Showing posts with label bubble. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bubble. Show all posts

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Marc Faber - Coming Next: Global Crash and U.S. Treasury Bubble Popping

Marc Faber is interviewed on Capital Account (Russia Today) by Lauren Lyster, where the talks about his views on US treasuries and capital markets, the Chinese economy and the consequences of a Chinese slowdown.


First, he explains that since 1981 were the yield was above 15%, US treasury have been in a bull market and is in bubble territory. But as with the Nasdaq in 1999, a bubble can continue inflation, and some friends of Marc Faber think 10 years trasuries will eventually yield less than 1%, and 30 years less than 2%. But his own view is that if yields increase again in markets such as the US and Japan, money will flow into equities, so he's not really worried if stock markets go down, even though he does not rule out a crash.

When asked about China, he basically says that Chinese government numbers are bogus, and when you look at Taiwan and South Korea, you'll find their exports to China are flat, and electricity consumption in China also show a weak picture of the Chinese economy.

Finally, he gives his outlook on what is happening now, and explains there is clearly a recession in Europe, the US is slowing down, but a China slowdown would be more important to the global economy, because it would have a strong impact on emerging economies. Currently Asia is certainly not in recession, but there is basically no growth.

Marc Faber appears in the first 10 minutes below, and the second part is about Libor with a zero hedge contributor.

Saturday, June 30, 2012

Marc Faber July 2012 Market Commentary

Marc Faber has just released the July 2012 market commentary on the gloomboomdoom.com website.

This month report is entitled "We are most deeply asleep at the Switch when we believe to control all Switches" where he discusses investors overconfidence both on the long and short side, and the lack of diversification that may result due to this overconfidence.

He explains that investors should consider carefully that win/win transactions are far less common than win/lose transactions, and usually, either the buyer or the seller makes a big mistake. In order to be successful, you have to make sure that you do not make that big mistake.

There is just one attachment to this monthly market commentary (MMC):
  • “Money Illusion and Why the ‘Bond Bubble’ Must Burst.” by Michael A. Gayed,Chief Investment Strategist at Pension Partners, LLC
The report is no available publicly, but Gayed regularly contributes to Marc Faber MMC, and it's not the first time he talks about a "Bond Bubble". His investment outlook is that stocks are going to vastly outperform bonds, at least in real terms.

If you want to receive the Monthly Market Commentary (MMC) by Marc Faber, it is available for 300 USD per year.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Peter Schiff: Buying Treasuries is Like Buying Facebook

Peter Schiff is interviewed on Fox Business News on the 4th of June 2012.

He explains that the next recession (which is coming soon) will be worse than 2008. and the Federal Reserve will have to come up with QE 3 and eventually QE 4.
Interest rates are now too low, and they should be decide by the market instead of the FOMC.
He also compares current US Treasuries massive buys to the frenzy during Facebook IPO, and eventually bond investors will suffer, just as Facebook IPO investors have.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Jim Rogers: The Next Recession (2013,2014) Will Be Much Worse

Jim rogers is interviewed on Business Insider by Henry Blodget on May 2, 2012.

He explains that because of the increase in debt, the next economic downturn will be much worse. We had a recession in 2002, then 2008 and the next one cannot be far away and should probably  occur in 2013 or 2014.

There is a lot of good news currently because we are in an election year and the government and the federal reserve are spending a lot of money, and the government statistics are massaged to make the economy look better than it really is. But in reality, the situation is getting worse, because the debt is getting much much worse.

Most people agree that the US is in relative decline against the rest of the world, but Jim Rogers also thinks the US in absolute decline as it is the larger debtor nation in history, and the country is over extended militarily over the world.

He concludes on a positive note by saying he's very bullish on agriculture in the US, and farm land is nowhere near a bubble yet.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Jeremy Grantham's Quarterly Newsletter April 2012 Summary

Jeremy Grantham, GMO, has just released its Quarterly Newsletter entitled "My Sister’s Pension Assets and Agency Problems (The Tension between Protecting Your Job or Your Clients’ Money)".

