Ogni volta che c’è un rialzo di Borsa, in questo 2022, milioni e milioni di investitori si domandano se è questo il momento giusto.

Ma soprattutto si chiedono: il momento giusto per fare che cosa?

Alleggerire le posizioni azionario, finalmente, dopo gli errori fatti nel 2020 e nel 2021?

Oppure comperare ancora, per mediare i prezzi di carico?

Per rispondere sarebbe necessario poter contare su qualcuno che di azioni ne capisce qualche cosa: non un promotore finanziario, ovviamente. Non un venditore di merce da piazzarvi.

Non serve a nulla, il private banker, il wealth manager, il robo advisor, in momenti come questo. Momenti in cui conta soltanto la competenza professionale di gestore di portafoglio.

E loro (i private bankers ed i wealth managers, insomma i promotori finanziari) non sono, e mai sono stati, gestori di portafoglio.

Noi siamo come sempre qui, disponibili e pronti a confrontarci con chi fosse interessato, sulle mosse più appropriate da mettere in pratica prima di un agosto che sarà in ogni caso molto movimentato.

Per i semplici lettori del Blog, ancora una volta, noi produciamo selezionata informazione di qualità, mettendo a loro diposizione un articolo recentissimo pubblicato dal Wall Street Journal, nel quale si fa il punto sul momento della Borsa a fine luglio 2022 in un modo che poi vi sarà utile proprio per decidere come modificare il portafoglio nelle prossime settimane.

Partendo proprio da quello che viene chiamato “il tentativo dell’Ave Maria”: ed infine chiarendo le ragioni per le quali proprio le scelte di questa fine di luglio 2022 potrebbero risultare decisive per la performance dell’intero 2022.

Anche (non soltanto) a causa dell’atteggiamento della Federal Reserve, che noi di Recce’d proprio oggi commentiamo in un altro Post.

Call it the Hail Mary approach. Stocks are trying for a desperate recovery from the failure that has gripped them all year, and to work out, everything has to go just right.

The S&P 500 hit this year’s low just over a month ago; it has risen about 8% since then, and smaller stocks are up more than 10%. For that low to be the base for a new bull run, there is one basic requirement, and an important follow on.

The basic requirement is that a deep recession is avoided. We may have a technical recession where the economy shrinks for two successive quarters, perhaps clear later this week. But we can’t have the sort of recession where earnings are pounded by widespread layoffs and belt-tightening.

The important follow on is that the Federal Reserve has to pivot away from its aggressive rate increases to ease again, switching focus from inflation to economic weakness.

Here is where the long shot comes in. It is going to take a lot for the Fed to be convinced that runaway inflation has been fixed: the external pressures from war and snarled supply chains need to ease. The domestic pressures, particularly the jobs market, need to come off too—but not so much that there is a deep recession.

Markets are now pricing exactly this outcome. Futures traders have started to bet on rate cuts as soon as next March, with rates coming down all the way to the end of 2024. Bond yields have plunged, too. Cyclical stocks most sensitive to economic growth have beaten defensive stocks, notably outperforming last week, as recession fears receded. And while analysts’ earnings forecasts have dropped a tiny bit, they are only just off their highs. Even the dollar has pulled back.

Such a bullish outcome is far from impossible. Commodity prices have dropped sharply despite Russia’s war in Ukraine, helped by the expectation of recession in Europe and a sharp slowdown in China. Bottlenecks in shipping and microchips have eased, housing has slowed and demand has switched from the stuff that everyone wanted as we emerged from lockdowns—especially big purchases such as cars, appliances and furniture—to services. Surveys show longer-term consumer inflation expectations, closely watched by the Fed, are coming down a little. And the white-hot jobs market is showing signs of cooling.

The problem is that the Fed can’t declare victory merely because inflation has fallen from 9%. Underlying inflation remains very high. Notably, services inflation has soared, as have “sticky” prices that aren’t changed very often—a measure used as a guide to where companies think things are going. Core consumer price inflation, stripping out food and energy, has accelerated upward for the past three months on a month-on-month basis.

Investors could be wrong in either direction, with very bad effects. If again it turns out that we haven’t yet reached peak inflation or that inflation stabilizes far above the Fed’s 2% target, bond yields could easily shoot back up. Recession fears would rise, earnings estimates fall and stocks would be hit, with Big Tech and other growth stocks that have led the rally since June 16 hit harder.

Investors could be right about peak inflation, but still lose. The Fed is expected to keep raising rates until early next year, lifting the overnight borrowing rate to 3.5% or so, according to CME Group calculations using futures pricing. If that, combined with slowdowns overseas, leads to a nasty recession then earnings forecasts will be slashed and stocks still fall (although bond investors would be fine).

I remain hopeful that a deep recession will be avoided. But belief in the current bull case could easily be knocked by bad data, or warnings such as the one from Walmart on Monday about consumer weakness, even if this ultimately turns out to be merely a slowdown. The goal line is far away, and investors are putting a lot of faith in their Hail Mary.

A look at the markets shows asset managers are moving money around in ways that suggest they see a recession coming. WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains what to look for and why they tell us investors are increasingly pricing in a recession. Illustration: David Fang

Write to James Mackintosh at james.mackintosh@wsj.com

Ha danneggiato la vita di miliardi di persone, la scelta irresponsabile di puntare sulla retorica della “inflazione transitoria” nel 2021.

Ha danneggiato il portafoglio titoli di milioni e milioni di investitori.

Purtroppo, sembra proprio che nel 2022 la cosa si stia ripetendo: e questa volta, il danno potrebbe essere ancora più grave ed ampio.

Se ne è preoccupato, venerdì 29 luglio 2022, il quotidiano Wall Street Journal.

Markets were elated by Chairman Jerome Powell’s comments at his press conference on Wednesday, but it does make us wonder if it wasn’t too good a thing. Prices soared as if tighter monetary conditions weren’t going to last long, and that’s worrying as an anti-inflationary message.

The four-paragraph statement from the Federal Open Market Committee after its meeting was harsh on inflation. “The Committee is very attentive to inflation risks,” he said.

But Mr. Powell sounded much less aggressive at various points in his hour-long press. It was especially surprising to hear him say that current interest rates are close to “neutral,” meaning they are no longer accommodative. But even after Wednesday’s 75 basis point hike, the fed funds rate is only 2.25% to 2.5%. The inflation rate in June was 9.1%, which means that real rates remain decidedly negative.

Powell also said he thinks rates may not need to rise much higher, citing the Fed’s June median forecast of 3.25%-3.5%. Markets had been signaling before the meeting that they believe the Fed will start cutting rates within a year. And while Powell didn’t bless that sentiment, he didn’t do much to dispel it, either.

Not to be rude, but when the fed funds rate went from 2% to 2.25% in October 2018, Powell said “we’re a long way from neutral” on interest rates. The inflation rate at the time was a mere 2.5%. Times and circumstances change, but the meaning of “neutral” may not have changed that much.

The Fed chief has insisted more than once that he and his colleagues are determined to bring inflation back to its 2% target. We hope so. And annual rate inflation looks likely to ease from 9% in the coming months as oil and other commodity prices have fallen. Therefore, the slowdown in growth will contribute.

But the lesson of the 1970s is that ending the fight against inflation too soon leads to inflation falling from its heights as the economy slows, but still remaining uncomfortably high on a new plateau. It then rises again as the economy recovers and reaches new heights. Then do it all over again, until the tightening medicine has to be much more severe than it would have been had the Fed stayed the course earlier.

It is always a mistake to over-interpret immediate market moves as Wednesday’s. But if they are correct that the Fed is signaling an early end to tightening, then the danger is that we are seeing a false dawn in the fight against inflation.

