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2020-12-31
PC
U.S. Macroeconomic Outlook 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Crises
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19:27","market":"us","language":"zh","title":"U.S. Macroeconomic Outlook 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Crises","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1154691529","media":"新浪财经","summary":"一、回顾2020，经济惨淡市场疯狂\n回顾2020，我们正确预测了美国经济颓废走势，然而市场的疯狂却出乎意料。\n（一）一方面，我们的分析正确预测了经济的颓废走势。\n我们分析的主要依据，首先是美国经济原本","content":"<p><b>I. Looking Back at 2020: A Dismal Economy and a Crazy Market</b></p><p>Looking back at 2020, we correctly predicted the declining trend of the US economy, but the market frenzy was unexpected.</p><p>(a) On the one hand, our analysis correctly predicted the declining trend of the economy.</p><p>Our main basis for analysis is that, firstly, the US economy was already on the verge of a cyclical economic crisis; secondly, the US government's passive response to the pandemic, which led to the pandemic spiraling out of control, further exacerbated the economic woes; and finally, although the national bailout measures were unprecedented in scale, their bias and limitations limited their effectiveness. All of this has seriously hindered the economic recovery of the United States. Specifically:</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6f651ec27751bf737490082d7ad19609\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"220\"></p><p>(Credit card delinquency rates at small and medium-sized banks in the United States. Gray indicates the economic crisis. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database)</p><p><b>First, the U.S. economy was already quite fragile at the end of last year and is gradually heading towards the next cyclical economic crisis.</b>Although mainstream institutional economists in the United States were generally optimistic about US economic development at the beginning of the year, we disagreed. The root cause of the cyclical economic crisis lies in the restricted consumption of the people. With sluggish wage growth, people have to rely on borrowing to maintain consumption growth. However, borrowing money for consumption is unsustainable, resulting in people's limited purchasing power being insufficient to absorb the continuously expanding supply, resulting in relative overproduction. Product backlogs lead to a decline in corporate profit margins. When profit margins decline to a certain point, companies will begin to reduce investment, cut working hours, and even lay off employees. However, this will further reduce investment and consumer demand, and the oversupply will become more serious, leading to a further decline in corporate profits, thus plunging into an a vicious circle and ultimately triggering an economic crisis. As shown in the chart above, as of the fourth quarter of 2019, the credit card delinquency rate of small and medium-sized banks in the United States (which have more underlying customers and are more sensitive to the economy) has exceeded the pre-crisis levels of 2000 and 2008, indicating that consumption growth can no longer be supported by debt. The chart below shows that historically, a decline in corporate profit margins to a certain extent has often triggered an economic crisis, and last year it approached this level.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1a0da671f84ef56a0ded9d477c0d76c6\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"261\"></p><p><b>Other effective leading indicators, including working hours and discretionary consumption growth, also point to an economic crisis.</b>When corporate profits decline, whether it's shortening workers' working hours or laying off staff, the total number of hours worked will be reduced. When people's incomes decline due to unemployment and insufficient working hours, or when their debts become unaffordable, they will reduce consumption expansion, especially for non-essential goods. The following two charts show that the year-on-year growth rate of total working hours and non-essential goods would begin to decline continuously for several quarters before the onset of economic crises in the past, warning of a crisis. As of the fourth quarter of 2019, both indicators had shown a downward trend. These data, along with a range of other indicators we observed, suggest that the economic crisis was drawing ever closer at the end of 2019.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2d1dae247273fd00fc067598efab7b4f\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"262\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/89a1d2d569ad36ff2653fd34bbbcb9ec\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"268\"></p><p><b>Second, the passive fight against the epidemic, prioritizing profits, only exacerbated the situation if the epidemic got out of control.</b>Based on our understanding of the nature of the U.S. government serving capital, we anticipated from the outset of the pandemic that the U.S. government would prioritize capital profits over public health and lives, and might refuse to take necessary anti-pandemic measures that would harm profits. The passive response to the pandemic has led to the outbreak spiraling out of control. As of December 19, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States has exceeded 17.8 million, and the death toll has exceeded 310,000. As the U.S. government continues to relax its anti-epidemic measures, the epidemic has become increasingly severe, with the daily number of confirmed cases exceeding 250,000 (see chart below) and the daily death toll exceeding 3,000, which is worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2,606 deaths) every day. The out-of-control pandemic was not due to the incompetence of the US government, the global military hegemon, but rather to deliberate planning. After all, the vast majority of those infected and killed came from the lower classes, especially people of color, while the wealthy hid in luxury homes or even islands and enjoyed the best medical conditions in the world. If we consider only profits, even if one million people at the bottom of the population die (less than 0.3% of the total population), the loss would be less than shutting down the economy for two months. However, the greedy, short-sighted, and cruel policies of the American ruling class have led to repeated and intensified outbreaks of the pandemic, causing the US economic recovery to lag behind that of countries where the pandemic has been controlled.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/47ba07e5188dd7a48630121bb33ceda1\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"222\"></p><p>(Daily number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States and its 7-day average, data source: The New York Times)</p><p><b>Third, government bailouts are heavily biased towards capital, and although their scale is unprecedented, their effectiveness is limited.</b>Similarly, based on our understanding of the nature of the U.S. government's service to capital, we predict that U.S. government bailouts will be heavily biased towards big capital rather than ordinary people. This means that monetary policy, which prints money out of thin air to save capital, will be extremely loose, while fiscal policy, which requires capital to pay for it, may be sluggish and biased. As expected, the Federal Reserve quickly lowered interest rates to zero in early March, when the pandemic first appeared, and launched an unprecedented \"unlimited quantitative easing\" monetary policy, expanding its balance sheet by $3 trillion within three months to save the market (see chart below). At the end of March, the U.S. government launched its first round of $2 trillion fiscal stimulus package, the largest portion of which was used to bail out American businesses (44%), only 15% to subsidize American families, and 15% to increase unemployment benefits. Even the relief provided to the American people was designed to ensure that they could pay their mortgages and rent, so as not to harm the interests of American banks and homeowners. However, relief for the American people expired at the end of July, and the U.S. Congress has been wrangling for months to block the introduction of a new relief plan. Loose monetary policy can boost asset markets, but history has shown that its effect on the real economy is limited. Fiscal stimulus, which has a greater impact on the real economy and people's livelihoods, especially effective public investment in infrastructure, science and education, and welfare, is nowhere to be found. The U.S. government's policies will create debt and asset bubbles, exacerbate public suffering, and hinder the true recovery of the U.S. economy.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/632d4b87e4d45512790a4f708967523d\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"239\"></p><p>(Federal Reserve's net total assets. Gray indicates the economic crisis. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database FRED)</p><p><b>The actual data validated our predictions: the U.S. economy is in a severe downturn, and the recovery is stalling.</b></p><p><b>First, GDP has shrunk severely.</b>As shown in the chart below, US GDP plummeted by 9% year-on-year under the impact of the pandemic. Despite resuming work at the end of April, GDP still contracted by 2.9% year-on-year in the third quarter, and forward-looking private investment contracted by 3.8% year-on-year. Subsequent data showed that the improvement tended to stagnate.