No one will win in the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Posted on March 28, 2022 by Gail Tverberg

Most people have a preconceived notion that there will be a clear winner and loser from any war. In their view, the world economy will go on, much as before, after the war is “won” by one side or the other. In my view, we are basically dealing with a no-win situation. No matter what the outcome, the world economy will be worse off after the fighting stops.

The problem the world economy is up against is the depletion of many kinds of resources simultaneously. This depletion is made worse by rising population, meaning that the resources available need to provide an adequate living for an increasing number of world inhabitants. Because of depletion, the world economy is reaching a point where it can no longer grow in the way it has in the past. Inflation, food shortages and rolling blackouts are likely to become increasing problems in many parts of the world. Eventually, the population is likely to fall.

We are living in a world that is beginning to behave like the players scrambling for seats in a game of musical chairs. In each round of a musical chairs game, one chair is removed from the circle. The players in the game must walk around the outside of the circle. When the music stops, all the players scramble for the remaining chairs. Someone gets left out.

Figure 1. Circle of chairs arranged for a game of musical chairs. Source

In this post, I will try to explain some of the issues.

[1] In a world with inadequate resources relative to population, conflicts are likely to become increasingly common.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is one example of a resource-associated conflict. The allies underlying the NATO organization have chosen to escalate the Russia-Ukraine conflict, in part, because the existence of the conflict helps to hide resource shortages and accompanying high prices that are already taking place. No matter how the war is stopped, the underlying resource shortage issue will continue to exist. Therefore, the conflict cannot end well.

If sanctions lead to less trade with Russia, (or even worse, less trade with Russia and China), the world economy will have an even greater problem with inadequate resources after the war is over. In fact, many parts of the current economic system are in danger of failing, primarily because depletion is leading to too little energy and other resources per capita. For example, the US dollar may lose its reserve currency status, the world debt bubble may pop, and globalization may take a major step backward.

[2] There is a huge resource depletion issue that authorities in many countries have known about for a very long time. The issue is so frightening that authorities have chosen not to explain it to the general population.

Mainstream media (MSM) practically never mentions that there is a major issue with resource depletion. Instead, MSM tells a narrative about “transitioning to a lower carbon economy,” without mentioning that this transition is out of necessity: The world is up against extraction limits for many kinds of resources. Besides oil, coal and natural gas, resources with limits include many other minerals, such as copper, lithium, and nickel. Other resources, including fresh water and minerals used for fertilizer are also only available in limited supply. MSM fails to tell us that there is no evidence that a transition to a low carbon economy can actually be made.

[3] The big depletion issue is affordability of end products made with high priced resources. The cost of extraction rises, but the ability of the world’s citizens to pay for end products made using these high-cost resources doesn’t rise. Commodity prices do not rise enough to cover the rising cost of extraction. When this affordability limit is hit, it is the resource extracting countries, such as Russia, that find themselves in a terrible situation with respect to the financial well-being of their populations.

The big issue that hits because of depletion is a price conflict. Businesses extracting resources need high prices so that they can reinvest in new mines, in ever more costly locations, but consumers cannot afford these high prices.

In a sense, the higher cost is because of “inefficiency.” As a result of depletion, it takes more hours of labor, more machine time, and a greater use of energy products to extract the same quantity of a given resource that was previously extracted elsewhere. Growing efficiency tends to help wages, but growing inefficiency tends to work the opposite way: Wages don’t rise, certainly not as rapidly as prices of end products.

As a result, commodity exporters, such as Russia, are caught in a bind: They cannot raise prices enough to make new investments profitable. The problem is that the world’s consumers cannot afford the resulting high prices of essentials such as food, electricity and transportation. Russia reports very high reserve amounts, especially for natural gas and coal. It is doubtful, however, that these reserves can actually be extracted. Over the long term, selling prices cannot be maintained at a sufficiently high level to cover the huge cost of extracting, transporting and refining these resources.

The success of a country’s economy can, in some sense, be measured by the country’s per capita GDP. Russia’s GDP per capita has tended to lag far behind that of the US (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Inflation-adjusted per capita GDP of the United States, Russia and Ukraine. Amounts are as provided by the World Bank, using Purchasing Power Parity GDP in 2017 International Dollars.

Russia’s inflation-adjusted GDP per capita fell after the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991. It was able to grow again, once oil prices began to rise in the early 2000s. Since 2013, Russia’s GDP per capita growth has again fallen behind that of the US, as increases in oil and other commodity prices again lagged the rising cost of production. Given these difficulties with depletion, Russia is becoming increasingly unwilling to ignore poor treatment it receives from Ukraine.

There may be another factor, as well, leading especially to the escalation of the conflict. The US seems to covet Russia’s resources. Some powers behind the throne seem to believe that Western forces supporting Ukraine can quickly win in this conflict. If such an early win occurs, the aim is for Western forces to step in and inexpensively ramp up Russian resource extraction, allowing the world a new source of cheap-to-produce fossil fuels and other minerals.

In this context, Russia launched an attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Ukraine has presented Russia with problems for many years. One issue has been transit fees for natural gas passing through the country; is Ukraine taking too much gas out? Another problem area has been the rise of the far-right Azov regiment. Russia has also expressed concern that NATO has been training soldiers within Ukraine, even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Russia doesn’t want military, trained by NATO, at its doorstep.

[4] World economic growth very much depends on growing energy consumption.

There are two ways of measuring world GDP. The standard one is with the production of each country measured in inflation-adjusted US$, with the changing relative value to the US$ considered. The other approach uses “Purchasing Power Parity” GDP. The latter is supposedly not affected by the changing level of the dollar, relative to other currencies. Inflation-Adjusted Purchasing Power Parity GDP is only available for 1990 and subsequent years. Figure 3 shows the high correlation between energy consumption and PPP GDP during the period from 1990 through 2020.

Figure 3. X,Y graph of world energy consumption for the period 1990 to 2020, based on energy data from BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy and world Purchasing Power Parity GDP in 2017 International Dollars, as published by the World Bank.

The reason for a strong association between GDP growth with energy consumption growth is a physics-based reason. Producing goods and providing services requires the “dissipation” of energy products because the laws of physics tell us that energy is required to move any object from one place to another, or to heat any object. In the latter case, it is the individual molecules within a substance that move faster and faster as they get hotter. The economy is a “dissipative structure” in physics terms because of the need for energy dissipation to provide the work needed to make the system operate.

Human beings are also dissipative structures. The energy that humans get comes from the dissipation of the energy found in foods of every kind. Food energy is commonly measured in Calories (technically, kilocalories).

[5] World economic growth also seems to depend on factors besides energy consumption.

The fitted equation on Figure 3 (the equation beginning with “y”) implies that GDP is rising much more rapidly than energy consumption, almost twice as rapidly. Over the entire 30-year period, the actual growth rate in energy consumption averages about 1.8% a year. If energy consumption growth had really been 1.8% per year, the fitted equation implies that growth in GDP would have greatly sped up over the period. (In fact, the growth rate in energy consumption was falling over the 30-year period, but GDP grew at closer to a constant rate. In terms of the fitted equation, these two conditions are equivalent.)

Figure 4. Calculated expected GDP growth rate if energy consumption grows at a constant 1.8% per year, based on the fitted equation shown in Figure 3.

How can GDP rise so much more rapidly than energy dissipation? There seem to be several ways such a higher rate of increase can occur, on a temporary basis:

[a] A worldwide trend toward an economy using more services. The production of services tends to require less energy consumption than the production of essential goods, such as food, water, housing and local transportation. As the world economy gets wealthier, it can afford to add more services, such as education, healthcare, and childcare.

[b] A worldwide trend toward more wage and wealth disparity. Such a trend tends to happen with more specialization and more globalization. Strangely enough, a trend to more wage disparity allows the world economy to continue to grow without adding a proportionately greater amount of energy consumption use because of the different spending patterns between low-paid workers and high-paid workers.

