Macro and Credit - Wirth's law

"People don't buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons." -  Zig Ziglar, American author

Watching with interest the unabated compression in credit spreads since the election of "Machiavellian" Macron in France, leading to a significant outperformance in beta (the carry game) as shown by the tighter levels reached for Itraxx CDS 5 year subordinated index (-55 bps since his election), we reacquainted ourselves with Wirth's law. Wirth's law, also known as Page's law, Gates' law and May's law, is a computing adage which states that software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster. The law is named after Niklaus Wirth, who discussed it in his 1995 paper, "A Plea for Lean Software". The Swiss computer scientist is best known for designing several programming languages, including Pascal, and for pioneering several classic topics in software engineering. In 1984 he won the Turing Award, generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science, for developing a sequence of innovative computer languages. In similar fashion, while High Frequency Trading has become faster, one could argue that volatility and velocity have become slower more rapidly, thanks to central banks meddling. Also, in similar fashion secondary trading in bonds have become slower, while yields continue to trade tighter. As posited by a good friend at an execution desk in a large private bank, it's a good thing primary markets are so ebullient, because secondary trading has become much slower with spread tightening so much, reducing the need to rotate existing position, while inflows are pouring into anything with a yield in true 2007 fashion but we ramble again.

In this week's conversation we would like to look again at the wage conundrum in the US, given when it comes to "inflation" and "Unobtainium" (another cryptocurrency using Bitcoin's source code) we still think as per our conversation "Perpetual Motion" from July 2014 that real wage growth is indeed the "Unobtainium" piece of the puzzle the Fed has so far been struggling to "mine" :

"Unless there is an acceleration in real wage growth we cannot yet conclude that the US economy has indeed reached the escape velocity level given the economic "recovery" much vaunted has so far been much slower than expected. But if the economy accelerates and wages finally grow in real terms, the Fed would be forced to tighten more aggressively." - source Macronomics, July 2014

Back in our January conversation "The Ultimatum game" we looked at jobs, wages and the difference between Japan and the United States in relation to the "reflation" story or "Trumpflation". We argued that what had been plaguing Japan in its attempt in breaking its deflationary spiral had been the outlook for wages. Without wages rising there is no way the Bank of Japan can create sufficient inflation (apart from asset prices thanks to its ETF buying spree) on its own. 

Synopsis:

• Macro and Credit - Attempts in exploiting the Phillips curve have failed
• Final chart - Trumpflated

• Macro and Credit - Attempts in exploiting the Phillips curve have failed

Back in June 2013 in our conversation "Lucas critique" we quoted Robert Lucas, given he argued that it was naive to try to predict the effects of a change in economic policy entirely on the basis of relationships observed in historical data, especially highly aggregated historical data. In essence the Lucas critique is a negative result given that it tells economists, primarily how not to do economic analysis:

"One important application of the critique (independent of proposed microfoundations) is its implication that the historical negative correlation between inflation and unemployment, known as the Phillips Curve, could break down if the monetary authorities attempted to exploit it. Permanently raising inflation in hopes that this would permanently lower unemployment would eventually cause firms' inflation forecasts to rise, altering their employment decisions. Said another way, just because high inflation was associated with low unemployment under early-twentieth-century monetary policy does not mean we should expect high inflation to lead to low unemployment under all alternative monetary policy regimes." - Robert Lucas

We argued at the time that Ben Bernanke's policy of driving unemployment rate lower was likely to fail, because monetary authorities have no doubt, attempted to exploit the Phillips Curve.  We also indicated in our past musing the following:

"In the 1970s, new theories came forward to rebuke Keynesian theories behind the Phillips Curve by monetarists such as Milton Friedman,  such as rational expectations and the NAIRU (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) arose to explain how stagflation could occur:
"Since the short-run curve shifts outward due to the attempt to reduce unemployment, the expansionary policy ultimately worsens the exploitable tradeoff between unemployment and inflation. That is, it results in more inflation at each short-run unemployment rate. The name "NAIRU" arises because with actual unemployment below it, inflation accelerates, while with unemployment above it, inflation decelerates. With the actual rate equal to it, inflation is stable, neither accelerating nor decelerating. One practical use of this model was to provide an explanation for stagflation, which confounded the traditional Phillips curve." - Milton Friedman

The issue with NAIRU:"The NAIRU analysis is especially problematic if the Phillips curve displays hysteresis, that is, if episodes of high unemployment raise the NAIRU. This could happen, for example, if unemployed workers lose skills so that employers prefer to bid up of the wages of existing workers when demand increases, rather than hiring the unemployed"

As far as we are concerned when unemployment becomes a target for the Fed, it ceases to be a good measure. Don't blame it Goodhart's law but on Okun's law which renders NAIRU, the Phillips Curve "naive" in true Lucas critique fashion. 

What is happening in the United States has already been laid bare in Japan given over the years, wage growth - in both per worker and per hour terms - has become less responsive to changes in the unemployment rate. In other words, the slope of the Japan’s Phillips curve has flattened, with the break coinciding with the onset of deflation in the late 1990s.

When it comes to the repeating interrogations of some sell-side pundits on this matter we read with interest Bank of America Merrill Lynch US Economic Viewpoint note from the 11th of May entitled "What's up with wages?" as it seems to us many still doesn't get it:

"Wage wars

The unemployment rate is 4.4%, companies have the most job openings available since 2001 and workers are quitting at the fastest rate since 2007. All else equal, this seems like an equation for “normal” pace of wage growth of 3.5-4.0%. But instead we are averaging a mid-2% pace for wages. In this piece, we address the theoretical and empirical reasons for the slow response in wages. We also look at wage dynamics on an industry level, relying on the expertise of BofA Merrill Lynch equity research analysts. Our bottom line is that wages should continue to head higher, but it will likely remain slow and uneven between industries.

There is the theory

The standard model for estimating wage inflation (or price pressure more broadly) is the Phillips Curve. The idea is pretty simple – if the unemployment rate is above NAIRU (non-acceleration inflation rate of unemployment, aka full employment), wage inflation should decelerate. As the unemployment rate approaches NAIRU, the pace of deceleration slows and once we cross through full employment, wage inflation begins to accelerate. This makes sense in theory, but less so in practice, leading to many claims of the death of the Phillips Curve (Chart 1).

In our view, it still provides a viable framework but we should accept that the Phillips Curve is relatively flat implying slow response of wage inflation to moves in the unemployment rate.