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bd4cc475fe14a0160091059bdf898b2d\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"222\"></p><p>(US GDP year-on-year growth rate, data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/be5b3bd52de2660ae58c5556db18cfc8\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"217\"></p><p>(Monthly year-on-year growth rate: Blue represents industrial production, red represents real private consumption. Data source: FRED)</p><p><b>Worse still, the recent recovery in both production and consumption has stalled.</b>The latest monthly data shows (above) that GDP contracted by 5.5% year-on-year in November, worse than in October; Real private consumption, which accounts for 70% of U.S. GDP, grew by -1.8% year-on-year in October (nearly 5 percentage points lower than the pre-pandemic growth rate). High-frequency data as of December 14 (see chart below) shows that credit card spending shrank by 4.7% compared to the same period last year, and the recovery that began in October has stalled.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/093623e7822b7c5a3ff823d9f402fdfe\" tg-width=\"405\" tg-height=\"264\"></p><p>(7-day year-over-year average of Chase Bank credit card spending, as of December 14. Data source: JPMorgan Chase)</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c775b545636006c32be575d3ed551881\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"239\"></p><p>(U.S. non-farm payrolls increased month-on-month; data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><b>Most seriously, the improvement in employment has reversed.</b>Employment is the pillar of consumption and the most important intrinsic driving force for economic recovery, and therefore a core indicator for measuring economic recovery. As shown in the chart above, as of early November, the month-on-month growth of U.S. non-farm payrolls has continued to slow since May. High-frequency data as of December 14 (see chart below) shows that the improvement in employment has begun to reverse in the past month, with total employment declining by more than 10 million compared to February. This does not include the underemployed due to the economic downturn.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/227c3e19fd3b768a13b57d197f62dcd4\" tg-width=\"433\" tg-height=\"262\"></p><p>(Total non-farm payrolls: official data (blue) and other data (yellow). Data source: JPMorgan Chase)</p><p><b>In addition, due to the bleak economic outlook, banks continued to tighten monetary policy despite ample liquidity.</b>According to bank survey data released by the Federal Reserve in November (see chart below), banks generally raised commercial lending standards for large and medium-sized enterprises in the second quarter (70 percentage points more banks raised standards than those that did not), and the vast majority of banks continued to raise lending standards in the third quarter (38 percentage points more banks raised standards than those that did not). Similarly, after banks generally raised their personal consumer credit standards in the second quarter, most banks continued to raise them in the third quarter. Banks' continuous raising of credit standards reflects their increasing pessimism about the economic outlook, which can also lead to credit crunch and affect corporate operations and consumption recovery.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e0e2a88c1f32b115bd13657865b2ee15\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"234\"></p><p>(Net proportion of banks raising credit standards: blue for commercial loans, red for personal consumer credit. Data source: FRED)</p><p><b>At the same time, the increasingly difficult lives of the lower classes in the United States are hindering economic recovery.</b>Severe unemployment, insufficient government aid, and a lack of access to loans have made it difficult for many American families to afford their most basic living needs. According to U.S. government data (see chart below), 12.7% of American households currently face food shortages, and 9.1% lack housing security. For the world’s most powerful country, this not only reflects extreme social injustice (the wealth of the richest classes in the United States reportedly increased significantly during the pandemic due to government bailouts), but also a sharp decline in the spending power of ordinary people, which will hinder economic recovery.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8aef3db6e58d10c666a84973ed058846\" tg-width=\"479\" tg-height=\"266\"></p><p>(Percentage of households in the United States facing food shortages and housing insecurity. Data source: U.S. Census Bureau)</p><p><b>(ii) On the other hand, the market frenzy was unexpected.</b></p><p><b>First, the stock market rebounded exceptionally quickly and repeatedly hit new highs.</b>The S&P 500 fell nearly 30% within a month of the first quarter, then rebounded quickly, recovering its losses within six months and hitting a new high, rising 15% this year as of December 18. The Nasdaq 100 index, which is mainly composed of large high-tech companies, rebounded even more sharply after falling nearly 30%, rising more than 45% this year as of December 18. In contrast, during the 2000 crisis, the S&P 500 fell by nearly 50% in two and a half years, while the Nasdaq fell by more than 75%. During the 2008 crisis, the S&P 500 fell 56% in a year and a half, while the Nasdaq fell 54%. In the 2008 crisis, the S&P 500 did not recover its lost ground until six years later, while in the 2000 crisis, the stock index did not truly recover until 13 years later.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8cf2e241a5358bbd56baf375d616e0af\" tg-width=\"531\" tg-height=\"282\"></p><p>(Trends in the US Standard 500 and Nasdaq stock indices. Data source: Yahoo Finance)</p><p><b>In addition, the P/E of the stock market has also risen to a historical high.</b>Nobel laureate economist Chairman Shiller advocated using the Shiller P/E (P/E), where the denominator uses the average of a company's long-term earnings (10-15 years) instead of the commonly used earnings of the past or next 12 months. This can cover the entire economic cycle and better reflect the reasonable valuation of the stock market. As shown in the chart below, at the beginning of this year, the Shiller P/E (15 years) had reached 35, significantly exceeding the level before the stock market crashes of 1929 (27) and 2008 (29), and only lower than the level during the dot-com bubble in 2000. High valuations do not necessarily mean a sharp drop in the stock market. For example, the current stock market valuation is equivalent to the level of 1998, when the stock market still rose for two years before finally collapsing. As can be seen from the chart below, stock market bubbles in history have often been burst by economic crises, and the higher the stock market valuation, the more severe the crisis, and the greater the decline. As of December 18, Shiller's P/E (15 years) had risen to 39. Investment experts often justify high valuations by citing low interest rates and a lack of alternative investment options, which we will discuss using historical data in the next section.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b7fd7fe83806353768a2e0d19ac8a536\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"246\"></p><p>(The 15-year Shiller PE ratio of the US S&P 500 indicates the economic crisis in gray. Data source: dqydj.com)</p><p>meanwhile<b>The IPO market is also in an unprecedentedly hot state, and it also ignores the company's fundamentals.</b>IPO financing in 2020 approached $150 billion, far exceeding the $100 billion level of the previous peaks in 1999 and 2000 (see chart below). At the same time, investors seem to disregard company performance, with more than 80% of IPO companies operating at a loss, a rate similar to that at the height of the internet in 2000. For example, the recent IPO of Airbnb, an internet travel rental company whose business was severely impacted by the pandemic, not only achieved a valuation of $100 billion in its IPO, but its stock price also doubled on the day of its listing. This inevitably brings to mind the frenzy of investing in internet companies in 2000.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b764c4abd0c78607d74993f9f6d1bab2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"216\"></p><p>(US IPO fundraising volume, in units of $1 billion. Light colors represent SPACs, dark colors represent other IPOs. Data source: Bloomberg)</p><p><b>The reasons behind the market frenzy are worth considering.</b>Before this economic crisis, stock market valuations were higher than before the 2008 crisis, and the degree of the crisis, whether measured by economic downturn or unemployment, was more severe than the crises of 2000 and 2008. However, the market's reaction was quite different, with a brief decline followed by a sharp rebound and continuous new highs. The stock market is severely disconnected from fundamentals, and we can see a series of special reasons behind this in the \"rearview mirror\".</p><p><b>First, the market does not believe this will be a lasting and deep crisis.