One popular strategist has it all figured out.
Bonds and the dollar are in an “early secular bear market,” raw materials an “early secular bull market” and stocks a “late secular bull market.”
That’s the “big picture,” as painted by BofA’s Michael Hartnett in the latest installment of his popular weekly “Flow Show” series.
We’re not breaking new ground here, necessarily, but Hartnett’s analysis is always worth highlighting from a kind of Alonzo Harris “it entertains me, that’s why I read it” perspective. (If you don’t get the reference, do yourself a favor and watch Training Day this weekend.)
As to the bond bear market, it’s illustrated below. The long bond’s down ~50% in four years.
Hartnett knows why: The problem’s inflation, but more specifically, bonds are responding to “fiscal excess, debt, war and deglobalization.”
The only thing that can stanch the bleeding is pushback against pervasive profligacy. According to Hartnett anyway. The “secular [bond] bear is only over once electorates on Main Street (via elections) and Wall Street (via debt ratings and failed auctions) vote for less fiscal excess,” he wrote.
Don’t hold your breath. The whole reason for the fiscal excess is greater demands of fiscal policy on Main Street. Those demands are likely to, if anything, intensify. As for “failed auctions,” suffice to say that while non-dealer demand will wax and wane, there will always be a bid for Treasurys — even if it has to be at gunpoint, figuratively for dealers and literally for foreign reserve managers. (The US isn’t just going to let the Saudis walk away, for example.) And at the end of the day, the Fed can always cap yields. Hartnett wouldn’t disagree. Indeed, he reiterated that YCC and “ICC” (interest-cost control) are the likely end games.
As for commodities, Hartnett’s “early secular bull” is predicated on some of the same factors driving the bear market in bonds. AI spend, he suggested, is yet another bullish driver given the read-through for power demand.
The “late secular bull” characterization for equities comes down to a lack of new leadership in US shares since 2009. It “ends with a bubble and/or recession,” Hartnett mused, adding that emerging market stocks are “much, much less ‘late-cycle.'” They’re also “much, much” riskier, I’d add. EM stocks (and anything to do with EM for that matter) come with country-specific, idiosyncratic risk. If you don’t understand that risk (and few do on a country-by-country basis), you’ll get burned at some point. Just ask anybody who bought an EM equity ETF in early 2021 without bothering to check on the weights assigned to big Chinese tech.
Finally, Hartnett reiterated what sometimes comes across as a quasi-sympathetic view towards sundry “new world monetary order” arguments, at least to the extent they revolve around the allegedly fading prospects for the dollar. The greenback, Hartnett pointed out, is back-footed against gold and crypto, notwithstanding strength against other fiat.
“US deficits require weaker FX to attract foreign capital and/or Fed support for Treasurys,” he wrote, adding that this year’s cyclical USD bull market is predicated on “US exceptionalism” which, ironically in this context, is “driven by ‘exceptionally’ easy fiscal policy.”
Oh, and if you’re wondering whether all of this (the “debt,” the deficit and the “borrowing”) is actually meaningful in the US context, as opposed to just a series of canards foisted upon the masses for the purposes of sustaining a charade, Jared Bernstein, Chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers, will explain it to you:
Folks, I’ve told you a thousand times if I’ve told you once: This is all made up.
Profligacy is often bandied by the people who never label tax cuts for the wealthy as part of the profligacy problem.
I didn’t understood this dynamic for the longest time, but now I get that this archetype also believes that taxes are an abomination and practically a stealing of their wealth by the government, so tax cuts for them are justified in the their worldview. Of course, it’s the same dynamic as people who demand lower prices for years and years until they are then horrified by trade deficits and globalization and the loss of domestic middle class jobs.
I figured this out when a good friend of this ilk described to me (in early 2016) why he was behind Trump, the first example of the ‘problem’ he ticked off was NAFTA. Funny thing….. in college (1990ish) I organized against NAFTA while he shrugged his shoulders.
Thank you, Mr. Bernstein, for the clear and lucid explanation.
You can’t let people actually know it’s all made up. You would have nothing to write about if they did. lol
Also, how would they control the masses if people figure this out?
Jesus — that came off like an SNL sketch. Has anyone checked with Nathan Thurm for his explanation?
Well this is disturbing.
We might need to get Biden to explain it to him
Is this real? The only place I can find it online is TikTok, from a pro-Palestinian site — they only seem to have posted it there because it makes someone with a classically Jewish name seem like an idiot… if it’s real and not AI generated.
Yes, it’s absolutely real. It’s from “Finding The Money,” the Stephanie Kelton documentary that’s won all kinds of awards during its limited release, and came out today across all streaming platforms for US viewers. You can buy it right now on iTunes movies and watch it yourself. And here’s Stephanie retweeting it: https://twitter.com/FindingMoneyDoc/status/1786050601236779078
Here: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/finding-the-money/umc.cmc.4wlgfqq0pdcphvcg89pd2us9r
Thanks… hence why it’s hard to find with search engines, it’s too damn new!
H-Man, the Bernstein interview is even more scary when you consider this is the guy who advises the President on economic issues.
Good grief. Somebody send that guy to get some ice cream or something. That is a Trump campaign spot.
That video is precious.
“What a Day”.
…And this is why people like Don the Con can BS people into believing whatever they want them to… Come on people (i.e., the “experts”) – get a F*ing handle on it!