Yesterday’s turnaround was impressive, but today’s red Chinese screens make a repeat unlikely. No matter, we have you covered with our Shanghai morning train reads:
• Paulson v. Ackman, Bridgewater v. AQR: Who’s Trending on Google? A data-driven look into whether hedge funds’ online popularity translates into assets under management. (CIO)
• Slow-Growth Pessimists Miss the Mark (Bloomberg View) see also Among Ingredients Needed for Faster Growth? Greater Appetite for Risk. (Washington Wire)
• Human Curation Is Back (Monday Note)
• Pot to Produce: Why some marijuana growers are getting into salad greens (California Sunday)
• Edible insect farms strive for scale (FT)
China Bans Stock Sales by Major Shareholders for Six Months
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-08/china-bans-stock-sales-by-major-shareholders-for-six-months
So I guess a 100% surge straight up was OK, but a 30% pullback bans selling. Yet another in a long list of “free market” rules put in place over the past decade around the world. And the one tenth of one percent wonder why the average joe has no confidence in any of these institutions.
I am fascinated at how very few discussions looking at economic growth discuss demographics. I agree with Gary Shilling that we will see some serious growth again. I think it will likely start about a decade from now which is when the baby boomers will have totally left the labor force and the leading edge will have died off, Generation X (a small cohort) will largely have moved past their peak earning years, and the Millenials (a large cohort) will be starting to enter the peak production years in their 40s. The abysmal political and corporate leadership in North America and Europe will have turned over entirely. I think the economic growth from 2025 or so to about 2040 will look more like 1985-2000 than today. We just have to get through now to get to there.
Impossible if automation and robotics keeps destroying available jobs at the same pace as today. Where and what will workers work at? What will the labor participation rate be?
Also remember that the population will be larger then than now, so there will be more people competing for a shrinking pool of available jobs.
normally population will grow, but it might be much more muted this time around. the great recession has slowed that down a lot, as new families have been very slow to form (along with marriages), now it might pick up again (likely) or not. but that automation thing will keep growing, and the question of what jobs will still be available is unknown (making that education investment a crap shoot at best, as no one knows what will be available. and for how long). and if there are more people trying to get the same jobs, then incomes will keep falling. which of course brings up just where will business get its customers from?
The future will be better than the past, Jojo, as long as we keep working at it.
When I was born cancer was a death sentence. Now, in many cases, it is curable or survivable. Thirty years ago, AIDS was a death sentence; now it is diabetes. Forty-five years ago, we thought communism was monolithic and were willing to sacrifice millions to settling that question. Now, the response to that idea is: you have to be kidding. When I was born, touching the moon was a fantasy. Now we land spacecraft on asteroids speeding away from us at an incredible rate.
The future will be better than the past. Not that there are not awful moments, but the overwhelming bulk of humanity is aiming toward a better life.
Yes, hard to fathom they never banned buying!
Or maybe it’s the Russians? Fearing a showdown with the West last summer over Ukraine, Russian investors sold and moved their monies into Chinese stocks, overwhelming the Chinese stock market. And now that a nuclear deal with Iran looks like a given, Russian investors are selling Chinese stocks. Sacre bleu!!!!
What does the Iran nuke deal have to do with the Chinese stock market?
Best Chinese Stock Market analogy …
https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/CJYxoNWUYAEH010.mp4
I found this graphic fascinating as it depicts major GDP collapses in the last century: http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/06/news/economy/greece-economy-warn-torn-country-depression/index.html
My takeaways:
1. The North American economy really, really sucked in the Great Depression – I am surprised the political system didn’t collapse;
2. Fighting a major war on your own soil is really, really bad for your economy;
3. Electing totalitarian, megalomaniac dictators can be bad for your economy;
4. Bad economic and financial policies can result in the equivalent economic damage of fighting a major war on your own soil; and
5. Greece is in deep doo-doo.
” I am surprised the political system didn’t collapse;”
It did! FDR ruled as a virtual dictator and the usual nomenclatura went out of power. The politcal system didn’t recover to it’s former state until 1980 when the 1% returned to power.
Every time the Republicans royally screw up we get to implement stuff (Social Security, National Health Care) that everyone else considers a birthright. Keep screwing up Republicans!
hm
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/headlines/20150708-new-york-stock-exchange-temporarily-suspends-trading.ece
technical difficulties? wonder who they hired to set that up.
seems like they just shutdown the trading floor didnt they?
oops?
Probably a low-bidder who “won” a reverse-auction.
from an undisclosed location no doubt
Re: Property taxes
A major reason we never up-sized our house was because of the property taxes in NYS. However, a bigger house than what we have would clearly be a luxury, not a necessity, so it is proof of the “tax what you want less of ” economic theory. The property taxes are guaranteed to go up so paying off our mortgage would not change the monthly payments drastically over time. At present our mortgage payments are only 50% of our monthly principal, interest and tax bill.
The big issue I have with local property taxes in NYS is that we are paying for a state program (Medicaid) with local county property taxes administered by elected and appointed officials who have nothing to do with Medicaid. So there is a complete disconnect between the taxation and the content/execution of a program. The local property taxes should be for local county and municipal programs, such as schools, roads etc.
Not the socialist view, rd. In Sweden (and the Netherlands), giving any student (your local ones, for instance) more than any other (students in cities distant from you) is verboten. Not saying I agree but that’s the way it works here.
It appears that we are successfully bringing our virtual infrastructure to the same level of success as our physical infrastructure:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nyse-suffers-unprecedented-suspension-of-trading-activities-2015-07-08
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/halt-lifted-after-united-flights-grounded-due-to-computer-glitch-2015-07-08
The irony is that a virtual currency (Bitcoin) spikes in the middle of all of this:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-price-spikes-after-nyse-trading-was-halted-2015-07-08?link=MW_home_latest_news
I really enjoyed the Leon Cooperman interview. It’s great that these guys are so generous with their time.
Podcasts like these are the new, advert free, public interest audio.