Analyzing the situation, the world is filled mostly with low-paid workers. To the extent that the pay of these low-paid workers can be squeezed down, it can prevent these workers from buying goods that tend to use relatively high amounts of energy products, such as automobiles, motorcycles and modern homes. At the same time, growing wage disparity allows the higher-paid workers to be paid more. These higher-paid workers tend to spend a disproportionate share of their income on services, such as education and healthcare, which tend to use less energy consumption.

Thus, greater wage disparity tends to shift spending away from goods and toward services. The main beneficiaries are the top 1% of workers (who buy mostly services, requiring little energy consumption), rather than the remaining 99% (who would really like goods such as a car and their own home, which require much more energy consumption).

[c] Improvements in technology. Improvements in technology are helpful in raising GDP because technological improvements tend to make finished goods and services more affordable. With greater affordability, more people can afford goods and services. This effect is favorable for allowing the economy, as measured by GDP, to grow more quickly than energy consumption.

There is a catch associated with using improved technology to make goods and services more affordable. Improved technology tends to increase wage disparity because it nearly always leads to owners and a few highly educated workers being paid more, while workers doing the more routine parts of processes are paid less. Thus, it tends to lead to the problem discussed above: [b] A trend toward wage and wealth disparity.

Also, with improved technology, available resources tend to be depleted more quickly than without improved technology. This happens because finished goods are less expensive, so more people can afford them. Once resources start getting exhausted, improved technology can’t fix the situation because resource extraction costs are likely to rise more rapidly than can be offset with the impact of new technology.

[d] A worldwide trend toward more debt at ever-lower interest rates.

We all know that the monthly payment required to purchase a car or home is lower if the interest rate on the debt used to finance the purchase is lower. Thus, falling interest rates can make paychecks go further. Both businesses and citizens can afford to purchase more goods and services using credit, so the overall level of debt tends to rise with falling interest rates.

If we are only considering the period from 1990 to the present, the trend is clearly toward lower interest rates. These lower interest rates are part of what is making the GDP growth higher than what would be expected if interest rates and debt levels remained constant.

Figure 5. 3-month and 10-year US Treasury interest rates through February 28, 2022. Chart by FRED of the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

[6] The world economy now seems to be reaching limits with respect to many of the variables allowing world economic growth to continue as it has in the past, as discussed in Sections [4] and [5], above.

Figure 6. World per capita GDP based on Purchasing Power Parity GDP in 2017 International Dollars calculated using World Bank data.

Figure 6 shows that there have been two major step-downs in world inflation-adjusted per capita PPP GDP. The first one occurred in the 2008-2009 period; the second one occurred in 2020. Figure 7 shows the sharp dips in energy consumption occurring in the same time periods.

Figure 7. World per capita energy based on data of BP’s 2021 Statistical Review of World Energy.

In 2021, energy prices started to rise rapidly when the world economy tried to reopen. This rapid rise in prices strongly suggests that energy extraction limits are being reached.

Another clue that energy production limits are being reached comes from the fact that the group of oil exporters, OPEC+, found that they couldn’t actually ramp up their oil production as quickly as they promised. Once oil production is cut back because of inadequate prices, it is hard to get production to rise again, even if prices temporarily rise because the many pieces of the chain supporting this extraction are broken. For example, trained workers leave and find jobs elsewhere, and contractors go out of business because of inadequate profits.

If we think about it, Items [5a], [5b], [5c] and [5d] are all reaching limits as well. Item [5d] is probably clearest: Interest rates can no longer be lowered. In fact, nearly everyone says that interest rates should now be raised because of the high inflation rates. If interest rates are raised, commodity prices, including prices for fossil fuels, will fall.

With lower fossil fuel prices, there will be pressure for oil, gas and coal producers to reduce their production, even from today’s lower levels. Because of the tight connection between energy and GDP, lower energy production will tend to push economies further toward contraction. Of course, this will make resource exporters, such as Russia, worse off.

As the world economy enters recession, we can expect that Item [5a], the shift from goods toward services, to turn around. People with barely enough money for necessities will reduce their use of services such as haircuts and music lessons. Item [5b], globalization and related wage disparity, is already under pressure. Countries are finding that with broken supply chains, more local production is needed. In the US, recent wage gains have tended to go to the lowest-paid workers. Item [5c], technology growth, cannot ramp up as resources needed from around the world are increasingly unavailable, due to broken supply chains and depletion.

[7] We are likely facing a collapsing world economy because of the limits being reached. Adding sanctions against Russia will further push the world economy in the direction of collapse.

Many sources report that Russian exports of wheat, aluminum, nickel, and fertilizers will be “temporarily” disrupted. A few sources note that Russia plays an important role in the processing of uranium fuel used in nuclear power plants. According to the Conversation:

Most of the 32 countries that use nuclear power rely on Russia for some part of their nuclear fuel supply chain.

We have become used to efficient air travel, but sanctions against Russia make this less possible, especially for flights to Southeast Asia. A Bloomberg article called Siberian detour requires airlines to retrace cold war era routes gives the example of direct flights from Finland to Southeast Asia being canceled because they have become too expensive and are too time-consuming with the required detours. It becomes necessary to fly indirect connecting routes if a person wants to travel. Many other routes have similar problems.

Figure 8. Source: Bloomberg, “Siberian detour requires airlines to retrace cold war era routes.”

US President Joseph Biden is warning that food shortages are likely in many parts of the world as a result of the sanctions placed against Russia.

According to a video shown on Zerohedge,

“It’sgoing to be real. The price of the sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia. It’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.”

If the world economy was doing well, and if Russia was a tiny part of the world economy, perhaps the sanctions could be tolerated by the world economy. As it is, the Russia-Ukraine conflict acts to hide the underlying resource shortage problem. This is possible because, with the conflict, the resource shortages can be described as “temporary” and “necessary” in the context of the terrible things the Russians are doing. The way the West frames the problem provides a scapegoat to deflect anger toward, but it doesn’t fix the problem.

Russia started out being very disadvantaged because commodity prices, in recent years, have not been rising high enough to ensure an adequate living for Russian citizens and high enough tax revenue for the Russian government. Adding sanctions against Russia will simply make Russia’s problems worse.

[8] There is little reason to believe that Russia will “give up” in response to sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries.

The attacks by Russia of Ukrainian sites seems to be occurring, for many related reasons. It can no longer tolerate being inadequately compensated for the resources it is extracting and selling to Ukraine and the rest of the world. It is tired of being “pushed around” by the rich economies, especially the United States, as NATO adds more countries. It is also tired of NATO training Ukrainian soldiers. Russia seems to have no plan to gain the entire territory of Ukraine; it is more of a temporary police action.

Russia’s underlying problem is that it can no longer produce commodities that the world wants as inexpensively as the world demands. Building all the infrastructure needed to extract and ship more fossil fuel resources would take more capital spending than Russia can afford. The selling price will never rise high enough to justify these investments, including the cost of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Russia has nothing to lose at this point. The current situation is not working; going back to it is no incentive for stopping the current conflict.

Russia is in some ways like a heavily armed, suicidal old man, who can no longer earn an adequate living. The economic system of Russia is no longer working as it should. Russia is incredibly well-armed. The situation reminds a person of the story of Samson, in his old age, taking down the temple of the Philistines and losing his own life at the same time. Russia has no reason to back down in response to sanctions.

Figure 9. Figure showing that Russia has a higher inventory nuclear warheads than the US. Figure by the Federation of American Scientists. Source

[9] Leaders of the world, including Joe Biden, appear to be oblivious to the situation we are facing.

Leaders of the world have created ridiculous narratives that overlook the critical role commodities play. They seem to believe that it is possible to cut off purchases from Russia with, at most, temporary harm to the rest of the world economy.