Scrive, e noi siamo d’accordo, ilWall Street Journal che è sempre sbagliato attribuire troppa importanza alla reazione immediata dei mercati finanziari. ma allo stesso tempo scrive: “Non per essere sgarbato, ma quando il tasso ufficiale di interesse arrivò al 2,25% nel mese di ottobre 2018, Powell disse che si era mol to lontani da un livello neutrale del costo del denaro. Allora, l’inflazione stava al 2,5%. E’ vero che le circostanze sono diverse, ma il significato del termine “neutrale” non può essere cambiato così tanto”.

L’articolo del WSJ è firmato dal Editorial Board, ed è quindi rappresentativo della linea del quotidiano.

Ed è anche rappresentativo del nostro modo di vedere la situazione attuale, per ciò che concerne la Federal Reserve.

Per completezza, vi riportiamo qui di seguito l’opinione di chi (autorevolmente) vede le cose in modo diverso da noi.

Following the rate hike from the Fed, DoubleLine Capital’s CEO Jeffrey Gundlach told CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime” he believes the central bank is no longer behind the curve on inflation and Powell has regained credibility.

“This market reaction seems less of a sugar high than the prior two in June and May,” Gundlach said.

The Dow jumped more than 400 points in the previous session, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite added 2.6% and 4.06%, respectively.

All S&P 500 sectors ended the day higher, with communications services posting its best daily performance since April 2020.

“For the most part, what’s really driving this move is that the economy is still performing okay and it looks like the Fed is probably going to slow the pace of tightening down by the next policy meeting,” said Ed Moya, Oanda’s senior market analyst.

Quindi: da un lato c’è chi dice che con i rialzi di giugno e luglio la Federal Reserve non è più “in ritardo”; all’opposto c’è chi dice che si rischia, con l’atteggiamento che prevale oggi, di essere costretti a rialzi dei tassi ancora più grandi in futuro.

Ed è questo, il rischio a cui abbiamo fatto riferimento in apertura del nostro Post: il rischio che si ripeta la situazione del 2021, quando si volle modificare con le parole la realtà che era sotto gli occhi di tutti.

Le parole, gli slogan, le campagne mediatiche non possono modificare la realtà.

La realtà prevale: sempre.

I messaggi del tipo “è tutto sotto controllo” possono provocare un breve momento di sollievo, ed anche di entusiasmo, sui mercati finanziari. Di certo, non c’è sollievo, e neppure entusiasmo, al supermeracto oppure alla pompa di benzina.

La volontà di Powell, è chiaro, è quella di compiacere: lo scopo è quello di “non dire nulla di drammatico”, a costo di ignorare la realtà.

Noi in questo Post ve lo facciamo spiegare da Mohamed El Erian, nell’articolo che segue:

By

Mohamed A. El-Erian

28 luglio 2022 00:58 CEST

One of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s unscripted remarks at his press conference on Wednesday — that interest rates have reached a “neutral level” after the just-announced 75-basis-point interest-rate increase — is sure to prompt much discussion among economists in the weeks and months ahead. Judging from how markets reacted the minute he made this remark, it is clear what conclusions the vast majority of investors want these economists to reach.

Neutral is shorthand for the crucially important notion that the level of interest rates is consistent with monetary policy being neither contractionary nor expansionary. When combined with the Fed’s dual mandate, it signals a monetary policy that is close to being set to deliver maximum employment and price stability.

In today’s world, this is translated by markets into the view that the Fed now believes that it has already done the bulk of what is needed to tighten monetary policy to deal with what Powell himself described as inflation that remains “much too high” and is inflicting “considerable hardship” on Americans.

Given this interpretation, it should come as no surprise that, immediately after Powell uttered the word “neutral,” stocks, bonds and the dollar all moved significantly and exactly as textbooks would suggest: Stocks surged, with the main indexes ending the session 1.4% to 4.1% higher; bond yields fell, with the two-year Treasury dipping below 3% and the curve inversion for the two-year and 10-year Treasuries moderating to 20 basis points; and the dollar weakened, with the DXY index falling to 106.4.

Each of these moves serves to ease financial conditions. No wonder markets set aside other unscripted remarks by Powell that are hard to immediately reconcile with his assertion that rates are at neutral. This included the likelihood of a higher natural rate of unemployment; the considerable amount of economic uncertainty; the need for the Fed to go “meeting by meeting” on its policy decisions; and the difficulty of providing clear forward policy guidance.

Count me among those hoping that Powell is entirely correct that rates are already at neutral. This would improve the chances of the Fed being able to soft-land the economy, thereby reducing inflation with limited damage to livelihoods and without triggering unsettling financial instability.

I have no precise estimate for neutral for the very reasons that Powell mentioned regarding the unusually high level of uncertainty and the changing structural parameters of the economy. As to the general neighborhood for that level, I have a hunch, but am far from certain, that we are still below it.

I hope I am wrong. If not, this will sadly end up amplifying my often-repeated concerns about the collateral damage to the economy and livelihoods, especially those of the more vulnerable segments of society, of a Fed that took way too long to understand and to respond properly to inflation.

Noi di Recce’d intendiamo, per “gestione di portafoglio”, una attività che quotidianamente aggiorna e rivede sia le stime di rendimento, sia le stime di rischio, per ognuno degli asset che sono compresi nel portafoglio modello (ovvero che potrebbero in futuro entrare a farne parte).

Si tratta quindi di un’attività che raccoglie, seleziona, ordina tutte le informazioni, e le inserisce dentro a modelli proprietari di valutazione sia del rischio sia del rendimento potenziale degli asset finanziari compresi nell’universo investibile.

Questo è il nostro modo di fare le scelte per i portafogli modello: non ci affidiamo semplicemente all’intuizione, non andiamo dietro a quello che si legge sui quotidiani, non andiamo dietro alle “imbeccate” di Goldman Sachs, non utilizziamo l’analisi tecnica, non ci affidiamo ai vecchi “detti della saggezza contadina”, del tipo “prima o poi i mercati recuperano sempre”.

In questo specifico caso, dunque, il nostro lavoro consiste nello stimare se ciò che dice la Federal Reserve oggi è credibile, in musura uguale, maggiore oppure minore alla “inflazione transitoria”.

La nostra storia professionale, in decine di episodi, ci ha dimostrato che è un errore affidarsi in modo cieco e non critico alle “promesse” delle Banche Centrali, e delle banche di investimento che agiscono come megafono di ciò che dicono le Banche Centrali.

Chi lo ha fatto, ci ha perso un mucchio di quattrini.

In questo caso specifico, il nostro ruolo professionale è dunque quello di valutare se la storia del “tasso ufficiale di interesse neutrale”, da cui deriva poi l’altra storia, quella del “pivot”, hanno senso o sono semplicemente invenzioni della fantasia di alcuni funzionari pubblici, spalleggiati da chi lavora nelle grandi banche di investimento globali.

I lettori del Blog dovranno (è il nostro consiglio) contattarci per discuterne, oppure fare da soli questo lavoro di analisi.

Per chi intendesse fare da solo, pensando di averne sia i requisiti sia il tempo, sarà utile leggere con massima attenzione l’ultimo contributo esterno di questo Post: nel quale chiaramente vengono spiegate le quattro cose che la Federal Reserve dovrebbe fare, se intende riacquistare la credibilità che è andata persa negli ultimi anni.

La chiusura di questo articolo è chiarissima, e merita tutta la vostra attenzione.

Per questo, ve la proponiamo anche tradotta qui di seguito.

