2. The Nonbank Financial System Controls $239 Trillion…..Half the World’s Financial Assets
Barrons-By Reshma Kapadia The nonbank financial system now controls $239 trillion, or almost half of the world’s financial assets, according to the Financial Stability Board. That’s up from 42% in 2008, and has doubled since the 2008-09 financial crisis. Postcrisis regulations helped shore up the nation’s biggest banks, but the restrictions that were imposed, coupled with years of ultralow interest rates, fueled the explosive growth of nonbank finance.
5. More Data on Bank Insiders Record Buying of own Stocks
Zero Hedge Another measure of insider sentiment is the buyers-to-sellers ratio, which compares unique insider buying to unique insider selling. The average quarterly ratio for banks since 2011 has been 1.8 to 1, according to the report. So far in the second quarter, the ratio is at a record high of 14.7 to 1.
“Insiders in this group are expressing a strong belief that the regional-banking system as a whole is sound, that there’s not a danger of a wide-scale collapse,” Ben Silverman, director of research at VerityData, said in a Bloomberg interview.
Note: “Heavy trucks – trucks more than 14,000 pounds gross vehicle weight.”Heavy truck sales declined sharply at the beginning of the pandemic, falling to a low of 308 thousand SAAR in May 2020.
Heavy truck sales were at 558 thousand SAAR in May, up from 548 thousand in April, and up 20% from 464 thousand SAAR in May 2022. Usually, heavy truck sales decline sharply prior to a recession. Sales were strong in May.
10. Common causes of bad decisions: Farnum Street Blog
1. Assumptions based on small sample sizes 2. Wanting the world to work the way we want rather than the way it does 3. Conforming to expectations/authority/group (social default) 4. Blindness to large trends (blind spots) 5. Not asking, “and then what?”
The Buick Envision SUV is assembled at a GM’s assembly plant in Shanghai, China, and imported to the…
According to reports, China is now the world’s biggest exporter of cars. Credit tariffs, the war in Ukraine, and the changing automotive landscape that have positively affected the country’s car production.
Chinese officials have released figures showing the country exported 1.07 million cars during the first three months of 2023, an increase of 58 percent compared to last year. That number pushes Japan, with 954,185 cars, to second place despite increasing its production by more than 6 percent in the same period. Germany, which previously held the second spot for passenger car exports, was surpassed by China last year — it now sits in third.
China’s rise in vehicle production is due to increased global demand for new energy vehicles (NEVs) as countries enact legislation limiting fossil fuel (combustion) vehicles and their emissions. The Asian nation is well-positioned to accommodate the demand. According to an International Energy Agency report released in July 2022, China produces 75 percent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries and holds 85 percent production capacity for anodes and 70 percent for cathodes. The report says that China’s first-quarter exports of NEVs, including electric cars, rose more than 90 percent compared to a year ago.
The war in Ukraine has also helped China’s exports. Western countries have imposed trade sanctions on Moscow, so the Russian government has turned to China for its vehicles. While Volkswagen and Toyota pulled out of Russia after the Ukraine invasion, Chinese carmakers Great Wall, Chery, and Geely — satisfying the new demand — enjoyed a market share jump.
Other automakers, such as Tesla, are benefitting as well. Elon Musk’s electric car company has a massive Shanghai manufacturing plant that sends cars to Europe and Japan — the Gigafactory is currently capable of making 1.25 million vehicles a year and has plans to increase capacity. While Chinese-built Teslas still aren’t being imported into the United States, last month, the company began making Model Y sport utility vehicles for export to Canada.
SAIC Motor, the Chinese state-owned automaker based in Shanghai (which owns the MG brand), and BYD Auto Co., Ltd., an automotive subsidiary of the publicly listed Chinese multinational manufacturer BYD Company (backed by US investor Warren Buffett), are some of China’s top exporters of NEVs.
It’s interesting to note that import tariffs, legislated by the US government, have prevented most, but not all, automakers from bringing Chinese cars into the US marketplace. However, tariffs have not stopped GM from selling its Buick Envision SUV (based price of about $35,000) in the US market. Last year, GM imported 36,407 made-in-China vehicles, with the majority being the aforementioned Buick SUV. The balance was brought in by Polestar and Volvo brands.