The pace of wage inflation is also influenced by productivity growth. In this environment of weak productivity growth, firms may be more hesitant to raise wages. Productivity growth has averaged 0.5 – 1.0% yoy over most of this recovery, which is a historically slow pace of growth. Without productivity growth, it becomes harder for companies to justify raising wages since the output per worker has failed to increase.

And then the data

We can examine the relationship between the unemployment rate and wage growth using historical data. We do this in two ways – descriptive (correlations) and empirical (regressions) analysis. The simplest is just to compare unemployment slack – defined as the unemployment rate less NAIRU – versus wage growth (Chart 2).

There is a general relationship where an increase in labor market slack depresses wage growth and a decline in slack underpins it, but from the quick glance of the eye, the relationship has fallen apart since the Great Recession.

We can also look at the JOLTS survey to gauge the degree of wage pressure in the system, by examining openings and quit rates. When times are good and the labor market is tight, workers have the ability to voluntarily quit jobs, often for a better opportunity and higher pay. According to the JOLTS survey, the quit rate is running at 2.1% (quits level as a % of total employment), hovering close to cycle highs. Using a longer history derived by Haltwanger et al, the current quit rate is consistent with wage growth of about 3.5% yoy based on the historical relationship (Chart 3).

It is standard to examine job openings in the context of the unemployment rate, which is depicted as the Beveridge Curve. This shows the relationship between the unemployment rate and the job vacancy rate (proxied by job openings). A shift out in the curve implies a higher level of unemployment rate for a given vacancy rate, implying less efficiency in the labor market and deterioration in the matching process. The curve clearly shifted out after the recession but seems to be turning back in most recently, implying more efficient job matching which in turn could underpin wages (Chart 4).

Another key source of wage growth is job-to-job transitions. Theory suggests that a worker will switch jobs when a better match comes along and that should lead to higher wages. Evidence bears this out. NY Fed economists find that even after controlling for worker characteristics, those who came into their current job through a job-to-job transition have higher wages than those who experience a period of nonemployment. In the past, the unemployment rate and the job-to-job transition rate have co-moved. But during the current recovery this relationship has weakened as the unemployment rate has returned to pre-recession levels while job-to-job transitions remain subdued (Chart 5).

The modest recovery in the job-to-job transition rate could explain the lackluster wage growth we have experienced during the recovery. It’s hard to know with certainty the reason for subdued job switching, but mismatch between jobs and worker skills may be holding back job switching and thus wage growth."  - source Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Obviously we are part of the crowd claiming the death of the Phillips curve. Back in our January conversation "The Ultimatum game" we argued that the Phillips curve was dead because because the older a country's population gets, the lower its inflation rate. While economics textbook would like to tell us that a slowdown in population growth should put upward pressure on wages and therefore induce inflation as labor supply shrinks à la Japan, as discussed in our June 2013 conversation Singapore-based economist Andrew Cates from UBS macro team indicated that demographics influence demand for durable goods and property.

At the time we concluded our conversation as follows:

"In similar fashion and as highlighted above in our quote from David Goldman, the United States need to resolve the lag in its productivity growth. It isn't only a wage issues to make "America great again". But if Japan is a good illustration for what needs to be done in the United States and therefore avoiding the same pitfalls, then again, it is not the "quantity of jobs" that matters in the United States and as shown in Japan and its fall in productivity, but, the quality of the jobs created. If indeed the new Trump administration wants to make America great again, as we have recently said, they need to ensure Americans are great again." - source Macronomics, January 2017

Subdued job switching is due to a mismatch between jobs and worker skills. To repeat ourselves, what matters is the quality of jobs but we should add that to ensure Americans are great again, they need to get better skills for the jobs being advertised and that goes through training. For instance, Labour Market Training targeted to unemployed job seekers has a long tradition in Sweden. It is all about upskilling unemployed adults in the end. Since the mid-1990s in Sweden, it has become a central labour market policy instrument. The purpose of labour market training is to provide unemployed persons basic or supplementary vocational training. Another objective is to promote both occupational and geographical mobility to support structural changes in the economy and to strengthen the position of disadvantaged groups in the labour market (source Eurostat, 2012). As we indicated before about the limitations of the Phillips curve is that if unemployed workers lose skills, then employers prefer to bid up of the wages of existing workers when demand increases.

Furthermore we disagree with Bank of America Merrill Lynch but they do recognise that using the Phillips curve for modelling purposes has its limits:

"Models are useful but they also have their limits. This was quite salient during the Great Recession. Chart 6 shows the forecast of a simple wage Phillips curve and actual average hourly earnings wage growth from 2008-2015.

The model predicted an earlier drop in wage growth during the recession and a relatively quick rebound during the recovery. In actuality, we got the reverse: wage growth declined at a slower pace and has only steadily picked up since the recession.
Models are built on past relationships. Once those relationships change, the models become less reliable. Structural shifts (e.g. demographics, mismatch) in the labor market could be affecting wage growth. The unemployment rate gap can’t capture all these complexities of the US labor markets. But the wage Phillips Curve is the “best bad” model we have.
Given our forecast for the unemployment rate (bottoming at 4.2%), our models suggest average hourly earnings should reach 3% by early next year while the ECI gets there by early 2019 (Chart 7).

- source Bank of America Merrill Lynch 

Unfortunately as posited by Robert Lucas it is naive to try to predict the effects of a change in economic policy entirely on the basis of relationships observed in historical data and yes indeed, demographics mismatch is putting clearly a spanner is this outdated Phillips curve model we think.

Clearly the relationship between labor market slack and wage growth is weakening. Japan is a good example of this "deflationary" curse were the labor market has become very tight as indicated by Société Générale Asian Themes note from the 12th of May entitled "Government of Japan to finally implement labour reforms":

"Current state of Japan’s labour market

Japan’s labour market is at its tightest level since the early 1990s 

Japan’s unemployment rate fell to below 3% to 2.8% in February 2017, and the job/applicant ratio has reached a high level of 1.45. Both measures have improved significantly since Prime Minister Abe took office in December 2012 and started Abenomics. The unemployment rate was at 4.3% and the job/applicant ratio was 0.83 in December 2012. Japan’s NAIRU (nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment) was previously believed to be at roughly 3.5%; however, the unemployment rate has remained continuously below that level over the past year. The job/applicant ratio has increased to levels not seen since the early 1990s. Looking at the breakdown, compared with the start of Abenomics in December 2012, the number of job openings in February 2017 has increased by 31.1%, while the number of job seekers has decreased by 24.0%."