</b>Cyclical economic crises, such as those of 2000 and 2008, are protracted, cause large numbers of companies to fail, and the recovery process is extremely slow. Although we realized before the US pandemic that the economy was on the verge of a cyclical crisis, markets and economists are often late to realizing cyclical economic crises. Therefore, they believe that this is only a temporary impact of the epidemic on the economy, and that things will return to normal after the epidemic. As the pandemic worsens, they are increasingly convinced that all bad news on fundamentals is a temporary impact of the pandemic, rather than a structural problem in the economy.</p><p><b>Second, the Federal Reserve's \"unlimited quantitative easing\" has fueled the situation.</b>During the stock market crash, the Federal Reserve not only cut interest rates to zero but also announced \"unlimited\" quantitative easing, injecting massive amounts of liquidity into the market by expanding its balance sheet by more than $3 trillion. Even the $1,200 given to each person by the U.S. government has become a bargaining chip for many retail investors in their gamble in the stock market. As shown in the chart below, the total money supply of M2 in the United States increased by as much as 25% year-on-year, far exceeding the 11% at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. This surge in liquidity has played a significant role in promoting the capital market. A popular saying on Wall Street is: \"Never go against the Federal Reserve.\"</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/82ee63596ffb216d1d2234190a093fd2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"229\"></p><p>(Year-on-year growth rate of US M2 money supply. Gray indicates the economic recession phase. Data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><b>Third, investors are subjectively looking for every reason to support the stock market's rise.</b>Investors who were completely unaware of the economic crisis, encouraged by ample liquidity, are willing to find any reason to justify the rise in stocks. This phenomenon of subjective self-rationalization can be seen in the impact of the general election on the stock market. The Democratic Party is expected to win both the presidency and the Senate before the election, which is explained by the Democratic government's strong stimulus package, which is conducive to economic recovery, leading to a surge in the stock market. Trump later led in the polls, explaining that Trump's policies were more favorable to investors, which led to a surge in the stock market. Finally, the Democrats became president, and the Republicans were likely to take control of the Senate. This was explained by the fact that dividing the government and checking and balancing each other was beneficial to policy stability, and the stock market still surged. It is evident that even contradictory news does not prevent investors from finding reasons to drive the stock market up.</p><p><b>Fourth, the story of the high-tech new economic model brought about by the pandemic is moving.</b>In the S&P 500 industry index, the technology, consumer discretionaries, and communications services sectors, which include U.S. tech giants, have surged by 40%, 28%, and 25% respectively this year, while the energy sector, which is directly related to the real economy, has plummeted by 33% (see chart below). To create a stock market surge, there must be a compelling story that everyone can understand. The 1990s saw the internet change the economic model, and the stock market continued to rise. The 2000s saw financial innovation reduce market risks, and the stock market continued to rise. The 2010s saw long-term low interest rates reduce return requirements, and the stock market will continue to rise. The story of the pandemic changing human life and ushering in a high-tech future is simple, easy to understand, and full of allure. Of course, many touching stories have ended with stock market crashes in the past. \"This time is different\"—which is hailed as the four most expensive words in financial history—will it really come true this time?</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ffc959c59156fb3c546594aee45347e2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"241\"></p><p>(This year's performance of the US S&P 500 industry index, data source: Yahoo Finance)</p><p><b>Fifth, retail investors flocked to the market to stimulate the market.</b>This story is so simple that all small investors can understand and agree with it. According to reports, in the United States, which has traditionally been dominated by institutional investors, individual trading accounts and trading activity have surged since the outbreak of the pandemic. Although retail investors do not have large amounts of capital, they often use derivatives as leverage, which can leverage large amounts of capital and have an excessive impact on the market.</p><p><b>Sixth, digitalization and passive trading have also exacerbated the market's trend of following trends.</b>Digital trading and passive investing have grown rapidly in the United States over the past 20 years and have become mainstream in recent years. Passive investing does not analyze fundamentals; it instead buys and sells according to market directions. Quantitative strategies, on the other hand, often focus on short-term trends and rarely make correct judgments about long-term macroeconomic trends. Moreover, their trading logic is mostly similar, leading to convergence in trading directions. The development of these trading strategies has exacerbated the disconnect between the market and fundamentals.</p><p><b>All of the above phenomena are classic characteristics of market bubbles.</b>Investors unaware of the risks of the crisis, driven by the Federal Reserve's massive liquidity, sought every reason to support the stock market's rise. They were captivated by a moving story, which drew countless retail investors to rush in. Coupled with digitalization and passive trading, this encouraged follow-the-trend investment. All of this inevitably leads to the formation of a bubble, and the stock market will deviate further and further from its fundamentals. However, history has proven that harsh realities will eventually pull the stock market back to ground level.</p><p><b>The biggest lesson we learned in 2020 was that we once again learned the old Wall Street saying: \"The market can remain irrational for longer than you can sustain it.\"</b>(The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent). Shorting the market against the tide during a severe market bubble may ultimately lead to success, but it may result in significant losses over a considerable period of time.</p><p><b>II. Looking Ahead to 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Risks</b></p><p><b>Looking ahead to 2021, the series of optimistic assumptions supporting the stock market are not guaranteed to be fully realized, and the risk of the bubble bursting cannot be ignored.</b>If the following situations occur, the market will make corresponding adjustments, and in severe cases, it may even cause a sharp decline in the stock market.</p><p><b>First, the economic crisis</b>Even if the pandemic is under control, the crisis may not yet be over, making it difficult for profits to grow rapidly. Demand in the United States was weak even before the pandemic, and it was on the verge of a cyclical economic crisis with relative overproduction, which further weakened demand. Even if the pandemic is under control, with a large number of workers losing their jobs and corporate finances weakening, consumer and investment demand will struggle to recover quickly, making it difficult for company profits to grow rapidly. More seriously, this extreme imbalance between supply and demand usually requires large-scale destruction of capital and production capacity in the form of a crisis to reduce supply in order to clear it out, allowing the remaining strong companies to resume profit growth and start a new economic cycle. According to Bloomberg data, during the economic crisis from January 2008 to June 2009, a total of 370 companies in the United States with debts exceeding $50 million went bankrupt. Given that the total liabilities of non-financial corporations in the United States ($31.2 trillion) have now doubled compared to 2008 ($15.4 trillion), the number of companies with liabilities exceeding $50 million should increase significantly compared to 2008. Therefore, to destroy the same proportion of capital and production capacity, the number of bankrupt companies would need to significantly exceed the 370 of the 2008 crisis. In contrast, as of December 12, only 236 companies with debts exceeding $50 million had gone bankrupt this year, thanks to an unprecedentedly large bailout from the U.S. government. This means that a large number of business failures may still be needed for the economy to truly clear out. Therefore, the economic crisis may not be truly over.