The history of the world shows that the populations of many civilizations have outgrown their resource bases and have collapsed. Physics points out that this outcome is almost inevitable because of the way the Universe is constructed. Everything is constantly evolving, even economies. The climate is constantly evolving, as are the species inhabiting the Earth.

Elected leaders need a story of everlasting growth that they can tell their citizens. They cannot even consider the physics-based way the world economy operates, and the resulting expected pattern of overshoot and collapse. Modelers of what are intended to be long-lasting structures cannot accept this outcome either.

Limits which are defined based on affordability of end products are incredibly difficult to model, so creative narratives have been developed suggesting that humans can move away from fossil fuels if they so desire. No one stops to think that economies cannot continue to exist using a much lower quantity of energy, any more than an adult human can get along on 500 calories a day. Both are dissipative structures; the ongoing energy requirement is built in. Factories close when electricity, diesel and other energy products are cut off.

[10] The sanctions and the Russia-Ukraine conflict cannot end well.

The world economy is already on the edge of collapse because of the resource limits it is hitting. Intentionally stopping Russia’s output of resources like fertilizer and processed uranium is certain to make the situation worse, not better. Once Russia’s output is stopped, it is likely to be impossible to restart Russia’s production at the same level. Trained workers who lose their jobs will likely find jobs elsewhere, for one thing. The shortfall in output will affect countries around the world.

The United States dollar is now the world’s reserve currency. The sanctions being applied indirectly encourage counties to use other currencies to work around the sanctions. There seems to be a substantial chance that the US economy will lose its role as the center of international trade. If such a change takes place, the US will no longer be able to import far more than it exports, year after year.

A major issue is the huge amount of debt most countries of the world have. With a rapidly slowing world economy, repaying debt with interest will become impossible. Debt defaults will further wreak havoc with the world economic system.

We don’t know the exact timing of how this will play out, but the situation does not look good.

The Dominance Of The U.S. Dollar Is Fading Right Before Our Eyes

by QTR’s Fringe Finance via Zerohedge.com

It was just a couple of weeks ago that I wrote an article arguing that the economic sanctions we have cast upon in Russia, due to its invasion of Ukraine, likely mark the beginning of a period where China and Russia would bifurcate the global monetary system, leading them to eventually challenge the U.S. dollar’s reserve status. 

Now, Saudi Arabia is joining the fray, further threatening to tip the balance of the global monetary scales that have kept the U.S. dollar afloat for decades.

The fact that predictions of a “new economy” and “new monetary system” only exist on fringe blogs like mine and haven’t gone mainstream given the current economic situation with Russia (even amidst our abuses of printing the dollar over the last several decades) is baffling to me.

As I noted to Andy Schectman in a recent podcast, our quality of life in the United States and our nation’s entire economy is an elephant balancing, on one leg, on the toothpick of the U.S. dollar’s reserve status.

Our quality of life relies solely in our unique ability to import the goods and services that we use and need on a daily basis, while exporting US dollars. We’ve been able to print trillions of U.S. dollars into existence over the last couple of years – monetary policy that is anything but sound, regardless of whether or not your currency has global reserve status – because of the luxuries afforded to us by the dollar’s global reserve status.

But this reserve status, and the $30 trillion in debt we have accrued and convinced ourselves we will never have to pay, quickly go from being long-term liabilities that we can theoretically ignore to current liabilities that we must address if the dollar is ever legitimately challenged.

Challenging the dollar’s reserve status would be an obvious and immediate catalyst that would flip everything we think we know about economics in our country on its head. Our monetary policy blind spots, that we have been willfully ignoring for decades, would instantly become leverage for the rest of the world.

The stage appears to remain set for this to happen. Globally, if you are an enemy of the United States, the situation hasn’t looked better to challenge the U.S. dollar, maybe ever, than it does now:

  • We have run up a mountain of debt and grossly expanded our money supply in an extremely short period of time
  • We are the most reliant we have ever been on other countries to import goods and services
  • We have a presidential administration that (1) doesn’t understand basic economics and (2) is limiting our nation’s ability to produce commodities, which act as a foundation for a country’s inherent wealth
  • We are about to enter into a economic recession
  • Inflation is setting records and is already bankrupting the middle and lower class of our nation, before even considering a potential challenge to the dollar

And while a week or two ago I was only worried about China and Russia, now that the world has been forced to pick economic sides, other nations are throwing their respective hats in the ring, too.

Saudi Arabia, which is a nation of major consequence economically due to its significant oil and gas reserves, has reportedly embraced the idea of accepting Yuan instead of dollars for Chinese oil sales.

Not unlike Russia and China’s plans to de-dollarize, that date back nearly a decade, the Saudis have been considering this idea for six years already. And not unlike Russia and China’s new economic tie-up, the catalyst for speeding up the process has been U.S. foreign policy:

Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia.

The talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom, the people said.

The consideration by Saudi Arabia is consequential.

It shows that other nations, when forced to choose sides between the U.S. and its foes, don’t feel obligated to commit to the U.S. dollar, further undermining the world’s perception about the dollar’s strength.

Not unlike Russia, Saudi Arabia is a country that, regardless of how much its currency may “devalue” versus a fiat basket of currencies, is still backed by finite resources.

This gives the country and its currency intrinsic strength. Russia seems to understand this. In fact, just this morning, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, likely alluding to this fact, said that economic sanctions against Russia make the country “stronger”.

Saudi Arabia is now another serious name on the list of contenders who have the currency bite to back up the economic rhetoric bark of challenging the dollar.

As The Wall Street Journal notes, the Saudis have “traded oil exclusively in dollars since 1974, in a deal with the Nixon administration that included security guarantees for the kingdom.”

The U.S. dollar’s ties to oil have been crucial in helping prop up the currency’s demand globally. These ties have also helped drum up the psychological buy-in necessary for the world to collectively accept that “the next guy” is going to want their U.S. dollars.

But given the alliance between Russia and China – and the newfound alliance between Saudi Arabia and China – it looks as though that confidence game might be coming to an end right before our very eyes.

In other words, the dollar could be fading from the global picture like Marty McFly’s brother from that family photo in Back to the Future.

We may not notice it right away…

…but eventually it’ll be clear.

Far be it for me too be a harbinger of too many uncomfortable predictions at once, butas I wrote last year, I also strongly believe that China will eventually back its forthcoming digital currency with gold to further strengthen its economic and monetary posture globally.

The contrast between a forthcoming divided global economy would be stark: nations like China and Russia seem genuinely interested in the idea of sound money backed by commodities, while the United States seems preoccupied with jargon filled academic circle jerks trying to convince ourselves that debt is money that “we owe to ourselves”, to quote Paul Krugman, and that money literally grows on trees.

If given the choice between the two ideologies, where do you think the world is going to wind up?

I’m not sure we’re ready to embrace the answer here in the United States, but we better get ready to.

Facts from the Week: March 6, 2022

Consumer

Costco – $COST

a quarter ago, I mentioned that we estimated, at that time, overall price inflation to have been in the 4.5% to 5% range. For the second quarter and talking with senior merchants, estimated overall price inflation was in the 6% range.

Our comp traffic and frequency for February was up 8% worldwide and 8.2% in the United States.

Rational Research @RationalResear$COST operating income up 35% year-over-year for the quarter ended 2/13/22. Not many retailers doing that. -February US comp ex gas/fx up 12.9% with traffic up 8% -Inflation estimate now 6%, up from 4.5% -Costco leasing 7 ocean vessels, up from 4 #winning @CJOppelMarch 3rd 20222 Retweets14 Likes

The Buckle – $BKE

TJ Maxx – $TJX

As for the first quarter, we are planning U.S. comp store sales to be up 1% to 3% over an outsized 17% U.S. open-only comp store sales increase last year. For the start of the first quarter, we are very pleased that our U.S. comp sales growth is strong as we are seeing excellent consumer demand for both our apparel and home categories.

