Tag: USA

Will the ‘Trump rally’ continue through 2017?

From The Conversation.

So far, investors appear to be giving Donald Trump their vote of confidence.

After his election as the 45th president of the United States, the U.S. Dollar Index rallied around 4 percent through the end of the year, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average approached 20,000 for the first time in its history and the Standard & Poor’s 500 was up just under 5 percent.

So now that investors have finished their usual year-end review of where to put their money, one question is on everyone’s mind: Will the so-called Trump rally continue in 2017?

In early November, I wrote an article based on my study showing that how stocks reacted in the first few days after a president’s victory would likely determine their performance for the rest of 2016 – which turned out to be true in Trump’s case.

In a similar vein, a separate study I published in 2009 demonstrated that how a stock market performs in the January a president takes office could portend its fortunes for the remainder of the year.

So will that also turn out to be true for Trump?

‘As January goes’

In that study, which I called “The ‘Other’ January Effect and the Presidential Election Cycle,” I combined two lines of research.

First, going at least as far back as the 1940s, the so-called January effect is a well-known bias in individual stock behavior in which stocks that lose value at the end of the year tend to reverse those losses in January.

The other January effect, which I use in my study, refers to evidence published in 2005 suggesting that January’s returns hold predictive power for the remainder of the year.

More specifically, this effect claims that when stocks go up in January, they tend to continue to climb for the rest of the year, and vice versa – regardless of the impact of other usual drivers of stock market returns. On Wall Street, this effect is often dubbed: “As January goes, so goes the year.” For the rest of the article, for simplicity’s sake, I’ll call this the January effect.

Second, I combined this January effect with the four-year presidential election cycle (PEC) to see how it influenced January’s predictive abilities. The PEC refers to a cycle in which U.S. stock market returns during the last two years of a president’s term tend to be significantly higher than gains during the first two years. This cycle is especially true for the third year of a president’s term, which has almost always been positive.

For my study, I wanted to see if the timing of the presidential cycle (first year, second year, etc.) affected January’s predictive abilities. I studied monthly returns (without dividends) of the S&P 500 over the 67-year period from 1940 through 2006.

January’s predictive power

Overall, my results were consistent with the paper noted above demonstrating that positive returns in January typically portended gains during the other 11 months of the year, as well as the opposite.

They further showed, however, that January’s predictive power is most convincing during the president’s first and fourth years in office. Since, at the moment, we care most about the first year of a president’s term, I’ll focus on those results.

Over my sample period of basically 17 election cycles, I found that during the president’s first year in office, average returns for the 11 months following a positive January were 12.29 percent, while a negative January led to average losses of 7.91 percent over the remainder of the year. That’s a difference of more than 20 percentage points – or over US$200,000 on a $1 million investment.

Furthermore, I found that a positive or negative January predicted returns for the remainder of the year almost 90 percent of the time, suggesting a very strong correlation.

Recent results have been split

Since my study was published, there have been two more elections, one of which ran contrary to the January effect, while the other confirmed it.

After President Barack Obama won the 2008 election, the S&P 500 lost 8.6 percent during his inaugural month of January. But the market rallied for the remainder of the year by about 35 percent.

Conversely, after his reelection in 2012, stocks returned around 5 percent in January 2013 and, consistent with the other January effect, the market climbed another 23 percent over the remainder of the year.

What’s behind this?

So what’s driving the effect?

Exactly what drives this effect is a topic of debate. For example, I tested whether it may be driven by monetary policy, which did not seem to be the case.

A common argument for the PEC is that it reflects investor views of fiscal policy, which is why returns during the second two years of the cycle tend to be higher than the first two. Yet my most significant results were for the first and fourth years.

Nonetheless, while I did not specifically test for fiscal policy influences, it seems valid since my results showed that January’s effect appears to be the most reliable during the president’s incoming year in office. The effect wasn’t nearly as pronounced during the other three years.

So far, that seems to be the case at the moment as the “Trump rally” appears to be a response to anticipated fiscal policy.

What to expect in 2017

Of course, there is never complete certainty in the markets, especially with an unavoidably small sample size like 17 election cycles. Still, the results of my study provide compelling evidence that, particularly in the president’s first year in office, January’s returns appear to capture information that is valuable for anticipating returns for the remainder of the year.

As of Jan. 10, the S&P 500 was up about 1.5 percent for the year and near its record high of 2,282, while the Dow continued to flirt with that magical 20,000 number.

While January’s full-month returns are not yet known, history strongly suggests that investors would be wise to closely monitor the S&P 500. If January 2017 remains positive for U.S. stocks, returns for the remainder of 2017 may very likely also be positive. The opposite can also be expected.

So for investors looking ahead in 2017, as January goes, perhaps so will the remainder of 2017.