</p><p><b>Second, the development of the epidemic</b>The government's passivity has led to the epidemic spiraling out of control, and the prospects after the vaccine is released are not yet fully clear. Investors expect that once a vaccine is released, the US pandemic will be brought under control relatively quickly, normal life will basically resume, and consumer demand will be released. However, the epidemic in the United States is exceptionally severe, with the confirmation rate per capita far exceeding that of other Western countries (see the chart below). Furthermore, due to misleading propaganda from right-wing politicians such as Trump, many people do not believe in the dangers of the novel coronavirus. Many people who believe in the dangers have doubts about the safety of the vaccines hastily launched by the government and pharmaceutical companies, so most Americans are unwilling to accept vaccines. At the same time, because US vaccines require ultra-low temperature storage, there are great difficulties in transportation and distribution. From this perspective, it remains uncertain when the epidemic will be brought under control. The longer this drags on, the more companies go bankrupt, the worse the financial situation of businesses and individuals deteriorates, and the more difficult it is for workers to find new jobs, the deeper the long-term impact of the pandemic on economic vitality may be, and the more difficult it will be to recover.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/22992bcf89dd59641632c49c9e0e6a2d\" tg-width=\"510\" tg-height=\"322\"></p><p>(Number of confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people: dark red in the United States, dark green in the European Union, red in Canada, green in Japan, pink in South Korea)</p><p><b>Third, government policies are unable to play a sufficient role in truly reversing the economic downturn.</b>On the one hand, while fiscal policy can effectively alleviate the problem of insufficient demand and promote economic recovery, American capital is unwilling to pay for public investment and social welfare, and its implementation faces numerous political obstacles. For example, although the scale of the new round of fiscal rescue packages has been reduced from the expected $1.5 trillion to $900 billion, it has still not been passed by Congress, and infrastructure plans that have been effective in boosting the economy are nowhere to be found. On the other hand, while ultra-loose monetary policy can support the growth of asset bubbles, the long-term practices of the US, Japan, and the EU have proven that it has a limited effect on the real economy and will exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor, worsen the imbalance between investment and demand, exacerbate the economic crisis, and trigger the bubble to burst.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/555a11dee2888ad473cb3cfc2b6fa7ba\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"240\"></p><p>(Red represents the Dow Jones Industrial Average, blue represents the 3-month Treasury Bond yield, red represents AAA corporate bond yields, and gray represents the economic crisis.)</p><p>Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently stated that interest rates will remain low for an extended period, while agreeing with the mainstream market view that high stock market valuations are reasonable in a prolonged low-interest-rate environment. However, historical data is not so optimistic: as shown in the chart above, after the Great Depression of 1929, from 1934 to 1945, US interest rates remained low for a long time, the three-month Treasury Bond remained below 0.5%, and corporate bond yields also fell to around 3% in 1937. The Dow Jones stock index nearly doubled between 1934 and 1937, but it didn't last long. In 1937, the cyclical economic crisis broke out again, and the stock market plummeted by nearly 40% within a year, before fluctuating downwards by 15% over the next four years. It seems that a low-interest-rate environment cannot guarantee the stock market's long-term prosperity; how long it will rise depends on whether the economy will fall into a deep crisis.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/16bb84f7a4f42a58dcb8db7f9a133078\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"231\"></p><p>(Total U.S. consumer credit. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED))</p><p><b>Fourth, debt risk: Corporate and personal debts are high, and the risk of debt crisis accumulates rapidly.</b>First, the current levels of corporate borrowing and personal consumption debt have far exceeded those levels before the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. As shown in the chart above, total consumer credit in the United States has been growing steadily in recent years, increasing by 62% compared to before the 2008 crisis. The chart below shows that the leverage ratio of non-financial companies in the United States has now risen to twice what it was before the 2008 crisis. More seriously, data shows that the current scale of subprime mortgages is higher than before the subprime mortgage crisis. The issuance of BBB-rated bonds, the lowest tier of investment-grade corporate bonds, has soared over the past 10 years, and by 2019 it was three times that of the lead-up to the subprime mortgage crisis. Meanwhile, the proportion of low-rated corporate bonds has doubled from less than 20% in 2008 to nearly 40%. Bloomberg reports that in 2020, driven by the impact of the pandemic and the Federal Reserve's monetary easing, the issuance of junk bonds in the United States reached an all-time high. Given the current severe economic situation, the risk of a debt crisis cannot be ignored. If the debt crisis spreads to the financial system and triggers a financial crisis, the consequences will be even more unimaginable.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a4ab5853e27eeca6d818bd4841f82cf\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"234\"></p><p>(Leverage ratio of U.S. non-financial corporations. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database)</p><p><b>In conclusion, the US stock market surged in 2020 against a bleak economic backdrop due to the aforementioned reasons, but the outlook for 2021 is not so optimistic. It is difficult to guarantee that all the assumptions supporting the stock market will be realized, and the numerous risks that may trigger a bubble burst cannot be ignored.</b></p>","source":"XLCJ","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>U.S. Macroeconomic Outlook 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Crises</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nU.S. Macroeconomic Outlook 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Crises\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n<p class=\"head\">\n<strong class=\"h-name small\">新浪财经</strong><span class=\"h-time small\">2020-12-30 19:27</span>\n</p>\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\n<p><b>I. Looking Back at 2020: A Dismal Economy and a Crazy Market</b></p><p>Looking back at 2020, we correctly predicted the declining trend of the US economy, but the market frenzy was unexpected.</p><p>(a) On the one hand, our analysis correctly predicted the declining trend of the economy.</p><p>Our main basis for analysis is that, firstly, the US economy was already on the verge of a cyclical economic crisis; secondly, the US government's passive response to the pandemic, which led to the pandemic spiraling out of control, further exacerbated the economic woes; and finally, although the national bailout measures were unprecedented in scale, their bias and limitations limited their effectiveness. All of this has seriously hindered the economic recovery of the United States. Specifically:</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6f651ec27751bf737490082d7ad19609\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"220\"></p><p>(Credit card delinquency rates at small and medium-sized banks in the United States. Gray indicates the economic crisis. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database)</p><p><b>First, the U.S. economy was already quite fragile at the end of last year and is gradually heading towards the next cyclical economic crisis.</b>Although mainstream institutional economists in the United States were generally optimistic about US economic development at the beginning of the year, we disagreed. The root cause of the cyclical economic crisis lies in the restricted consumption of the people. With sluggish wage growth, people have to rely on borrowing to maintain consumption growth. However, borrowing money for consumption is unsustainable, resulting in people's limited purchasing power being insufficient to absorb the continuously expanding supply, resulting in relative overproduction. Product backlogs lead to a decline in corporate profit margins. When profit margins decline to a certain point, companies will begin to reduce investment, cut working hours, and even lay off employees. However, this will further reduce investment and consumer demand, and the oversupply will become more serious, leading to a further decline in corporate profits, thus plunging into an a vicious circle and ultimately triggering an economic crisis. As shown in the chart above, as of the fourth quarter of 2019, the credit card delinquency rate of small and medium-sized banks in the United States (which have more underlying customers and are more sensitive to the economy) has exceeded the pre-crisis levels of 2000 and 2008, indicating that consumption growth can no longer be supported by debt. The chart below shows that historically, a decline in corporate profit margins to a certain extent has often triggered an economic crisis, and last year it approached this level.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1a0da671f84ef56a0ded9d477c0d76c6\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"261\"></p><p><b>Other effective leading indicators, including working hours and discretionary consumption growth, also point to an economic crisis.