CORONAVIRUS AND THE END OF BOOM AND BUST / CREDIT BUBBLE BULLETIN

Coronavirus and the End of Boom and Bust

Doug Nolan


The market week began with cases of the coronavirus jumping to 222, including four outside China. China’s National Health Commission confirmed human-to-human virus transmission. By Friday, more than 1,200 infections had been confirmed, with 41 deaths (8,420 under observation according to the Washington Post). China on Thursday suspended flights and travel out of Wuhan, a city of 11 million. The virus has quickly spread to Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal, France, Australia and the United States.

China has moved to quarantine 13 cities involving an estimated 46 million, according to Bloomberg “the first large-scale quarantine in modern times.” From Bloomberg (Lisa Du): “‘The containment of a city hasn’t been done in the history of international public health policy,’ said Shigeru Omi, who headed the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific Region during the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s. ‘It’s a balance between respecting freedom of movement of people, and also prevention of further disease and public interest. It’s not a simple sort of thing; it’s very complex.’” Included in the 46 million are foreign nationals now unable to leave China.

A 1,000-bed emergency hospital is to be constructed in ten days in overwhelmed Wuhan, as 400 military doctors are deployed to support local providers. In Beijing and throughout the country, officials have cancelled “Year of the Rat” Chinese New Year’s celebrations. Beijing’s Forbidden City is closed to tourist until further notice. Across China, there is fear of going to markets, restaurants, movies and public events.

Nations around the globe have isolated ill patients awaiting coronavirus test results. That this scare is coming at the height of flu and cold season in the U.S. and other northern hemisphere countries adds further complication to a rapidly escalating crisis.

Florida Senator Rick Scott is urging the Trump administration to declare a public health emergency. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has called for the administration to impose a temporary travel ban on flights from China. The coronavirus has the potential to turn highly disruptive to the Chinese economy, with wide-ranging effects on global markets and economies.

The Shanghai Composite dropped 2.8% in Thursday trading, and was down 3.2% for the week. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 3.8%, with the Hang Seng China Financials index sinking 4.9%. For the most part, Asian equities ended the week with modest losses. Financial stocks were under pressure around the globe.

My Bubble thesis views China as the marginal source of both global Credit and demand for commodities. Any development posing risk to China’s vulnerable Bubble rather quickly becomes a pressing global issue. It’s worth noting the Bloomberg Commodities Index dropped 3.1% this week. WTI crude sank 7.4%, while Copper was hit for 5.7%. Nickel fell 6.9%, Tin 5.4% and Zinc 3.6%. China’s renminbi declined 1.2% versus the dollar. In the face of notable investor optimism and attendant financial flows, EM currencies reversed lower this week.

Global safe haven bonds appeared to believe this week’s developments were a big deal. Ten-year Treasury yields dropped 14 bps to a three-month low 1.685%, and German bund yields fell 12 bps to negative 0.34%. The two-year versus 10-year Treasury spread declined almost eight bps this week to a six-week low 18.5 bps (after ending 2019 at 34bps). The market now prices in a 41% probability of a rate cut by the July 29th FOMC meeting, up from last week’s 29%. While on the subject of safe havens, gold bucked this week's commodities market selloff to gain 0.9% to $1,572.

U.S. stocks were under moderate pressure in early Thursday trading, but by the close the S&P500 was positive for the session and back near record highs. The situation turned more concerning by Friday. The S&P500 ended the session down 0.9%, with a loss for the week of 1.0%. The Bank index dropped almost 2% in Friday trading.

January 22 – Reuters: “U.S. home sales jumped to their highest level in nearly two years in December, the latest indication that lower mortgage rates are helping the housing market to regain its footing after hitting a soft patch in 2018. …Existing home sales increased 3.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.54 million units last month, the highest level since February 2018. November’s sales pace was unrevised at 5.35 million units… Existing home sales, which make up about 90% of U.S. home sales, surged 10.0% on a year-on-year basis in December. For all of 2019, sales were unchanged at 5.34 million units.”