Risale allo scorso 22 luglio, e spiega che “Indipendentemente da ciò che la Fed farà la prossima settimana (il riferimento qui è alla riunione del 27 luglio scorso), senza affrontare queste quattro carenze, la banca centrale continuerà a non avere la credibilità necessaria per evitare di essere ricordata dagli storici dell'economia come colei che ha causato inutilmente una recessione negli Stati Uniti, che ha destabilizzato un'economia globale che sta ancora cercando di riprendersi dalla Covid, che ha peggiorato le disuguaglianze, che ha alimentato una preoccupante instabilità finanziaria e che ha contribuito allo stress del debito nei fragili Paesi in via di sviluppo.

By

Mohamed A. El-Erian

22 luglio 2022 11:00 CEST

Global economy watchers and market participants will be paying a lot of attention next week to how the Federal Reserve describes the US economic outlook, to the magnitude of its interest rate increase and whether it changes the pace of its balance-sheet contraction. Yet for the well-being of the US and global economy, the answer to these questions is less important than whether the Fed shows seriousness about fixing four failures that continue to fuel one of the worse policy mistakes in decades: Failures of analysis, forecasts, response and communication.

Let us first dispose with what seems to interest economists and markets the most right now.

On the economic outlook, the Fed will acknowledge that, once again, inflation has proved to be higher and more stubborn than projected and that, despite some signs of weakness, the US economy remains in a “good place.” With that, it is likely to again lift rates by 75 basis points and leave unchanged its previously announced plans for quantitative tightening.

This will come as a relief to those worried that the Fed, playing a desperate game of catch-up, would raise rates by 100 basis points and worsen what is already an uncomfortably high risk of tipping the US economy into recession. Yet such relief will again prove fleeting unless the Fed also regains policy credibility by addressing its four persistent failures.

The first is one of analysis. The Fed has yet to make the comprehensive analytical shift from a world dominated for years by deficient aggregate demand to the current one where deficient aggregate supply plays an important role. Its monetary policy approach is either still formally governed by the “new framework” adopted last year that is no longer suitable and should be publicly discarded or governed by no framework at all, thereby leaving the US and global economy without a much-needed anchor.

The result of this is a central bank that continuously struggles to properly inform and influence economic agents, that consistently lags behind markets rather than leads them, and that could easily fall prey to the even more catastrophic policy mistake of returning to the 1970s trap of “stop-go” policies.

For an illustration of the inadequate Fed policy anchor, consider the recent implied market forecast of what it will announce on Wednesday. In just a few days, the probability of the Fed raising by a highly unusual 100 basis points went from insignificant to even odds and then down again to improbable.

The longer the Fed resists the overdue analytical pivot, the more its inflation and growth forecasts will continue to miss the mark, exacerbating the second failure. For the last few quarters, such projections have been quickly and correctly dismissed as unrealistic by a wide range of economists, market analysts and, even more unusual, former Fed officials. This matters even more now that the US economy is showing signs not just of weakening but also of flirting with a recession. 

Third, the Fed must be more agile in its policy responses. It is now widely agreed that, after sticking for way too long to its misguided “transitory” inflation call, it should have responded more forcefully when it finally “retired” this faulty characterization. This was confirmed by former Vice Chair Randal Quarles last week, who also referred to the concern that I and many others hold that the Fed is still co-opted by markets.

Finally, the Fed must be more straightforward in its communication. It seems to remain the central bank in advanced countries that is most prone to, using a phrase from former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, “fairy tale economics”; and it is the most systemically important of all these central banks.

Regardless of what the Fed does next week, without addressing these four deficiencies, the central bank will continue to lack the credibility needed to avoid being remembered by economic historians as having unnecessarily caused a US recession; having destabilized a global economy still trying to recover from Covid; having worsened inequality; having fueled unsettling financial instability; and having contributed to debt stress in fragile developing countries.

Negli ultimi dieci giorni, tutti gli operatori di mercato e tutti gli investitori finali sono stati chiamati ad un compito molto faticoso: decifrare i segnali in arrivo da BCE e Federal Reserve in occasione delle due riunioni di luglio.

Si è trattao, a nostro parere, delle due riunioni più importanti del 2022: sono state infatti prese decisioni di grande rilevanza, per i mercati finanziari, per i vostri investimenti, e per i nostri portafogli modello.

E (badate bene) non stiamo riferendoci agli aumenti dei tassi di interesse, e neppure al TPI della BCE. Non sono quelle, le cose di maggiore rilievo emerse dalle due riunioni.

Lo spiegheremo in questo Longform’d: ma prima di tutto, ricapitoliamo ciò che è successo, mettendo in evidenza gli aspetti di maggiore importanza, utilizzando questo brano che per voi abbiamo selezionato.

The European Central Bank has finally pulled the trigger, raising interest rates for the first time in 11 long years and by a larger-than-expected 50 basis points to zero. The era of negative rates is over and the governing council is likely to fully take the euro zone into positive rates at its next quarterly economic review on Sept. 8. Furthermore, it unveiled an unlimited safety net for peripheral European countries' bond yields. But it wasn't enough to convince the market to reduce the spreads on Italian debt, which have soared in recent days. 

It is evident that the half-point rate increase persuaded hawks on the governing council to agree to the new Transmission Protection Instrument, which will allow the central bank to buy unlimited amounts of the bonds of countries when it sees a need to to “counter unwarranted disorderly market dynamics.” The ECB statement makes that link quite clearly, as did ECB President Christine Lagarde in the press conference. But details remain sketchy, and Lagarde counterbalanced her tough talk with the perhaps-too-honest view that the ECB doesn't want ever to use the new program. Many feel that hawks on the governing council will prevent it ever being brought into action.

The central bank laid out four criteria nations must meet to qualify for assistance under the program: 

1. Compliance with the EU fiscal framework: not being subject to an excessive deficit procedure.

2. Absence of severe macroeconomic imbalances: not being subject to an excessive imbalance procedure.

3. Fiscal sustainability: in ascertaining that the trajectory of public debt is sustainable, the Governing Council will take into account, where available, the debt sustainability analyses by the European Commission, the European Stability Mechanism, the International Monetary Fund and other institutions, together with the ECB’s internal analysis.

4. Sound and sustainable macroeconomic policies.

The TPI — which could be nicknamed ‘To Protect Italy’ —  will be unlimited in size and depend in scale on severity of risks. But the euro markets remain unconvinced, seeing this as a shaky compromise. Defining such issues as the sustainability of a country's debt is a highly contentious issue, something German Bundesbank chief Joachim Nagel highlighted rather pointedly earlier this month.

The collapse of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi's coalition government this week, with national elections now expected in early October, has concentrated the focus even more on the sustainability of more indebted European countries' borrowing and economic predicament. The 10-year yield spread of Italy over Germany widened by more than 20 basis points on Thursday to over 230 basis points, close to the four-year high reached in June. With Italian 2-year yields reaching 2%, and 3-year yields at 2.5%, the nation is a far cry from the sub-zero funding levels it enjoyed as recently as earlier this year.

With euro zone inflation running at 8.6%, and into double digits in several countries, there really was no time to wait for the ECB. Despite the Italian political turmoil, swift action on curbing inflation is required as there are no signs of a respite in upward price pressure across Europe. “We expect inflation to remain undesirably high for some time,” Lagarde said,

A notable casualty of the about-change in ECB policy is the governing council's forward guidance, which has been dropped for a more expedient meeting-by-meeting approach. Lagarde twice mentioned the level of euro, which briefly fell below parity with the dollar this month, as creating inflationary pressures. Further weakness in the common currency may have to lead to more aggressive rate hikes.

The disappointing reaction from Italian bond yields to the new crisis plan suggests policy makers will need to spend more time trying to convince traders and investors that they’re serious in recognizing the need to prevent spreads from blowing out. With Italian politics back in a state of turmoil, it’s going to be a long, hot summer for the euro markets.