Author: Ray Sturm, Associate Lecturer of Finance, University of Central Florida

How speeding up payments to small businesses creates jobs

From The US Conversation.

Speeding up payments to SME’s would have a major positive impact. Operating a small business, the backbone of the U.S. economy, has always been tough. The same is true in Australia, and cash flow is a major challenge, as data from our SME survey shows:

According to The Conversation, SME’s also been disproportionately hurt by the Great Recession, losing 40 percent more jobs than the rest of the private sector combined.

Interestingly, as my research with Harvard’s Ramana Nanda shows there’s a fairly straightforward way to support small businesses, make them more profitable and hire more: pay them faster.

A major source of financing

When a business is not paid for weeks after a sale, it is effectively providing short-term financing to its customers, something called “trade credit.” This is recorded in the balance sheet as accounts receivable.

Despite its economic importance, trade credit has received little attention in the academic literature so far, relative to other sources of financing, yet it is a major source of funding for the U.S. economy. The use of trade credit is recorded on companies’ accounting statements as “trade payables” in the liability section of the balance sheet. According to the Federal Fund Flows, trade payables amounted to US$2.1 trillion on nonfinancial companies’ balance sheets at the end of the third quarter of 2006, two times more than bank loans and three times as much as a short-term debt instrument known as commercial paper.

Recent news reports have highlighted the problem of slow payments to suppliers as large companies extend their payment periods, often with crushing results for small businesses.

Other countries have tried to reform the trade credit market, especially in Europe, where a directive was adopted in 2011 limiting intercompany payment periods for all sectors to 60 days (with a few exceptions).

In an earlier paper, I showed that requiring payments to be made within shorter time periods had a large effect on small businesses’ survival when it was adopted in France. Receiving their money earlier led them to default less often on their own suppliers and their financiers. Their probability to go bankrupt dropped by a quarter.

Accelerating payments

To learn more about the impact of such reforms in the U.S., we studied the effects of speeding up payments to federal contractors.

The QuickPay reform, announced in September 2011, accelerated payments from the federal government to a subset of small business contractors in the U.S., shrinking the payment period from 30 days to 15 days – thus accelerating $64 billion in annual federal contract value.

Federal government procurement amounts to 4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product and includes $100 billion in goods and services purchased directly from small businesses, spanning virtually every county and industry in the U.S. In the past, government contracts required payment one to two months following the approval of an invoice, with the result that these small businesses were effectively lending to the government – and often while doing so, they had to simultaneously borrow from banks to finance their payroll and working capital.

Our research shows that even small improvements in cash collection can have large direct effects on hiring due to the multiplier effect of working capital. On average, each accelerated dollar of payment led to an almost 10 cent increase in payroll, with two-thirds of the increase coming from new hires and the balance from increased earnings per worker. Collectively, the new policy – which accelerated $64 billion in payments – increased annual payroll by $6 billion and created just over 75,000 jobs in the three years following the reform.

To give an example, take a business selling $1 million throughout the year to its customers and being paid 30 days after delivering its product. It therefore has to finance 30 days’ worth of sales at any given time (or 8 percent of its annual sales). As a result, it constantly has about $80,000 in cash tied up in accounts receivable.

A shift in the payment regime from 30 days to 15 days means that the firm has to finance only 15 days of sales, or $40,000. And that would in turn help it eventually sustain $2 million in annual sales and double in size.

Holding back growth

These findings confirm the widely shared belief among policymakers and business owners that long payment terms hold back small business growth.

They also raise the question as to why the economy relies so much on trade credit if it costs so much in terms of jobs, and whether other policies might be undertaken to reduce it. An interesting follow-up policy to QuickPay was SupplierPay. In that program, over 40 companies including Apple, AT&T, CVS, Johnson & Johnson and Toyota pledged to pay their small suppliers faster or enable a financing solution that helps them access working capital at a lower cost.

It is likely that more information on customers’ quality and speed of payments would allow suppliers to choose whether to work with businesses that pay more slowly. So following a “name and shame” logic, companies might feel they have to accelerate payments not to be perceived as bad customers.

The broader impact

Would it make sense to sustain and extend this policy?

An interesting aspect of our analysis is that the effect of QuickPay depends on local labor market conditions. It was most pronounced in areas with high unemployment rates when it was introduced. Elsewhere job creation was limited.

The reason for this is that helping small businesses grow gives them an advantage over other companies operating locally. By hiring more, these small business contractors make it harder for others to do so. Unless there is unemployment, this crowding-out effect offsets the employment gains of the policy.

As such, such a policy will be effective in stimulating total employment only in areas or times of high unemployment.