- source Société Générale

Whereas the United States have yet to experience a significant rise in labor participation and has seen as well a significant fall in its productivity, the Japanese economy has overall achieved productivity growth with continuous deleveraging and hefty corporate cash balances and a tight labor market thanks to poor demographics and rising women participation rate in the labor market. As we posited in June 2016 in our conversation "Road to Nowhere":

"When it comes to Japanese efficiency and productivity, no doubt that Japanese companies have become more "lean" and more profitable than ever. The issue of course is that at the Zero Lower Bound (ZLB) and since the 29th of January, below the ZLB with Negative Interest Rate Policy (NIRP), no matter how the Bank of Japan would like to "spin" it, the available tools at the disposal of the Governor appears to be limited.

While the Japanese government has been successful in boosting the labor participation rate thanks to more women joining the labor market, the improved corporate margins of Japanese companies have not lead to either wage growth, incomes and consumption despite the repeated calls from the government. The big winners once again have been the shareholders through increased returns in the form of higher dividends. In similar fashion to the Fed and the ECB, the money has been flowing "uphill", rather than "downhill" to the real economy due to the lack of "wage growth". This is clearly illustrated in rising on the Return Of Invested Capital (ROIC) " - source Macronomics, June 2016

We concluded at the time:

"If indeed Japan fails to encourage "wage growth" in what seems to be a "tighter labor" market, given the demographic headwinds the country faces, we think Japan might indeed be on the "Road to Nowhere. Unless the Japanese government "tries harder" in stimulating "wage growth", no matter how nice it is for Japan to reach "full-employment", the "deflationary" forces the country faces thanks to its very weak demographic prospects could become rapidly "insurmountable". - source Macronomics, June 2016

Either you focus on labor or on capital, end of the day, Japan has to decide whether it wants to favor "wall street" or "main street"." - source Macronomics, October 2016.

Yet for Japan, for some pundits, there might be hope given the intent of the Japanese government to implement labour reforms as indicated by Société Générale in their note:

"The government has proposed a set of labour reform plans to alleviate pressures from labour shortages

The government has announced a set of labour reform plans that it considers crucial for the sustainability of Japan’s labour market. The key focus is the concept of ‘equal wage for equal work’ and limiting overtime. These measures to improve working conditions should motivate marginally attached workers to return to the labour market. Addressing labour reform is an important tool for preventing Japan’s potential growth rate from declining due to declining labour inputs in an ageing society.

Progress until now and further progress on labour reforms should help Japan’s economic recovery continue

The various labour policies the government has implemented since the start of Abenomics have started to bear fruit. The number of women in the labour force continues to increase, younger generations are securing jobs, and the government has started to address the issue of accepting foreign workers as well. These measures have already helped to counteract the decline in the ageing workforce to a certain extent. Implementation of additional reforms will likely further help the sustainability of Japan’s labour market over the medium to long term. In turn, alleviating the downward pressure on labour input should boost the potential growth rate and strengthen Japan’s economic recovery." - source Société Générale.

 Back in our January conversation "The Ultimatum game", we indicated the following:

"Re-anchoring inflation expectations can only come from increasing wage growth and some significant labor market reforms in Japan. Not only wage growth is still eluding the Japanese economy, but, productivity has been yet another sign of "mis-allocation" of resources which has therefore entrenched the deflationary spell of Japan in recent years." - source Macronomics, January 2017.

The issue of course we are seeing in both Japan and the rest of the world is that the older generations is averse to inflation eating away their assets while the young generations are more comfortable with relatively high wages and the resulting inflation. Unfortunately rentiers seek and prefer deflation. They prefer conservative government policies of balanced budgets and deflationary conditions and so far the money has been flowing downhill where all the fun is namely the bond market and particularly beta (the carry game) which can be illustrated by the outperformance in the CCC bucket in High Yield so far this year.

When it comes to Japan and wages per worker, more recently it decreased for the first time in 10 months (-0.4%), contrary to expectations for an increase. It remains to be seen how the Japanese government is going to slay the deflationary demon plaguing its economy.

• Final chart - Trumpflated

For inflation expectations to remain anchored, acceleration in wages are essential for both the US and Japan. When it comes to assessing the "Trumpflation" trade, as of late it has been fading. Since the beginning of the year we have been fading the strong dollar investment crowd and we continue to expect further weakness. Our final chart comes from Credit Suisse Global Equity Strategy note from the 18th of May entitled "Reassessing the reflation trade". It shows that the reflation trade index which had propelled much higher stocks on hopes for a global reflationary play is moving back into negative territory:

"The deflating of the reflation trade

As the first chart below illustrates, this combination of an improving global cycle, significant year-on-year commodity price rises and the election of Donald Trump drove expectations of a broad-based reflation in the global economy. The reflation surprise index (proxied here simply by adding the Citi economic and inflation surprise indices for the US) rose to a post-2011 high in the first quarter following an extended period in negative territory. Now, however, the reflation surprise index is back into negative territory as US macro surprises roll over, and inflation starts to surprise on the downside, rather than the upside, as earlier rises in commodity prices fall out of the annual comparison.

US small caps, the US dollar and US nominal yields have all given up much of their post- US election gains. Similarly, GEM equities have gained back their losses over the same period." - source Crédit Suisse

As we indicated in previous conversations, markets were trading on great expectations and hope. It looks to us that for the time being, there is a need to get reacquainted with more realist expectations from the new US administration.

"Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men." - Thomas Huxley

Stay tuned!