</b>When corporate profits decline, whether it's shortening workers' working hours or laying off staff, the total number of hours worked will be reduced. When people's incomes decline due to unemployment and insufficient working hours, or when their debts become unaffordable, they will reduce consumption expansion, especially for non-essential goods. The following two charts show that the year-on-year growth rate of total working hours and non-essential goods would begin to decline continuously for several quarters before the onset of economic crises in the past, warning of a crisis. As of the fourth quarter of 2019, both indicators had shown a downward trend. These data, along with a range of other indicators we observed, suggest that the economic crisis was drawing ever closer at the end of 2019.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2d1dae247273fd00fc067598efab7b4f\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"262\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/89a1d2d569ad36ff2653fd34bbbcb9ec\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"268\"></p><p><b>Second, the passive fight against the epidemic, prioritizing profits, only exacerbated the situation if the epidemic got out of control.</b>Based on our understanding of the nature of the U.S. government serving capital, we anticipated from the outset of the pandemic that the U.S. government would prioritize capital profits over public health and lives, and might refuse to take necessary anti-pandemic measures that would harm profits. The passive response to the pandemic has led to the outbreak spiraling out of control. As of December 19, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States has exceeded 17.8 million, and the death toll has exceeded 310,000. As the U.S. government continues to relax its anti-epidemic measures, the epidemic has become increasingly severe, with the daily number of confirmed cases exceeding 250,000 (see chart below) and the daily death toll exceeding 3,000, which is worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2,606 deaths) every day. The out-of-control pandemic was not due to the incompetence of the US government, the global military hegemon, but rather to deliberate planning. After all, the vast majority of those infected and killed came from the lower classes, especially people of color, while the wealthy hid in luxury homes or even islands and enjoyed the best medical conditions in the world. If we consider only profits, even if one million people at the bottom of the population die (less than 0.3% of the total population), the loss would be less than shutting down the economy for two months. However, the greedy, short-sighted, and cruel policies of the American ruling class have led to repeated and intensified outbreaks of the pandemic, causing the US economic recovery to lag behind that of countries where the pandemic has been controlled.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/47ba07e5188dd7a48630121bb33ceda1\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"222\"></p><p>(Daily number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States and its 7-day average, data source: The New York Times)</p><p><b>Third, government bailouts are heavily biased towards capital, and although their scale is unprecedented, their effectiveness is limited.</b>Similarly, based on our understanding of the nature of the U.S. government's service to capital, we predict that U.S. government bailouts will be heavily biased towards big capital rather than ordinary people. This means that monetary policy, which prints money out of thin air to save capital, will be extremely loose, while fiscal policy, which requires capital to pay for it, may be sluggish and biased. As expected, the Federal Reserve quickly lowered interest rates to zero in early March, when the pandemic first appeared, and launched an unprecedented \"unlimited quantitative easing\" monetary policy, expanding its balance sheet by $3 trillion within three months to save the market (see chart below). At the end of March, the U.S. government launched its first round of $2 trillion fiscal stimulus package, the largest portion of which was used to bail out American businesses (44%), only 15% to subsidize American families, and 15% to increase unemployment benefits. Even the relief provided to the American people was designed to ensure that they could pay their mortgages and rent, so as not to harm the interests of American banks and homeowners. However, relief for the American people expired at the end of July, and the U.S. Congress has been wrangling for months to block the introduction of a new relief plan. Loose monetary policy can boost asset markets, but history has shown that its effect on the real economy is limited. Fiscal stimulus, which has a greater impact on the real economy and people's livelihoods, especially effective public investment in infrastructure, science and education, and welfare, is nowhere to be found. The U.S. government's policies will create debt and asset bubbles, exacerbate public suffering, and hinder the true recovery of the U.S. economy.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/632d4b87e4d45512790a4f708967523d\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"239\"></p><p>(Federal Reserve's net total assets. Gray indicates the economic crisis. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database FRED)</p><p><b>The actual data validated our predictions: the U.S. economy is in a severe downturn, and the recovery is stalling.</b></p><p><b>First, GDP has shrunk severely.</b>As shown in the chart below, US GDP plummeted by 9% year-on-year under the impact of the pandemic. Despite resuming work at the end of April, GDP still contracted by 2.9% year-on-year in the third quarter, and forward-looking private investment contracted by 3.8% year-on-year. Subsequent data showed that the improvement tended to stagnate.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bd4cc475fe14a0160091059bdf898b2d\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"222\"></p><p>(US GDP year-on-year growth rate, data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/be5b3bd52de2660ae58c5556db18cfc8\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"217\"></p><p>(Monthly year-on-year growth rate: Blue represents industrial production, red represents real private consumption. Data source: FRED)</p><p><b>Worse still, the recent recovery in both production and consumption has stalled.</b>The latest monthly data shows (above) that GDP contracted by 5.5% year-on-year in November, worse than in October; Real private consumption, which accounts for 70% of U.S. GDP, grew by -1.8% year-on-year in October (nearly 5 percentage points lower than the pre-pandemic growth rate). High-frequency data as of December 14 (see chart below) shows that credit card spending shrank by 4.7% compared to the same period last year, and the recovery that began in October has stalled.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/093623e7822b7c5a3ff823d9f402fdfe\" tg-width=\"405\" tg-height=\"264\"></p><p>(7-day year-over-year average of Chase Bank credit card spending, as of December 14. Data source: JPMorgan Chase)</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c775b545636006c32be575d3ed551881\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"239\"></p><p>(U.S. non-farm payrolls increased month-on-month; data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><b>Most seriously, the improvement in employment has reversed.</b>Employment is the pillar of consumption and the most important intrinsic driving force for economic recovery, and therefore a core indicator for measuring economic recovery. As shown in the chart above, as of early November, the month-on-month growth of U.S. non-farm payrolls has continued to slow since May. High-frequency data as of December 14 (see chart below) shows that the improvement in employment has begun to reverse in the past month, with total employment declining by more than 10 million compared to February. This does not include the underemployed due to the economic downturn.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/227c3e19fd3b768a13b57d197f62dcd4\" tg-width=\"433\" tg-height=\"262\"></p><p>(Total non-farm payrolls: official data (blue) and other data (yellow). Data source: JPMorgan Chase)</p><p><b>In addition, due to the bleak economic outlook, banks continued to tighten monetary policy despite ample liquidity.</b>According to bank survey data released by the Federal Reserve in November (see chart below), banks generally raised commercial lending standards for large and medium-sized enterprises in the second quarter (70 percentage points more banks raised standards than those that did not), and the vast majority of banks continued to raise lending standards in the third quarter (38 percentage points more banks raised standards than those that did not). Similarly, after banks generally raised their personal consumer credit standards in the second quarter, most banks continued to raise them in the third quarter. Banks' continuous raising of credit standards reflects their increasing pessimism about the economic outlook, which can also lead to credit crunch and affect corporate operations and consumption recovery.