Author: Jean-Noel Barrot, Assistant Professor of Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management

The Problem With Low Interest Rates

Fed Governor Jerome H. Powell spoke on “Low Interest Rates and the Financial System“. Monetary policy may sometimes face trade offs between macroeconomic objectives and financial stability. He argues that”low for long” interest rates have supported slow but steady progress to full employment and stable prices, which has in turn supported financial stability. But, there are difficult trade offs to manage. Over time, low rates can put pressure on the business models of financial institutions. And low rates can lead to excessive leverage and broadly unsustainable asset prices.

Whilst there are times when all of these objectives are aligned. For example, the Fed’s initial unconventional policies supported both market functioning and aggregate demand. More broadly, post-crisis monetary policy supported asset values, reduced interest payments, and increased both employment and income. All of these effects are likely to have limited defaults and foreclosures and bolstered the balance sheets of households, businesses, and financial intermediaries, leaving the system more robust.

But at times there will be tradeoffs. Low-for-long interest rates can have adverse effects on financial institutions and markets through a number of plausible channels.

After all, low interest rates are intended to encourage some risk-taking. The question is whether low rates have encouraged excessive risk-taking through the buildup of leverage or unsustainably high asset prices or through misallocation of capital. That question is particularly important today. Historically, recessions often occurred when the Fed tightened to control inflation. More recently, with inflation under control, overheating has shown up in the form of financial excess. Core PCE inflation remained close to or below 2 percent during both the late-1990s stock market bubble and the mid-2000s housing bubble that led to the financial crisis. Real short- and long-term rates were relatively high in the late-1990s, so financial excess can also arise without a low-rate environment. Nonetheless, the current extended period of very low nominal rates calls for a high degree of vigilance against the buildup of risks to the stability of the financial system.If we look at the channels listed here, the picture is mixed, but the bottom line is that there has not been an excessive buildup of leverage, maturity transformation, or broadly unsustainable asset prices.

Low long-term interest rates have weighed on profitability in the financial sector, although firms have so far coped with those pressures. Net interest margins (NIMs) for most banks have held up surprisingly well. NIMs have moved down for the largest banks
Return on assets, has recovered but remains below pre-crisis levels. Life insurers have substantially underperformed the broader equity market since 2007, suggesting that investors see the low-rate environment as a drag on profitability for the industry. Even so, data on asset portfolios do not suggest that life insurers have increased risk-taking. The same is true for banks. Both the regulatory environment and banks’ own attitudes toward risk following the financial crisis have helped ensure that the largest banks have not taken on excessive credit or duration risks relative to their capital cushions.

Low rates have provided support for asset valuations–indeed, that is part of their design. But I do not see valuations as significantly out of line with historical experience. Equity prices have recently increased considerably, pushing the forward price-earnings ratio further above its historical median.

And equity premiums –the expected return above the risk-free rate for taking equity risk– have declined, but are not out of line with historical experience.

In the nonfinancial sector, valuation pressures are most concerning when leverage is high, particularly in real estate markets. Residential real estate valuations have been in line with rents and household incomes in recent years, and the ratio of mortgage debt to income is well below its pre-crisis peak and still declining. In contrast, valuations in commercial real estate are high in some markets. And in the nonfinancial corporate sector, gross leverage is high by historical standards. Low long-term rates have encouraged corporate debt issuance at the same time that some regulations, particularly the Volcker rule, have discouraged banks from holding and making markets in such debt. High-risk corporate debt (the sum of high-yield bonds and leveraged loans) grew rapidly in 2013 and 2014, although growth has declined sharply since then.

However, firms also are holding high levels of liquid assets, so net leverage is not elevated. Firms have also lengthened their maturity profiles, and interest coverage ratios are high. Greenwood and Hanson’s measure of the share of high-yield debt in overall issuance is at a relatively low level. And this debt is now held more by unlevered investors. Overall, I do not see leveraged finance markets as posing undue financial stability risks. And if risk-taking does not threaten financial stability, it is not the Fed’s job to stop people from losing (or making) money.

As I said, a mixed picture. Low interest rates have encouraged risk-taking and higher leverage in some sectors and have weighed on profitability in others, but the areas where there are signs of excess are isolated.

US Employment Data Strengthens Case For More Rate Rises

The latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics, released overnight shows US employment momentum is supportive of rate rises this year. It is ironic that as the US presidency passes in a couple of week, the economy there is looking pretty strong! Over the past 3 months, job gains have averaged 165,000 per month. However the news was not sufficient to lift the Dow Index through 20,000.

Household Survey Data

The unemployment rate, at 4.7 percent, and the number of unemployed persons, at 7.5 million, changed little in December. However, both measures edged down in the fourth quarter, after showing little net change earlier in the year.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (4.4 percent), adult women (4.3 percent), teenagers (14.7 percent), Whites (4.3 percent), Blacks (7.8 percent), Asians (2.6 percent), and Hispanics (5.9 percent) showed little change in December.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 1.8 million in December and accounted for 24.2 percent of the unemployed. In 2016, the number of long-term unemployed declined by 263,000.