Rent a Center – $RCII

“In the fourth quarter, the combined effect of significantly reduced government pandemic relief, decades-high rates of inflation, and supply chain disruptions impacted our target customers’ ability to access and afford durable goods, which negatively impacted our results. We anticipate these external headwinds will continue for the foreseeable future, resulting in year-over-year declines in revenue and earnings for 2022, on a pro forma basis, while free cash flow should increase for the year,” -CEO

Ruth’s Chris – $RUTH

  • Quarter to date through February 20, 2022, Company-owned comparable restaurant sales increased 4.3% compared to 2019.  

Big Lots – $BIG

clearly, in California, there’s a major crime epidemic going on, enforcement of penalties or shoplifting have been largely kind of abandoned there. And certainly, you’ve heard of other retailers essentially even closing stores because they can’t operate them viably. So we saw California spike pretty significantly. And relative to what we were seeing as late as June or July and our last round of physical inventories, there was a significant step up there.

Potbelly – $PBPB

Supply Chain

Expeditors – $EXPD

“Roughly two years of pandemic-induced disruption have led to unprecedented conditions throughout our industry, with little relief in sight. There is still too little international air capacity, as travellers have been kept from flying abroad; the ocean ports are too congested to accommodate many of the ships that need to load and unload their containers; and worker shortages are severely limiting overland capacity to support the freight that is able to arrive in port.

“We have worked our strong carrier relationships to secure as much capacity as we could get on behalf of all of the shippers looking for space during the quarter, but the severe imbalance between capacity and demand continues to heavily impact our industry. There is simply not enough carrier capacity in the air or on the oceans to accommodate the heavy demand for cargo space, particularly from China to the U.S., where historically high average buy and sell rates have been the most elevated.

“Despite the lack of space, we experienced record-high air tonnage in the fourth quarter, as we used more air charters than at any other time in our company’s history, even with extremely elevated rates. Ocean container volumes, by contrast, declined during the quarter, as we were somewhat limited in our ability to secure necessary capacity from ocean carriers, and hampered by the time and resources required to process shipments and meet sharply growing customer demand. -CEO

The Harpex – Harper Petersen

Source: Harper Petersen & Co

Housing

Home Depot – $HD

Now I’ll comment on our outlook for 2022. The broader housing environment continues to be supportive of home improvement. Demand for homes continues to be strong, and existing home inventory available for sale remains near record lows, resulting in support for continued home price appreciation. On average, homeowners’ balance sheets continue to strengthen as the aggregate value of U.S. home equity grew approximately 35% or $6.5 trillion since the first quarter of 2019. The housing stock continues to age, and customers tell us the demand for home improvement projects of all sizes is healthy.

Lowes – $LOW

Redfin – $RDFN

Home prices spiked to an all-time high of $363,975 as the market continued to heat up during the four-week period ending February 27. The median home-sale price was up 16% year over year, the biggest annual gain since August, and the typical home sold for 0.8% above list price, the largest premium since October. Intense competition among buyers driven by an extreme shortage of homes for sale is driving prices up unseasonably fast.

Mortgage Rates – Freddie Mac $FMCC

Toll Brothers – $TOL

Turning back to the demand side of the equation. The housing market and demand for our homes in particular is being propelled by strong demographics from both the millennial and boomer generations; a substantial imbalance between the tight supply of homes and continued pent-up demand; the wealth effect of rising existing home equity; migration trends and the greater appreciation for home. We believe these long-term tailwinds will continue to support demand for our homes well into the future.

We continue to see people move from states where home values, taxes and cost of living are higher to less expensive regions. This dynamic is spurring demand in markets across the country and particularly in the Sunbelt and Mountain states, where we have expanded in recent years. For these buyers, affordability is less of an issue.

We have also not seen an impact on demand from the recent increase in mortgage rates. I remind you that our customers are generally better insulated from affordability concerns compared to buyers in the entry-level market. Our buyers tend to have higher incomes and they benefited from multiple years of appreciation in their investment portfolios and their existing homes.

Also keep in mind that rates have no impact on monthly payments for about 15% to 20% of our customers, who pay all cash, and that another approximately 30% of our buyers borrow at jumbo rates, which are currently 0.625 point lower than conforming for our clients. And overall, our customers average less than 70% loan to value in their mortgages.

Q: And then I know you haven’t seen any impact on demand yet, but have any of those warning sign metrics started to weaken for you at all?

A: Very good question. The warning signs are web traffic, foot traffic. And right now, web traffic and foot traffic is up significantly.

Tempur Pedic – $TPX

In the first quarter, we have seen softness from the lower end consumer, which we believe is temporary. We believe we are maintaining labor and advertising expenses that would otherwise naturally flex with sales.

If you look at our Tempur flagship stores, they started off the first quarter solid. And then when you move into Presidents’ Day, I would call it strong with same-store sales so far in Presidents’ Day running over 20%. If you look at entry-level bedding, lower end customer, that’s been a challenge probably beginning in the fourth quarter. We continued into the first quarter.

Floor N Decor – $FND

From a macroeconomic perspective, we are planning on 2022 to be a good year. The secular demand in housing continues to exceed available supply, which has led to an acceleration in home price appreciation. We believe these factors, combined with record levels of homeowner equity and aging housing stock should further support home remodeling spending. In addition, we serve a higher-income consumer, and they have substantially higher wealth and home equity relative to pre-pandemic levels and there continues to be innovation in our category. With that said, we are monitoring factors such as today’s Russian invasion of Ukraine and other geopolitical events, rising interest in mortgage rates, modest decline in existing home sales, inflationary pressures impacting the consumer and uncertainties related to the pandemic.

We are planning on our comparable store sales growth of 10.5% to 13% driven by our business model, a good macroeconomic backdrop and raising retail prices throughout 2022 to offset the anticipated higher supply chain and vendor product costs, which is remarkable considering the [average] comp growth we had in fiscal 2021 as well as the second half of 2020.

Odds and Ends

Gas Prices

Energy spending as % of income

Source: Market Ear, US Bureau of Labor Stats

AAII Bull Bear

CNN Fear Greed

US Federal Reserve Balance Sheet

https://rationalresearch.substack.com/p/facts-from-the-week-march-6-2022?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyMjYzMTcwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0OTc4OTI4NCwiXyI6Ims4ZlpuIiwiaWF0IjoxNjQ2NTg3NjA2LCJleHAiOjE2NDY1OTEyMDYsImlzcyI6InB1Yi01NDAwMiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.az3VLMAFX4eqMZi8GxG4ozzcRMbUUxlJpVD47T8bhI8&s=r

OUR WORLD THIS WEEK- Capitalist exploits

The pundits are rushing to tell us that the way to stop Russia’s aggression is by hitting the Russkies where it hurts (i.e. their oil and gas).

Our view is that any sort of blockade of Russia’s exports will only lead to an inflationary super storm.

Now, before you accuse us of peddling “pro-Russia” talking points. Nothing of the sort. What we are trying to do is point out how Russia is way more critical to the world economy than it was some 20 years ago.

Some 20 years ago Europe (and the “West”) had the North Sea, which produced as much as Russia and the US. Today, the North Sea is a shadow of its former self. And if US shale continues to disappoint, it won’t be long before Russia becomes the world’s biggest oil producer “beyond reasonable doubt”.

Do you think that Rosneft, Lukoil, or Gazprom are in trouble of being sanctioned when they supply some 36% of Europe’s oil needs?

And natural gas (not that this is unappreciated).

Furthermore, there are probably a couple of commodities that few have given any thought to, coal in particular.

Russia exports almost as much thermal coal as Australia (granted the chart below is a few years old but volumes wouldn’t have changed materially in that time). Russia also exports about as much coking coal as the US and about 40% of Australia.