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e0e2a88c1f32b115bd13657865b2ee15\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"234\"></p><p>(Net proportion of banks raising credit standards: blue for commercial loans, red for personal consumer credit. Data source: FRED)</p><p><b>At the same time, the increasingly difficult lives of the lower classes in the United States are hindering economic recovery.</b>Severe unemployment, insufficient government aid, and a lack of access to loans have made it difficult for many American families to afford their most basic living needs. According to U.S. government data (see chart below), 12.7% of American households currently face food shortages, and 9.1% lack housing security. For the world’s most powerful country, this not only reflects extreme social injustice (the wealth of the richest classes in the United States reportedly increased significantly during the pandemic due to government bailouts), but also a sharp decline in the spending power of ordinary people, which will hinder economic recovery.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8aef3db6e58d10c666a84973ed058846\" tg-width=\"479\" tg-height=\"266\"></p><p>(Percentage of households in the United States facing food shortages and housing insecurity. Data source: U.S. Census Bureau)</p><p><b>(ii) On the other hand, the market frenzy was unexpected.</b></p><p><b>First, the stock market rebounded exceptionally quickly and repeatedly hit new highs.</b>The S&P 500 fell nearly 30% within a month of the first quarter, then rebounded quickly, recovering its losses within six months and hitting a new high, rising 15% this year as of December 18. The Nasdaq 100 index, which is mainly composed of large high-tech companies, rebounded even more sharply after falling nearly 30%, rising more than 45% this year as of December 18. In contrast, during the 2000 crisis, the S&P 500 fell by nearly 50% in two and a half years, while the Nasdaq fell by more than 75%. During the 2008 crisis, the S&P 500 fell 56% in a year and a half, while the Nasdaq fell 54%. In the 2008 crisis, the S&P 500 did not recover its lost ground until six years later, while in the 2000 crisis, the stock index did not truly recover until 13 years later.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8cf2e241a5358bbd56baf375d616e0af\" tg-width=\"531\" tg-height=\"282\"></p><p>(Trends in the US Standard 500 and Nasdaq stock indices. Data source: Yahoo Finance)</p><p><b>In addition, the P/E of the stock market has also risen to a historical high.</b>Nobel laureate economist Chairman Shiller advocated using the Shiller P/E (P/E), where the denominator uses the average of a company's long-term earnings (10-15 years) instead of the commonly used earnings of the past or next 12 months. This can cover the entire economic cycle and better reflect the reasonable valuation of the stock market. As shown in the chart below, at the beginning of this year, the Shiller P/E (15 years) had reached 35, significantly exceeding the level before the stock market crashes of 1929 (27) and 2008 (29), and only lower than the level during the dot-com bubble in 2000. High valuations do not necessarily mean a sharp drop in the stock market. For example, the current stock market valuation is equivalent to the level of 1998, when the stock market still rose for two years before finally collapsing. As can be seen from the chart below, stock market bubbles in history have often been burst by economic crises, and the higher the stock market valuation, the more severe the crisis, and the greater the decline. As of December 18, Shiller's P/E (15 years) had risen to 39. Investment experts often justify high valuations by citing low interest rates and a lack of alternative investment options, which we will discuss using historical data in the next section.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b7fd7fe83806353768a2e0d19ac8a536\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"246\"></p><p>(The 15-year Shiller PE ratio of the US S&P 500 indicates the economic crisis in gray. Data source: dqydj.com)</p><p>meanwhile<b>The IPO market is also in an unprecedentedly hot state, and it also ignores the company's fundamentals.</b>IPO financing in 2020 approached $150 billion, far exceeding the $100 billion level of the previous peaks in 1999 and 2000 (see chart below). At the same time, investors seem to disregard company performance, with more than 80% of IPO companies operating at a loss, a rate similar to that at the height of the internet in 2000. For example, the recent IPO of Airbnb, an internet travel rental company whose business was severely impacted by the pandemic, not only achieved a valuation of $100 billion in its IPO, but its stock price also doubled on the day of its listing. This inevitably brings to mind the frenzy of investing in internet companies in 2000.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b764c4abd0c78607d74993f9f6d1bab2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"216\"></p><p>(US IPO fundraising volume, in units of $1 billion. Light colors represent SPACs, dark colors represent other IPOs. Data source: Bloomberg)</p><p><b>The reasons behind the market frenzy are worth considering.</b>Before this economic crisis, stock market valuations were higher than before the 2008 crisis, and the degree of the crisis, whether measured by economic downturn or unemployment, was more severe than the crises of 2000 and 2008. However, the market's reaction was quite different, with a brief decline followed by a sharp rebound and continuous new highs. The stock market is severely disconnected from fundamentals, and we can see a series of special reasons behind this in the \"rearview mirror\".</p><p><b>First, the market does not believe this will be a lasting and deep crisis.</b>Cyclical economic crises, such as those of 2000 and 2008, are protracted, cause large numbers of companies to fail, and the recovery process is extremely slow. Although we realized before the US pandemic that the economy was on the verge of a cyclical crisis, markets and economists are often late to realizing cyclical economic crises. Therefore, they believe that this is only a temporary impact of the epidemic on the economy, and that things will return to normal after the epidemic. As the pandemic worsens, they are increasingly convinced that all bad news on fundamentals is a temporary impact of the pandemic, rather than a structural problem in the economy.</p><p><b>Second, the Federal Reserve's \"unlimited quantitative easing\" has fueled the situation.</b>During the stock market crash, the Federal Reserve not only cut interest rates to zero but also announced \"unlimited\" quantitative easing, injecting massive amounts of liquidity into the market by expanding its balance sheet by more than $3 trillion. Even the $1,200 given to each person by the U.S. government has become a bargaining chip for many retail investors in their gamble in the stock market. As shown in the chart below, the total money supply of M2 in the United States increased by as much as 25% year-on-year, far exceeding the 11% at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. This surge in liquidity has played a significant role in promoting the capital market. A popular saying on Wall Street is: \"Never go against the Federal Reserve.\"</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/82ee63596ffb216d1d2234190a093fd2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"229\"></p><p>(Year-on-year growth rate of US M2 money supply. Gray indicates the economic recession phase. Data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><b>Third, investors are subjectively looking for every reason to support the stock market's rise.</b>Investors who were completely unaware of the economic crisis, encouraged by ample liquidity, are willing to find any reason to justify the rise in stocks. This phenomenon of subjective self-rationalization can be seen in the impact of the general election on the stock market. The Democratic Party is expected to win both the presidency and the Senate before the election, which is explained by the Democratic government's strong stimulus package, which is conducive to economic recovery, leading to a surge in the stock market. Trump later led in the polls, explaining that Trump's policies were more favorable to investors, which led to a surge in the stock market. Finally, the Democrats became president, and the Republicans were likely to take control of the Senate. This was explained by the fact that dividing the government and checking and balancing each other was beneficial to policy stability, and the stock market still surged. It is evident that even contradictory news does not prevent investors from finding reasons to drive the stock market up.</p><p><b>Fourth, the story of the high-tech new economic model brought about by the pandemic is moving.</b>In the S&P 500 industry index, the technology, consumer discretionaries, and communications services sectors, which include U.S. tech giants, have surged by 40%, 28%, and 25% respectively this year, while the energy sector, which is directly related to the real economy, has plummeted by 33% (see chart below). To create a stock market surge, there must be a compelling story that everyone can understand. The 1990s saw the internet change the economic model, and the stock market continued to rise. The 2000s saw financial innovation reduce market risks, and the stock market continued to rise. The 2010s saw long-term low interest rates reduce return requirements, and the stock market will continue to rise. The story of the pandemic changing human life and ushering in a high-tech future is simple, easy to understand, and full of allure. Of course, many touching stories have ended with stock market crashes in the past. \"This time is different\"—which is hailed as the four most expensive words in financial history—will it really come true this time?