Macro and Credit - Narrative paradigm

"The first step towards philosophy is incredulity." - Denis Diderot, French philosopher

Watching with interest hard data becoming softer with the latest weak US CPI (-0.3%) and disappointing retail sales falling by 0.2% (0.1% fall expected), when it came to choosing our title analogy we reminded ourselves of the Narrative paradigm, a theory proposed by 20th century scholar Walter Fisher. It stipulates that all meaningful communication is a form of storytelling or reporting of events. It promotes the belief that humans are story tellers and listeners and are more persuaded by a good story than by good argument. Because of this, human beings experience and comprehend life and financial markets as a series of ongoing narratives, each with its own conflicts, characters, beginning, middle, and end. In his theory Walter Fisher believed that all forms of communication that appears to our reason are best viewed as stories shaped by history, culture, and character. The ways in which financial pundits and the Fed have been selling us the "Trumpflation" and "recovery" story justifying the hikes in interest rates have more to do with telling a credible story than it does in producing evidence or constructing a logical argument we would argue, hence our chosen title. These pundits, like the Fed are essentially storytellers and each individual chooses the ones that match his or her values and beliefs. Obviously, the test of the narrative rationality is based on the probability, coherence, and fidelity of the stories that underpin the immediate investment decisions to be made. Unfortunately, these "Jedi tricks" do not function well with us. We must confess that we never bought the strong dollar narrative story that everyone piled into. As of late, the latest raft of hard US macro data has pushed us to revisit a US long duration exposure. It seems to us that US GDP for Q1 2017 is going to be most likely more disappointing than Q1 2016, therefore we have gone with the narrative rationality of MDGA (Make Duration Great Again) from a tactical perspective but we ramble again...

In this week's conversation we would like to look at 

Synopsis:

• Macro and Credit - Foreign bonds allocation - Are the Japanese back in town?
• Final charts - Credit, the only easy day was yesterday...

• Macro and Credit - Foreign bonds allocation - Are the Japanese back in town?

At the end of March in our conversation "Outflow boundary", we argued that it was important to focus on what our Japanese friends such as GPIF, Lifers and Mrs Watanabe were doing in terms of foreign bonds allocations.  At the time we also added:

"The weakness seen since the beginning of the year has reduced the cost of dollar funding, and with US policy in turmoil in conjunction with prospects for slower US growth than anticipated, there is a chance to "make duration great again" we think in the current "Outflow boundary" environment" - source Macronomics, March 2017

We also note that our tactical bullish US long bonds allocation since our recent post was validated:

"Now, if US long bonds yields such as 30 years continue receding, then indeed our contrarian stance of once again dipping our toes in long duration exposure (ETF ZROZ - TLT) and adding to Investment Grade credit with higher duration as well could be tactically enticing. We are watching closely the 3% level on the 30 year." - source Macronomics, March 2017

With the 30 year US bonds now at a yield of 2.89% supported mostly by geopolitical woes in conjunction with recent weaknesses in hard data such as CPI and retail sales. As we pointed out in our recent musings including our most recent one, we were eagerly anticipating a return of the Japanese investment crowd in US Treasuries and US credit thanks to an improving cross-currency basis. We also highlighted last week that European domiciled accounts had been front-running the Japanese investment crowd, which has now entered its new fiscal year. The big question one might ask in the current "Narrative paradigm" is as follows: are the Japanese back in town when it comes to their foreign bonds purchases?

One clear trend seen in recent years has been Bank of Japan's QE programme between December 2012 and June 2016 which has enticed large inflows into the US bond markets as displayed in Nomura FX Insights note from the 10th of April entitled "Where has the ECB QE Money gone":

- source Nomura

Is this time going to be different? We wonder. There is currently a clear avoidance in terms of allocation by the Japanese investment crowd for French Government bonds given the looming French elections. There is as well prevailing uncertainties from the new US administration when it comes to fiscal policies. What appears to be the case is that the current level of uncertainties is clearly slowing the return of the Japanese crowd this time around.

Also, the recent bout or "risk-off" with USD/JPY trading through the significant 110 level is somewhat probably dampening the velocity in the return of this specific investment crowd. On this subject we read with interest Bank of America Merrill Lynch Liquid Insight note from the 13th of April entitled "New fiscal year, new flow":

"New fiscal year, new flow

Japan entered the new fiscal year this month. Last week, we argued JPY strength may be overdone and that the USD/JPY’s medium-term uptrend has not ended despite a near-term possibility of further technical sell off through 110 where we stop out (Is JPY strength justified? 105 first or 117? 07 April 2017). In our view, global risk events may not fully explain the extent of JPY strength, and flow dynamics could have been behind the JPY strength. With new data from the balance of payment statistics, we argue the demand/supply balance of USD/JPY should be improving especially after an eventful April.

Japanese money in the new fiscal year

We have seen a notable slowdown in foreign securities purchases by Japanese investors since the US election in November (Chart of the day).

The slowdown probably reflects position unwinding among bank accounts and a wait-and-see stance among the Japanese real money community amid a volatile Treasury market in the final months of the Japanese fiscal year (Chart 1-Chart 2).

Banks could continue to unwind Treasuries, but it would involve little FX impact as they usually fund these investments in the USD, unlike real money accounts we discuss below.

Lifers – more USD buying

There is a seasonality of increased foreign bond purchases by insurance accounts during the early part of Japanese fiscal year. This year, we observe (1) rising yields in the JGB’s super long sector, but still at a relatively low level; (2) lower FX hedge cost; and (3) higher US yields, and (4) a lower USD/JPY (Chart 4).

True, it is unlikely they would be very aggressive in unhedged foreign bond investments as investors would balance across JGBs, hedged foreign bonds, and unhedged foreign bonds. For now, the USD/JPY at 110 may not attract strong demand, but we believe the USD demand will increase in the next few months once we go through April full of risk events or if we get renewed optimism for the US tax reform.

Trust accounts – market stabilizer

Trust accounts continued to sell rising assets and buy falling assets last quarter as the GPIF portfolio has presumably been close to its target for some time (Chart 5).

Going forward, a traditional risk-off market, as we currently observe, would likely be met by selling of domestic bonds (and potentially foreign bonds) and buying of domestic and foreign equities by pension funds. Reflation trade would be met by selling of foreign and domestic equities and buying of foreign bonds (and potentially domestic bonds) by pension funds.

Exporters’ hedging

Another source of the earlier USD/JPY weakness may have to do with Japanese exporters’ hedging activity into the fiscal year-end. Japan’s trade balance has been rising in light of stable oil prices and rising real exports (Chart 7).

There is a possibility the final months of the fiscal year generated additional USD selling.

As FY17 starts, we think corporate hedging should be more orderly, unlike last year. According to the BoJ’s tankan survey, large manufacturers had assumed an average USD/JPY rate of 117.5 heading into FY16, while the year actually opened at 112s, which led to a severe USD selling pressure last April, in our view (Revisiting the dollar’s 100 yen scenario 07 April 2016). This year, corporates assume an average USD/JPY rate of 108.4 (Chart 8).