Hmmm… switch off Russian natural gas (for a theoretical exercise), and the world will need a stink load more of coal of which Russia is one of the top 5 global suppliers. Guess you could always turn to uranium?

Granted Kazakhstan isn’t Russia, but they are rather friendly. Of course, uranium produced (yellow cake) isn’t the stuff that goes into nuclear reactors. That is enriched uranium, which Russia (Rosatom) accounts for 50% of world enriched uranium production. That is absolutely extraordinary. Roughly 20% of the US electricity supply comes from nuclear. You know who’s really screwed?

Our French mates run the place on nuclear, and guess what? Over half of this enriched uranium comes from the Russkies.

And who accounts for a fair whack of grain exports?

And without fertilizer crops don’t grow. Here are the world’s top fertilizer exporters (as of 2020 and the value of exports in US dollars).

Should the rest of the world be sanctioning Russia’s commodity exports, we’d likely see Weimar Republic style inflation in those countries, particularly Europe.

You might say, “Surely, there must be other countries Western governments can turn to.”

Here is a neat little picture to make this easy from a geopolitical perspective. The options available to the West from “friendly” states.

One word: yikes!

Can you see now why the calls for sanctions of Russian exports are not only naive, but also self-destructive?

Have a great weekend!

– The Team at Capitalist Exploits

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It’s the Supply Chain, Stupid-Craig Shapiro

Deglobalization has been accelerated by Covid and exacerbated further by rising geopolitical tensions. This dynamic, which threatens the hegemony of the $, will usher in an era of building multiple / duplicative / repetitive supply chains and the prioritization of resource/commodity procurement at any price by governments focusing on their domestic citizens over global affairs. Governments, particularly those with deteriorating polling data, will prioritize access to resources, especially energy and food, over other agendas. Manufacturers from across the world are showing continued desire toward reshoring production at home, acquiring inputs from domestic suppliers or producing more parts in house. Rising transportation costs are helping to accelerate the shift away from global value chains as well with container and shipping costs rising massively during the pandemic and remaining sticky on the high side even as the worse congestion shortages have started to ease. With rising wage costs abroad in previously low wage cost countries, the advantages of offshoring manufacturing as being whittled away at the same time the realization that onshoring production reduces a country’s vulnerability to global supply shocks is becoming more apparent. These deglobalization dynamics will be a significant inflationary headwind to offset the structural deflationary tailwinds of demographics and technology that we have had for 40+ years.

This environment challenges the conventional thinking of developed market central banks who are stuck in an old world order type of thinking. Sticky inflation and pricing of commodities in multiple currencies will create an FX world that trades on balance of payments & current account dynamics, resulting in less need for many countries to hold as many US$ and UST reserves as in the past. The Fed is faced with a very difficult choice: start getting serious about raising interest rates to stymie inflation and protect the $ but run the risk that they tighten us into a recession that kicks off a US govt debt crisis as tax receipts dry up or do little now to stop inflation and see the US$ continue to come under pressure anyway with potential for runaway inflation coming but ultimately improve the US competitive position to create its new domestic supply chain. We are not sure they know which way to go but they need to decide soon. The clock is ticking as Putin’s aggressions are accelerating all global time lines, rapidly moving the world to address a new world order that he has desired for decades.

World peace is a thing of the past now. Countries like Germany and Japan have announced desires to re-arm themselves. Other countries will feel similar needs to acquire resources to protect their domestic interests. And at the same time, countries are all becoming more internal, looking to protect their own citizens over trying to help others, particularly in providing basic goods. Russia has weaponized its energy resources as a way to help its domestic agenda. China has weaponized the speed of the supply chain in an effort to help its own agenda. The ball is now in the Biden Administration’s and the Fed’s court ahead of Biden’s SOTU address tonight and Powell speaking tomorrow and into the March Fed meeting in two weeks. They need to decide: Is the US govt and Fed ready to give up the hegemonic state and exorbitant privilege the US has been afforded for decades? Or will they seek to defend the $ and democracy? The next few weeks are likely to determine how things go for the next several decades. We are watching carefully.

We are long gold, gold/silver miners, agriculture commodities and bitcoin and short equity indices while the Fed remains woefully behind the curve addressing these more structural inflationary forces that are continuing to embed themselves into the public psyche.

https://3circleinvestments.substack.com/p/its-the-supply-chain-stupid?s=r

Eric Mandelblatt – Investing in the Industrial Economy

Eric Mandelblatt is the founder and CIO of Soroban Capital. We cover how the global push towards decarbonization could have massive impacts on the industrial economy, the supply and demand forces at work in commodities production, and why energy and materials represent such a small share of the market today

excerpt of the interview

The world has determined that the two big methods for decarbonizing are wind and solar generation, and electric vehicles. Now, there’s other paths that we can go down, but I’d say the big two today, the big two tools for decarbonizing the world, are really change out the power generation mix and lean heavier on wind and solar, and then let’s ramp electric vehicle penetration from the current 5%.

On the wind and solar side, what I think investors are misunderstanding, misinterpreting, is the ramp capacity in wind and solar. And the starting point. The stat we like to use around here is the world is consuming 40 times more fossil fuels than they are consuming wind and solar generation. So if I take all the fuel sources in the world and I throw them into a pie, 82% of that pie is fossil fuels today. That’s coal, that’s gas, and that’s oil. 2% of that pie is wind and solar. Now the remainder is largely hydro and nuclear. We’re not really adding capacity in a big way today.

full interview below

Investing in the Industrial Economy – Colossus® (joincolossus.com)

What I read this week- 27th Feb

Fiat Currency Zero Hour: Russia And China Might Collectively Challenge The Dollar’s Reserve Status

https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/fiat-currency-zero-hour-russia-and?utm_source=url

Putin played Powell — and US pays the price

https://nypost.com/2022/02/26/putin-played-powell-and-us-pays-the-price/

Vincent Deluard

The Inflation Clown, the Debt Jubilee, and Transitory Democracy.

Accumulation Phase in the Commodity Bull Market

Can one play the US inflation via Bangalore real estate? Neelkanth Mishra explains how

“This bout of heavy inflation in the US is perhaps best played through maybe Bangalore real estate, wherein a lot more of services get exported because the wage rates in the US are rising very rapidly and there is not a visible pipe but an indirect pipe which one can visualise where services there have a greater propensity for engineers in Bangalore,” says Neelkanth Mishra, Co-Head of Equity Strategy, Asia Pacific and India Equity Strategist, Securities Research, Credit Suisse.

Let us start with what has happened in the last few weeks and months. . You track the FII shareholding data pretty closely. What is happening with the FII side of the market? Markets are not falling much but FIIs are selling. Is it only because of primary market issuances?
The FII behaviour is more because of what is happening globally. There is elevated uncertainty in global financial markets. The Fed is trying to tighten aggressively as they are starting to realise that they are perhaps behind the curve. This is happening unfortunately at a time when global demand indicators are starting to weaken.

We have been tracking our proxy for global retail sales. They were significantly above trend for almost all of 2021 and then there was a very steep fall. It was protected by pre-buying in October-November but in the December sales in the US, the numbers were really weak and when one puts this together with consumption weakness in China, the expected weakness in real estate construction, etc, the global end demand situation is looking a lot weaker than what the supply constraints would suggest.

At this time, it is going to be very difficult for policymakers to stimulate the economy and this is a very new situation for global markets because over the past decade, we are used to a situation where whenever demand weakens and stock markets take a tumble, the monetary and fiscal taps get opened. This time the primary focus especially in the US seems to be inflation and therefore as growth weakens, we may not see that stimulus coming through. As that readjustment of expectations happens, the global markets are likely to stay quite volatile.

Emerging markets, in particular, have seen outflows and that is the usual trading pattern whereas as the US is tightening, you pull money out of emerging markets and the FIIs selling that we have seen is a reflection of that. For India per se, the cyclical rebound is doing very well and we expect it will continue to pick up in the next couple of quarters.