</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ffc959c59156fb3c546594aee45347e2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"241\"></p><p>(This year's performance of the US S&P 500 industry index, data source: Yahoo Finance)</p><p><b>Fifth, retail investors flocked to the market to stimulate the market.</b>This story is so simple that all small investors can understand and agree with it. According to reports, in the United States, which has traditionally been dominated by institutional investors, individual trading accounts and trading activity have surged since the outbreak of the pandemic. Although retail investors do not have large amounts of capital, they often use derivatives as leverage, which can leverage large amounts of capital and have an excessive impact on the market.</p><p><b>Sixth, digitalization and passive trading have also exacerbated the market's trend of following trends.</b>Digital trading and passive investing have grown rapidly in the United States over the past 20 years and have become mainstream in recent years. Passive investing does not analyze fundamentals; it instead buys and sells according to market directions. Quantitative strategies, on the other hand, often focus on short-term trends and rarely make correct judgments about long-term macroeconomic trends. Moreover, their trading logic is mostly similar, leading to convergence in trading directions. The development of these trading strategies has exacerbated the disconnect between the market and fundamentals.</p><p><b>All of the above phenomena are classic characteristics of market bubbles.</b>Investors unaware of the risks of the crisis, driven by the Federal Reserve's massive liquidity, sought every reason to support the stock market's rise. They were captivated by a moving story, which drew countless retail investors to rush in. Coupled with digitalization and passive trading, this encouraged follow-the-trend investment. All of this inevitably leads to the formation of a bubble, and the stock market will deviate further and further from its fundamentals. However, history has proven that harsh realities will eventually pull the stock market back to ground level.</p><p><b>The biggest lesson we learned in 2020 was that we once again learned the old Wall Street saying: \"The market can remain irrational for longer than you can sustain it.\"</b>(The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent). Shorting the market against the tide during a severe market bubble may ultimately lead to success, but it may result in significant losses over a considerable period of time.</p><p><b>II. Looking Ahead to 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Risks</b></p><p><b>Looking ahead to 2021, the series of optimistic assumptions supporting the stock market are not guaranteed to be fully realized, and the risk of the bubble bursting cannot be ignored.</b>If the following situations occur, the market will make corresponding adjustments, and in severe cases, it may even cause a sharp decline in the stock market.</p><p><b>First, the economic crisis</b>Even if the pandemic is under control, the crisis may not yet be over, making it difficult for profits to grow rapidly. Demand in the United States was weak even before the pandemic, and it was on the verge of a cyclical economic crisis with relative overproduction, which further weakened demand. Even if the pandemic is under control, with a large number of workers losing their jobs and corporate finances weakening, consumer and investment demand will struggle to recover quickly, making it difficult for company profits to grow rapidly. More seriously, this extreme imbalance between supply and demand usually requires large-scale destruction of capital and production capacity in the form of a crisis to reduce supply in order to clear it out, allowing the remaining strong companies to resume profit growth and start a new economic cycle. According to Bloomberg data, during the economic crisis from January 2008 to June 2009, a total of 370 companies in the United States with debts exceeding $50 million went bankrupt. Given that the total liabilities of non-financial corporations in the United States ($31.2 trillion) have now doubled compared to 2008 ($15.4 trillion), the number of companies with liabilities exceeding $50 million should increase significantly compared to 2008. Therefore, to destroy the same proportion of capital and production capacity, the number of bankrupt companies would need to significantly exceed the 370 of the 2008 crisis. In contrast, as of December 12, only 236 companies with debts exceeding $50 million had gone bankrupt this year, thanks to an unprecedentedly large bailout from the U.S. government. This means that a large number of business failures may still be needed for the economy to truly clear out. Therefore, the economic crisis may not be truly over.</p><p><b>Second, the development of the epidemic</b>The government's passivity has led to the epidemic spiraling out of control, and the prospects after the vaccine is released are not yet fully clear. Investors expect that once a vaccine is released, the US pandemic will be brought under control relatively quickly, normal life will basically resume, and consumer demand will be released. However, the epidemic in the United States is exceptionally severe, with the confirmation rate per capita far exceeding that of other Western countries (see the chart below). Furthermore, due to misleading propaganda from right-wing politicians such as Trump, many people do not believe in the dangers of the novel coronavirus. Many people who believe in the dangers have doubts about the safety of the vaccines hastily launched by the government and pharmaceutical companies, so most Americans are unwilling to accept vaccines. At the same time, because US vaccines require ultra-low temperature storage, there are great difficulties in transportation and distribution. From this perspective, it remains uncertain when the epidemic will be brought under control. The longer this drags on, the more companies go bankrupt, the worse the financial situation of businesses and individuals deteriorates, and the more difficult it is for workers to find new jobs, the deeper the long-term impact of the pandemic on economic vitality may be, and the more difficult it will be to recover.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/22992bcf89dd59641632c49c9e0e6a2d\" tg-width=\"510\" tg-height=\"322\"></p><p>(Number of confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people: dark red in the United States, dark green in the European Union, red in Canada, green in Japan, pink in South Korea)</p><p><b>Third, government policies are unable to play a sufficient role in truly reversing the economic downturn.</b>On the one hand, while fiscal policy can effectively alleviate the problem of insufficient demand and promote economic recovery, American capital is unwilling to pay for public investment and social welfare, and its implementation faces numerous political obstacles. For example, although the scale of the new round of fiscal rescue packages has been reduced from the expected $1.5 trillion to $900 billion, it has still not been passed by Congress, and infrastructure plans that have been effective in boosting the economy are nowhere to be found. On the other hand, while ultra-loose monetary policy can support the growth of asset bubbles, the long-term practices of the US, Japan, and the EU have proven that it has a limited effect on the real economy and will exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor, worsen the imbalance between investment and demand, exacerbate the economic crisis, and trigger the bubble to burst.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/555a11dee2888ad473cb3cfc2b6fa7ba\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"240\"></p><p>(Red represents the Dow Jones Industrial Average, blue represents the 3-month Treasury Bond yield, red represents AAA corporate bond yields, and gray represents the economic crisis.)</p><p>Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently stated that interest rates will remain low for an extended period, while agreeing with the mainstream market view that high stock market valuations are reasonable in a prolonged low-interest-rate environment. However, historical data is not so optimistic: as shown in the chart above, after the Great Depression of 1929, from 1934 to 1945, US interest rates remained low for a long time, the three-month Treasury Bond remained below 0.5%, and corporate bond yields also fell to around 3% in 1937. The Dow Jones stock index nearly doubled between 1934 and 1937, but it didn't last long. In 1937, the cyclical economic crisis broke out again, and the stock market plummeted by nearly 40% within a year, before fluctuating downwards by 15% over the next four years. It seems that a low-interest-rate environment cannot guarantee the stock market's long-term prosperity; how long it will rise depends on whether the economy will fall into a deep crisis.