Category Archives: Asian economic development

Macau casinos, February 25, 2015

February 25, 2015 By in Casinos, China, Entertainment, Hong Kong, Macau, Recent Market Action Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Macau casino stocks in Hong Kong took a drubbing overnight, continuing weakness shown by US parents in Wall Street trading yesterday.  The US stocks are down again as I’m writing this.

Why?

Analysts had been estimating (guessing/hoping is probably a more accurate description) that the amount lost by gamblers during the current Lunar New Year month would come in at slightly more than half what they left at the tables during the comparable period last year.  With the month nearly gone, data so far indicate that the actuals will come in at somewhat less than half the 2014 take.  Hence the selloff.

If there’s a positive story for the Macau casinos–and I think there is a strong one–it has little to do with whether this month is good or not.

Current weakness is the result of  a campaign by Beijing that’s now deep in its second year.  The idea is to restore faith in the Communist Party by discouraging flashy over-the-top consumption by the politically well-connected.  It’s also aimed at quashing corrupt local government get-rich-quick schemes involving crazy real estate developments and unneeded, heavily polluting basic industry projects.  This two-pronged attack, which has had a negative effect on high-roller gambling in Macau, has lasted much longer than anyone, myself included, had predicted.  The February-to-date casino results seem to indicate that Beijing has not yet taken its foot off the regulatory accelerator.

The positive case has three parts:

–the development of the Cotai Strip along Las Vegas lines is creating a new, more lucrative, less volatile gambling market in Macau.  It’s for middle-class Chinese visitors who want a gambling vacation that also includes resort dining and entertainment.  This business has been expanding very rapidly.  It now accounts for about three-quarters of the SAR’s gambling profits.  Non-gambling attractions in Macau are still in their profit childhood.  In pre-recession Las Vegas, however, resort profit equaled that of the casinos.  So there’s plenty of room for expansion

–at some point–who know when–the current anti-corruption campaign will abate and high-roller business in Macau will begin to stabilize and then gradually expand again.  Beijing’s crackdown began in 2013 but only started to cause serious high-roller attrition in Macau in late spring last year.  So positive year-on-year earnings comparisons are unlikely before autumn.

–the stocks are reasonably priced–cheap, if you believe the first two points.

The Macau casino stocks are now what I would call a value idea–meaning that we have a good sense of what will happen but are pretty much at sea about when.  High dividend yields argue that we’re gin paid to wait.

One technical note:  the stocks hit relative low points about a month ago and have come back to those lows over the past few days.  It would be a sign that they may be finally bottoming if they can stay above the month-ago lows as the weak February results are officially announced.   Technicians would regard a breakdown below these lows would be a good thing in the US, but bad news in Hong Kong.

Shaping a portfolio for 2015 (vi): the rest of the world

December 11, 2014 By in Asian economic development, bond market, China, emerging markets, EU financial crisis, frontier markets, Hong Kong, Japanese development, Portfolio management, Shaping a portfolio for 2015, stock market Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

world GDP

A recent World Bank study ranks the largest countries in the world by 2013 GDP.  The biggest are:

1.   USA         $16.8 trillion

2.  China         $9.2 trillion

3.  Japan          $4.9 trillion

4.  Germany          $3.6 trillion.

The EU countries taken together are about equal in size to the US.

stock markets

From a stock market investor’s point of view, we can divide the world outside the US into four parts:  Europe, greater China, Japan and emerging markets.

Japan

In the 1990s, Japan choked off incipient economic recovery twice by tightening economic policy too soon–once by raising interest rates, once by increasing its tax on consumer goods.  It appears to have done the same thing again this year when it upped consumption tax in April.

More important, Tokyo appears to me to have made no substantive progress on eliminating structural industrial and bureaucratic impediments to growth.  As a result, and unfortunately for citizens of Japan, the current decade can easily turn out to be the third consecutive ten-year period of economic stagnation.

In US$ terms, Japan’s 2014 GDP will have shrunk considerably, due to yen depreciation.

If Abenomics is somehow ultimately successful, a surge in Japanese growth might be a pleasant surprise next year.  Realistically, though, Japan is now so small a factor in world terms that, absent a catastrophe, it no longer affects world economic prospects very much.