Between the impeachment trial and the coronavirus, noteworthy housing data received scant attention. Housing and mortgage finance in 2020 will reemerge as prominent factors in U.S. Bubble Analysis, especially if global developments continue to pressure market yields (and mortgage rates) lower. While December Existing Home Sales (seasonally-adjusted) were the strongest in almost two years, more notable was the decline in available inventory to 3.0 months. This was down from November’s 3.7 months (and September’s 4.1) to the lowest level in the 20-year history of the data series. The chief economist for the National Association of Realtors stated, “America is facing a dire housing shortage condition.” Little wonder home prices have begun to accelerate.

January 17 – Bloomberg (Prashant Gopal): “U.S. home prices rose the most in 19 months in December, fueled by low mortgage rates and the tightest supply on record, according to Redfin. Prices jumped 6.9% from a year earlier to a median of $312,500, the biggest annual increase since May 2018… Values fell in just two of the 85 largest metropolitan areas Redfin tracks: New York, with a 2.4% decline, and San Francisco, down 1.7%... Some of the most-affordable cities in Redfin’s study had the biggest price gains, led by Memphis, Tennessee, with a 16% jump. The inventory of available homes for sale nationwide tumbled 15% from a year earlier. There were fewer properties for sale last month than at any time since at least December 2012…”

January 21 – CNBC (Diana Olick): “Homebuilding took a sharp turn higher to end 2019, but it is far from enough to satisfy the current demand. The U.S. housing market is short nearly 4 million homes, according to new analysis from realtor.com. Analyzing U.S. census data, the report showed that the 5.9 million single-family homes built between 2012 and 2019 do not offset the 9.8 million new households formed during that time. Even with an above average pace of construction, it would take builders between four and five years to get back to a balanced market. The shortfall today can be blamed on the epic housing crash of more than a decade ago… With loans available to even the riskiest buyers, builders responded by putting up 1.7 million single-family homes at the peak of the construction boom in 2005, according to the U.S. census. That was about 5 million more than the 20-year average.”

January 23 – Wall Street Journal (James Mackintosh): “The Davos consensus can be a powerful counter-indicator, but this year it is worrying me for all the wrong reasons. Two years ago the elite assembled for the World Economic Forum in the Alps strongly believed in global growth, and were completely wrong. A year ago they were concerned, and again entirely wrong as markets subsequently soared. This year the problem is that I find myself sharing the consensus view, justifying high stock valuations on the basis of easy monetary policy. It is a deeply uncomfortable place to be.”

Bob Prince, Co-CIO of Bridgewater Associates (in a Bloomberg Television interview from Davos): “2018 I think was a lesson learned. The tightening of central banks all around the world wasn’t intended to cause a downturn – wasn’t intended to cause what it did. But I think lessons were learned from that. And I think it was really a marker that we’ve probably seen the end of the boom and bust cycle.”

Bloomberg’s Tom Keene: “Is it the end of the hedge fund business in modeling portfolios off the guestimates of what central banks will do?”

Prince: “That won’t play much of a role nearly as it has. You remember the eighties when we sat and waited for the money supply numbers. We’ve come a long way since then… Now we talk 25 plus [bps Fed rate increase] – 25 minus. We’re not even going to get 25 plus or minus and we have negative yields. That idea of the boom/bust cycle – and that history that we’ve been in for decades – is really driven by shifts in credit and monetary policy. But you’re in a situation now where the Fed is in a box. They can’t tighten, and they can’t ease – nor can other central banks, particularly the reserve currencies. And so where do you go from here? It’s not going to look like it has.”

Bloomberg’s Jonathan Ferro: “Bob, you just said it twice – and I’m still surprised. And you said it before the interview started… It’s the end of the boom/bust cycle?”

Prince: “As we know it.”

Ferro: “There was a man called Gordon Brown, former Chancellor of the United Kingdom, a famous scene in Parliament of him standing up and saying, “It’s the end of the boom/bust,” and it was right before the financial crisis. It’s the end of the boom/bust cycle? What does that mean?”

Prince: “Cycles in growth are caused by the boom and bust in Credit. Credit expansion, Credit contraction. And those expansions and contractions of Credit are largely driven by changes in monetary policy. And so we’re in a situation today where with interest-rates close to zero and secular deflationary forces, you’re not going to get a tightening of monetary policy. They learned that lesson last year and got the unintended effects of that. You’re not going to get a tightening, and one of the reasons you’re not going to get a tightening is because they can’t ease. If you can’t ease you don’t want to tighten to cause a problem for yourself that you can’t get out of. Therefore, you’re in a box; you don’t tighten, and you don’t ease.”

