Higher Govt Spending leads to lower P/E ratios

In the equation

C+I+G+(X-M)= GDP

where C is consumption I stands for Investment G for govt spending and (Exports-Imports) always negative for India and even US.

with (C) under pressure in India because of demonetization and in US because of household indebtedness ,private (I) not taking place because the future looks more uncertain , (X-M) perpetually negative,the only way GDP can bounce back is through higher govt spending. The narrative looks good and economist and corporates both are clamoring for govt to do more spending to bring back growth. But the above chart should debunk the theory that higher govt spending is good for economy. It might give near term impetus and excitement to the market but ,but if you believe like me that government is by nature less efficient than the private sector, then higher government spending will mean more capital misallocation, which is not good for stock valuations in medium term .

Mega Trend in Making

The global stock market capitalization has increased by $3 trillion recently, while the global bond market value declined by roughly the same amount.There are three macro trades over here. one.. bond to Equity second…. EM (bond & Equity) to DM Equity and third…. Rise in Dollar Index.This move since Trump win is what a trailor looks like in a long movie ,The markets are indeed forward-looking, but this latest leg of the risk rally has a certain speculative feel to it and I must admit this move ( strength in US Dollar) and sell off in Bonds are overextended in short term.

The Gathering Inflation storm

China quietly stopped being an exporter of deflation few months back when its factory gate price turned positive after a gap of five years. Portfolio managers who took this development seriously made a bounty in industrial metals stocks which outperformed the broader market since this news. Now we get one more jolt from china producer price index which  also rose at  the fastest pace in more than five years in December as the factory to the world swung to exporting inflation.

 

Now to be sure there are sceptics who point this as one off data but I think it is a start of a bigger trend. As Diana choleya writes China is more likely to be “exporting inflation” than “exporting price deflation” as it was in the period 2002-2006 because its economy and interaction with the world have changed .China used commodities and energy extremely inefficiently, but it also administered their domestic prices. Energy and commodity prices surged on world markets, but in China they hardly budged. Thus, global manufactured goods price deflation continued unabated until China reached its physical energy and transport supply limits. She further writes that gone are the days when Chinese exporters could rely on cheap and ample migrant labour to keep manufacturing prices low. Gone also are the days when China’s state-owned oil and gas producers could assume the burden of low administered energy tariffs, which also helped to hold down global prices of manufactured goods. Gone, too, are the days when public and overall debt were low enough for China not to care about shouldering the extra costs in order to achieve rapid industrialisation and to grab export market share and what you see is the risk in world today are hiding in plain sight in the form of unexpected higher inflation as the data highlights rise in both industrial metal and raw materials prices. All This adds to ongoing price pressures at Chinese factories, such as wage increases. They all raise input costs. With margins getting squeezed from the bottom up, producers will be trying to pass on these higher costs to the global supply chains via higher asking prices. And if they get those prices to stick, they’ll export inflation to the rest of the world. And that’ll be a sea change. Add a toxic mix of protectionism, the global markets will be surprised with health dose of inflation. Below is the chart where even IMF expects inflation to be in positive territory this year.

In my view mild return of inflation is already underway in India also as core inflation refuses to budge lower and input price inflation continues to march higher. The numbers are not alarming enough as is evident in bond market complacency and continued euphoria in equity markets to chase high P/E growth strategies even as bond yield refuse to go lower and value strategies have started outperforming. A major trend shift is underway ……Read the leaves the times they are changing

An Economy for 99 percent

Oxfam today in Davos released a report, ‘An economy for the 99 percent’, which shows that the gap between rich and poor is far greater than had been feared. It details how big business and the super-rich are fuelling the inequality crisis by dodging taxes, driving down wages and using their power to influence politics. It calls for a fundamental change in the way we manage our economies so that they work for all people, and not just a fortunate few. Consider the following

  • The richest 10% in India own 80% of its wealth, while the richest 1% possess 58% of all wealth
  • Fifty-seven billionaires in India possess as much wealth as the poorest 70% of the country
  • Since 2015, the richest 1%, globally, have owned more wealth than the rest of the planet.
  • Eight men listed below now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world.
  • Over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over $2.1 trillion to their heirs – a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people.
  • The incomes of the poorest 10% of people increased by less than $3 a year between 1988 and 2011, while the incomes of the richest 1% increased 182 times as much.
  • In the US, new research by economist Thomas Piketty shows that over the last 30 years the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50% has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1% have grown 300%.

.Oxfam is also calling on business leaders to play their part in building a human economy. The World Economic Forum has responsive and responsible leadership as its key theme this year.  They can make a start by committing to pay their fair share of tax and by ensuring their businesses pay a living wage

The world’s 8 richest people are, in order of net worth:

  1. Bill Gates: America founder of Microsoft (net worth $75 billion)
  2. Amancio Ortega: Spanish founder of Inditex which owns the Zara fashion chain (net worth $67 billion)
  3. Warren Buffett: American CEO and largest shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway (net worth $60.8 billion)
  4. Carlos Slim Helu: Mexican owner of Grupo Carso (net worth: $50 billion)
  5. Jeff Bezos: American founder, chairman and chief executive of Amazon (net worth: $45.2 billion)
  6. Mark Zuckerberg: American chairman, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Facebook (net worth $44.6 billion)
  7. Larry Ellison: American co-founder and CEO of Oracle  (net worth $43.6 billion)
  8. Michael Bloomberg: American founder, owner and CEO of Bloomberg LP (net worth: $40 billion)

The proposed “border adjusted plan” – a potential blow to India’s export story?