Don’t get the impression that China is throttling back its manufacturing capabilities. On the contrary, Xu Haidong, the deputy chief engineer at the state-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, has indicated that China’s target is to export a staggering 8 million passenger vehicles by 2030!
The Daily Stoic-A classic episode of Seinfeld begins with George Costanza having a revelation. “Every decision I’ve ever made in my entire life has been wrong,” George says. “Every instinct I have in every aspect of life…is often wrong.” Then just do the opposite, Jerry says. “Yes,” Costanza says with excitement, “I will do the opposite!” For the rest of the episode, George has great success doing the opposite of what his instincts tell him to do.
This is now known as The Costanza Principle. And it turns out to be scientifically-sound advice. On a recent episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, the positive psychiatrist Dr. Samantha Boardman said,
“There’s so much messaging today about how you always have to be yourself and trust your feelings. But I tell people, “be un-you.” Like what is the opposite of what you feel like doing right now? Or who is someone you really admire—what would they do in this moment? And I actually think that can get us closer to the versions of ourselves that we would like to be…Separating oneself from one’s impulse, taking a healthy step back and gaining some distance between what you feel like doing and what’s actually going to help you—you’ll make a better choice.”
As we’ve talked about before, this is ancient advice. In his essay on clemency, Seneca tells the story of the emperor Augustus’ wife advising him, “Do what doctors do when the usual prescriptions have no effect: try the opposite remedies. Strictness has gotten you nowhere…Now try and see how far clemency gets you.” And Epictetus’ line was, “What assistance can we find in the fight against habit? Try the opposite!”
When the Stoics, the science, a wife, and a sitcom agree on something, only a fool would decline to listen. Try the opposite today. Be un-you.
You can listen to the entire interview with Dr. Samantha Boardman where she talks about her book Everyday Vitality: Turning Stress into Strength, how you can improve your life by changing small daily habits, why feeling stressed is not necessarily a bad thing, how to deal with catastrophizing, and more.
From Dave Lutz at Jones Trading QUANT BUYERS– The market’s steady rise has puzzled analysts and portfolio managers as the S&P 500 has churned more than 9% higher this year (and the technology-focused Nasdaq Composite has risen 24%). One explanation: Quant funds, or those relying on computer models and automated trading, have been doubling down on equity markets as other investors have stepped back, citing high valuations and concerns about the likely course of the U.S. economy.
Quant-fund buying has pushed these funds’ net exposure to U.S. stocks to the highest level since December 2021, according to data from Deutsche Bank. Mainstream investors, in contrast, have been pulling cash from stock funds and pouring it into money markets, WSJ notes.
3. Number of Companies Citing “AI” in Earnings Calls
Food for Thought: Companies citing “AI” on earnings calls:
Investors in Chinese property developers are also getting more skeptical about the market.
The Markit iBoxx index for China high-yield real estate bonds is back down to near where it was trading in November, when Beijing announced support for the sector through a “16-point plan.”
While that plan “has been instrumental to setting a floor to this crisis,” the initiatives are only aimed at supporting developers’ debts at a project level, S&P Global Ratings analysts said in a May 22 report.
That means there’s still uncertainty about whether developers can repay investors for bonds at a holding company level, the ratings agency said. They’re looking at whether the developers can generate enough cash from property sales.
In April, the analysts pointed out that national property sales fell to 900 billion yuan ($126.87 billion), below last year’s monthly average of 1.1 trillion yuan.
For all of 2023, S&P expects China developer sales to fall by about 3% to 5% — slightly better than the previously forecast 5% to 8% drop.
This year’s forecasts are based on expectations that sales in larger cities grow by about 3%, while sales in smaller cities don’t drop by more than 10%, the report said.
9. Business Insider House prices are declining in these 7 Western states while continuing to hit new heights across the rest of the country
A single-family home stands in a canyon in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah. Carla Mozée
US house prices rose modestly in the first quarter, said the FHFA on Tuesday.