Se a qualcuno, tra i nostri lettori, fosse sfuggito, ricordiamo che di tutto ciò che ha fatto la BCE dieci giorni fa, per noi investitori la cosa di maggiore rilevanza è una sola: ovvero il fatto che la BCE di Lagarde ha deciso di abbandonare la politica di “forward guidance”, che significa anticipare ai mercati finanziari ed agli operatori economici il futuro cammino dei tassi ufficiali di interesse.

Lagarde ha spiegato giovedì 21 luglio 2022 che la BCE non fornirà più indicazioni sulle future mosse in materia di tassi ufficiali di interesse: le prossime mosse saranno soltanto “data-dependent”, ovvero decise all’ultimo momento ed in funzione dei dati che saranno pubblicati nelle settimane precedenti la decisione.

Sei giorni dopo, il medesimo messaggio è arrivato da Jerome Powell per ciò che riguarda la Federal Reserve.

Il che butta i mercati, e gli investitori di ogni parte del Mondo, nella più totale confusione. Non esistono più le linee-guida: mercati ed investitori dal luglio 2022 sono costretti, anche loro, ad essere data-dependent.

Il che rende essenziale disporre di un supporto professionale ed altamente qualificato, allo scopo di effettuare quotidianamente tutte le necessarie valutazioni, dipendenti dai dati in uscita, su tutti gli asset finanziari compresi nel proprio portafoglio.

E’ il punto decisivo, per la gestione del portafoglio, per tutti gli anni a venire (anche se, dobbiamo dirlo, per noi di Recce’d le cose stavano così già dal 2007).

Leggiamo adesso che cosa ha scritto, proprio su questo specifico punto, il Financial Times.

The European Central Bank was unable to react to soaring inflation by raising rates as early as many policymakers wanted because of a commitment to forward guidance that it has now ditched after nine years, according to people involved in the decision. The ECB surprised many economists by raising interest rates for the first time in over a decade by half a percentage point on Thursday, despite having guided until recently that it intended a move of only half that size. Two of the bank’s governing council members told the Financial Times they believed it would have raised rates at least a month earlier if they had not been bound by guidance that rates would not rise until it stopped buying more bonds in early July. “A reasonable number of people on the council wanted to do 25 basis points in June,” said one ECB rate-setter. “Locking ourselves into forward guidance was unhelpful in that respect.” A second council member said the benefit of a June increase was outweighed by “the loss of credibility” that would have resulted from breaking its guidance on the timing of when asset purchases would end, adding: “It tied our hands.”

The insights underline how central banks are struggling to provide reliable guidance on their monetary policy plans after being caught out by the rapid surge in inflation to 40-year highs. In addition, the ECB is grappling with a European energy crisis and political instability in Italy. “Forward guidance has definitely overstayed its welcome,” said Spyros Andreopoulos, senior Europe economist at French bank BNP Paribas. “They kept being surprised by the data, which affected their credibility.” An ECB spokesperson said the council’s June meeting in Amsterdam gave “unanimous” support to leaving rates unchanged and saying it intended to do a 25 basis point rise in July, with a bigger move likely in September. ECB president Christine Lagarde said on Thursday that it had ditched its previous guidance on the size of future rate rises after “front-loading” its exit from negative rates and was now shifting to a “meeting-by-meeting” approach to setting borrowing costs. “We are much more flexible; in that we are not offering forward guidance of any kind,” she said. “From now on we will make our monetary policy decisions on a data-dependent basis, [we] will operate month by month and step by step.”

The decision to ditch forward guidance on rates, which has been an important part of the policy toolkit since its introduction by former ECB chief Mario Draghi in 2013, was broadly welcomed by analysts — even if some were still irritated by how the central bank broke its last stated commitments. “No guidance is better than bad guidance,” said Marco Valli, chief European economist at Italian bank UniCredit. “This will probably raise volatility in rate-hike expectations as markets try to understand the ECB’s reaction function at a time of elevated, supply-driven inflation and substantial weakening of economic activity.”

The ECB is the latest central bank to question the value of providing guidance. The US Federal Reserve last month abandoned its heavily signalled plans for a half-point rate rise only days before announcing its first 0.75 percentage point increase since 1994 after inflation rose by more than it had expected. Fed chair Jay Powell said after the decision that it was “very unusual” to have key data land “very close” to a rate-setting meeting, adding: “I would like to think, though, that our guidance is still credible.”

The Bank of England surprised investors last year by not raising rates when a move was widely expected in November and then raising them when it was unexpected in December. BoE chief economist Huw Pill said earlier this month it would be “unhelpful” to provide further guidance on rates while opinion was split between its policymakers. But a few days later BoE governor Andrew Bailey said its first half-point rate rise since 1995 “will be among the choices on the table when we next meet” in early August.

ECB officials said forward guidance was most useful to signal that rates would stay low for longer once it had cut them below zero and it was buying vast amounts of bonds. “We’re moving away from that world now,” said one official. However, Lagarde did provide some guidance on the future direction of rates on Thursday, signalling more rises ahead. “At our upcoming meetings, further normalisation of interest rates will be appropriate,” she said, adding that the central bank aimed to “progressively raise interest rates to [a] broadly neutral setting. That’s where we want to arrive at”. Lagarde declined to estimate the neutral rate of interest — the optimal level where an economy is neither overheating nor being held back — but other council members put it between 1 and 2 per cent, meaning its deposit rate still has some way to go from zero now. The ECB chief also ditched the word “gradual” in describing its rate-rising plans. She only used the word once in Thursday’s press conference — to describe wage growth — compared with seven times in June.

Council members criticised the concept of gradualism in June, when some said it “could be misleading if it was interpreted as implying too slow or too rigid a pace of adjustment in the monetary policy stance”, according to the minutes of last month’s meeting. Frederik Ducrozet, head of macroeconomic research at Pictet Wealth Management, suggested that the ECB publish the interest rate expectations of its council members over the next couple of years. This is similar to how the Fed publishes the median rate expectations of its officials every quarter. “The ECB has to come up with a new way of signalling its intention to the market,” said Ducrozet. “Otherwise it will add a layer of difficulty to predicting what they will do in the next meetings.”

Tutto ciò che avete appena letto vi porterà a concludere che siamo appunto entrati in una Nuova Era, che è già stata etichettata “The New Ab-normal”: un’etichetta che a noi piace, perché sintetizza due concetti:

• ciò che è stato “normale”, per i mercati finanziari e per le banche Centrali, oggi non è più “normale”

• la nuova situazione che ha preso il posto di ciò che era “normale” è così diversa dal passato, ed per molti aspetti così eccessiva, che può essere definita “Ab-normale”

Allo scopo di spiegare con maggiore dettaglio, ci affidiamo a ciò che ha scritto all’inizio della scorsa settimana (come commento alla settimana precedente) la Banca olandese Rabobank.

By Bas van Geffen, senior market strategist of Rabobank

It was a wild ride for Europe this week. Italian PM Draghi resigned, triggering snap elections in the country. These are scheduled for 25 September. The elections will delay talks on the 2023 budget and the implementation of structural reforms. Moreover, a new government may try to renegotiate the reform plans that have been submitted to Brussels for the Recovery and Resilience Facility – although there would appear to be little wiggle room here.

Notwithstanding this political uncertainty, the ECB raised its interest rates by 50 basis points, trying to normalise its interest rates in pursuit of the inflation aim. I’m glad that Lagarde specifically referred to normalising the Bank’s rates policy, rather than policy normalisation in general, because, as we have been arguing, the ECB’s tightening cycle is anything but normal. One would expect that a central bank can do away with unconventional policy as it moves away from the lower bound on interest rates. Look at the Fed, for example, which is already slowly unwinding its QE policy.