The labor force participation rate, at 62.7 percent, changed little in December and was unchanged over the year. In December, the employment-population ratio was 59.7 percent for the third consecutive month; this measure showed little change, on net, in 2016.

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (also referred to as involuntary part-time workers), at 5.6 million, was essentially unchanged in December but was down by 459,000 over the year. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

In December, 1.7 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, little changed from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

Among the marginally attached, there were 426,000 discouraged workers in December, down by 237,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available to them. The remaining 1.3 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in December had not searched for work for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.

Establishment Survey Data

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 156,000 in December, with an increase in health care and social assistance. Job growth totaled 2.2 million in 2016, less than the increase of 2.7 million in 2015.

Employment in health care rose by 43,000 in December, with most of the increase occurring in ambulatory health care services (+30,000) and hospitals (+11,000). Health care added an average of 35,000 jobs per month in 2016, roughly in line with the average monthly gain of 39,000 in 2015.

Social assistance added 20,000 jobs in December, reflecting job growth in individual and family services (+21,000). In 2016, social assistance added 92,000 jobs, down from an increase of 162,000 in 2015.

Employment in food services and drinking places continued to trend up in December (+30,000). This industry added 247,000 jobs in 2016, fewer than the 359,000 jobs gained in 2015.

Employment also continued to trend up in transportation and warehousing in December (+15,000). Within the industry, employment expanded by 12,000 in couriers and messengers. In 2016, transportation and warehousing added 62,000 jobs, down from a gain of 110,000 jobs in 2015.

Employment in financial activities continued on an upward trend in December (+13,000). This is in line with the average monthly gains for the industry over the past 2 years.

In December, employment edged up in manufacturing (+17,000), with a gain of 15,000 in the durable goods component. However, since reaching a recent peak in January, manufacturing employment has declined by 63,000.

Employment in professional and business services was little changed in December (+15,000), following an increase of 65,000 in November. The industry added 522,000 jobs in 2016.

Employment in other major industries, including mining, construction, wholesale trade, retail trade, information, and government, changed little in December.

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.3 hours in December. In manufacturing, the workweek edged up by 0.1 hour to 40.7 hours, and overtime edged up by 0.1 hour to 3.3 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls remained at 33.6 hours.

In December, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 10 cents to $26.00, after edging down by 2 cents in November. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 2.9 percent. In December, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 7 cents to $21.80.

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for October was revised down from +142,000 to +135,000, and the change for November was revised up from +178,000 to +204,000. With these revisions, employment gains in October and November were 19,000 higher than previously reported. Over the past 3 months, job gains have averaged 165,000 per month.

How the U.S. Debt-to-GDP Ratio Has Changed

From The St. Louis Fed On The Economy Blog.

The new incoming president and Congress will likely engage in vigorous discussions about economic policies, including ones that will impact the national debt.

This post will give a thumbnail report on the recent history of this important macroeconomic indicator.

Economists typically measure the size of the national debt as the ratio of the total publicly held federal debt to the current level of the gross domestic product (GDP). By looking at only publicly held debt, the measure excludes government bonds owned by the government itself, such as those in the Social Security Administration’s portfolio. In scaling the debt by GDP, the resulting ratio accounts for the fact that a larger economy may more easily sustain a larger debt.

In the six or so years preceding the most recent recession, the debt-to-GDP ratio was relatively constant, around 34 percent. Although stable, it still sat relatively close to its post-World War II era peak experienced in the mid-1990s.

This stability was upset dramatically with the onset of the recession. The federal debt increased largely because falling incomes led to lower tax receipts. Also, unemployment and poverty rose, which increased the cost of social insurance programs such as Medicaid and unemployment insurance. The figure below shows average increases in the debt-to-GDP ratio for the past 10 years. (Each year is as of the second quarter.)

debt gdp ratio

In the two years containing the 2007-09 recession, the debt-to-GDP ratio grew by about 16 percentage points. By the second quarter of 2009, this ratio equaled 50 percent.

Following the recession, there was no (at least successful) effort to bring this ratio down. Instead, a number of factors, including the implementation of the $840 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, caused the debt-to-GDP ratio to increase at a rapid pace. Between 2009:Q2 and 2012:Q2, the ratio increased by 6.2 percentage points on average per year.

In the following three years, a dramatic slowdown in the growth rate of the debt-to-GDP ratio returned. It grew by 1.4 percentage points on average per year over that period.

This relatively slow pace of increase seems to have quickened over the past year. Between 2015:Q2 and 2016:Q2, the ratio increased by 2.9 percentage points. During that one-year period, the debt-to-GDP ratio crossed the 75 percent level for the first time in most Americans’ lifetimes. 2016 put the ratio at its highest value since the WWII drawdown.

Debt, The Key to 2017?

From The Burning Platform Blog.