But some Western states are seeing the first year-over-year price declines in years.
The agency’s pricing index rose 4.3% in the first three months of the year.
America’s housing market broadly notched price increases as the key spring-selling season began, but one area of the country that was booming saw the air coming out of prices on a yearly basis, according to government data released Tuesday.
House prices grew 4.3% in the first quarter compared to a year ago, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said in a report on Tuesday. The advance meant that the market had notched annual appreciation each quarter since 2012.
The agency’s House Price Index reached just under 400, hitting an all-time high with figures tracking back to 1991. The index measures prices of single-family houses with mortgages guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“U.S. house prices generally increased modestly in the first quarter,” said Anju Vajja, principal associate director at the FHFA’s Research and Statistics division. “However, year over year prices in many western states have started to decline for the first time in over ten years.”
Seven states logged prices declined, all located in the Western US. Utah led the list, with prices off by 4.35%. Nevada followed with a drop of 3.6%.
California’s house prices fell by 2.86%, and Washington saw a 2.62% drop, the FHFA report said. Also landing on the list were Idaho, Oregon, and Colorado, with the latter seeing prices down 1.07%.
Outside the Western states, the District of Columbia experienced a 2.35% year-over-year price pullback. Of the nine regions that the FHFA tracks, two had annual house price decreases. The Pacific division was down 2.4%, and the Mountain division was down 0.1%.
Rising interest rates directed by the Federal Reserve in fighting hot inflation have contributed to a slowdown in the housing market since last year, with home sellers slashing listing prices while listings themselves have become scarce.
Separate data from property software and data provider Black Knight has shown markets on the West Coast, including San Francisco and Seattle, have seen the biggest slowdowns. Localized data also point to the sharp regional divides in the housing market. Over the last four quarters, house prices rose in 78 of the top 100 largest metropolitan areas, fronted by a 14% rise for the Miami area. San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, California, was the largest metro area with the greatest price decline, at 10.1%.
Nationwide, FHFA said housing prices rose 0.6% in March. That rate outstripped the 0.3% estimate at Econoday.The start of the spring selling season showed house price gains in March in a separate S&P CoreLogic report released Tuesday. Its Case-Shiller Index rose 0.7% in March versus the year-ago period as tight inventory pressured prices upward.
The “decline in home prices that began in June 2022 may have come to an end,” in March, said S&P CoreLogic.
Farnum Street Blog “The issues facing San Francisco aren’t from a lack of funding. In 2021 alone, the city allocated $1.1 billion to its Department of Homelessness, and its budget has risen 500% since 2016. The results: Homelessness actually increased 64% during the same period. Where does all this money go?”
3. ChatGPT Reached 100m Monthly Active Users in 2 Months vs. 9 Months for TikTok
Zerohedge BY TYLER DURDEN. OpenAI’s viral ChatGPT chatbot reached 100 million monthly active users in just two months in January after launching in November, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. For some context, it took TikTok nine months after its launch to reach 100 million users and Instagram 2.5 years.
4. Tech 3.23 Standard Deviation Over 50Day….Most Since 2004
Bespoke Investment Group Again, Tech has led the way higher with a sharp move this week. The sector is now extremely overbought, trading 3.23 standard deviations above its 50-DMA; the fifth most overbought reading on record. Since 1990, there have only been a handful of times in which the S&P 500 Tech sector has traded at least 3 standard deviations overbought, with the most recent being roughly six years ago. But to find the last time the sector was as extended as it is today, you’d have to go all the way back to early 2004!
9. Immigrants are Record Share of Workforce-3.4% Unemployment
MoneyWatch Aimee PicchiThe share of immigrants in the workforce rose to 18.1% last year, an increase from 17.4% in 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a recent report.
Employees who were born outside the U.S. had a lower jobless rate last year than native-born workers, the BLS said. Foreign-born workers had an unemployment rate of 3.4% in 2022, compared with 3.7% for people born in the U.S., it noted.
The biggest difference was among men, with about 77% of immigrant male workers over the age of 16 in the workforce, compared with 66% of those born in America, the analysis found.