Though this may suggest some near-term pressure, the assumption itself seems conservative, in our view. While the improving trade balance may support the JPY over the medium-term at margin, we believe corporate USD selling will be spread out and less intense this year." - source Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Whereas the Narrative paradigm has been so far seen in renewed optimism for US tax reform, the latest raft of hard data makes us wonder how many weeks before we seen again "Bondzilla" the Japanese NIRP monster's appetite return. Our current stance, given the weaker tone in both geopolitical rising tensions in conjunction with a much softer tone in hard data, has pushed us, was we indicated earlier on in our conversation to play the duration game again, in effect front-running the Japanese investment crowd before they are back in town, yet this time around in 2017 with a delay we think. On that point we agree with Bank of America Merrill Lynch's conclusions:

"Flow in the new fiscal year will likely put widening pressure on JPYUSD basis but the magnitude will be less this time

As highlighted above (and here), lifers are expected to start investing in foreign bond markets after the French election, but in the early part of the Japanese fiscal year. Lifers’ outward flow usually pushes JPYUSD basis wider as they try to hedge FX risk. This will likely be no different this time, but we expect the widening pressure will be less and it would be difficult to see JPYUSD basis go wider to last year’s level. At the current level of USDJPY, lifers will be more open to keep their foreign bonds unhedged and some of the contributing factors to the tightening of USDJPY basis since the start of the year are structural." - source Bank of America Merrill Lynch

No doubt the Lifers will come into play in terms of their foreign bonds allocations, and this will also have some impact in the already volatile USDJPY currency pair. What is of interest of course, when it comes to the "Narrative paradigm" is that there are already early signs of the Japanese investment crowd dipping their toes back into foreign bonds as indicated by UBS in the Global Rates Strategy note from the 10th of April entitled "What Japanese Investors Are Buying":

"French bonds overtake US Treasuries as main force behind Japanese selling Japanese investors' post-US presidential election trend of considerable net selling of overseas bonds continues. Weekly flow data underscores how Japanese investors sold ~¥5.4 trillion of foreign bonds from the time of the election to the end of Mar-17.
Today's more granular data release of which individual sovereign bond markets were bought and sold in Feb-17 highlights that French bonds have overtaken US Treasuries as the main force behind the overall selling pressure. This suggests that political risks as of February overshadowed the increasingly attractive currency-hedged pick-up over JGBs offered by French bonds. Separately, we note that the last week of Mar-17 saw the largest net purchases of overseas bonds in six months. However, as this follows the typical pattern around Japan fiscal year-end (.Figure 4), we would caution interpreting this as a sign of a sustainable rebound in Japanese demand for overseas bonds.

 - source UBS

While, yes it might be seen as too early to embrace yet the "Narrative paradigm", in the light of the recent weakness in both the US dollar and hard macro data, we would rather be a little bit early and start tactically adding at least on the long end of US Treasuries, rather than wait for additional signs from the Japanese investor crowd. Some says fortune favors the brave, we would posit that in most occasions it favors the bold contrarian but we ramble again here.

Finally, for our final charts below, as we posited in previous conversations, when it comes to the situation in credit and in particular in 2017, we would rather go for US credit, given it seems to us that Euro High Yield is "priced to perfection" and when it comes to US High Yield we closely follow what oil prices are doing and much less sanguine than we were back at the end of 2015. Yes, the credit cycle seems to be turning, but, it is slowly turning.

• Final charts - Credit, the only easy day was yesterday...

Whereas the second part of 2016 saw a very significant rally in general for US High Yield and in particular for the US energy sector, the rally so far this year has been significant as well, making us wonder if there is any "juice" left given the performance so far. Yet something we would agree with Barclays from their Global Strategy Chart book from the 10th of April is that when it comes to credit we would favor US Investment Grade over Euro Investment Grade. On top of that agreement we also think that, when it comes to credit overall, the only easy day was yesterday:

"Credit was strong in 2016n but easy gains likely behind us" - source Barclays

As we pointed out, foreign demand remains key to not only US credit but as well for US Treasuries, so overall, let's see if indeed the Japanese Investment crowd and Bondzilla the NIRP monster find again their appetite while the "Narrative paradigm" surrounding the "Trumpflation" story fades away.

"Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy." -  Napoleon Bonaparte

Stay tuned!

Macro and Credit - The Woozle effect

"When everyone is thinking the same, no one is thinking." - John Wooden, American basketball player and coach

Watching with interest more fake news such as more stories surrounding evidence by citations of Russian involvement in US elections and fake prices, leading to some violent market gyrations as in Bitcoin, given our last musing around the thematic of hoaxes, we decided that for this week's title analogy, we would stick with the theme. The Woozle effect, also known as evidence by citation, or a woozle, occurs when frequent citation of previous publications that lack evidence misleads individuals, groups and the public into thinking or believing there is evidence, and nonfacts become urban myths and factoids. More importantly, "The Woozle effect" describes a pattern of bias seen within social sciences and which is identified as leading to multiple errors in individual and public perception, academia, policy making and government and markets as well (herd mentality). A woozle is also a claim made about research which is not supported by original findings. Given the creation of woozles is often linked to the changing of language from qualified ("it may", "it might", "it could") to absolute form ("it is"), we found interesting that the "Trumpflation story" has suddenly morphed from "it may" to "it is". To some extent, the Woozle effect is yet another example of confirmation bias we think. People tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. A series of experiments in the 1960s suggested that people are biased toward confirming their existing beliefs. Later work re-interpreted these results as a tendency to test ideas in a one-sided way, focusing on one possibility and ignoring alternatives. In certain situations, this tendency can bias people's conclusions. Explanations for the observed biases include wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Another explanation is that people show confirmation bias because they are weighing up the costs of being wrong, rather than investigating in a neutral, scientific way. Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Poor decisions due to these biases have been found in political and organizational contexts but, also in financial markets. As we have often indicated in our past musings, our contrarian stance comes from our behavioral psychologist approach given we would rather focus on the process of the woozles rather than their content. In our last musing, for instance we indicated we had turned slightly more positive on gold and gold miners alike. We must confess we have been adding in late December.

In this week's conversation we would like to discuss our contrarian stance surrounding "Mack the Knife" aka King Dollar + positive real US interest rates and why we think that eventually "Trumpflation" could morph into "DeflaTrump", meaning a lower dollar thanks to that 30s model we discussed as of late,  namely that populism and discontent means we are potentially facing a global trade war with the rise of protectionism.

Synopsis:

• Macro and Credit - All the promises we've been given...
• Final chart - The central bank "put" has been weakening

• Macro and Credit - All the promises we've been given...