In this newsletter, he focus on how career risk for people working in the investment business affects the markets. The first priority for professional investors is to keep their job, and for that reason they usually go with the flow to avoid being wrong on their own and be able to use the all convenient "nobody saw it coming".  Career risk (which I discovered thanks to Jeremy Grantham) is what made me realize that as an individual investor, you could beat the market over the long term, as long as you are disciplined and patient.

Here are the key points brought forward by Jeremy Grantham:
  • Career risk is a main cause of volatility: two-thirds of the time annual GDP growth and annual change in the fair value of the market is within plus or minus a tiny 1% of its long-term trend, whereas the market’s actual price is within plus or minus 19% two-thirds of the time.
  • Ignoring long term trends may be the correct response on the part of most market players, for ignoring the volatile up-and-down market moves and attempting to focus on the slower
    burning long-term reality is simply too dangerous in career terms.
  • The quote “The market can stay irrational longer than the investor can stay solvent.”  can be expressed as “The market can stay irrational longer than the client can stay patient.”  for investment companies. GMO found that clients patience time has been around 3 years on average in normal conditions.
  • 3 conditions must be met to bet against market irrationality:
    • Allow a “margin of safety” and wait for a real outlier before you make a big bet
    • Stay reasonably diversified
    • Never use leverage
He admits that his sister portfolio (managed by himself) did better than his clients' portfolio, mainly because he has only had to consider absolute return without the investment constraints some investors impose and felt absolutely no career risk.

GMO tries to find the right balance between short term client expectations and long term prospects, but this is challenging as it appears they lost 40% of their clients when they stayed out of the 1999/2000 stock market bubble. But as they were proven right as time passed by, the company  eventually "attracted a flood of new business" in 2003 to 2006.

Before the 2008 crash, his sister portfolio had virtually 0% allocation in stocks, but GMO clients still had about 45%, again because of business risk. 

GMO now offers a "Benchmark-Free Allocation Strategy" which allowed great return during last decade and reflects little career or business risk. The strategy intended to protect capital first and yet still make good money by taking into account historical trends and valuations.

The second part of the newsletter "Force Fed" written by Ben Inker provides GMO's investment outlook and explains how the Federal reverse market manipulation makes it to invest.

Here are the key points I noted:
  • The Fed has engineered a situation in which the really unattractive asset classes are the ones we have always thought of as low risk: government bonds and cash. (etfideas: That's actually the main reason why I hate the fed)
  • Stocks are expensive relative to GMO estimate of long-term fair value, but so are bonds and cash.
  • Australian and New Zealand government bonds are the only bonds (unenthusiastically) liked by GMO because of decent real yield and government spending policies that are sustainable in the
    long run.
You can read the complete newsletter for free on GMO website.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Marc Faber: Inflation or Deflation ?

Marc Faber is interviewed by Lauren Lyster's Capital Account on Russia Today on the 3rd of April 2012.

Marc Faber says inflation in money and credit can cause bubbles, but it is hard to know where they are, and it is not easy to know where inflation is taking place. He also notes that governments hide inflation and much of that inflation goes into asset prices. We do not know exactly how much the Federal Reserve, the ECB, the BOJ, etc. are propping up the prices of stocks, commodities, etc. We can only estimate. The money printing and loose language of the central bankers and policy makers around the world certainly does distort the price mechanism, however, and Marc Faber is not optimistic about the ramifications of these actions.

He also mentioned the quadrillions in derivative, and that derivatives bubble will eventually collapse and lead to massive wealth destruction.

When asked to give advice to young people in their 20s and 30s, he referred to his generation and how it was easy to get a job at the time, but since the collapse of communism and the advance of the internet, 3 billion persons entered the world economy and western youngster have a lot of competition by young people living in developing economies, so he just think young people should lower their expectations and people in the western world should change their mentality and reject the nanny state.