He was one of the 334 people assigned to the USS Arizona who survived the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Lou Conter was 20 years old when the warship he was on—the USS Arizona—was bombed by Japanese forces at Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Now, at 101, he’s the last known survivor of the USS Arizona. He escaped the burning wreckage and helped crewmates to safety. Just don’t call him a hero.
“I consider the heroes the ones that gave their lives, that never came home to their families,” he said. “They’re the real heroes.”
The USS Arizona’s bombing was the deadliest of the attacks that day, killing 1,117 people. It accounted for nearly half of the 2,403 who died during Pearl Harbor. Conter was one of the 334 people assigned to the USS Arizona who survived.
He became the last known survivor in April, after his former crewmate Ken Potts died at 102 years old.
The warship’s ammunition storage exploded during the bombings. The USS Arizona was so badly damaged that it was left to sink instead of being repaired. Its ruins are still underwater and viewable from the USS Arizona Memorial, which was built to hover over the warship.
Conter helped pull crewmates out of the burning ship.
“As we guided these men to safety, more often than not, their burned skin would come off on our hands,” Conter wrote in his 2021 book, “The Lou Conter Story.”
He often wondered why he made it out of the USS Arizona alive.
“God didn’t want you to go that time,” he said he told himself. “There’s a lot more for you to do for the country.”
A month after Pearl Harbor, Conter went to flight school. Working 12- to 14-hour days kept his mind off the death and destruction he saw on the USS Arizona.
“It helped out a lot to not think about it,” he said.
He got his pilot wings in November 1942, he said, and was part of a team that flew Black Cat aircraft overnight doing bomb runs in the South Pacific. He said he was shot down twice, once in September 1943 and a second time three months later. Both times, he used a lifeboat to get to shore.
After World War II ended, he said he returned to California and signed up for the reserves. In the early 1950s, he served again in the Korean War.
Conter retired from the Navy in 1967 as a lieutenant commander. He became a real-estate developer in California, where he still lives.
As the number of the USS Arizona survivors dwindled to about 30, they would get together, Conter said. The group got smaller through the years, from 13 to five and then to two.
“Now I’m the only one still living,” he said.
Conter said he didn’t know Potts when they were on the USS Arizona, but they became friends decades later. He talked to Potts on the phone every three weeks, asking him how he was doing and whether he was eating well. “Keep your spirits up,” Conter would say.
He is now on a new mission: Go back to Pearl Harbor this December.
It has been about four years since Conter has been to the annual remembrance. His doctor had forbidden him from taking the nine hours of flights from his home in Grass Valley, Calif., to Hawaii.
5. Get Ready for a Flood of Investment Products Around AI
New ETF uses artificial intelligence to time the market
The fourth ETF from upstart Qraft will test the limits of AI by going in and out of the market based on what the data say.
By Jeff Benjamin Can artificial intelligence accurately time the stock market? The developers behind a new ETF from Qraft Technologies believe it can, and that’s the premise of the Qraft AI U.S. Large Cap Dynamic Beta and Income ETF (AIDB).
“We believe the application of AI in actively managed funds transcends the limitations of the human mind, allowing for potentially better risk management and investment decision making,” said Marcus Kim, Qraft founder and chief executive.
“This is an especially relevant potential benefit for investors in times of market distress when emotions and biases are heightened,” Kim said. “We’ve introduced AIDB to extend these benefits to investors seeking dynamic equity exposure amid global market volatility by anchoring this fund’s strategy to our time-tested AI risk prediction model.”
The ETF, which starts trading Wednesday, joins three other AI-enabled Qraft funds. The difference between those funds and the latest launch is the ability to move in and out of the market in varying degrees based on what the AI data is forecasting.
Francis Geeseok Oh, CEO of Qraft’s Asia-Pacific business unit, said the AI program, which considers more than 70 macro and market data sets, correctly predicted the market downturn in March 2020 leading into the Covid pandemic, as well as the downturn following the market peak in November 2021.
“We’re using AI to predict downside risk,” he said.