It is fascinating to me no one seems all that worried about the systematically dangerous levels of global debt supporting essentially bankrupt governments, banks and consumers. Global debt stood at $142 trillion at the end of 2007, just prior to a worldwide financial meltdown, caused by too much bad debt in the financial system.

To “fix” this problem, central bankers around the globe ramped up their electronic printing presses to hyper-drive and created another $57 trillion of debt by mid-2014. They haven’t taken their foot off the gas since. Today, global debt most certainly exceeds $225 trillion and has surpassed 300% of global GDP. Rogoff and Reinhart made a pretty strong case that when debt to GDP exceeds 90%, disaster will follow.

Global debt issuance reached a record $6.6 trillion in 2016, with corporations accounting for $3.6 trillion – most of which was used to buy back their stock at all-time highs. What could possibly go wrong? The level of normalcy bias amongst financial “experts”, the intelligentsia, and the common man is breathtaking to behold. We are in the midst of the mother of all bubbles, never witnessed in the history of mankind, and we pretend everything is normal, with no consequences for our reckless disregard for honesty, rational thinking, or simple math.

The 2000 dot.com bubble and the 2008 housing bubble were one dimensional. This mother of all bubbles required the global coordination and unprecedented irresponsible intervention of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB), the Bank of Japan (BOJ), the Bank of England (BOE) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to lead the world to the brink of monetary disaster. The highly educated theorists running these central banks have created tens of trillions in unpayable debt while suppressing interest rates to zero or below at the behest of their Deep State masters.

The result is simultaneous bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate. The pin destined to pop all the bubbles is slightly higher interest rates. The 1% increase in the 10 Year Treasury is already causing havoc in the housing market, the bond market and is hammering pension funds. With the hundreds of trillions in globally interconnected derivatives primed to detonate, 2017 could be an explosive year.

Here are a few things I think could happen in 2017 on the [US] economic front:

  • The national debt stands at $19.9 trillion and will reach $20 trillion before Obama departs. With spending on automatic pilot and tax revenue in decline, the national debt will reach $21 trillion in 2017. With most of the debt financed short-term, the increase in rates will ratchet the interest on the debt from $433 billion to over $550 billion.
  • With the CPI increasing by over 3% in the first few months of the year, the Fed will continue to raise rates, and the 10 Year Treasury will breach the 3% level.
  • Home prices have surpassed the 2006 peak, even though existing home sales are still 20% below 2006 levels and housing starts are 50% below 2006 levels. The entire “recovery” has been engineered by the Fed and Wall Street at the high end of the market. With mortgage rates up 1% already, the further increase will result in existing home sales and housing starts falling by 20% in 2017 and home prices falling by 5% to 10%.

  • The short-term OPEC agreement will allow oil prices to move back to $60 per barrel, further eating into consumer discretionary spending. Desperate fracking companies needing cash flow to service their debt will ramp up. Bankrupt or near bankrupt countries like Venezuela, Mexico, and Iran will also increase production. With a slowing global economy and surging supply, prices will collapse again into the $40s in the second half of the year.
  • Holiday sales for the bricks and mortar retailers will be reported in January as lukewarm at best. By February, the store closing announcements will reach into the hundreds. Sears will finally declare bankruptcy and shutter at least 50% of their stores. Mall developers will begin to declare bankruptcy as vacancies and rising interest rates create a perfect storm.
  • Consumer debt will reach the previous high of $1 trillion, as subprime student loan and auto debt continues to accumulate at an astounding pace. The spigot for student loans is likely to be tightened under Trump, with over 25% of the loans effectively in default. Auto sales (if you can call six year financing and 40% leases, sales) peaked in 2016. Millions of auto buyers are underwater on their loans, subprime auto loans are going into default quicker than you can say Cadillac Escalade, and higher interest rates will price out more potential suckers.
  • The faux jobs recovery is running out of steam. With non-existent wage growth, surging costs for rent, health care, energy, and credit cards tapped out, American families will hunker down and reduce spending further. With consumer spending accounting for 68% of GDP, this will lead to an official recession by the middle of 2017.
  • All the recent surveys showing consumer confidence soaring and optimism for 2017 are based on nothing but hope. The promises of a Trump administration will not come to fruition until 2018 at the earliest. He will meet resistance from Democrats across the board and resistance amongst his own party. His grand plans for massive tax cuts and spending increases will run into the reality of $1 trillion annual deficits. As reality sets in, and recession arrives, the unwarranted optimism will fade rapidly. Tax cuts will be tempered by reduced spending plans.
  • The USD hitting fourteen year highs against the basket of worldwide currencies does not bode well for bringing manufacturing jobs back to make America great again. The reason for the strong dollar is because we are the best looking horse in the glue factory. With Europe and Japan promoting negative interest rates and the Fed slowly raising rates, the dollar will continue to rise. This will hurt our manufacturing businesses, increase our $500 billion annual trade deficit further, and depress the profits of our global corporations.