 The interview starts at 3:18.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Peter Schiff: Ben Bernanke is Public Enemy No. 1

Peter Schiff is interviewed on CNBC Fast Money on the 26th of March 2012 and explains the Federal Reserve is now blowing a massive bubble in US treasury and government debt and once this pops (as interest rate must be increased due to inflation), banks will fail and the crisis will be worse than 2008/2009.

Friday, February 24, 2012

There is An Obvious Bubble in Gold (or Not?)

CrushTheStreet.com has interviewed pedestrians in California following the Gold Bubble talks and asked them if they purchased Gold in the last year(s).

There were too few people in this video to make it statistically relevant, but still, none of the persons interviewed purchased Gold, although some bought Gold stocks (which they already sold) and one bought Silver.

It's quite difficult to have a bubble when there are few buyers. In 2000, during the Nasdaq bubble, individual investors' behavior was much different. I remember Marc Faber saying that during a new year party in 1999/2000, a woman asked him what he would buy. He answered that he liked treasuries, and the woman replied that treasuries would only return around 6% per year, whereas she could get 10% to 20% day-trading on tech stocks.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Marc Faber February 2012 Market Commentary

Marc Faber has just released his February 2012 market commentary on the gloomboomdoom.com website.

This month report is entitled "In all Investments it is a healthy Thing Now and Then to Hang a Question Mark on the Ideas we Have long Taken for Granted", implying that we should always reconsider the things we think of as obvious truth.

There is 1 attachment with this monthly market commentary (MMC) :
  • "2012: A Year of Reflation and Bursting of the "Bond Bubble"" by Michael A. Gayed,Chief Investment Strategist at Pension Partners, LLC
Michael A. Gayed regularly posts articles on Seeking Alpha, I would not find recent articles related to the Bond Bubble, but he has some articles about the Reflation and the relation between treasuries and the US dollar in his "Winter Resolution of 2012" articles.

If I can find a summary, I'll post highlights of the Gloom Boom Doom market commentary a bit later.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Jim Chanos Says China Banks Deteriorating

Jim Chanos Interview on Bloomberg on the 11th of October 2011.

He's still bearish on Chinese banks even though the government has stepped up to buy Chinese banks shares.

He emphases that his company focuses on the property market in China and that this market has only started to decline.

In the second part of the interview, they discuss US politics: GOP debate, his support for Obama and income inequality in the US.

Finally, he talks about European banks and the need for recapitalization.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Jim Chanos: China Debt Worse than Europe Debt

James Chanos is interviewed by Bloomberg on the 20th of September at Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting.
During the first 3 minutes (up to 3:30), he talks about the European debt crisis and the shorting ban on European bank stocks. He says that regulators do not understand how markets work, as major short sellers are other financial institutions that edge their bets. If they can not meet those edging needs, they also run into troubles.

His view is that the austerity measures in Europe will lead to less growth, and that government spending in Europe is a larger part of GDP than in the USA (25% for the US vs. 35 to 50% for European countries).

Then they discuss about China in the middle of the interview (3:30 to about 9:40).
Chinese growth is beginning to sputter and property stocks and real estate developers are leading the declining. Sales of real estate are down 50% in major Chinese cities this year.

The Chinese government balance looks good on paper. But if we look at state enterprise (that are implicitly backed by the government), the debt to GDP ratio went from 100% to 200% that is the same or even worse than European countries, especially the PIIGS.

Jim Chanos explains that most people will be surprised (on the downside) by the Chinese growth by the end of this year and/or beginning of next year. He even quoted the CEO of Japanese company who said he had trouble getting paid for his escalators.

Even if the Chinese government tries to reign in the increase in debt, many real estate developers turn to the black market, and that experts expect 50% of new loans to go bad, that kind of issue could wipe out the Chinese GDP growth this year. A Chinese slowdown of that scale would negatively affect the global economy (remove 1% of global GDP growth).