From a Woozle effect perspective, we find it very interesting how easy weighing up the costs of being wrong leads to overconfidence.

We might sound a bit philosophical in these early days of 2017 but, we do share Jim Chanos and Steen Jakobsen, that we are going to see some tectonic shifts.

These shifts will have some significant consequences in terms of allocations rest assured. You might be wondering why we have entitled our bullet point this way? Well as goes the lyrics for an Electro House song we like "All the promises we've been given", government and central bankers have been very good at promising:

"All the promises we’ve been given
All the fires that we’ve feedin’
All the lies that we’ve been livin’ in
Wouldn’t it be nice if we
Could leave behind the mess we’re in
Could dig beneath these old troubles return
To find something amazing" - The Presets - Promises

This is somewhat the "Trumpflation" story playing out. Unfortunately, we cannot leave the mess we are in thanks to so many years of lax policies, lies and fires which our central bankers have been feeding. But, there is more to it. and at this juncture, we would like to remind ourselves with our November 2013 conversation entitled "Squaring the Circle" in which we tackled the paramount issue between "explicit guarantees" and "implicit guarantees":

"We quoted Dr Jochen Felsenheimer in our conversation "The Unbearable Lightness of Credit" in August 2012, let us do it again for the purpose of the demonstration:
"The advantage of explicit guarantees is that the market can value them and that the guarantee can be taken up - even in a crisis! For this reason, we can quote the "last man standing" at this point, the president of the German Federal Constitutional Court, Andreas Vosskuhle:"The constitution also applies during the crisis". That is a hard guarantee, both for politicians and for investors!"

We will not discuss the issue of implicit guarantees and explicit guarantees from a credit valuation point of view as we have already approached this subject in our conversation quoted above. The only point you should take into account is that the advantage of explicit guarantees is that markets tend to "function" better under them. Obviously our great poker player "Mario Draghi" at the helm of the ECB has played with his OMT a great hand but based only on "implicit guarantee". That's a big difference." - source Macronomics, November 2013

And this is the great swindle politicians have been pulling selling entitlements based on "implicit" guarantees rather than "explicit" ones. Let us explain, the developed world is awashed in unfunded liabilities, therefore "it may" has for so many people clinging to their pension benefits has become "it is". The woozle effect in that case is that many think that what is in reality clearly "unfunded" is "funded". It isn't. 

While everyone is focusing on the asset side of the "Trumpflation" story (lower corporate taxes, cash repatriation, etc.), no one has really been focusing on the liability side, which could have some important implications. What has been weighting so much on bond prices since the US election has been once again the Japanese investors crowd. Again what we indicated back in 2016 in our conversation "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", still holds in 2017, namely that you want to track what these investors are doing flow wise:

"As we have pointed out in numerous conversations, just in case some of our readers went through a memory erasure procedure, when it comes to "investor flows" Japan matters and matters a lot. Not only the Government Pension Investment Funds (GPIF) and other pension funds have become very large buyers of foreign bonds and equities, but, Mrs Watanabe is as well a significant "carry" player through Uridashi funds aka the famously known "Double-Deckers". This "Bondzilla" frenzy leading our "NIRP" monster to grow larger by the day is indeed more and more "made in Japan"- source Macronomics July 2016

On this subject we read with interest Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Japan and FX Watch notes from the 12th of January entitled "Japanese investors sell foreign bonds after US election":

"Surplus structure keeps yen in check

Japan's Ministry of Finance today released the November international balance of payments and a preliminary portfolio investment report for December. Japan’s current account stood at a ¥1.8tn surplus in November to match the recent trend (Chart 3).

We are seeing a gradual recovery in Japan’s real exports, which seems in line with the positive cyclical trend in global manufacturing. Oil imports have stabilized, but remain low. Outward direct investments exhibit structural strength, but the yen’s significant depreciation since the summer suggests “tactical” large-scale purchases of foreign companies (eg, Softbank buying ARM) are probably behind us for the time being (Chart 4).

The BoJ’s yield curve control has widened the yield gap between foreign and yen rates, which should support Japan’s thick income surplus. Overall, the surplus structure marginally stabilizes the yen’s move especially as Japanese investors first reacted to the US election by selling foreign bonds (Chart 2).

Trump shock led to foreign bond sale

In December, Japanese banks and lifers sold ¥1.48tn of foreign bonds, the biggest sale since June 2015 amid the Bunds tantrum. This is in line with our view given the rise in volatility in the US and the likely loss from the move in rates after the election. Details are yet to be reported, but we would assume this is a continuation of November where most of the sales happened in the US rather than Europe (Table 1).

Given our core view in the US remains bearish duration while the BoJ’s monetary policy helps keep JGB yields relatively low, this likely leads to some repatriation of Japanese money to the JGB market, which explains the rise in JGB purchases at both banks and lifers in November.

Pensions rebalance into bonds, out of equity

In Oct-Dec, trust accounts–represented by pension accounts–sold domestic and foreign equities and bought JGB and foreign bonds (JGB data up to November) (Chart 6).

In our view, the GPIF portfolio is close enough to its target that large moves in financial markets would lead to rebalancing activities where appreciating assets are sold and depreciating assets are bought, reducing market volatility at margin.

Flows may keep USD/JPY basis from widening for now

Meanwhile, foreign investors net-sold ¥123bn of JGBs in December. This most likely resulted from quarterly redemption of JGBs as a data from the JSDA, which excludes redemptions, shows foreign investors were net purchasers for a 29th straight month in November. We argued that tightening in USD/JPY basis spread is unlikely to become a trend, but a combination of cautious Japanese investors in foreign bond investment (and some repatriation into JGBs) and demand from foreign investors for JGBs will keep the USDJPY basis off the high seen in November for a while." - source Bank of America Merrill Lynch

So, from a "flow" perspective, no matter what the latest woozle is, namely the "great rotation" from bonds to equities pushed forward by many pundits, when it comes to Japan, not only the voracious foreign bid from Japanese investors has tempered it's pace, but if indeed, Japanese are more cautious about their foreign allocations, then indeed this will put some additional upward pressure on sovereign bond yields we think.