China

In the post-WWII era, successful emerging economies have by and large followed the Japanese model of keeping labor cheap and encouraging export-oriented manufacturing.  Eventually, however, everyone reaches a point where this formula no longer works.  How so?    …some combination of running out of workers, unacceptable levels of environmental damage or pressure from trading partners.  The growth path then becomes shifting to higher value-added manufacturing and a reorientation toward the domestic economy.  This is where China is now.

Historically, this transition is extremely difficult.  Resistance from those who have made fortunes the old way is invariably extremely high.  I read the current “anti-corruption” campaign as Beijing acting to remove this opposition.

I find the Chinese political situation very opaque.  Nevertheless, a few things stand out.  To my mind, China is not likely to go back to being the mammoth consumer of natural resources it was through most of the last decade.  My guess is that GDP growth in 2015 will come in at about the same +7%or so China will achieve this year.  In other words, China won’t provide either positive or negative surprises.

For most foreigners, the main way of getting exposure to the Chinese economy is through Hong Kong.  Personally, I own China Merchants and several of the Macau casinos.  The latter group looks very cheap to me but will likely only begin to perform when the Hong Kong market is convinced the anti-corruption campaign is nearing an end.

EU

In many ways, the EU resembles the Japan of, say, 20 years ago.  It, too, has an aging population, low growth and significant structural rigidity.  The major Continental countries also have, like Japan, strong cultural resistance to change.  These are long-term issues well-known to most investors.

For 2015, the EU stands to benefit economically from a 10% depreciation of the euro vs. the US$.  As well, it is a major beneficiary of the decline in crude oil prices.  My guess is that growth will be surprisingly good for the EU next year.  I think the main focus for equity investors should be EU multinationals with large exposure to the US.

emerging markets

I’m content to invest in China through Hong Kong.  I worry about other emerging Asian markets, as well as Latin America (ex Mexico) and Africa.  Foreigners from the developed world provide most of the liquidity in this “other” class.  If an improving economy in the US and higher yields on US fixed income cause a shift in investor preferences, foreigners will likely try to extract funds from many emerging market in order to reposition them.  That will probably prove surprisingly difficult.  Prices will have a very hard time not falling in such a situation.

 

Chinese port company stocks beginning to rise

November 26, 2014 By in Asian economic development, China, Hong Kong, Stock ideas, Strategy Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I’ve been interested in the Hong Kong-listed port operators for a long time.  Ten or fifteen years ago, it was a truism that world trade had a direct, and high-beta, relationship with world GDP growth and that port operators in China were direct beneficiaries.  Yes, there are substantial differences from one name to another within the group, but if economies are expanding, they were the clear place to be.

Today, the situation a lot more nuanced.  Beijing clearly understands that its future is not in low-end export-oriented manufacturing.  The complete collapse of the global trade finance system in late 2008 made customers, particularly in the United States, realize that their supply chains were too extended (dysfunction in the operation of the California ports helped this thought process along, as well).  The result has been a reorientation toward suppliers closer to home.

This move has, in a sense, reversed the causality in port stock watching.  It used to be that rising GDP meant the Chinese port stocks would go up.  Now, I think, the right line of reasoning is that if the Chinese port stocks are going up, then there must be significantly rising economic activity somewhere (China and the EU would be the default guesses)–whether we can see it clearly or not.

Anyway, the Chinese port stocks are just breaking out of the trading they’ve been in for that past half-year.  They’ve only been acting better for a few days.  But if the move continues, this could be an indicator that 2015 will be a better year for world commerce than the consensus now thinks.

 

linking the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets

November 20, 2014 By in Asian economic development, China, emerging markets, Hong Kong Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

restricting foreigners

Every country has restrictions on ownership of assets by foreigners.  Some of this is unofficial, like when France said yogurt maker Danone was a crown jewel that Pepsi couldn’t buy, or when New York blocked Mitsubishi Estate from buying a decrepit Rockefeller Center.  Other limits–notably restrictions on non-citizens owning media or transportation assets–are set down in law.

why?