With rising inflation, rising interest rates, stagnant wages, falling corporate profits, stock valuations at all-time highs, and corporations no longer able to finance stock buy backs at no cost, the stock market will finally hit the wall after a seven year bull market. This last surge of euphoria, based on nothing but Trumpmania sweeping Wall Street, will constitute the final blow-off. The market is currently valued to provide nominal returns of less than 1% over the next twelve years and is likely to experience an abrupt sell-off of 50% in the near future. I believe the near future will be 2017. I think the powers that be will be testing Trump’s mettle in his first year to see if he’ll play ball and do their bidding.

A Tale of Two Housing Markets: Hot and Not So Hot

From Of Two Minds Blog.

A hot housing market is hot for reasons beyond low mortgages interest rates. It is explained by islands of concentrated capital, GDP growth and talent which combined act as magnets that attract global capital and talent, even as prices notch higher. Though this is a US example, similar arguments are relevant closer to home!

If we had to guess which areas will likely experience the smallest declines in prices and recover the soonest, which markets would you bet on?

Though housing statistics such as average sales price are typically lumped into one national number, this is extremely misleading: there are two completely different housing markets in the U.S. One is hot, one is not so hot.>Just as importantly, one may stay relatively hot while the other may stagnate or decline.

All real estate is local, of course; there are thousands of housing markets if we consider neighborhoods, hundreds if we look at counties, cities and towns and dozens if we look at multi-city metro regions.

But consider what happens to average sales prices when million-dollar home sales are lumped in with $100,000 home sales. The average price comes in around $500,000– a gross distortion of both markets.

Here’s a real-world example of what has happened in hot markets over the past 20 years. The house in question is located in a bedroom community suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area metro area. The home was built in 1916 and has 914 square feet, no garage and a small lot. It sold in 1996 for $135,000. This was a bit under neighborhood prices due to the lack of garage and small size, but nearby larger homes sold in the $145,000 to $160,000 range. The house was sold in 2004 for $542,000, and again in 2008 for $575,000. It is currently valued at $720,000. The neighborhood average is $900,000. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, inflation since 1997 has added 50% to the cost of living: $1 in 1997 equals $1.50 in 2016.

Adjusted for inflation of 2.5% annually, calculated cumulatively, the home would be worth a shade over $220,000 today. Long-term studies have found that housing tends to rise about 1% above inflation annually, so if we add 1% annual appreciation (3.5% calculated cumulatively over the 20 years), the home would have appreciated about $47,000 above and beyond inflation, bringing its value to $268,000–almost double the purchase price.

But being in a hot market, this little house appreciated a gargantuan $450,000 above and beyond inflation and long-term appreciation of 1% annually. Those who bought in hot markets are $500,000 richer than those who bought in not-so-hot markets.

Another house I know in a hot metro market sold for $438,000 in 1997 and is currently valued at $1.4 million. The owners picked up substantially more than $500,000 in bonus appreciation.

Or how about a home that sold for $607,000 in 2010 and is now valued at $960,000? (Note that I have picked neighborhoods and metro areas I have known for decades, so I can verify the current valuations are indeed in the real-world ballpark.)

Inflation alone added about $60,000 to the value since 2010; the $300,000 appreciation above and beyond inflation is pure gravy for the owners.

It’s easy to dismiss these soaring valuations as credit-driven bubbles that will eventually pop, but that narrative misses the enormous differences in regional incomes and GDP expansion. The little 900 square foot house that’s barely worth $100,000 in most of the country may well fetch $700,000 in hot markets for far longer than we might expect if it is in a metro area with strong GDP and wage growth.

To understand why, look at these three maps of the U.S. The first reflects the GDP generated within each county; the second shows real growth in GDP by region, and the third displays the wages of the so-called “creative class”–those with high-demand skillsets, education and experience.

The spikes reflect enormous concentrations of GDP. This concentrated creation of goods and services generates jobs and wealth, and that attracts capital and talent. These are self-reinforcing, as capital and talent drive wealth/value creation and thus GDP.

Unsurprisingly, there is significant overlap between regions with high GDP and strong GDP expansion. The engines of growth attract capital and talent.

Creative class wages are highest in the regions with strong GDP expansion and concentrations of GDP, capital and talent. Attracting the most productive workers requires hefty premiums in pay and benefits, as well as interesting work and opportunities for advancement.

That people will make sacrifices to live in these areas should not surprise us–including paying high housing costs. This willingness to pay high housing costs attracts institutional and overseas investors, a flood of capital seeking high returns that further pushes up the cost of housing.

The rising cost of money will impact all housing. So will recession. But if we had to guess which areas will likely experience the smallest declines in prices and recover the soonest, which markets would you bet on?