The ETF, which has an expense ratio of 70 basis points, has a potential range from being fully invested in a large-cap stock index all the way to being 100% in cash.
The current outlook, according to Oh, “doesn’t see much downside risk so it is suggesting participating 100%, despite the debt ceiling debate.”
The idea of using AI to time the market will likely appeal to some investors and at least be closely watched by financial advisors, said Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi.
“Advisors are increasingly looking to tap into artificial intelligence to support investment needs,” he said. “This new ETF taps into the technology to support asset allocation decisions, shifting from equities to cash.”
Rosenbluth pointed out that Qraft’s largest ETF, the $10.7 million Qraft AI-Enhanced Large Cap Equity Momentum (AMOM), is up 9.1% this year. That is much stronger performance than the higher-profile $9.2 billion iShares MSCI USA Momentum Factor ETF (MYUM), which is down 3.9% over the same period.
Eric Balchunas, ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, described AI as “a huge trend,” but still a long way from being able to generate positive investment returns all the time.
“We’re pretty bullish overall on AI but the challenge is it’s an evolution of smart beta, which is an evolution of active management,and in that way, it faces the same hurdles as human managers,” he said.
Balchunas cited as an example the $107 million AI Powered Equity ETF (AIEQ), an actively managed fund powered by IBM Watson. Not only is the fund up just 3% this year, but its annual turnover rate hovers around 1,700%. That turnover rate compares to 3% for the Vanguard Total Market ETF (VTI).
The new Qraft ETF is shooting for a turnover rate of between 100% and 200%, according to Oh.
“If a computer has machine learning, maybe it will teach itself to trade less,” Balchunas said. “But the more you trade, it just becomes another cost you have to overcome.”
The other challenge Balchunas sees with the new Qraft ETF is the fact it’s offering active management in the large-cap equity space.
“Most advisers are dead set on passive when it comes to large-cap stocks, and it will be really tough to dislodge passive management,” he said.
“I’m expecting a wave of AI-related ETFs to hit the market as issuers seek to capitalize on what’s clearly a hot topic right now,” he said. “I would equate this to the slew of crypto-related ETFs that launched over the past several years. The use of artificial intelligence in the investment process carries some cachet and investors will begin seeing this term pop up everywhere.”
However, Geraci added, “the jury is still out on whether investors will actually benefit from the growing use of AI by asset managers. AI-powered ETFs sound great in theory, but the proof will be in the performance.”
I’ve been asked by many readers and some clients for my thoughts on the economy and recession.
As I am typing this, I’m thinking about how much ink I should be spilling on writing about the recession and how much time we, as investors, should be allocating to thinking and worrying about it.
Firstly, our ability to predict it is very limited – the economy is a complex system and thus incredibly difficult to forecast. Don’t believe me? The Federal Reserve employs a few hundred PhDs who stare at economic data 24/7 and they have yet to get it right, even once.
Secondly, recessions are not a death sentence to the economy but a natural, transitory phase.
This brings me to the third and most important observation: Time is the currency of life, and attention is how we choose to allocate this currency. As an investor, I can spend most of my day fidgeting, spending my time trying to predict the unpredictable and invest as if, at some point (I don’t know when), our portfolio will encounter a recession. Yes, earnings of some businesses will temporarily decline and then come back. Their stock prices may decline as well. But the value of the businesses, if we have done our analysis right, will not really change much. Recession – a temporary decline of cash flows – is a tiny blip in the stream of discounted cash flows.
There are three versions of ourselves: what people think of us, what we think of ourselves, and who we actually are. There is a saying, “Don’t tell me what you care about, show me how you spend your time.” We are at peace when who we think we are and who we actually are largely overlap. We are even more at peace if the two overlap in the version we’d like to be. We cannot really control what others think of us. The only thing we can do is to behave according to our values; but again, we should not tie our happiness to something we cannot control.
If you want to discover who you truly are, look at how you spend your time. If you are telling everyone and yourself, “I am a long-term investor,” but your daily attention is preoccupied with predicting and trying to avoid the next recession, then something has to change.
By the way, the above applies to many parts of our lives.