Yet, in Europe ‘normalisation’ means an expansion of its unconventional toolkit: alongside the rate hike, the ECB launched an anti-fragmentation instrument under the name Transmission Protection Instrument. Under the TPI the ECB could theoretically buy unlimited amounts of sovereign(-related) bonds, and much of the programme –from activation to purchase volumes– is left to the Council’s discretion. The Governing Council did reassure us that “the scale of TPI purchases would depend on the severity of the risks facing monetary policy transmission,” and Lagarde noted that the ECB “prefers not to use the instrument, but will not hesitate [to do so if needed]”.

That determination may well be tested, though. Markets were initially positively surprised by the unlimited size of the TPI. However, a long list of eligibility criteria relating to sound fiscal and economic policies caused some second-guessing, not in the least part because of the political uncertainty in Italy. The TPI’s conditions don’t sound overly restrictive to us, and there appears to be quite some grey area. However, the market may have to test this before it believes that as well.

Welcome to the new (ab)normal.

Of course, as we have flagged several times before, the ECB is in the uncomfortable situation that the TPI was a prerequisite for a faster, yet still orderly, hiking cycle. Lagarde also admitted this herself, stating that the tool allowed the ECB to “go big”. In addition to the availability of the TPI, Lagarde cited inflation risks, which “have intensified, particularly in the short term”. In other words, the ECB is clearly still concerned about the price developments. This means that the 50 basis points weren’t just a way to get the hawks on board with a less restricted fragmentation tool, and that more Council members may have genuinely wanted a bigger hike based on their assessment of the inflation outlook, although not all doves were convinced: a small number of ECB officials initially preferred a 25bp increase, according to Bloomberg.

After yet another last-minute deviation from its earlier guidance, the ECB has finally given up trying to predict its own next move. The Council dropped most of its forward guidance, including its intentions for September, and has shifted to a “meeting-by-meeting” approach instead. That, arguably, is at least some true normalisation of policy: an ECB that no longer pre-commits.

In light of the hawkish surprise yesterday, money markets are now pricing in a non-negligible chance that the ECB will follow up with a 75bp hike in September. We maintain our 50bp call for that meeting, but we now believe the ECB will follow that up with another 50bp in October.

There are two key assumptions behind this new forecast. First of all, this assumes that the TPI will effectively limit fragmentation risks in the Eurozone. Secondly, this assumes that the economic outlook does not deteriorate too sharply in the next couple of months. We still believe that the ECB’s next set of forecasts will probably require a downward revision of the growth forecasts, as the PMIs today (see below) are yet another indicator that Eurozone growth is losing momentum. That said, it also looks as though the Council’s tolerance towards growth risks has increased as long as inflation remains uncomfortably high. Without further shocks to energy and food commodities, we would assume that inflation will peak and slowly start to recede from early-Q4, which means that the ECB can probably declare job (almost) done after October. Plus, the ECB is so far not forecasting any recession, and the Bank has historically been reluctant to do so. It is therefore quite possible that it takes tangible evidence of one before the ECB stops hiking. We therefore do still believe that a 25bp move in December will be the end of the hiking cycle.

Despite the ECB -yet again- adopting a more hawkish stance, we remain sceptical that it will provide EUR with significant support. For a brief moment it looked like the ECB had struck the right balance with a 50bp hike and ‘unlimited’ TPI: EUR rose above 1.026 upon the release of the press statement. However, as we feared ahead of the meeting, this boost to the currency didn’t last very long.

Tutta intera la vicenda ci lascia in ogni caso una serie di utili insegnamento, sia come investitori, sia in quanto cittadini che consumano e lavorano alimentando la crescita dell’economia.

Tra questi insegnamenti, uno è il più importante di tutti, e per tutti: ne potete leggere nel quarto contributo esterno, che pubblichiamo in chiusura del nostro Post.

In questo articolo, viene spiegato, a nostro giudizio con grande chiarezza, come proprio i fatti che qui stiamo esaminando, e che l’articolo richiama, dimostrano che il grande insegnamento che il 2022 porta, sia ai privati sia alle aziende, sia agli investitori sia ai consumatori, è quello che segue

non è vero che “il denaro a costo zero da parte delle Banche Centrali” non costa nulla: il denaro a costo zero è una politica economica che presenta costi molto elevati, sia agli investitori sia ai consumatori, sia alle aziende sia alle famiglie.

Buona lettura.

The ECB’s announcement on Thursday July 21 of a “new instrument” for tackling “fragmentation risk” is ominous for the future of the euro. The idea is to pre-empt the emergence of serious break-up risk for the euro-zone as the policy interest rate continues to move higher in coming quarters towards “neutral.”

Chief Lagarde and her colleagues are determined to pre-empt this process triggering financial stress in the form of market crisis for weak government and bank paper. Saving the euro from high inflation must go along with saving the monetary union from break-up (fragmentation risk).

The launch of the new instrument and its likely use means “saving the euro” should drain not bolster confidence in the European money. Historians will not overlook the irony of this new likely giant step on the euro’s long journey to inflationary collapse occurring just on the same day as Mario Draghi, Chief Lagarde’s predecessor, renowned for his swaggering remark about “doing whatever it takes to save the euro” being forced to resign as Prime Minister of Italy.

The new instrument, born under the name “transmission protection instrument” (TPI), will be the catalyst to the accelerated full transformation of the ECB into a bloated European “bad bank” fund. This entity enjoys a giant privilege. Its liabilities are in large part the designated money (whether as banknotes or as reserves of banks) enjoying huge protections as such (most importantly legal tender) in all member countries of the European Monetary Union.

In effect, since the EMU crises of 2010-12, the ECB has been the agent which has “communalized” much of the bad state and bank debt of Italy (also Spain, Portugal and Greece). It has done this by issuing euro money liabilities against giant purchases of government paper and long-term lending (called LTROs) into the corresponding weak banking systems (again most of all Italy).

This communalization has created three big problems for the future of the euro:

First: the road back to monetary normality surely involves shrinking monetary base (now almost 50 percent of euro-zone GDP, compared to 27 percent in US). But how to accomplish this when the ECB would have to dump huge quantities of weak sovereign and bank loans on to the open market to achieve this purpose? 

Second: as interest rates rise, it becomes increasingly problematic whether those weak borrowers can service their loans from the ECB. New loans to pay the interest are a red flag regarding insolvency danger, whether in the form of legal default, or default by inflation (thereby reducing real value of principle). The European public at some stage should become alarmed about the danger of default by inflation spilling over into their holdings of the money issued by this bad bank fund.

Third: the tolerance of the German public for this transformation of the ECB and its money could snap in a way which means that the Federal Republic pulls out of the union. Germany has been critical in keeping the ECB humpty dumpty together. Partly this critical role depends on public perception (that Germany stands behind the ECB and all its potential losses), albeit there is much wishful thinking here rather than legal fact. 

And then there is the target-2 system – in effect an interbank clearing system, but where net balances between the member central banks are not cleared). The Bundesbank’s credit balance here now stands at over 30 percent of German GDP (matched largely by Italian and Spanish net debit balances; France’s balance is at approximately zero),

Germany, though, can walk away – a course which is not absurd given that ECB holdings of loans and government paper issued by weak banks and sovereigns amounts to over 100 percent of German GDP. In the big picture we should note no member country, jointly or severally, guarantees the monetary debts of the ECB. In fact. the only meaningful guarantee here would be a promise to sustain real purchasing power of money.

If Germany exits EMU, then the ECB’s monetary liabilities just become worth a lot less in real terms (via currency collapse and inflation). Ultimately these monetary liabilities might cease to be monetary – that occurs if monetary union comes to an end. Then the monetary liabilities of the ECB would have to find a market price (in terms of real purchasing power) as the paper of a giant bad bank devoid now of monetary function. 