Whenever people think that the Fed will start tapering and raise rates, they believe we are back in 2013 when demand just collapsed across asset classes. Do you think this time around India and the overall world will be much better prepared?
The emerging markets are definitely better prepared. Their current account deficits are not really as high as they were in 2013. It is the case not just for India but for several other emerging markets as well. Many of the EMs have prepared themselves with much larger reserve positions. I do not think they are in a weaker position but at the same time, remember that even though inflation may be a primarily US phenomenon right now because in Japan, in China and large parts of Asia, inflation is not that big a policy headache right now. The reality is that most asset classes globally are benchmarked off the US 10-year treasury yield and that is why the volatility in global markets can be quite broad based.

This will be perhaps a time when the equity and bond markets both will see weak demand. So this is a readjustment process. I do not think the world has ever seen the US inflation being 1.5-2% points higher than India’s inflation for several months in a row. I am getting used to this and I think that uncertainty is going to be causing a lot of volatility across markets.

Last time around, Budget was a great event, markets had rallied overall and you as a strategist can also say that it coupled with what happened with the global rally. What to expect going into the Budget?
The challenge for policymakers in India at state and central level is shifting again. For most of the last decade, it was about fiscal consolidation and getting the fiscal deficits back in line. What is happening right now is that the markets are primed for higher deficits and so they are expecting that the Centre and the states will have high deficits. Tax collections are going up but the governments are unable to spend.

The biggest variable to track right now is the cash balance that governments have with RBI which is more than 2% of GDP right now. This is coming primarily as the government functioning was very badly impaired by the lockdowns and activity restrictions. As we get into the Budget and not just the central budget but the states budgets as well which will also get presented over February and March, the key variable to look out for would be what they are deciding to spend on, how much can they scale up spending because the fiscal, the tax revenues are good.

The temptation would be to consolidate aggressively but at the same time, the best way to get debt to GDP down is to grow the denominator, basically grow nominal GDP faster and especially when the markets are primed for higher deficits, it makes sense to spend a lot more. So, that would be the first focus area. At the same time, one of the key takeaways from the last year’s Budget was that it was very progressive; it showed clean accounts; it showed parts where the government was very focussed on growth, very reformed focus and announced privatisation of PSU banks and several other such steps.

Even if there are no concrete steps that affect the fiscal numbers, if the Budget speech comes up with some such announcements, say on the personal taxes or personal income taxes or some removal of exemptions, that will be taken very positively. I do not know if that will be enough to offset some of the global market turbulence but it will help India hold up better.

Last year, there was a higher expenditure. This year, the government may have some savings from vaccination, the Covid programmes. Do you think expenditure on such a high base cannot grow very strong and that is why the quality of expenditure would be the key?
Absolutely right and if you are going from 6.8% to a situation where you can theoretically consolidate to 5.8% or even a 5.5%. this would be faster than what you had guided to which is 4.5%. Again we are talking only about the central government by FY26. The fact is if you consolidate too fast, you are going to shrink expenditure and there is some natural expenditure shrinkage which should be expected and there should not be that much vaccination requirement next year. The foodgrain supply also should be lower. Fertiliser prices globally are starting to come off and so the fertiliser subsidy can come off as well. It is possible that some of the disinvestment proceeds may improve next year as well. So we will have more space and keeping up expenditure and finding avenues where one can spend a lot more is going to be the biggest challenge for the Centre.

For the states the revised headline deficit in FY21 was 4.7% for states. In reality, if one looks at how much they borrowed and how much cash they ended the year with, it will be lower than 3% which is not very different from what it was pre Covid. For FY22, the states are at 3.6% but the borrowing is again below what was expected and their cash balances have actually climbed further and which suggests that they will end this year also with a deficit lower than 3%.

So at a time when everyone expects India as an economy to have incurred the cost of higher fiscal deficit by pushing up yields, the term premium in India is at a ridiculous level. But the benefits from that in terms of higher government spending have actually not come through. Just to give you a number, in the September ‘21 quarter, the GDP in real terms was about 0.3% higher than September 2019 quarter, the pre Covid base quarter but the government spending was 17% lower. This is the government’s final consumption expenditure and comes at a time when the governments the world over are boosting expenditure to support aggregate demand so that their economy does not contract.

In India the GDP is growing despite the government spending shrinking and this is something that needs a lot of attention of the markets and as well as for policy makers because the markets just look at the headline deficit and then say oh, my God there is a problem! What they are not observing perhaps or not paying enough attention to is the fact that there is Rs 4.5-5 trillion cash that the governments are sitting on and how that gets spent is going to be very important. As you said, it should be spent productively; the quality of expenditure needs to be good so that the multiplier is good and that will I think be a good support for growth going forward.

In terms of fiscal deficit consolidation path, the oil tailwind with the excise duty is no longer there. How should one look at divestment programmes and the oil revenues which will now not be there?
Oil revenues will be lower. They are not going to be there. The total cut by the Centre and the states put together at an annualised level – and this happened in November so fourth months have already been seen in FY22 – we will see eight months of that reduction. The total was Rs 1-1.5 trillion which is large but in the context of government taxation, I do not think that is a very large number. This is coming at a time when because of formalisation and better compliance, the tax to GDP, excluding the oil revenue, is not doing that badly while corporate profits are doing well. So corporate tax growth will be strong and therefore the process of consolidation in theory can continue.

However, as I said earlier, the objective should shift from just managing the year to year fiscal deficit to looking at debt to GDP and seeing how fast can we bring it down because at 90% debt to GDP, we are in a very tricky position if the cost of borrowing goes up like it has. Then very quickly, one can get trapped into a trap where your interest costs start climbing and then the deficit starts climbing and that forces a reduction in the GDP and that sort of brings down ratings and a lot of other risks can emerge.

So one need to get that 90% down to 70% over the next decade and the best way to do that in my view is to grow the denominator and that must happen with the Centre and the states coordinating on how to spend productively in a way that once the economy really takes off, it can be withdrawn. The simplest way to spend and some states may be tempted to do that is to give salary hikes to state employees. I am not saying that that should be done or that will be done, but that is one way of increasing expenditure which will have some growth impact but it will then create a permanent liability which one cannot pull away from and that is what happened 10 years back. These are the most important issues as we go into the budgets for the centre and the states.

In terms of inflation, if the hyperinflation continues or the inflation goes ahead, what is the best way to play it as an investor?
The one nuance that I would like to bring is that this is not global inflation. In our financial markets globally, we need to worry about it because the US, which effectively sets the cost of capital for most asset classes, is going through a bout of very heavy inflation but this is not yet a global inflation problem. The debate in Europe as well has been whether this spike in inflation to 5% is something that will persist and as we are seeing US inflation go up, we have to see what are the goods and services that the US can import because then the differential starts to become a lot more attractive.

In conventional high inflation situations, one starts buying commodities but the Chinese inflation is less than 2%. The outlook on hard commodities like steel and iron ore is not that strong; the outlook on oil and gas is more geopolitical driven and depends on what is happening in Russia and Ukraine or what is happening in West Asia. So this bout of heavy inflation in the US is perhaps best played through maybe Bangalore real estate, wherein a lot more of services get exported because the wage rates in the US are rising very rapidly and there is not a visible pipe but an indirect pipe which one can visualise where services there have a greater propensity for engineers in Bangalore.

Budget 2022 | US inflation | Investment Strategy: Can one play the US inflation via Bangalore real estate? Neelkanth Mishra explains how – The Economic Times (indiatimes.com)

A Former SAC PM’s Advice To Traders: “Sit Tight, Be Right”

By Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research via Zerohedge

Today’s story is about patience. Whether you are trading or investing, 2022 will require more calm thoughtfulness than any year in recent memory. History shows that as crises fade into the rearview mirror, market volatility (and the opportunities it brings) declines. Also, there is a real tug of war now between fundamentals and Fed policy. Lastly, the best places to make money in stocks (cyclicals, in our view) are volatile and rarely well-structured industries or companies. Bottom line: 2022 is a “measure twice, cut one” sort of year.

