds have appreciated and home prices continue to go higher. That means that people continue to have more and more wealth.
So that wealth can continue to fuel spending. You can think of it as a boomer, you know, sitting on a million dollar house somewhere. Maybe he downsizes by the smaller house and then uses the rest of the money to go on cruises and so forth. Or you can think about a crypto bro, bought Bitcoin now, Bitcoin went up a lot. He has a lot more wealth he can spend. So that excess savings idea, I think it is not useful. You really got to think about wealth.
Now, to be clear, there's a huge distribution, the show impact of this. Few people hold a lot of wealth, but you also have to note that a lot of the wealth appreciation is in housing and 60% of the people in the West own homes. And that's going to affect their spending patterns as well. So I think that the wealth effect is broader now and it's much more useful to think about excess wealth than it is excess savings.
And I think with wealth high and jobs, job growth, excuse me, unemployment low and wages growth high, we could actually still continue to see the US economy chug along.
我认为,随着财富的增加和就业机会的增长,失业率的下降和工资的增长,美国经济实际上仍能够持续发展。
All right, so that's all I prepared for this week. Thanks so much for tuning in. And of course, if you are interested in my latest thoughts, check me out at FedGuy.com. Or you can check out my courses at centralbanking101.com. Talk to you all soon.