No doubt, any break-up scenario has huge costs, including write-offs for the German public. The existential question, though, poses itself: if not now, when? How much larger will these costs be when the decision to break-up is forced much later.

No-one expects the present coalition government in Berlin to be taking any such decision. But market valuations including of money do reflect shifting probability of future catastrophe even far ahead. The dangers highlighted here of ultimate monetary collapse have just got a lot worse due to the ECB’s launch of its new instrument. 

According to the official press release on the TPI, the ECB, its own discretion (by vote of its governing council) can engage in unlimited purchases of paper from any member country if it considers the behaviour of its credit spread (say relative to Bunds) as having come out of line “with fundamentals.” In making that determination, the ECB will check with the EU Commission concerning the evolution of public finances in the given country. The ECB will also check for general economic sustainability in its various dimensions.

If, for whatever reason, the Italian spread (Italian government bond yields vs. German) suddenly widens – perhaps because markets distrust the political direction or sense that Italian credit institutions are in a new bleak situation – then the ECB can turn on the taps. Yes, it will sterilize the new lending, that means presumably disposing of German and Dutch paper in the ECB balance sheet to make room for Italian for example, becoming even more of a bad bank. 

There are decisive moments in monetary history. The aftermath of July 21 is likely to be one of them as regards the European monetary future. These problems have become a lot worse

The disastrous era of negative rates may be ending but it is not over. Imposing negative nominal and real rates is a colossal error that has only encouraged excessive indebtedness and the zombification of the economy. However, nominal rates may be rising but real rates remain deeply negative. In other words, rates are still exceptionally low for the level of inflation we have.

Negative interest rates are the destruction of money, an economic aberration based on the idea that rates are too high and that is why economic agents do not invest or take the amount of credit that central planners desire.

The excuse for implementing negative rates is based on a fallacy: that central banks lower rates because markets demand it and policy makers only respond to that demand, they do not impose it. If that were the case, why not let the rates fluctuate freely if the result is going to be the same? Because it is a false premise.

Imposing artificially low rates is the ultimate form of interventionism.

Depressing the price of risk is a subsidy to reckless behaviour and excessive debt.

Why is it bad for everyone to keep negative rates?

The reader may think I am crazy because hiking rates makes mortgages more expensive, and families suffer. However, you should also ask yourself why house prices rise to unaffordable levels. Because cheap borrowing drives higher indebtedness and makes asset prices significantly above affordability levels.

First, prudent saving and investment are penalized and excessive debt and risk-taking are promoted. Think for a moment what kind of business is the one that is viable with negative rates, but not with rates at 0.5%. A time bomb.

It is no accident that zombie companies have soared in an environment of falling interest rates. A zombie company is one that cannot pay interest on debt with operating profits, has negative return on assets, or negative net investment. According to a study by the Bank of International Settlements, the percentage of zombie companies has risen to all-time highs in the period of low rates.

Zombie companies are less productive, riskier and may create a systemic problem. Furthermore, negative rates curb creative destruction, essential for progress and productivity.

In the case of governments, negative rates have been a dangerous tool. They have made it comfortable to take on vast amounts of debt and make deficits skyrocket.

A policy designed as something exceptional and temporary was extended for more than a decade leaving a trail of inefficiency, malinvestment and excess debt.

A policy designed to buy time and conduct structural reforms has become an excuse to avoid them, take more debt and increase imbalances.

But negative real and nominal rates disguise risk, giving a false sense of solvency and security that quickly dissipates with a slight change in the economic cycle. These extremely low rates generate greater problems as risk accumulates above what central banks and supervisors estimate, starting with governments themselves.

Negative rates have fuelled the public debt bubble that will end with higher taxes, higher inflation, lower growth, or all of them together.

Of course, the other effect of this economic aberration is high inflation, the tax on the poor. For years it has generated enormous inflation in assets, by encouraging risk taking, from the real estate sector to the multiples of industrial assets or infrastructure. Borrowing was unusually cheap and when credit soars, it flows towards high-risk assets and, of course, the creation of bubbles.

It is surprising. The entire economic consensus recognizes that the rate cuts of the early 2000s led to the bubbles that cemented the excess of risk prior to the 2008 crisis. However, that same consensus applauds the madness of negative rates because there is a perverse incentive in statism when the bubble is sovereign debt.

After the high inflation in assets, high inflation of consumer prices has arrived, a double negative effect for savers and real wages.

The European Central Bank has raised rates… to zero! The biggest increase in 22 years and the first time without negative rates for eight years. With inflation in the eurozone at 8.6%, it is clearly an insufficient and timid rise.

Interest rates are the cost of risk and with these rates the policy of central banks continues to penalize savings and prudent investment in real and nominal terms, while risk-taking is encouraged.

It is amazing to read that some think it is imprudent to raise rates… to zero! with core inflation at levels not seen since 1992.

Will mortgages go up in Europe? Of course. But it seems incredible to me that the economic debate is on whether 40-year mortgage rates go to 2% instead of why they were at 1.2% in the first place.

When you worry about the cost of a new mortgage going up, think that house prices have skyrocketed well above what we consider affordable precisely because of negative rates.

Hardly anyone buys something they cannot afford taking debt if the interest rate reflects the genuine cost of risk.

Bubbles and credit excesses always occur after a planned incentive such as artificially lowering interest rates and injecting liquidity above the real demand for currency.

Of course, when bubbles burst, interventionists never blame the artificial lowering of interest rates or printing money… they blame “the market”.

Cheap money is expensive. The problem for the next few years is not going to be adapting to rates that will continue to be exceptionally low, but to realize the excess risk accumulated in the era of monetary insanity.

Those colleagues who recommend central banks to be “prudent” and not raise rates too quickly should have warned of the madness of lowering them at full speed until reaching negative levels.

If rates fluctuated freely, the creation of bubbles and excesses of debt would be almost impossible because the risk would be reflected in the cost of money.

The best way to prevent financial bubbles and crises is not to encourage excess risk and debt by artificially lowering rates.

Rates do not have to be hiked or cut by a central planner. They need to float freely. Anything else creates more imbalances than the alleged benefits they promote.

La Storia non si ripete, ma spesso fa rima: lo scrisse Mark Twain.

La Storia non si ripete: ma regala utili lezioni, a titolo gratuito.

Da almeno due anni, noi di Recce’d abbiamo suggerito ai nostri lettori si approfittare di queste lezioni che la Storia ci regala: ed in particolare, in decine e decine di occasioni abbiamo suggerito ai nostri lettori di guardare agli Anni Settanta.

Nelle prime settimane, ci presero per pazzi. Poi, gradualmente, settimana dopo settimana, ci fu prestata maggiore attenzione.

Nell’ultimo trimestre, tutti, ma proprio tutti (anche il Bollettino Parrocchiano) hanno scritto e parlato degli Anni Settanta. Molto di recente, il conosciutissimo settimana specializzato Barron’s (immagine qui sotto).

L’utilità della lezione che la Storia ci regala, in particolare se guardiamo ai fatti degli Anni Settanta, è grandissima: e non perché (come qualcuno potrebbe credere) si ripeteranno per filo e per segno gli Anni Settanta. Questo, una semplice ripetizione, è impossibile.

E tuttavia: riguardando ciò che accadde negli Ani Settanta possiamo costruire, per gli anni Duemilaventi, uno scenario più credibile, sostenibile, affidabile, all’interno del quale effettuare la revisione del portafoglio ed i nostri futuri investimenti.

Perché una sola cosa è certa: gli anni Duemilaventi avranno nulla in comune con gli Anni Duemiladieci. Zero.