It’s common that emerging countries restrict foreign ownership of all publicly traded locally owned corporations.  The same thing happened in Europe as it was rebuilding after WWII.  Two reasons:

–countries don’t want rich foreigners (translation:  Americans) to be able to scoop up valuable national assets for a song, thereby disenfranchising the country’s citizens and making locals into sort of tenant farmers, and

–they don’t want the potential disruption to economic activity (the currency and the money supply) caused by mad rushes in and out of local stocks by foreign portfolio investors.

two classes of stock

The most common method of controlling foreign ownership is for a country to establish two classes of stock, one to be held by locals, the other by foreigners.  The details vary widely country by country.  What makes China unusual is that, generally speaking, locals and foreigners trade shares in different venues–the letter in Hong Kong, the former on the mainland.

problems with the system

Whenever there are two different markets, and two different prices, for the same security, the party that gets the lower price is going to be unhappy.  Given that the supply of foreign portfolio capital is large and the number of foreign-designated shares is typically small, it’s almost always the local citizen who feels disadvantaged.

In addition, raising new equity capital can be awkward.  Foreigners may balk at having to pay, say, twice what a local does to buy a new share.

Invariably there’s unofficial arbitrage between the two classes.

In China’s case, it’s possible that Beijing wants inefficient state-owned enterprises to be more subject to the goad that can be provided by professional portfolio managers.

Shanghai/Hong Kong trading opened this week

This week, China opened limited foreign trading in Shanghai-listed stocks (not Shenzhen stocks, however, which make up about 40% of China’s market cap).  It is also permitting limited trading by mainland citizens in Hong Kong.  The control mechanism being used is daily limits on the cross-border flow of money in and out of both markets.  The system is called Stock Connect.

ho-hum, so far

The plan was announced a while ago–the result being that stocks identified as possible targets for fresh money in both Shanghai and Hong Kong were bid up in anticipation in recent weeks.  However, the volume of cross-border trading has been low and highly touted beneficiaries have been selling off.

For China, this initial indifference is probably the best possible outcome.  Still, this is another step in opening Chinese financial markets to the world.  And one day the ability for us to buy mainland stocks may be important.  It’s just not today.

 

 

slowdown in Japan

November 19, 2014 By in Asian economic development, Japanese development Tags: , , , Leave a comment

People who like black and white answers and numerical precision–whether the situation calls for them or not–define a recession as being two consecutive quarters of decline in real GDP (“real” here meaning after factoring out the effects of price changes–in Japan’s case, deflation).

On this way of looking at things, Japan entered its fourth recession since the global financial crisis when the government announced early this week that the economy had shrunk by 1.3% on an annualized basis during the September quarter.  This comes after a fall of 7.3% during the June quarter, when Tokyo implemented the first of two planned increases in the national value added tax.

Today’s situation seems to me eerily similar to that in 1997, when Tokyo stopped a nascent recovery in its tracks with a similar value added tax rise.

Prime Minister Abe reacted to the new GDP data by postponing the second value added tax increase, which had been penciled in for 2015, and calling for a general election that he intends to serve as a referendum on his policies.

Almost two years in, the fundamental sticking point for Abenomics remains unaddressed.  The idea has been to induce a large depreciation of the currency–a loss of a third of its value, so far–to lower production costs for export-oriented industry.  This makes export goods more competitive in world markets and buys time for industry to streamline and expand.  Industrial renaissance gradually repairs the damage done to national wealth through the currency depreciation.  Prosperity also induces a gradual currency rebound, restoring at least some of the wealth lost through its decline.

In many ways, Abenomics is the successful template Japan used to recover after WWII.  This time, however, Japanese industry has shown no inclination to restructure itself that I can see.  And until now Tokyo has done virtually nothing to dismantle the barriers to change of corporate control which it put in place as its economic malaise began in the 1990s and that ensure ossified managements remain in place.

For the sake of Japan, one can only hope that the point of the upcoming election will be a mandate to force industrial reform.  Without this, Abenomics will wind up merely as creating a massive loss of national wealth and a similar drop in living standards.