For the time being, the dollar woozle is still working its way, being the largest consensus trade around for many pundits, also for the likes of Deutsche Bank from their FX Blueprint note entitled "King Kong Dollar" from the 12th of January:

"King Kong Dollar

The most prominent theme in our 2017 FX blueprint is that a Trump presidency changes everything. The US economy is the 800-pound gorilla in the room – policy shifts are too important to not matter for global FX. Our overall assessment is that Trump will be highly supportive of the dollar. Whether this mostly happens against the low-yielding EUR and JPY or EM FX will depend on the policy mix that is delivered: greater emphasis on growth and the euro and yen will suffer most; greater trade protectionism and EM, particularly Asia, will bear the burden. Either way, the broad trade-weighted dollar should strengthen, with a Trump administration coming at a convenient time for our medium-term bullish view. First, the greenback has finally entered the ranks of a G10 FX top-3 high-yielder, an important driver of dollar appreciation in the past. Second, a rally that is front-loaded to the beginning of a Trump presidency fits in nicely with the mature stage of a typical 7-10 year dollar up-cycle.
It is tempting to only talk about President-elect Trump, but currency drivers run beyond the US. From Brexit to European elections and China’s ongoing battle with outflows, politics and de-globalization stand out as the broader FX drivers of 2017. In most instances, particularly in Europe, idiosyncratic stories provide further support to a bullish dollar view. In other cases, local drivers allow for useful diversification against dollar longs, with ZAR, RUB and IDR standing out in particular. 2017 promises to be another exciting year for FX.

Looking for the dollar catalysts

We see Trump’s Fed appointments and corporate tax reform as the most important drivers of the dollar in 2017. Four out of seven board nominations are due this year, including Yellen’s replacement. These are likely to lean hawkish and entirely reshape the Fed. Corporate tax reform may well mean lower rates, but far more important would be an imposition of a “border tax” –potentially the biggest shift in global trade since Bretton Woods and leading to a big US competitiveness gain. Beyond America’s shores, idiosyncratic drivers point to a stronger dollar against both the JPY and EUR. In the Eurozone, negative surprises in either the French or potential Italian election open up existential risks. Even if all goes well, the beginning of ECB taper could accelerate record portfolio outflows: wider spreads (and redenomination risk) and more volatility in bunds should further lower demand for European assets. Japan stands out for the opposite reasons: political stability will allow the BoJ to continue targeting JGB yields unhindered, further increasing policy divergence with the US. We expect EUR/USD to break parity and USD/JPY to approach its all time-highs this year.

It’s all about Trump’s tax policy

While most attention is focused on US fiscal stimulus, we think corporate tax reform stands out as the biggest positive driver of the dollar in 2017. Lower tax rates, border adjustments and a tax holiday on unrepatriated earnings all matter. Border adjustments would impose a 15-20% tax on all US imports while exempting export income from taxation. The policy would amount to a 15% backdoor competitiveness gain for the US economy. A mechanical application of trade elasticities would imply that the US basic balance would go back to the highs seen at the start of the
century (chart 1).

A tax holiday and shift to a territorial system of taxation would allow more than $1 trillion of dollar liquidity and $200bn of annual future earnings to be brought back to the US. Most of this cash is already in USD: but the withdrawal of offshore liquidity will maintain widening pressure on cross-currency basis pushing offshore dollar yields higher. Corporates are likely to use the liquidity for buybacks and dividend hikes which together with corporate tax cuts would encourage equity inflows and further support the dollar. With foreigners not having invested in US equities for the last five years, there is plenty of potential for foreign buying of the S&P (chart 2).

- source Deutsche Bank

Like any woozle, while the above narrative is enticing, we are not buying it. Equities pundits like to focus on the asset side, such as the impact of corporate tax rate mentioned above, we credit pundits tend to focus on the liability side which means that rather than focusing on the corporate tax relief effect we would rather side with our friend Michael Lebowitz from 720 Global from his latest note "Hoover's folly" from the 11th of January and focus on Global Trade risk, Hoover's style:

"Ramifications and Investment Advice

Although it remains unclear which approach the Trump trade team will take, much less what they will accomplish, we are quite certain they will make waves. The U.S. equity markets have been bullish on the outlook for the new administration given its business friendly posture toward tax and regulatory reform, but they have turned a blind eye toward possible negative side effects of any of his plans. Global trade and supply chain interdependencies have been a tailwind for corporate earnings for decades. Abrupt changes in those dynamics represent a meaningful shift in the trajectory of global growth, and the equity markets will eventually be required to deal with the uncertainties that will accompany those changes.
If actions are taken to impose tariffs, VATs, border adjustments or renege on trade deals, the consequences to various asset classes could be severe. Of further importance, the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency and accounts for the majority of global trade. If global trade is hampered, marginal demand for dollars would likely decrease as would the value of the dollar versus other currencies.
From an investment standpoint, this would have many effects. First, commodities priced in dollars would likely benefit, especially precious metals. Secondly, without the need to hold as many U.S. dollars in reserve, foreign nations might sell their Treasury securities holdings. Further adding pressure to U.S. Treasury securities and all fixed income securities, a weakening dollar is inflationary on the margin, which brings consideration of the Federal Reserve and monetary policy into play.

Investors should anticipate that, whatever actions are taken by the new administration, America’s trade partners will likely take similar actions in order to protect their own interests. If this is the case, the prices of goods and materials will likely rise along with tensions in global trade markets. Retaliation raises the specter of heightened inflationary pressures, which could force the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at a faster pace than expected. The possibility of inflation coupled with higher interest rates and weak economic growth would lead to an economic state called stagflation. 

Other than precious metals and possibly some companies operating largely within the United States, it is hard to envision many other domestic or global assets that benefit from a trade war." - source 720 Global, Michael Lebowitz, Hoover's folly, 11th of January 2016

This makes perfect sense and as we indicated earlier on, we have become more positive on gold / gold miners in late December for that very reason. As we pointed out in our November conversation "From Utopia to Dystopia and back" the trade attitude of the next US administration is the biggest unknown, and the biggest risk we think. In this previous conversation we showed in our final chart that gold could indeed shine after the Fed and guess what it has:

"Whereas investors have been anticipating a lot in terms of US fiscal stimulus from the new Trump administration hence the rise in inflationary expectations and the relapse in financial "Dystopia", which led to the recent "Euphoria" in equities, the biggest unknown remains trade and the posture the new US administration will take. If indeed it raises uncertainty on an already fragile global growth, it could end up being supportive of gold prices again." - source Macronomics, November 2016

So if indeed the US administration is serious on getting a tough stance on global trade then obviously, this will be bullish gold but the big Woozle effect is that it will be as well negative on the US dollar. This is a point put forward by Nomura in their FX Insight note from the 5th of January entitled "The weak dollar revolution could be tweeted":

"Weak dollar policy is a natural extension of protectionist policies

Clearly, the one area of trade policy that has been so far little discussed is FX policy. In a detailed interview on 30 November 2016, soon-to-be Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin evaded a pointed question on whether he supports a strong dollar. Instead, he responded:

“I think we’re really going to be focused on economic growth and creating jobs and that’s really going to be the priority.” (CNBC, 30 November 2016).