The ample availability of competent and cheap workforce has made India the global ‘outsourcing destination of choice’ in sectors such as IT, pharma, Gems and Jewellery, financial services etc. However, with right winged nationalist ideologies gaining prominence globally, this could come under some serious threat. The Republicans in the House of Representatives with the backing of President elect Donald Trump, have proposed changes to the US corporate tax code which could mark one of the most important shifts in US tax and international trade policy in a generation and an underappreciated threat to Indian exports. The so called “border adjusted” plan could radically change the structure of business taxation by imposing a 20 percent tax on all imports by US and providing a special exemption for all export-related income.

I will come to the potential impact but consider these facts:

Trump’s threat to protect the US interest in an inward-looking manner looks increasingly real now rather than just an election rhetoric as has been in the past. The way Ford announced the scrapping of its proposed Mexico plant shows that Trump means business when it comes to carrying out the threat of onerous border tax on US firms which ships jobs abroad. If enacted, the proposed bill would have a transformational impact on the US trade relationship with the rest of the world. The stakes are high for India and our exports.

If the border adjusted tax is enacted, US imports would become dearer as corporates would have to pay the new corporate tax rate (20-25% proposed) on the value of Imports. On the other hand, exports would become cheaper, because for every dollar of exports, corporate will no longer be required to pay tax on such earnings. Which roughly means that exports from US will be incentivised by upto 15% on tax adjusted basis and US imports will become 15% costly – post tax.

A border tax adjustment would be very positive for the US trade balance. As explained above, a border tax adjustment would be equivalent to an across the board import tariff of and an export subsidy of 10-20%. This could go a long way in reducing the US trade deficit.

The idea is to tax goods as they enter the United States from other countries, but to avoid taxing U.S. exports at all. For instance, a car imported into the U.S. from Mexico would be taxed, but the American-made steel sent to Mexico would not.

Proponents say the proposed “destination tax” would encourage more U.S. production of goods and create U.S. jobs. But opponents say it will send prices higher, unfairly cut profits for some sectors, particularly the retail industry, and could prompt retaliation. The idea is similar but not quite like a VAT, or value added tax, common in other countries.

Now these are only proposals and there are uncertainties related to all estimates above. As a signatory to WTO it can be debated whether the territorial corporate tax system would be allowable under WTO rules. The question is highly complex, but senior Trump advisers have stated they would be willing to take the issue to the WTO.

It is also not clear what types of goods and services the proposed tax would cover – however, one thing is for sure – the broader the coverage the bigger the impact and vice versa.

Still, it is hard to argue that such a fundamental shift in tax treatment of US exports and imports would not have a material impact on trade relations and flows with the rest of the world. More importantly, the second-order impact of “re-shoring” may be more material given that US corporate activity has been disadvantaged due to the current unfavorable tax treatment of offshore profits.

Taking all the above into account, I think dollar and dollar assets will be beneficiaries should the “border tax adjustment” be accepted and enacted.  An appreciating dollar would be a natural response to an improving US trade balance and improved export competitiveness. I believe that the dollar Index could climb by 15-20% to fully offset the price shifts caused by the tax and more against countries running high current account deficits with the United States and have relatively higher dependence on dollar borrowings.

It is also important to understand that even if border tax proposal does not go through US is turning nationalist. In fact, of the two dozen US 2016 presidential candidates, only one advocated for a continuation of America’s role in maintaining the global security and trade order that the Americans installed and have maintained since 1945.

As Peter Zeihan writes in Accidental superpower “I see a long-overdue shift in the global order. New trends emerging. New possibilities unfolding. ”

The Americans who had created, nurtured, enabled, maintained and protected the post-WWII global order are losing interest and such shift will have monumental consequences. America’s energy needs at that time required that the US guard the world and in turn run current account deficits.

In 2006 total American oil production, had dropped to 8.3mbpd while demand was touching 20.7mpbd, forcing the United States to import 12.4mpbd, more than Japan and China and Germany combined. By 2016 U.S. oil output had breached 15mbpd. Factor in the Canadians and Mexicans, and total American imports of non-North American oil had plunged to about 2mbpd — and that in the teeth of an oil price war. And that’s just oil specifically. Take a more comprehensive view and include everything from bunker fuel to propane, and the continent is less than 0.8mbpd from being a net energy exporter.

The end of American dependence upon extra-continental energy sources does more than sever the largest of the remaining ties that bind America’s fate to the wider world; it sets into motion a veritable cavalcade of trends: the re-industrialization of the United States and the accelerated breakdown of the global order.

The world has had seven decades to become inured to a world in which the Americans do the heavy lifting to maintain a system that economically benefits everyone. The world has had three decades to become inured to a world in which the Americans do not expect anything of substance in return. As the Americans, back away, very few players have any inkling of how to operate in a world where markets are not open, transport is not safe, and energy cannot be secured easily.

The Disorder’s defining characteristic is, well, its lack of order. Remove the comfortable, smothering American presence in the world and the rest of humanity must look out for its own interests.

The chairman of one of India’s largest software companies recently expressed his concerns on recent political events that might “shape a world of exclusion, conflict and suspicion” ahead. It is high time that corporate India takes this monumental change in US strategy seriously.

Edited version of this article appeared in Economic Times on 14th Jan

What I read this week: Is India really ready to usher in a universal basic income programme

So let’s talk about a universal basic income for every Indian. Won’t believe? Actually it looks like it is closer to becoming a reality in India sooner than we think. I am sure you would love to read about it.

Plus, I also read some interesting write-ups about how water is emerging as one hell of a business and whether earnings really drive market.

KKR Outlook for 2017- Paradigm shift

KKR  one of the largest private equity firms in world , in its 2017 outlook  believe that there are four major potentially secular changes that all investment professionals must consider: fiscal stimulus over monetary, domestic agendas over global ones, deregulation over reregulation, and a broadening of outsized volatility from the currency markets to include global interest rate markets.