In order to play the Chinese crash, Jim Chanos is short Chinese banks, Rel Estate developers, commodities and any company that sells to China. He is however long Macau casinos.

At the end of the interview, he gives his views on the US. He agrees with the Buffett rule as taxes are now a small part of the GDP and says he is still short healthcare stocks (as the US government needs to reign in Medicare costs) and Netflix (as the DVD business is dying).

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Marc Faber: Buy Stocks over Treasuries

Interview of Marc Faber on Bloomberg on the 19th of August 2011.

Dr Faber discusses whether the treasuries are in a bubble and when it could pop.

Marc Faber also explains that he believe the bear market has just started due to technicals, but if he was given no choice he would still buy stocks instead of long dated treasuries for the long term. He thinks it will be incredibly difficult to reach new highs above 1370 on the S&P.

Finally, he still expect gold to perform well in the long term (although it is above the trend line in the long term) and does not see a huge drop potential as with any drop of 150 dollars, there would be many dollars.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Jim Chanos and Mohamed El-Erian on China's Real Estate Bubble and Economy

Jim Chanos, a famous short seller, and Mohamed El-Erian from Pimco were interviewed on CNBC on the 14th of April 2011.

Firstly, Chanos was asked about shorting opportunities and he said he could find a few more opportunities in the U.S due to higher valuations notably in the alternative energy and healthcare sectors.

But most part of the interview was focus on China where both acknowledged the real estate bubble and that property prices started to move lower in China. Jim Chanos sees a hard landing and even compared China to the Soviet Union which had 6-8% growth rates for almost 40 years based on illusion. However, El-Erian rather sees China having a soft landing and dismissed the ideas of comparing China to the Soviet Union as China is "tested" daily by the markets.













Thursday, March 24, 2011

China's Ghost Cities and Malls

SBS Dateline has a very interesting documentary about the Chinese real estate, the ghost cities to several part of china, the in-famous Dongguan mall (largest in the world) which is virtually empty, the ridiculous price of real estate that can not be possibly purchased by working people, and is only used as a store of value for the rich.

There are currently 64 millions vacant apartments in China where 160 millions people could live (assuming 2.5 persons / flat). Jim Chanos also previously said there is enough planned commercial real estate to provide a cubicle for every Chinese citizen.




Since China's real estate is not highly leveraged (50% down-payment requirements), there may not be a large collapse as in the U.S.A, but it's quite possible the number of transactions decrease dramatically, as sellers don't want to sell at loss and buyers do not want to over pay.


How can we take advantage of the coming real estate bubble burst in China?
First, the timing is very uncertain, as the Chinese government may be able to keep the game going for quite a while, so we'd have to find a financial product that does not decay over time.

One of the best way to invest in this is to short commodities themselves, commodities producers stocks and country index heavily relying on commodities such as Australia or Canada.

For most investors (including myself), it's quite difficult (and not really recommended) to short stocks and commodities. However, there are some short ETF leveraged or not. Please bear in mind that some ETF are not well structured and may make you lose money even if the underlying decreases in value (more on that in another blog entry).

Here's some ETF ideas to take advantage of the burst of the real estate bubble in China (I have not studied those in details, they are just starting points):

* PowerShares DB Commodity Dble Short ETN (DEE) - To short commodities. (Warning !!! It's leveraged) - http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=dee
* ProShares UltraShort DJ-AIG Commodity ETF (CMD) - To short commodities. (Warning!!! it's leveraged) - http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CMD
* PowerShares DB Commodity Short ETN (DDP) - To short commodities - non leveraged -
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ddp

Usually for short ETF, I wait for a few years to have an history to see how well they track the underlying index, as some as just going to go to zero (by design or incompetence).

I could not find any ETF to short Australian and/or Canadian stock indices.