Tag Archives: money

what just happened to the Swiss franc (CHF)

January 15, 2015 By in Recent Market Action, Switzerland and the euro Tags: , , , , , 5 Comments

background

Pre-financial crisis one euro bought close to 1.7 chf.

As progressive waves of bad news about the EU financial system broke–that, for example, its banks were stuffed to the gills with worthless US mortgage derivatives, or that Greece had faked its national financial statements for years and was unable to pay its (euro-denominated) national debt–EU investors began to sell their currency and buy the chf, whose value began to rise.

In mid-2011 a sudden spike upward in demand brought the Swiss currency to the point that a euro bought less than a single chf.

the cap

That forced the Swiss National Bank to step in to stabilize its currency, fearing that continuing gains in the chf would have terrible negative effects on tourism and on exporters.  The SNB set a cap on the value of the chf at 1.2 per euro.  The chf could trade cheaper than 1.2 per euro, but the central bank would always be there to buy euros at the 1.2 rate if needed to prevent the chf from appreciating further.

problems

This action fixed the immediate problem of appreciation of the dhf against a key trading partner.  But it did two bad things at the same time:

–it effectively tied the currency to a now-nosediving euro, and

–it expanded the Swiss money supply in a potentially unhealthy way.

today

This morning the SCB made the surprise announcement that it was going to let the chf float against the euro again, effective immediately.  The currency spiked to 1.0 euro before settling in at around 1.1 euro.

Why the surprise?  

I can think of several reasons:  the Swiss government didn’t want to buy any more euros.  I imagine it anticipated it would be swamped with buy orders for the chf during any phase-out period.  Currency traders may have anticipated this move and been buying boatloads of euros from the Swiss government in recent days, effectively forcing the SCB action.

Why do this at all? 

That’s the interesting part.

Switzerland apparently anticipates that when the ECB embarks on quantitative easing, the result will be some pretty ugly currency action for the euro.

 

the shrinking euro (and yen)

January 5, 2015 By in currency effects, EU financial crisis, Strategy Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

the shrinking euro

This time a year ago, it cost $1.36 to buy a euro.  It was $1.39 by March.   The euro then moved sideways vs. the greenback until early summer–when it began an almost continual descent that has the EU currency now trading at just above $1.19.  That figure is down 14% from the 2014 high, and off 12.5% from the year-ago level.

reasons?  

The surprising revelation last summer that the overall EU economy was slowing, not accelerating as most observers, myself included, had expected is the most important, I think.  Sanctions against Russia and recent worries that a new Greek government might repudiate its sovereign debt have just added to the funk.

The Japanese yen has tracked more or less the same course vs. the dollar as the euro–meaning that neither Japan nor the EU has gained/lost competitiveness vs. its main global manufacturing rival.

Looking at the situation from a more conceptual level, both Japan and the EU have relatively old populations and both give much higher priority to preserving their traditional social order than to achieving economic progress.  Neither characteristic argues for long-term economic/currency strength.

consequences

economic

In the short run, currency declines stimulate overall economic activity.  They also rearrange growth to favor exporters, import-competing industries and service industries like tourism.  This means that local currency profits for firms that have their costs in euros and revenues in harder currencies will likely be higher than generally anticipated.

The huge fall in oil prices will still be stimulative, but the edge will be taken off the benefit a bit by the currency decline.

Euro-oriented holders of dollar-denominated assets benefit; dollar-oriented holders of euro assets are hurt.

financial markets

I expect European bond managers will continue to boost their holdings of US Treasuries, figuring they’ll get both yield pickup and an anticipated currency gain.  This flow will keep long-term interest rates in the US a bit lower than they would be otherwise.

Equity managers will shift European holdings more toward multinational firms with dollar-denominated assets and earnings.  Some of this has happened already.  Many times, though, PMs will wait until they see the weak currency stabilize before reallocating.  Personally, I don’t think waiting makes any sense, but that’s what people seem to do.

US firms with European assets and earnings will face the double negative of slow growth in the EU and the diminished value of EU profits in dollars.   I think US-based manufacturers of consumer staples are particularly at risk.

hedging

While the extent of the decline of the euro may be a surprise, the fact that it’s a weak currency shouldn’t be.  This means many US companies that have euro exposure will have hedged away part of this risk.

I have conflicting thoughts on this issue.  Almost universally, investors ignore profits gained by hedging.  The idea, which I agree with, is that in short order the favorable hedges will run out, exposing the weaker unerlying profit stream.  There’s no sense in paying for profits that will be gone in a quarter or two.  On the other hand, while firms always reveal hedges that have gone wrong (and argue that investors should ignore these losses), they don’t always highlight hedging that has worked.  I guess I’m saying that I’d be leery of companies with EU exposure even if reported profits don’t show any unfavorable impact.

 

 

 

why the oil price will continue to be weak

October 22, 2014 By in Energy, Industry Analysis, Mining, oil and natural gas, Recent Market Action, shale oil and gas, Strategy Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

supply and demand

In the short term (read:  for now and for some vague time into the future), demand for oil is pretty constant, no matter what the price (i.e., demand is inelastic).   People need to fuel their cars and heat their homes.  Industry needs to generate electric power and keep factories humming.

The supply of oil is similarly inelastic, for two reasons:

–major oilfields are mammoth, expensive, multi-year capital projects.  Engineers get underground oil flowing toward wells at what they calculate to be the optimal rate to drain the entire deposit.  Changing that rate once the oil is moving can mess things up so that lots of oil gets left behind–meaning having to do expensive and time-consuming extra drilling to recover it.