FX policy cannot be ignored in trade policy. A weak currency can be effective in giving domestic industries an advantage over foreign industries. Indeed, this has generally been the policy of emerging Asia economies from China to Thailand. Their substantial growth in FX reserves since the Asia crisis in 1997 is testament to a concerted policy to curb strength in their currencies. For Donald Trump, at a fundamental level, any appreciation of the dollar would offset some if not all of any import tariffs introduced.

As for the practicalities of introducing a weak dollar policy, the Plaza Accord of 1985 under a Republican administration is the last such example. However, it was coordinated with key trade partners and monetary policy was moving in a supportive direction. Replicating such an Accord would be a gargantuan task. The other precedent of sorts is the Nixon shock – again under a Republican administration. This was a unilateral move and involved both a currency devaluation and the imposition of import tariffs.

However, the better reference points may actually be emerging markets. They have pursued weak currency policies without coordination and often at odds with domestic monetary policy. Admittedly, the presence of capital controls makes it easier to separate FX and monetary policy (thereby overcoming the so-called Triffin dilemma).

The success of their policies has often hinged on the scale of their interventions whether through direct currency intervention or sovereign wealth fund purchases of foreign assets. One study featuring 133 countries over the past 30 years found that such state-directed outflows were a significant positive driver of the current account (i.e. pushed it into surplus)9. An IMF study featuring 52 countries (13 advanced and 39 emerging) from 1996 to 2013 found that currency intervention had a larger and more significant impact on exchange rates than interest rate differentials10.

It should be noted that Japan, which has been the most active G7 intervener in currency markets, has typically engaged in sterilised intervention. That is, intervention that would not affect domestic money supply (and so not impact monetary policy). Studies have shown that Japanese intervention has at times been successful even though it was sterilised. Moreover, one study by former Deputy Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs, Taktatoshi Ito, showed that FX intervention over the 1990s, which was predominantly uncoordinated with other countries, resulted in a profit of JPY9 trillion ($75 billion). This showed that the MoF was buying USD/JPY at the lows and selling at the highs11. Therefore, there could be nothing to stop the US engaging in FX intervention to weaken the dollar. " - source Nomura

It appears that from a "Mack the Knife" perspective, it will be rather binary, either we are right and the consensus is wrong thanks to the Woozle effect, or we are wrong and then there is much more acute pain coming for Emerging Markets, should the US dollar continue its stratospheric run. From a contrarian perspective we are willing to play on the outlier.

What appears to be clear to us is that the Woozle effect from a central banking perspective has been fading as shown below in our final chart.

• Final chart - The central bank "put" has been weakening

What has clear in recent months has been rising signs of the Woozle effect fading when it comes to central banks credibility. With rising populism, which in recent ways has been driven by central banking interventionism, there are growing indications that the cosy relationship between politicians and central bankers is getting tested. Our final chart comes from Bank of America Merrill Lynch European Credit Strategist note from the 9th of January entitled "Yielding to populism" and displays how the central bank "put" has been weakening:

"Yielding to populism

We expect to return frequently to the theme of “populism” as 2017’s big narrative. For credit investors, populism doesn’t have to be all bad news. As our US credit strategy colleagues have highlighted, potential Republican tax reform could be very beneficial for some parts of the US market. In Europe, though, we worry that populism will manifest itself in two bearish ways this year: a weaker ECB “put” (read: weaker credit technicals), and rising political risk, which we believe is not reflected in European spreads.
Thus, while Euro corporate bonds have nudged tighter in the first week of 2017, with reach for yield behaviour still evident, we think Euro spreads stand to end the year wider. We look for the Euro high-grade market to finish the year 15bp-20bp wider than today’s levels, and for high-yield spreads to end 50bp wider (applying some tweaking to our Nov ’16 forecasts given the big high-yield tightening in December).

Draghi’s populist moment

In our view, Dec 8th 2016 should be seen as a game changing moment for Euro credit markets. We think the ECB yielded to another form of “populism” – namely pressure from a hawkish governing council to step away from the negative yield era, given undesirable side effects. So from April this year, ECB monthly QE buying will decline from €80bn to €60bn.

But we think that Draghi’s actions highlight a bigger story: namely that the central bank “put” (or influence on the market) is already showing signs of weakening. Chart 1 shows cumulative central bank asset purchases including EM FX reserves (which we think should be viewed as another form of QE buying). Note the peak in September last year, due to declining EM FX reserves (such as China). 

But in 2017, we know that the ECB is set to tone down its asset buying, and we also expect the BoE to stop buying gilts and corporate bonds once their respective targets have been reached (which we estimate to be in February ’17 and April ‘17, respectively). A weakening influence of central banks therefore means a weakening of the very strong technicals that have been asserting themselves on European fixed-income markets."

- source Bank of America Merrill Lynch

From a credit tightening perspective, we think you ought to monitor US Commercial Real Estate (CRE) because as reported by UBS in their latest US Credit Strategy Outlook for 2017, CRE nonperforming loans are likely to rise for the first time since 2010 and monthly CMBS deliquency rates were up 6 bp to 5.23% Y/Y in December. Bank loan officers have started to tighten lending standards since the first quarter 2016. US CRE is therefore something you want to keep a close eye on 2017. If the equity crowd are indeed the eternal optimist and suckers for the Woozle effect, the credit crowd is often the eternal pessimist, but then again, regardless of the narrative, as indicated above, in a world stifled by very high debt level, both duration risk and credit risk have been clearly extended meaning that price movements like we have seen in the Energy sector in 2016 are larger. When things will turn nasty at some point, recoveries this time around are going to be much lower, so forget the assumed recovery rate of 40% when you price your senior CDS but, that's a story for another day...or year...

"Every swindle is driven by a desire for easy money; it's the one thing the swindler and the swindled have in common." - Mitchell Zuckoff, American journalist

Stay tuned!