* * *

Strange as it may sound, I learned most of what I know today on this topic while working for Steve Cohen at the old SAC Capital. Yes, it was a (very) fast money trading shop. And yes, Steve’s trading process demanded absolute adherence to a specific set of rules and mindset. Price action, not opinion or emotion, defined right and wrong.

But SAC is also where I learned the old trader’s saying, “Sit tight, be right”. If your process is sound, from idea generation to risk management and exit discipline, then patience determines profitability. Simply put, big trades often take time to work.

Everyone at SAC had their own approach to cultivating patience, which in the context of the firm’s trading bent often meant simply distracting themselves rather than staring at their daily P&L. Steve might invite his family to lunch and actually take an hour off the desk with them if he was worried about being shaken out of a large position intraday. Other traders occupied their time by planning where to go for lunch or dinner (traders think about food a lot). As for me, I would spend hours on a forward calendar of catalysts that might offer new trading ideas (analysts think about data a lot).

Many years after leaving SAC, a hedge fund performance analytics firm showed me some research that put the importance of patience into even starker relief. Hedge funds, as a whole, are good at finding winning ideas. Their performance would often be better, however, if they held those ideas longer. Academic work on institutional investor (long only and hedge funds) behavior shows that the problem is structural. So much of money management marketing is pitching new ideas to gather assets that “old ideas” (those currently in the portfolio) get crowded out too early in order to take stakes in new names.

I bring all this up because 2022 feels very much like a year where patience will be the defining factor when it comes to outperformance. Whether you are bullish or bearish on a market, sector, investment theme or individual idea, it will take longer to get paid for your point of view than the last several years.

Three reasons I think that’s true:

1: US equity market volatility historically declines in the years after a shock. The chart below shows the CBOE VIX Index back to 1990. As highlighted, there have been 4 notable VIX spikes since then. In each case volatility declined for several (3-9) years thereafter. In March 2022 we will be 2 full years into the post-pandemic market recovery. Volatility has already been declining. The VIX today is only 20, for example, even with the selloff and January’s choppy action.

2: There are times when fundamentals (i.e., corporate earnings) matter and then there are times when changes in macro conditions matter more.

  • At the bottom in March 2020, macro mattered; fiscal and monetary policy supported the US economy during the Pandemic Crisis.
  • From Q2 2020 to Q4 2021, US corporate earnings took over the market narrative. The S&P 500 earned 23 percent more in 2021 than it had pre-pandemic. Wall Street analysts were slow to acknowledge that fact, which allowed for a long series of earnings beats.
  • We are now entering a period where the Federal Reserve will engage in a never-before-seen experiment: raising interest rates off zero and reducing the size of its balance sheet in the same year.

All this sets up 2022 as a tug of war between the relative certainty of strong corporate earnings and the absolute unknown effect of novel Fed policy. As we outlined earlier this week, the setup here reminds us a lot of 1994. Back then, the Fed embarked on a surprise series of aggressive rate hikes and investors simply had no idea what that would do to the US economy. Now, Fed communication may be better – they have telegraphed liftoff and runoff quite clearly – but the market is still left wondering what results will come from their decisions.

3: The sectors that have been working – and we still like – are not what one would call easy stories to love. Large cap Financials (+6 pct YTD) are cheap but face structural challenges from venture capital funded FinTech disruptors. Large cap Energy (+14 pct YTD) is an ESG nightmare, and you have to believe (as we do) that traditional carbon-based energy has several years of new demand highs ahead of it. Airlines (+7 pct YTD), which Jessica just highlighted earlier this week, are no one’s idea of a stable or well-structured industry.

As much as we like cyclical sectors, we know there will be sudden and violent rotations out of them through 2022. They have a tailwind but owning them in 2022 is not the same as holding Big Tech in 2020 – 2021. If nothing else, their competitive positions are not as strong. In trading parlance, you are “renting” these names rather than buying a forever home for capital.

Summing up: 2022 is set to bring us lower average US equity volatility, a see-saw dynamic between fundamentals and Fed policy, and rotation into cyclical (and often volatile) sectors with little to offer besides earnings leverage. It will be a year for patience and, just importantly, discipline. Sit tight, be right.

The Trade for 2022 Is Going to Be an Epic Rotation into Value Stocks

Larry McDonald, creator of «The Bear Traps Report» and New York Times best-selling author, expects a colossal shift from growth to value stocks in the face of elevated inflation. He also explains why he believes gold and emerging markets have big upside potential.

In an in-depth interview with The Market/NZZ, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, the creator of the «Bear Traps Report» discusses where he spots the best opportunities for investors against this backdrop. He also explains why he believes emerging markets like China have great upside potential and how he bets on the upcoming U.S. midterm elections.

Mr. McDonald, when it comes to the market outlook for the coming year, everything revolves around inflation. What are your thoughts on this issue?

Everybody knows that inflation is going to come down. On a year-over-year basis, these high levels of price increases are just not sustainable. But here’s the problem: If inflation normalizes at 2.5% to 3.5%, or maybe 4%, a lot of money is in the wrong place.

What do you mean by that?

There is a ton of money in growth stocks like Tesla and Nvidia, and what’s happened is that the tertiary parts in this segment have already given away, particularly cloud-software stocks and stocks that are owned by the ARK ETFs. Those stocks are all big deflation bets. But if you have sustained inflation the net present value of future cash flows is worth a lot less for growth stocks, and that’s why they are underperforming. Teladoc for instance, a remote healthcare provider, is down 70% off the highs. Yet, it’s still trading at 14x sales. So if inflation normalizes at a higher trajectory, it’s going to force trillions of dollars out of growth stocks into value stocks.

What does this imply for investors?

The trade for 2022 is going to be an epic rotation into value stocks. That means money managers like Warren Buffett or David Einhorn at Greenlight Capital are going to do really well. In this context, some of our best ideas for next year are names like AT&T and Intel. We also like Alibaba a lot where there is tremendous value. Right now, based on market capitalization, you can fit 9 Alibabas into Apple, whereas this ratio was about 1.5 to just under 2 over the past five years.

Chinese internet stocks such as Alibaba, JD.com and Baidu, which are also listed in New York, have suffered serious losses this year. What makes you so optimistic for 2022?

In years like this, when the S&P 500 is up 15% to 20% or more, the emphasis on tax-loss selling is exponentially higher. It’s a strategy where you dump stocks that have performed poorly in order to reduce capital gains taxes, as the year draws to a close. This year, a lot of investors have index gains and need losses, causing heavy selling pressure on certain names. Now here’s the thing: Historically, the sectors that experienced heavy tax-loss selling typically do very well in the first half of the following year. In our view, we are now past the tax-loss selling season, which gives beaten-down names a very high ceiling lookout. That’s one of the reasons we’re extremely bullish on Alibaba, the China internet ETF KWEB and the China large-cap ETF FXI.

The slump in the Chinese tech sector has a lot to do with regulatory interventions. How do you deal with the political risk?

In China, the credit impulse has been coming down for at least seven months. But going forward, you got the Olympics coming up in February and the party congress later in the year. Taking this into account, we think that president Xi wanted to engineer some event this past year to take out a lot of the bad actors in China’s economy to address excess leverage in real estate developers like Evergrande and fraudulent behavior in other areas like education firms. Basically, he wanted to do a cleanse for everyone to see by punishing tech stocks and highly leveraged entities. But now, heading towards the Olympics and the party congress where president Xi is pressing for a lifetime mandate extension, the last thing in the world China wants is some kind of Lehman situation.