Un buon investitore, ed un buone gestire di portafoglio, ha già iniziato, 24 mesi fa, a ragionare, valutare, stimare ed operare in un modo completamente diversa dal modo utilizzato dopo il 2008.

Totalmente, completamente diverso.

Rileggendo i titoli dei quotidiani negli Anni Settanta, ad esempio, si scopre che in quel periodo le economie soffrivano sia per il caro-vita, sia per la disoccupazione.

Rileggendo quei titoli, vi convincerete che chi oggi a voi dice che “sta arrivando la recessione, e per conseguenza diminuirà l’inflazione”, e quindi anche i tassi di interesse, vi sta raccontando qualcosa che esiste … soltanto nella sua fantasia.

Almeno, se guardiamo alla realtà dei dati e della Storia.

Se rileggete i quotidiani degli Anni Settanta, scoprite che già in quel periodo ci furono gravi epidemie, e che già in quel periodo ci furono massicce speculazioni sulle materie prime.

La Storia non si ripete, ma spesso fa rima.

Rileggendo i titoli di allora, scoprirete che quelli anni furono anni di scarsità e di razionamento, ma pure anni di scioperi e conflitti sociali.

E potrete constatare che allora, come oggi, gli uomini politici dell’Occidente fecero appelli e pressioni sugli uomini al Comando della Politica nei Paesi arabi e negli altri Paesi produttori di energia.

La storia, anche in questo caso, fa rima.

Ed infine, vi verrà ricordato dalla stampa di quegli Anni che, molto semplicemente, la Banca Centrale disse al proprio Popolo: “dovete abituarvi ad avere di meno”.

Tutte queste cose, che ritroverete leggendo i quotidiani di allora, vi saranno molto utili, ed in due modi:

• potrete domandarvi quante e quali, delle vicende di allora, si ripeteranno nei prossimi anni; e poi

• potrete passare ai mercati finanziari, e quindi alla gestione del vostro attuale portafoglio in titoli, chiedendovi quali dei movimenti di mercato visti negli Anni Settanta si rivedranno oggi, e quali no

Ad esempio, con il grafico che vedete qui sopra, ripercorriamo insieme il trienno 1973-1975: seguendo la linea di colore azzurro, vedete che cosa fece nel triennio la Borsa di New York (la scala alla destra nel grafico); sulla sinistra, e seguendo la linea di colore viola, vedete come in quel periodo si comportò la cosiddetta curva dei rendimenti, ovvero la differenza tra il rendimento del Titolo di Stato a 2 anni ed il Titolo di Stato a 10 anni.

Il tema della curva dei rendimenti, in queste settimane, è uno dei più discussi dagli operatori, giorno dopo giorno.

Il grafico qui sopra allarga il periodo di osservazione: stiamo sempre parlando dell’indice della Borsa di New York, ma in questo secondo grafico vediamo che cosa fece quell’indice negli anni che vanno dal 1966 al 1982. Stiamo parlando di un periodo di 17 anni.

Potete rivedere i medesimi dati anche nel grafico che segue: osservate come il “bear market” del primo semestre 2022 sia, da un punto di vista statistico, qualcosa che ci dice ben poco su quello che succederà nel secondo semstre 2022, e negli anni successivi.

Il “bear market” come vedete non garantisce il ribalzo: a differenza di ciò che a voi viene raccontato dal private banker, dal wealth manager, dal promotore finanziario e dal robo advisor.

Questi venditori, che si fanno chiamare private banker, personal banker, family banker o con altri nomi esotici, vi fanno sempre vedere il grafico “di lungo periodo” della Borsa americana, allo scopo di farvi credere che “nel lungo periodo l’investimento in azioni rende sempre di più rispetto all’investimento in obbligazioni”.

Per questo, adesso anche noi vi proponiamo un grafico “di lungo periodo” della Borsa di New York: grafico che mette in evidenza tre periodi, di 18, 25 e 17 anni, nei quali la Borsa di New York non è salita. Ed un quarto periodo, più recente, di otto anni.

Riflettete su questi dati, ma prima di tutto riflettete sulla natura del rialzo dagli Anni Novanta ad oggi: chiedetevi se il rialzo dagli Anni Novanta ad oggi può davvero essere ritenuto “mai più reversibile”.

A questa considerazione, aggiungetene poi una seconda: perché quel grafico “di lungo termine” riguarda sempre, e soltanto, la Borsa di New York?

Non sarebbe corretto andare a vedere anche i grafici “di lungo periodo” per le Borse europee ed anche per il Giappone? E magari di qualche Paese Emergente?

Giusto … per avere le idee chiare sulle cose che si dicono!

Un ultimo grafico potrà esservi molto utile, e lo vedete qui sotto: nel grafico l’andamento della Borsa di New York (la linea di colore blu scuro) viene messo a confronto con il tasso ufficiale di interesse USA (la linea di colore azzurro).

Ci sarebbero numerose osservazioni da fare, a proposito di questi dati: vi invitiamo a contattarci attraverso il sito, allo scopo di approfondire insieme quali indicazioni sul futuro dei mercati finanziari si possono ricavare esaminando questo episodio nella Storia dei mercati e delle economie.

Chiudiamo il nostro Longform’d con un contributo esterno, che Recce’d ha selezionato per i suoi lettori.

Lo abbiamo scelto perché aiuta i nostri lettori a comprendere al meglio che cosa si deve intendere per “stagflazione”, in che modo questa definizione si applicava ai fatti degli Anni Settanta, fino a che punto è appropriato utilizzarla nel contesto attuale.

Si citano episodi che (nel caso in cui non lo abbiate ancora fatto, seguendo i nostri precedenti suggerimenti) è nel vostro esclusivo interesse di approfondire e ripercorrere.

La Storia non si ripete, è vero. ma alcune delle cose qui sotto citate, alcune le rivedremo, tutti insieme, nei prossimi mesi ed anni.

Stocks were booming, wages and prices were chasing each other higher, and, for the first time in decades, inflation was in the air. “Can the Federal Reserve Board be counted on to answer 1967’s expected inflationary alarms with its usual credit-curbing ardor?” The Wall Street Journal asked on Nov. 2, 1966. “The answer: Probably no.”

In fact, amid a series of monetary and fiscal half-measures, the next decade-and-a-half would become known as the Great Inflation, with the consumer price index surging 186%, or 7.3% annually, from 1968 to 1983. (The CPI was 4.7% in 2021 and is estimated at 8% this year so far.)

Worse, two energy crises hobbled the U.S. economy, pushing up the unemployment rate to 8.2% in 1975 and 10.8% in 1982, even as prices continued skyward. Dubbed stagflation, it economically strangled many American families and businesses.

The episode was “the greatest failure of American macroeconomic policy in the postwar period,” says Jeremy Siegel, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School professor emeritus of finance and author of the seminal market study, Stocks for the Long Run.

Today, stagflation is again in the air. Inflation, triggered by postpandemic spending, is at its highest level in four decades and the economy may already be in recession. Stocks are in a bear market, bond yields are rising, and crypto is crashing. Only unemployment remains historically low, at 3.6%.

The past few years have been difficult enough; imagine 15 years of it. Fortunately, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker left a guide to avoiding the worst of the damage in what he called “the lesson of the 1970s.”

Will we heed that lesson?

As with today’s rising prices, the Great Inflation began with a hot-running economy, supercharged by 1964 tax cuts and spending on both war (Vietnam) and peace (the Great Society). The CPI hit 3% in 1966, when The Journal sounded the alarm. The Fed was led by William McChesney Martin Jr., who famously compared the central bank to “the chaperone who ordered the punch bowl removed just when the party was really warming up.”