Keene: “It sounds like you read (Ray) Dalio’s book.”

Prince: “We work together” (laughter).

Ferro: “…What are the investment implications…”

Prince: “The nature of the economic environment is changing. So, we are converging on something – a slow growth environment, I’d say close to stagnation – approaching stagnation. That’s why interest rates are at zero. That’s why real interest rates are negative – is because central banks have to make cash very unattractive…, but also they have to make bonds unattractive. Central banks have taken cash and bonds and they’ve made it a funding vehicle – not an investment vehicle. And they’re trying to keep that rate low so that money goes from bonds to assets.”

Noland: I’m always fascinated when highly intelligent market professionals say peculiar things. I’m still not over Ray Dalio’s concept of “beautiful deleveraging” from some years back. When I first heard Prince’s comments, I thought immediately of the eminent American economist Irving Fisher and his infamous, “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau” - just days ahead of the great 1929 stock market crash.

But there is an analytical framework behind Prince’s view worthy of discussion. I’m with him completely when it comes to, “Cycles in growth are caused by the boom and bust in Credit.” In a historical context, I can accept “those expansions and contractions of Credit are largely driven by changes in monetary policy.” I agree “you’re not going to get a tightening of monetary policy.” Prince says central banks are “in a box,” while I prefer “trapped.”

But it is as if Mr. Prince is suggesting there is now some type of equilibrium condition that precludes a boom and bust dynamic. I would counter that central banks are locked in a position of administering extreme monetary stimulus, fueling a runaway boom that will end in a historic bust. Markets clearly expect ongoing aggressive stimulus (QE) from all the major global central banks.

And I don’t buy into the “rates are near zero because of stagnation” argument. The Fed cut rates three times in 2019 due to market fragility and the risk of a faltering Bubble - that had little to do with U.S. economic performance. Global rates are where they are because of acute global Bubble-related fragilities and resulting extreme monetary stimulus. Low global market yields (and negative real yields) are more a Bubble Dynamic than a reflection of deflationary forces. A historic boom/bust dynamic has global bond markets anticipating enormous prospective central bank bond purchases (QE).

The critical question: Can runaway booms descend into busts without a tightening of monetary policy? The answer seems a rather obvious “absolutely”. I don’t believe the Fed’s timid tightening measures in 1999 and early 2000 precipitated the bursting of the Internet and technology Bubble. The Fed was cutting rates aggressively into 2002, yet that didn’t arrest the bust in corporate Credit. I would strongly argue the Fed’s even more cautious 2006/2007 rate increases were not the catalyst for the bursting of the mortgage finance Bubble. In reality, in the face of strengthening Bubble Dynamics, financial conditions loosened significantly as the Fed tiptoed along with its so-called “tightening” cycle.

The Fed emerged from the 1994 tightening cycle recognizing that contemporary finance – with its hedge funds, speculative leverage, derivatives and Wall Street securitized finance and proprietary trading– carried an elemental propensity for excess and instability. That was effectively the end of Federal Reserve policy tightening cycles. From then on, it was cautious little “baby steps” to ensure the Fed wouldn’t upset the markets.

The “tech” and mortgage finance booms were left to inflate free from central bank restraint. Uncommonly painful busts were inevitable. Today’s most protracted all-encompassing global boom has not only been left free to inflate, central bankers continue their multi-trillion spending spree to pressure nonstop inflation. I do agree: when this fiasco runs its course, it certainly won’t be boom and bust “as we know it.”

January 21 – CNBC (Yun Li): “Billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones said the stock market today is reminiscent of the latter stages of the bull market in 1999 that saw a giant surge that ultimately ended with the popping of the dot-com bubble. ‘We are just again in this craziest monetary and fiscal mix in history. It’s so explosive. It defies imagination,’ Jones said… ‘It reminds me a lot of the early ’99. In early ’99 we had 1.6% PCE, 2.3% CPI. We have the exact same metrics today.’ ‘The difference is fed funds were 4.75%; today it’s 1.62%. And back then we had budget surplus and we’ve got a 5% budget deficit,’ Jones added. ‘Crazy times.’”