Markets that are “cheap” because wages are low and opportunities scarce, or high-cost areas with high wages and concentrations of the factors that drive growth and innovation?

The point is that hot housing markets are hot for reasons beyond low interest rates for mortgages. These islands of concentrated capital, GDP growth and talent are magnets that attract global capital and talent, even as prices notch higher.

Bank EPS Misses On Deck

From Zero Hedge.

Wondering how the blow out in interest rates is impacting commercial banks, which just happen to have hundreds of billions in duration exposure in the form of various Treasury and MBS securities, not to mention loans, structured products and of course, trillions in IR swap, derivatives and futures? Wonder no more: the Fed’s weekly H.8 statement, and specifically the “Net unrealized gains (losses) on available-for-sale securities” of commercial banks, gives a glimpse into the pounding that banks are currently experiencing. In short: it has been a bit of a bloodbath.

After hitting a recent high of $34 billion in gains three months ago when interest rates were still near 2016 lows, the reported amount of net unrealized gains has tumbled, and from a gain it has turned into a loss of $14 billion as of the week ended December 14. On a 4-week rolling basis, the change amounts to $37 billion in losses, the biggest monthly drop since the 2013 Taper Tantrum.

This may not be the end of it: as the next chart below shows, commercial banks are holding just shy of an all time high of $747 billion in Treasuries and other non-MBS securities, a number which rises to $2.43 trillion if one includes all Treasury and agency securities on commercial bank balance sheets.

Should rates keep rising, the “unrealized” losses will keep building.

Where on the bank income statement do these losses appear? As we explained the last time this was an issue, in the aftermath of the 2013 Taper Tantrum, it comes down to the the Available For Sale (AFS) line, which runs through the Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income line.

It means that the November and December spike in rates will hammer those banks which hold their bond portfolios as AFS, and thus are subject to Mark to Market and ultimately flow through the P&L.

It also means that the shorthand to get a sense of how substantial the MTM losses from bond holdings will be is to look at the massacre that is going on in the AFS line and extrapolate it to all other levered commercial bank (and hedge fund) rate exposure. Expect math PhD-programmed algos that determine the marginal momentum of the S&P to figure this out some time over the next 2-3 weeks once banks begin reporting results which “unexpectedly” are well below expectations, especially since instead of steepening, the Net Interest Margin line has remained very much unchanged, and if anything, has modestly flattened, failing to offset the losses from bank holdings of rate-sensitive securities.

The End Is in Sight for the U.S. Foreclosure Crisis

From The St. Louis Fed.

The extended period of historically elevated rates of extreme mortgage distress and defaults in the U.S. housing market, better known as “the foreclosure crisis,” has faded from view as the economy continues its slow recovery. A deeper look at mortgage performance data from the Mortgage Bankers Association suggests the crisis has ended in some states, while it is not quite over yet for the nation as a whole. However, the end is near. The condition of current mortgage borrowers considered as a group—nationwide or state by state—is once again comparable to the period just before the Great Recession and the onset of the foreclosure crisis.

As explained below, we identify the fourth quarter of 2007 as the beginning of the nationwide foreclosure crisis; we judge that it had not yet ended as of the third quarter of 2016. Based on current trends, we expect it should end in early 2017. This nearly 10-year nationwide foreclosure crisis will have been longer and deeper than anything we’ve seen since the Great Depression. As many as 10 million mortgage borrowers may have lost their homes.

Some states and regions have experienced severe recessions and housing crises worse than the nation as a whole, while others have suffered less. The result is a wide range of foreclosure-crisis experiences. Among the seven states that make up the Eighth Federal Reserve District, we conclude that only Missouri and Tennessee have exited their foreclosure crises as of the third quarter of 2016 when judged by a national standard; Arkansas likely will follow soon. Meanwhile, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Mississippi may be a year or more away from exiting. If we take into account long-standing differences in mortgage conditions across states, our conclusions are more favorable. Only Illinois has failed to return to its own pre-crisis level and, even there, the end of the foreclosure crisis appears imminent.

Using Data to Define the Start and End of the Foreclosure Crisis

We define the recent foreclosure crisis as the period during which the share of mortgages that are seriously delinquent (90 days or more past due) or in foreclosure in a particular state or nationwide was above the worst level experienced in recent memory (i.e., not including the Great Depression).2 To recognize secular changes in mortgage practices and performance—in particular, steadily rising levels of outstanding mortgage debt and a proliferation of new types of mortgages—we calculate a crisis threshold for the nation and for individual states as the combined rate of serious delinquency plus foreclosure inventory that first exceeds its own five-year moving average by an amount greater than any previously experienced in the data.

We define the end of a foreclosure crisis as the first quarter in which the combined rate drops below its initial crisis reading.