As a former senior trader at Lehman Brothers, you experienced the collapse of the U.S. banking sector firsthand in the fall of 2008. How big is the risk today in China’s financial system?

Here’s what’s interesting: This fall, when Evergrande was collapsing under its enormous debt, China’s currency was very strong, the volatility of the Yuan was really low. Same thing with credit default swaps on the big banks in the Asian region like ANZ Bank, Standard Chartered and HSBC. In periods where there is real stress in China, as in 2015 with the devaluation in the Yuan, CDS on Western banks near China have been a highly reliable leading indicator, a canary in the coalmine type. In the face of this year’s incredible deleveraging process, it’s shocking how tame the volatility in the Yuan has been. China’s currency has been strengthening, and it’s remarkable how there really hasn’t been any credit contagion the way there was in 2015. And now, with the Olympics and the party congress coming up, the probability of a fiscal impulse is extremely high.

So you’re betting on new stimulus for China’s economy?

Remember, we had back-to-back capitulations in Chinese equities over the past year: China had a pretty nasty Covid outburst in Q3 and then they had this kind of regulatory punishment period and the deleveraging. What’s more, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the threat of delisting Chinese companies in the United States. But we think that’s overblown, at least for now. The delisting risk makes a lot of noise, but it’s really two to three years away. So from our capitulation model’s point of view, these stocks are a screaming buy.

How exactly does this model work?

It’s a seven-factor model where we look for things like the distance of the share price below the lower Bollinger band or the amount of shares traded in the most recent weeks vs the last six months, the last year and the last five years. In the case of ETFs, we’re also looking at the discount to net asset value, and with equities at price-to-earnings and price-to-sales ratios. In essence, the model mathematically tries to calculate seller exhaustion. A textbook example was the historic capitulation in the energy sector in 2020. First, it was driven by Covid, and then by the Democrats basically promising that they were going to wipe out the oil and gas industry when they took control of the White House and Congress. As a result, you had two events that shook investors out of energy stocks, and the capitulation score was the highest ever.

Accordingly, you favored oil and gas companies in our interview at the time. How do you view the prospects for energy stocks today?

We’ve trimmed our energy position by 30%, but we’re still bullish. For instance, I’m looking at Buffett and he basically bought one stock in the third quarter: Chevron. I’m with him, and I love Chevron here. It’s a cheap stock with a great dividend. Besides Chevron, we have the energy ETF XLE and BP in our core holdings. Next year, it’s going to be really busy because the social response to Covid will be so powerful. It was already powerful this year, but if you listen to the American Express earnings call, global business travel is still 40% off the highs. This coming summer, I expect a big revival in business and leisure travel, and that’s going to be very bullish for energy because we just don’t have enough oil relative to global growth.

Where else do opportunities open up?

We also love Brazil. Think about what Brazilian banks have been through: In 2016, you had a huge inflation scare in Brazil and a commodity bust pushing the country into a horrible recession. On top of that, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, was removed from office. Hence, the period of 2016 to 2018 was a horrific event where Brazilian stocks were destroyed. And then, Brazil got hit hard by Covid. So if you’re a Brazilian bank and you’re still standing, you’ve just survived two colossal historic shocks. As a result, from an upside/downside perspective you have tremendous value. The EWZ ETF which tracks an index of companies in Brazil is another case where you have a very decent capitulation score. And here’s the most important part: Emerging market stocks – just like gold – do incredibly well when you have a shortened hiking cycle in the U.S., or if the Fed gets knocked into pausing a hiking cycle.

Why do you think that will be the case? The Federal Reserve signaled just a few weeks ago that it intends to raise benchmark interest rates three times next year.

Let’s take a quick look back: In the post-Lehman era, the Fed hiked rates nine times. And, if you add in quantitative tightening – the rundown of the Fed’s balance sheet – they actually hiked rates 15 times between December 2015 and 2018. That’s because quantitative tightening has a very similar power as rate hikes. In addition to that, we had the taper period in 2014. So actually, the tightening cycle was 2014 to 2018. Put differently: We had a five-year tightening cycle, and typically emerging market stocks and gold do very poorly through a long-embedded hiking cycle.

What does this mean for the current cycle?

The market is starting to act funny. People are starting to sell the rallies instead of buying the dips. What’s happening is the beast in the market is looking at all this monetary tightening and a fiscal cliff. Over the last two years, investors had three safety blankets: One them was monetary accommodation. The second one was a huge fiscal tailwind: In the U.S, we had $6 trillion of deficit spending in 2020 and 2021. And thirdly, the vaccines were coming on the scene giving people a lot of hope. But now, the beast in the market is looking at $3 trillion of fiscal and monetary withdrawal, and on top of that, there is uncertainty around the effectiveness of vaccines. This is setting up for a real problem because inflation plus the fiscal and monetary withdrawal equals a tremendous amount of tightening.

Fed Chairman Powell, however, continues to say that the U.S. economy is on a robust growth path.

It’s pretty obvious: Eurodollar futures and the long end of the yield curve are telling you: «No way on God’s green earth will this hiking cycle go on for five years and 15 hikes.» I think inflation already hiked rates for the Fed by around 150 basis points because of demand destruction. For regular families spending money on Christmas presents and food for the holidays, the costs have just doubled. It’s also everything that goes into oil and chemicals. So the consumer is really wounded. For instance, if you look at University of Michigan data, the Fed has never ever kicked off a hiking cycle with consumer confidence as low as it is now. Bottom line: This shortened hiking cycle is going to be a home run for gold and stocks in emerging markets like China and Brazil. That’s the big trade for 2022.

Source: «The Bear Traps Report»

However, there is already speculation on Wall Street that the Fed will not only tighten interest rates soon, but could also start reducing its balance sheet towards the end of 2022.

This is like tapering on steroids: You can’t accelerate the taper, promise three rate hikes and a possible quantitative tightening without destroying growth stocks. We think the Nasdaq 100 will see a brutal correction until the Fed backs away by summer. In this environment, the safety net for investors is that value stocks are going to outperform. That’s why we love names like Intel. It’s one of our top ideas in our tax-loss basket for next year. Personally, I’m short the semiconductor sector ETF SMH and long Intel. If you look at the outperformance of the semiconductor sector vs Intel, it’s mathematically unsustainable. It’s off the charts by two to three standard deviations outside the norm. And with Intel, you have a dividend of 2.5% to 3% which means double the yield compared to ten-year Treasuries. Another interesting part is that Seth Klarman and Dan Loeb – two hall of fame investors – own the stock.

Why do you think the Fed will back down? And what does that mean in terms of rate hikes?

They will probably hike once next year. Central bankers are very bright people, but they are academics who never have managed risk. So they put forth these altruistic, pollyannaish policy proposals. Look at the amount of debt on the planet. It’s bad, and everybody understands that, but the real problem is not just more debt. What’s important is that there’s $30 trillion of debt that yields less than 2%. So when interest rates move up, bond prices move down, and you have a lot more downside on a 2% bond than on a 4% bond.

Speaking of debt: What’s in store for the markets in 2022 in terms of U.S. fiscal policy? President Biden’s Build Back Better stimulus program recently suffered a major setback.

That was a call where I was wrong. But we did get the infrastructure bill, and we got the American Rescue Act in March. So President Biden did pass two meaningful pieces of legislation. He couldn’t pass Build Back Better, and right now the market believes there’s nothing coming. But I do think that this new Covid wave increases the probability of more stimulus. It won’t be called Build Back Better, but if there is enough downside in the market and enough stress in the system, we will get a capitulation from the Fed where they will alter the rate hike schedule and we will get a capitulation from Washington around more fiscal spending. That’s the big call for next year: By mid-July, we probably will have a fiscal and monetary capitulation.

More on Larry thoughts on Cannabis

https://themarket.ch/english/larry-mcdonald-epic-rotation-into-value-stocks-ld.5717