–a macroeconomic look at OPEC’s oil-producing countries, especially in the Middle East, is a real eye-opener.  These nations typically have large young populations and more or less no economic activity other than oil.  In my cartoon-like view, they have tons of high school graduates entering the workforce each year and nothing to offer them but make-work “jobs” funded by oil money.  Keeping the political status quo ultimately requires that the oil keep flowing.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the budget breakeven oil price for Iran, for instance, is $140 a barrel and Saudi Arabia’s is $93.  (This isn’t an immediate do-or-die thing, though.  Countries can use savings, borrow or sell assets to bridge a budget gap for a while.)

recent history

Over the past decade or more, supply and demand have been close to being in balance, with China’s strong economic growth giving prices an upward bias.

China is now trying to halt the proliferation of low value-added, energy-wasting industry, so this source of extra demand is fading.  More important, the advent of oil extraction from shale in the US has raised world oil supplies by about 6%, or 5 million barrels a day over the past five years.

Given that demand is relatively constant, the only way to get buyers for this extra oil is to cut prices.  This is what’s happening now.

revisiting the 1980s

There’s lots of ugly history of colonial exploitation of Middle Eastern oil producers in the 1970s and before.  Let’s skip over that, in this post at least.

During the 1970s, OPEC pushed the price of a barrel of oil from under $2 to around $25.  By the start of the 1980s, the association was clearly divided in to two camps.  One wanted to maintain the highest possible current price (which had risen to around $35 for the easiest oil to refine).  The other, led by Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC producer, feared users would find substitutes for oil, diminishing the long-term value of their vast untapped reserves.  It wanted prices at, say, $15 – $20 a barrel.

Saudi Arabia decided to force its will on the other camp by unilaterally raising production to stabilize prices.  However, a long and deep global recession soon began (partly caused by higher oil prices, mostly by the Fed’s decision to raise interest rates sharply to choke off runaway inflation in the US).

Saudi Arabia then reversed course and began to cut production, again to defend its preferred price level.  Other OPEC nations agreed to reduce production as well, but by and large never did.  Prices eventually bottomed at about $8 a barrel.

The point, though, is that the Saudi attempt to act as the “swing” producer by raising and lowering its output in order to stabilize prices, didn’t work out.  All that happened was that Saudis absorbed a huge amount of the pain of the price decline, allowing its OPEC rivals to prosper, in a relative sense at least.

today

I think Saudi Arabia learned from its experience in the early 1980s that unilaterally reducing production doesn’t work.  Besides, unlike in the early 1980s, it needs its current coil income to balance its budget.

Shale oil production will continue to grow, if nothing else simply from projects begun a few years ago.

As a result, I think the oil price will drift lower, either until a healthier world economy increases demand, or until lower prices force high-cost oil producers to shut down.  We’re a long way from the latter happening.

Bad for oil producers–in fact, energy producers of any stripe, great for everyone else.

Bill Gross: a wave of (self-) destruction?

October 10, 2014 By in bond market, Current Market Thoughts, Industry Analysis, Investment firms, securities markets Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As even casual readers of the financial press know, Bill Gross, the bond guru, recently left PIMCO, the firm he founded, for smaller (everything is smaller than PIMCO) rival Janus.  Two aspects of his departure strike me as particularly noteworthy:

–Gross has been saying very emphatically, both at PIMCO and Janus, that he has absolutely no intention of retiring or of ceding any measure of control over his portfolios to colleagues.  This is despite an extended period of poor performance.  If he’s thinking at all about the impact of his statements on clients, he surely believes he is reassuring them.  However, it seems to me that the opposite is most likely the case.

What clients are likely hearing is that although he’s been charting a losing course for his portfolio for an extended period, he refuses to consider any changes or even to take any input from his 700+ professional colleagues. The way he’s delivering his stay-the-course message also makes him sound like an adolescent having a tantrum.  It’s hard not to connect this unusual behavior with the fact of extended underperformance, raising further issues about his temperament and his judgment.  This it’s-all-about-me attitude is very scary for anyone how has bet on Gross’s management prowess.

–PIMCO as a firm clearly made a terrible strategic mistake in making the idea of continuous outperformance by a single manager the exclusive focus of its marketing to clients for so many years.  Yes, the message is powerful and simple to understand, but one that’s also very risky and that invests a huge amount of power in a single individual.

PIMCO would probably have imagined any possible parting of the ways with Bill Gross to be somewhat akin to Derek Jeter’s final season as a Yankees.   …that is to say, a nostalgic feel-good farewell tour for a player who may be a shadow of his former self, but which validates both personal and institutional brands and generates large profits for both sides.  What PIMCO got instead was the unflattering glare of tabloid coverage of a messy divorce.

Bad for PIMCO.  But bad for Gross, too, I think.

As a client, how eager are you going to be to hitch your star to an apparently erratic 70-year-old who has weak recent performance, no longer has access to PIMCO’s extensive information network and whose assets under management are too tiny to have much clout in the brokerage community?    The default reaction of the pension consultants who advise institutions seems to be:  PIMCO without Bill Gross isn’t good enough; Bill Gross without PIMCO isn’t good enough.  It seems to me that PIMCO has a much better chance of changing consultants’ minds than Bill Gross does–it already has infrastructure, other managers with strong records and huge assets under management.

If I’m correct, absent a return to his form through the long period of interest rate declines, Mr. Gross appears to be in a much more difficult position than his former firm.  Much of this is his own doing.