The Foreclosure Crisis at a National Level

Mortgage Bankers Association data show that the U.S. foreclosure crisis started in the fourth quarter of 2007, when the combined rate reached 2.81 percent, a level that exceeded its five-year moving average by 0.67 percentage points, more than any other previous level. Given that the combined rate stood at 3.2 percent in the third quarter of 2016, this suggests that the nationwide foreclosure crisis has not yet quite ended. However, based on the rate of decline in recent quarters, the data-defined end of the crisis on a national scale is likely to occur as soon as the first quarter of 2017. Indeed, comparable data from Lender Processing Services, as shown in the recently released Housing Market Conditions report from the St. Louis Fed, also suggest the foreclosure crisis is nearing its end.

It Has Been a Long, Hard Slog

However it is defined, the mortgage foreclosure crisis will go down as one of the worst periods in our nation’s financial history. For the nation as a whole, the crisis will have lasted almost a decade—about as long as the Great Depression. For most states in the Eighth District, the slightly shorter duration of their foreclosure crises, when measured against their own data trends, has been offset by higher average rates of serious mortgage distress seen even in non-crisis periods.

The conclusion that the foreclosure crisis has been a long, miserable experience for many is unavoidable. And many Americans continue to suffer lasting financial, emotional and even physical pain as a result of their experiences during this time. However, a look at the data today shows that, at least, the end is in sight.

The Fed Admits The Good Old Days Are Never Coming Back

From Zero Hedge.

The dots that the FOMC members contribute to the plot indicate their expectations for the federal funds rate.

Technically, it’s what they think rates should be, not a prediction of what rates will be on those dates. Is that a forecast? You can call it whatever you like. I think “forecast” is close enough.

But before we analyze the whatever-you-call-it, let’s look back at the not-so-distant past.

Here’s a rate history of the last 16 years:

I’ve highlighted this fact before, but it’s worth mentioning again: In 2007, less than a decade ago, the fed funds rate was over 5%. So were the interest rates for Treasury bills, CDs, and money market funds.

People were making 5% on their money, risk-free. It seems like ancient history now, but that year marked the end of a halcyon era of ample rates that most of us lived through.

The chart below shows historical certificate of deposit rates—but remember, you could put your money in a money market fund and do better than the six-month certificate of deposit yield, back in 2007.

Today’s young Wall Street hotshots have never seen anything like that. To them, the jump from 0.5% to 0.75% must seem like a big deal. It’s really not. If the chart above were a heart monitor readout, we would say this patient is now dead and that last blip was an equipment glitch.

The point to all this is that these near-zero rates to which we have all adapted are by no means normal or necessary to sustain a vibrant economy.

We’ve done fine with much higher rates before. They are even beneficial in some ways—they give savers a return on their cash, for instance. But there are likely to be consequences once we embark on this rate-increase cycle.

The FOMC cast members are all old enough to remember those bygone days of higher rates as well as I do. So, we would think they might at least foresee a return to normalcy at some point in the future.

Not so.

The FOMC members see nothing of the sort

Here is the official dot plot published by the FOMC. (I have included their preferred heading so that no one complains about my calling it a forecast, even though that’s what it is.)

Each dot represents the assessment of an FOMC member. That group includes all the Fed governors and the district bank presidents. All 17 of them submit dots, including the presidents of districts who aren’t in the voting rotation right now. There would be 19 dots if the two vacant governor seats had been filled.

That flat set of dots under 2016 represents a rare instance of Federal Reserve unanimity: They all agree where rates are right now. (See, consensus really is possible.) The disagreement sets in next year. For 2017, there’s one lone dot above the 2.0% line, but the majority (12 of 17) are below 1.5%.

Nevertheless, it will be a much different year than this one if they follow through. The dots imply that the fed funds rate will rise a total of 75 basis points next year.

Presumably, that would be three 25 bps moves, but they can split it however they want. They could ignore their expectations completely, too. This time last year, the FOMC said to expect a 100 bps rise, or four rate hikes, in 2016. We got only one.

Follow the dots on out and you see that their assessments trend a little higher in the following two years, and then we have the “longer run” beyond 2019. Most FOMC participants think rates at 3% or less will be appropriate as we enter the 2020s.

The most hawkish dot is at 3.75%.

Think about what this means

Today’s FOMC can imagine raising rates only to the point they fell to about halfway through their 2007–2008 easing cycle. They see no chance that overnight rates will reach 5% again. None.

Here is another view of the same data, that shows how the dots shifted.

Looking at each set of red (September) and blue (December) dots, we see only a slightly more hawkish tilt than we saw three months ago. The “Longer Term” sets are almost identical—two of the doves moved up from the 2.5% level, while the two most hawkish hung tight at 3.75% and 3.50%.

That word hawkish is relative here. By 2007 standards, these two voters are doves. But, Toto, I’ve a feeling we aren’t in 2007 anymore.