Yet when it was time to end the inflation party, Martin was “reluctant to raise interest rates or crimp the lending-money supply,” wrote The Journal. Why? Because slowing the economy might tame inflation at the cost of increasing joblessness, which was politically unacceptable. Martin and successor Arthur Burns followed the leads of presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, respectively.

“[E]veryone in the field knows pretty well that the president [Nixon] wants rates kept low,” Treasury Secretary John Connally told The Journal on Aug. 16, 1971, when the federal-funds rate was at 5.75%. The rate would follow an up-and-down pattern throughout the ’70s.

Fed officials believed in the Phillips Curve, which theorizes that there’s a stable, inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. Running the economy a little hot, went the thinking, would keep joblessness low.

But critics warned that persistent inflation could become self-perpetuating. As workers seek wage hikes, companies raise prices to match labor costs, setting off a wage-price spiral. “The burdens of inflation have grown too much to bear,” Barron’s wrote on March 31, 1969, citing housing and manpower shortages that mirror today’s situation. “[I]f the past be any guide, the unsound expansion and speculative excess must lead to a crash.”

Nixon’s response, a series of wage, price, and rent controls (among other measures), mostly suppressed prices until they were lifted.

Barron’s excoriated what was known as the Nixon Shock. “What did the controls achieve?” asked editor Robert Bleiberg on April 29, 1974. “[W]hile pretending to control inflation, the Nixon Administration, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve Board, has turned the inflationary spigots wide open.”

Then came the first oil shock. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ embargo of 1973 drove crude prices up 300% in months. It made “a mockery of the notion that there was a simple tradeoff between higher inflation and lower unemployment,” wrote economist Stephen B. Reed. The Phillips Curve was dead.

President Gerald Ford’s voluntary Whip Inflation Now program of 1974 turned into a punchline as stocks tanked and recession set in; Barron’s called it “gimmickry.” Another oil crisis hit in 1979.

The low point may have been President Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech in July of that year, when he told the U.S. that “all the legislation in the world can’t fix what’s wrong with America.”

The economy, in short, was out of control and the government was out of ideas. One result was the political revolution that swept Ronald Reagan into the presidency the next year.

Another was the monetary revolution led by Volcker, who was named Fed chairman by Carter 10 days after the speech. He made clear his target was inflation. “[W]e have no choice but to deal with the inflationary situation, because over time inflation and the unemployment rate go together,” he said in 1980. “Isn’t that the lesson of the 1970s?”

Volcker tightened the money supply and pushed the federal-funds rate above 19%. This caused a double-dip recession, but inflation and joblessness in time both fell, and soon it was Reagan’s Morning in America.

Today, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell appears to understand the lesson of the ’70s. “We’re not trying to provoke, and don’t think that we will need to provoke, a recession,” he told the Senate Banking Committee on June 22. “But we do think it’s absolutely essential that we restore price stability, really for the benefit of the labor market as much as anything else.”

If the Fed didn’t react to inflation as quickly as some hoped, Siegel says it still acted soon enough to limit the damage. He says he expects inflation to taper off within a year, and that we’ll experience a softer landing than the one engineered by Volcker.

So, we may not need to relearn the lesson of the ’70s firsthand.

Kenneth G. Pringle is a financial journalist and historian.

Le parole delle banche internazionali di investimento, e con loro anche quelle pronunciate dalle Banche Centrali, a noi in Recce’d non hanno mai convito.

Mai: neppure nel 1992, nel 1998, nel 2000, nel 2008.

Ma da due anni a questa parte, a nostro giudizio si sono trasformate in un’unica, gigantesca operazione di marketing.

Un marketing peraltro molto grezzo: tutto incentrato sulla semplificazione. Ve lo ricordate lo spot TV? “Scambierebbe due fustini con uno del nostro Dash?”. Il consumatore non accettava lo scambio: perché voleva, a tutti costi, il “bianco più bianco”.

Oppure, ricordate il marketing delle pompe di benzina? “La benzina Esso mette un tigre nel motore”. Fino a che non si è scoperto che tutte le case acquistano il carburante raffinato nella medesima raffineria.

Nel nostro caso, il marketing massiccio è stato utilizzato per forzare il risparmiatore ad acquistare titoli finanziari che il risparmiatore NON voleva detenere: si è forzato l’intero mercato finanziario, e nel modo più semplice, ovvero di fatto vietando la vendita dei titoli. “Se tu vendi, io compero sempre, e tu ci perdi sempre”. Implicitamente, si è messo un bando alla vendita di titoli. Messo poi in pratica con la attiva collaborazione delle banche globali di investimento e dell’industria dei Fondi Comuni di Investimento.

Questa verrà ricordata come la autentica follia economica degli Anni Duemila: sostituirsi ai mercati, impedendo così ai mercati di funzionare.

Oggi, per le Banche Centrali e le banche internazionali di investimento è diventato impossibile proseguire su quella strada. Oggi, quello che abbiamo descritto qui sopra non si può più fare.

E allora?

Ed allora si tenta di sostituire quel vecchio strumento (il QE) con la persuasione di massa, studiata ed applicata alle masse già nel secolo scorso.

Il gioco è cambiato: adesso, si lavora incessantemente per fare credere a tutti (con la collaborazione dei media) che esiste quello che non esiste.

O meglio: si vuole convincere la massa che il futuro sarà “proprio quello ideale”, ideale per loro che lo raccontano, e non quel futuro che sulla base della realtà dei fatti oggi si può anticipare.

Nulla di nuovo: insieme, noi e voi, abbiamo già commentato momento come questi in decine di altre occasioni. L’esito, poi è stato sempre il medesimo: ovvero NON quello che dicevano loro, e SEMPRE quello che invece noi di Recce’d vi abbiamo anticipato. Anticipato grazie a una disciplinata attenzione alla realtà dei fatti, e ad un metodo di lavoro che non è corrotto dal conflitto di interesse.

Tornando alla pratica dell’investimento, e della gestione di portafoglio, è decisivo avere oggi la capacità di analizzare ciò che viene detto da operatori interessati (come sono le Reti di promotori e le banche globali di investimento) e metterlo a confronto con ciò che dice invece la realtà e gli stessi operatori economici non finanziari (come potete leggere nella prima immagine sopra).

In aggiunta, è indispensabile disporre di strumenti di comprensione ed analisi come quelli che sono richiesti per leggere ed interpretare in modo corretto il grafico che vedete qui sopra: la notissima “regola di Taylor” per stimare a che livello dovrebbe trovarsi oggi il tasso ufficiale di sconto.

In Europa, dovrebbe essere il 7,4%, mentre … è appena ritornato sopra lo zero, giovedì scorso. La situazione, quindi, è totalmente sfuggita al controllo.

Strumenti di analisi e comprensione sono indispensabili anche per comprendere ciò che trovate scritto qui sotto nell’immagine che segue.

Immagine che, nella sua parte bassa, riporta una conclusione che, per noi di Recce’d, oggi 23 luglio è il punto fermo nella gestione dei portafogli modello.

Il mercato finanziari non è un buon indicatore delle aspettative di inflazione per la “gente reale” e gli operatori sui mercati finanziari hanno una visione semplicistica dei legami tra crescita economica ed inflazione. A nostro parere, risulterà molto difficile per la Federal Reserve raggiungere l’obbiettivo dichiaro per l’inflazione nell’arco dei prossimi 48 mesi.

Questo è anche il nostro modo di interpretare i fatti delle ultime settimane, come abbiamo analizzato e dettagliato la settimana scorsa in The Morning Brief.

Se avete interesse ad approfondire questi temi, potete molto facilmente contattarci attraverso il nostro sito. Noi siamo disponibili a parlarne.