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/16bb84f7a4f42a58dcb8db7f9a133078\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"231\"></p><p>(Total U.S. consumer credit. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED))</p><p><b>Fourth, debt risk: Corporate and personal debts are high, and the risk of debt crisis accumulates rapidly.</b>First, the current levels of corporate borrowing and personal consumption debt have far exceeded those levels before the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. As shown in the chart above, total consumer credit in the United States has been growing steadily in recent years, increasing by 62% compared to before the 2008 crisis. The chart below shows that the leverage ratio of non-financial companies in the United States has now risen to twice what it was before the 2008 crisis. More seriously, data shows that the current scale of subprime mortgages is higher than before the subprime mortgage crisis. The issuance of BBB-rated bonds, the lowest tier of investment-grade corporate bonds, has soared over the past 10 years, and by 2019 it was three times that of the lead-up to the subprime mortgage crisis. Meanwhile, the proportion of low-rated corporate bonds has doubled from less than 20% in 2008 to nearly 40%. Bloomberg reports that in 2020, driven by the impact of the pandemic and the Federal Reserve's monetary easing, the issuance of junk bonds in the United States reached an all-time high. Given the current severe economic situation, the risk of a debt crisis cannot be ignored. If the debt crisis spreads to the financial system and triggers a financial crisis, the consequences will be even more unimaginable.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a4ab5853e27eeca6d818bd4841f82cf\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"234\"></p><p>(Leverage ratio of U.S. non-financial corporations. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database)</p><p><b>In conclusion, the US stock market surged in 2020 against a bleak economic backdrop due to the aforementioned reasons, but the outlook for 2021 is not so optimistic. It is difficult to guarantee that all the assumptions supporting the stock market will be realized, and the numerous risks that may trigger a bubble burst cannot be ignored.</b></p>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n<p> source：<a href=\"http://finance.sina.com.cn/zl/authority/2020-12-30/zl-iiznezxs9753548.shtml\">新浪财经</a></p>\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/41f81b99b97a59da55dd70fd1af475cb","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯",".SPX":"S&P 500 Index","SPY":"标普500ETF",".IXIC":"NASDAQ Composite"},"source_url":"http://finance.sina.com.cn/zl/authority/2020-12-30/zl-iiznezxs9753548.shtml","is_english":false,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1154691529","content_text":"一、回顾2020，经济惨淡市场疯狂\n回顾2020，我们正确预测了美国经济颓废走势，然而市场的疯狂却出乎意料。\n（一）一方面，我们的分析正确预测了经济的颓废走势。\n我们分析的主要依据，首先是美国经济原本就处于周期性经济危机边缘，其次美国政府消极抗疫导致疫情失控对经济更是雪上加霜，最后国家救助措施虽然规模空前，但其偏向性和局限性限制了有效程度。这都严重阻碍了美国的经济复苏。具体来讲：\n\n（美国中小银行信用卡拖欠率。灰色为经济危机。数据来源：美联储经济数据库）\n首先，美国经济体在去年底已经相当脆弱，正在逐步走向下一次周期性经济危机。尽管年初美国主流机构经济学家普遍看好美国经济发展，我们却不以为然。周期性经济危机爆发的根源在于民众受限制的消费。民众工资增长低迷，不得不依靠借债去维持消费增长。但借钱消费不可持续，导致民众有限的购买力不足以吸收持续扩张的供给，形成生产的相对过剩。产品积压导致企业利润率下降，而当利润率下滑到一定地步，企业便会开始降低投资、削减工时，甚至开始裁员。但这会进一步降低投资和消费需求，供过于求会变得更加严重，导致企业利润进一步下滑，因而陷入恶性循环，最终引发经济危机。从上图可见，截至2019年第四季度，美国中小银行（其底层客户较多，对经济更加敏感）信用卡拖欠率已经超过2000和2008年危机前水平，显示消费增长已难以再靠借债支撑。下图显示，历史上企业利润率下滑到一定地步往往便会引发经济危机，而去年已经接近这一水平。\n\n其他有效领先指标，包括工作时间和非必需消费增长，同样指向经济危机。当企业利润下降时，无论是缩短工人工作时间，还是裁减人员，都会压缩工作总小时数。而民众因失业和工时不足而收入下降，或者债务难以负担之时，便会减少消费扩张，尤其是非必需品。以下两张图表可见，工作总小时数和非必需品的同比增长率，在过去经济危机到来前若干个季度都会开始持续下降，预警危机到来。截至2019年第四季度，这两个指标均已显示出下滑趋势。这些数据和我们观察的其他一系列指标显示，经济危机在2019年底已经在步步逼近。\n\n第二，利润当先消极抗疫，疫情失控雪上加霜。出于对美国政府服务资本这一本质的理解，我们在疫情爆发之初便预计美国政府将把资本利润置于民众健康和生命之上，可能会拒不采取有损利润的必要抗疫措施。消极抗疫导致疫情失控，截至12月19日美国新冠确诊人数超过1780万，死亡人数超过31万。随着美国政府抗疫措施不断松懈，疫情一波比一波严重，目前每日确诊人数已经超过25万（下图），每日死亡人数超过3000人，比每天一次911恐怖袭击事件（死亡2606人）还要糟糕。疫情失控并非是作为全球军事霸主的美国政府无能所致，而更像是蓄意的谋划。毕竟被感染和死亡的绝大部分来自底层民众，特别是有色人种，富人则躲在豪宅甚至小岛之上，并且拥有世界最佳的医疗条件。如果仅从利润考虑，即使死掉100万人底层民众（不到总人口的0.3%），也比把经济关闭2个月损失要小。但美国统治阶级这一贪婪、短视和残酷的政策，却使疫情反复爆发且愈演愈烈，使得美国经济复苏滞后于疫情被控的国家。\n\n（美国新冠患者每日新确诊人数及其7日平均，数据来源《纽约时报》）\n第三，政府救助措施严重偏向资本，虽然规模空前但效果受限。同样是出于对美国政府服务资本这一本质的认识，我们预测了美国政府的救助措施将极大偏向大资本，而非普通民众。这意味着凭空印钱去拯救资本的货币政策将会极为宽松，而需要资本买单的财政政策则可能拖泥带水，而且偏向性明显。果不其然，美联储在疫情初显的3月初便首先迅速将利率迅速降低至零点，并且推出了空前的“无限量化宽松”货币政策，并在3个月内扩表3万亿美元拯救市场（下图）。3月末，美国政府推出2万亿首轮财政刺激计划，而其中最大部分用于救助美国企业（44%），仅15%补贴美国家庭，15%加大失业救济。即使对美国民众的救济，也是考虑到要保障百姓能够支付房贷和房租，以免损害美国银行和房主利益。然而，对美国民众的救济在7月底已经过期，美国国会已经扯皮数月，阻挠新一轮救济计划出台。宽松的货币政策可以推动资产市场，但历史证明对实体经济却效果有限。而对实体经济和民生作用更大的财政刺激，特别是行之有效的基建、科教和福利等的公共投资，更是渺无踪影。美国政府的政策，将在制造债务和资产泡沫的同时，加剧民众苦难，阻碍美国经济的真正复苏。\n\n（美联储净总资产。灰色为经济危机。数据来源：美联储经济数据库FRED）\n实际数据验证了我们的预测，美国经济严重下滑，并且复苏趋于停滞。\n首先，GDP严重萎缩。由下图可见，在疫情打击下美国GDP同比暴跌9%。尽管4月底已经开始复工，到第三季度GDP依然同比萎缩2.9%，具有前瞻性的私人投资同比萎缩3.8%，而之后的数据显示改善趋于停滞。\n\n（美国GDP同比增长率，数据来源：美联储经济数据库FRED）\n\n（月度同比增长率：蓝色为工业生产，红色为实际私人消费。数据来源：FRED）\n更糟糕的是，近期生产和消费复苏均趋于停滞状态。最新月度数据显示（上图），工业生产总值在11月份同比萎缩5.5%，比10月份还糟；而占美国GDP 70%的实际私人消费10月份同比增长率为-1.8%（比疫情前增长速度低5近个百分点）。截至12月14日的高频数据显示（下图），信用卡消费与去年同期相比萎缩4.7%，并且从10月份开始复苏出现停滞。\n\n（美国大通银行信用卡消费同比7天平均值，截至12月14日。数据来源：摩根大通银行）\n\n（美国非农就业人数环比增长，数据来源：美联储经济数据库FRED）\n最为严重的是，就业改善出现逆转。就业是消费的支柱，是经济复苏最主要内在动力，因此是衡量经济复苏的核心指标。由上图可见，截至11月上旬，美国非农就业环比增长自5月份以来持续放缓。而截至12月14日的高频数据显示（下图），最近一个月就业改善开始逆转，总就业人数开始下滑，比2月份降低超过1000万人，这还不包括因经济不景气而造成的半失业人口。\n\n（非农就业总人数：官方数据（蓝）与其他数据（黄）。数据来源：摩根大通银行）\n此外，由于经济前景黯淡，银行在充沛的流动性下，却继续收紧银根。美联储11月份发布的银行调研数据显示（下图），第二季度银行普遍对大中型企业提高商业贷款标准（提高标准的银行数量比未提高的要多出70个百分点），第三季度绝大部分银行在继续提高贷款标准（提高标准的比未提高的多38个百分点）。与此类似，银行在第二季度普遍提高个人消费信贷标准之后，大部分银行在第三季度继续提高标准。银行不断提高信贷标准，反映了银行对经济前景越来越悲观，也会导致信用紧张，影响公司运作和消费复苏。\n\n（提高信用标准的银行净比例：蓝色为商业贷款，红色为个人消费信贷。数据来源：FRED）\n同时，美国底层民众生活日益困难，阻碍经济复苏。严重失业、政府救助不足，再加上借贷无门，导致美国众多家庭难以负担最基本的生活需要。美国政府数据显示（下图），目前有12.7%的美国家庭面临食物短缺，9.1%的家庭缺乏住房保障。对于全球最强大的国家来说，这不仅反映了社会的极度不公（据报道美国最富有阶层在疫情期间由于政府救助而财富大增），而且体现了普通民众消费能力的大幅下降，这将会阻碍经济复苏。\n\n（美国面临食物短缺和缺乏住房保障的家庭比例。数据来源：美国人口普查局）\n（二）另一方面，市场的疯狂出乎意料。\n首先，股市反弹异常迅速，并且连创新高。标普500指数在第一季度一个月之内下跌近30%，然后迅速反弹，6个月内便收复失地且再创新高，截至12月18日今年上涨15%。主要由高科技大公司组成的纳斯达克100股指，在下跌近30%后，反弹更加猛烈，截至12月18日今年上涨超过45%。相比之下，2000年危机，标普500在两年半期间下跌近50%，纳斯达克下跌则超过75%；2008危机，标普500在一年半期间下跌56%，纳斯达克则下跌54%。2008年危机，标普500在6年之后才收复失地，而2000年危机，股指则在13年后才真正恢复。\n\n（美国标500和纳斯达克股指走势。数据来源：雅虎金融）\n此外，股市的市盈率也上升到历史高位。诺贝尔经济学奖得主席勒（Shiller）倡导使用席勒市盈率（P/E），其中分母使用公司长期盈利的平均值（10-15年），取代常用的过去或者未来12个月的盈利。这样可以覆盖整个经济周期，更好反映股市的合理估值。由下图可见，在今年年初席勒P/E（15年）已经高达35，显著超过1929年（27）和2008年（29）大股灾前的水平，仅低于2000年互联网泡沫时的水平。高估值并不意味着股市一定要大跌，例如目前股市估值相当于1998年水平，那时股市依然大涨了两年才最终崩溃。从下图也可以看出，史上历次股市泡沫往往是被经济危机刺破，而且股市估值越高，危机程度越重，下跌幅度就越大。截至12月18日，席勒P/E（15年）已经上升到39。投资专家往往用利率低迷缺乏其他投资选择来为高估值辩护，我们在下节会通过历史数据进行商榷。\n\n（美国标普500的15年席勒PE，灰色部分为经济危机。数据来源dqydj.com）\n同时，IPO市场也处于空前火热状态，而且同样无视公司基本面。2020年IPO融资量接近1500亿美元，远远超过上次高峰1999和2000年的1000亿美元水平（下图）。与此同时，投资人似乎不计公司业绩，有超过80%的IPO公司处于亏损状态，这一比率也与2000年互联网巅峰时相近。例如近日Airbnb的上市，这一在疫情冲击下业务受到沉重打击的互联网旅游租房公司，不仅在IPO中获得1000亿美元估值，而且上市当天股价翻倍。这让人不禁想起2000年投资互联网公司的疯狂。\n\n（美国IPO融资量，单位10亿美元。浅色为SPAC，深色为其他IPO。数据来源：彭博）\n市场疯狂背后的原因值得思考。本轮经济危机之前，股市估值比2008年危机前还高，而且危机程度不论是以经济下滑还是人员失业来衡量，都比2000年和2008年危机更为严重。然而，市场的反应却大相径庭，短暂下滑之后便剧烈反弹并不断创立新高。股市与基本面严重脱离，从“后视镜”中我们可以看到背后有一系列特别原因。\n首先，市场并不认为这将是一场持久、深度的危机。2000和2008年那样的周期性经济危机，旷日持久，会导致大批公司倒闭，而且复苏过程极为缓慢。虽然我们在美国疫情之前就意识到经济已经处于周期性危机的边缘，但市场和经济学家往往对周期性经济危机后知后觉。因此，他们认为这仅是一场疫情对经济的暂时冲击，疫情过后便会恢复常态。随着疫情愈发加重，他们越来越相信一切基本面的坏消息都是疫情的暂时冲击，而非经济出现结构性问题。\n第二，美联储“无限量化”推波助澜。美联储在股市大跌之时不仅降息至零点，而且宣布“无限量”量化宽松，通过扩表超过3万亿美元，为市场注入海量流动性。连美国政府给每人发放的1200美元也成为许多散户在股市上一搏的筹码。由下图可见，美国M2货币总量同比增长高达25%，远超过2008年金融危机高峰的11%。这样汹涌的流动性，对资本市场起到了巨大的推动作用。华尔街流行的一句话是：“永远不要和美联储作对”。\n\n（美国M2货币同比增长率。灰色为经济衰退阶段。数据来源：美联储经济数据库FRED）\n第三，投资人主观寻找一切理由支持股市上涨。本来就对经济危机毫无察觉的投资人，在充沛流动性的怂恿下，愿意寻找一切理由来解释股票上涨的合理性。从大选对股市的影响中就可以看出这种主观自我合理化的现象。民主党在大选前有望通吃总统和参院宝座，解释为民主党政府刺激幅度大、有利经济复苏，于是股市大涨。特朗普后来选票领先，解释为特朗普政策更有利于投资人，于是股市大涨；最后是民主党当总统，共和党大概率占参院，解释为分裂政府互相制约利于政策稳定，股市依然大涨。可见即使是互相矛盾的消息，也不影响投资人找到理由推动股市上涨。\n第四，疫情带来高科技新经济模式故事动人。标普500行业指数中，美国科技巨头所在的科技、非必需消费和通讯服务行业，今年分别暴涨40%、28%和25%，而与实体经济直接相关的能源行业则暴跌33%（下图）。要想形成股市狂涨大潮，一定要有所有人都听得懂的动人故事。1990年代是互联网改变经济模式，股市将持续上涨；2000年代是金融创新降低市场风险，股市将持续上涨；2010年代是长期低息降低回报要求，股市将持续上涨。疫情改变人类生活，迎来高科技未来的故事，简单易懂，充满诱惑。当然，从前多少动人故事都以股灾结束，“这次不同”--这被誉为金融史上最昂贵的四个字--这次真会实现吗？\n\n（美国标普500行业股指今年走势，数据来源：雅虎金融）\n第五，散户蜂拥而上撬动市场。这个故事简单到所有小股民都能理解和认同。据报道，一贯以机构投资者占统治地位的美国，个人交易账户和交易活动在疫情爆发之后剧增。散户投资者虽然资金量不大，但往往使用衍生品做杠杆，因此可以撬动较大资金，对市场造成超出比例的影响。\n第六，数字化和被动交易，也加剧了市场的跟风趋势。数字化交易和被动投资在过去20年在美国发展迅速，在近年已经成长为主流。被动投资对基本面不做分析，跟随市场方向买卖。而量化策略则往往注重短期趋势，鲜能对长期宏观走势做出正确判断，而且交易逻辑大多相近，导致交易方向趋同。这些交易策略的发展，加剧了市场与基本面的脱离。\n以上的一系列现象，其实都是市场泡沫的经典特征。对危机风险毫无察觉的投资人，在联储巨大流动性推动下，寻找一切支持股市上涨的理由，被一个动人的故事所折服，带动无数散户蜂拥而上，再加上数字化和被动交易助长跟风投资。这一切都导致泡沫的滋生在所难免，股市会背离基本面越来越远。然而历史证明，凝重的现实终究会将股市拉回地面。\n2020年给我们最大的教训，是再次学习了华尔街的那句老话：“市场保持非理性的时间能比你可以支撑的时间更长”（The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent）。在市场泡沫严重的情况下逆流做空市场，虽然最终或将获胜，但在相当长的时期内可能会损失惨重。\n二、展望2021：前景不定风险四伏\n展望2021，支撑股市的一系列乐观假设难保完全实现，泡沫破碎的风险不可忽视。如果以下情况发生，市场便会做出相应调整，情况严重的话甚至会造成股市大幅下行。\n第一，经济危机：即使疫情被控，危机可能尚未出清，利润难以高速增长。美国在疫情之前便需求疲软，处于生产相对过剩的周期性经济危机边缘，而疫情进一步减弱了需求。即使疫情被控，在工人大批失业、企业财政削弱的情况下，消费和投资需求也难以迅速恢复，公司利润便难以高速增长。更为严重的是，这种供需极端不平衡，通常需要以危机形式大规模摧毁资本和产能以降低供给才能出清，使得剩下的强壮公司能够重新开始盈利增长，开始新一轮经济周期。根据彭博数据，2008年1月至2009年6月经济危机期间，美国总共有370家债务规模在5000万美元以上的企业倒闭。由于目前美国非金融公司负债总量（31.2万亿美元）已经增长到2008年（15.4万亿美元）的两倍，负债在5000万美元以上的公司数量比2008年应会显著增加。因此，要摧毁同样比例的资本和产能，破产公司的数目需要显著超过2008年危机的370家。相比之下，截至12月12日，在美国政府的空前巨款救助下，债务规模在5000万美元以上的公司今年只有236家倒闭。这意味着可能依然需要大批企业倒闭才能使经济真正出清。因此，经济危机可能并未真正结束。\n第二，疫情发展：政府消极导致疫情失控，疫苗出笼之后的前景尚未完全明朗。投资预期疫苗出笼后美国疫情可以较快得以控制，正常生活可以基本恢复，消费需求得以释放。然而，美国疫情异常严重，单位人口确诊率远超过其他西方国家（见下图）。此外，由于特朗普等右翼政客的误导宣传，许多民众不相信新冠病毒的危害性。而那些相信危害性的民众，又有不少对政府和药商仓促推出的疫苗的安全性存在质疑，因此有大部分美国人表示不愿接受疫苗。同时，由于美国疫苗需要超低温存储，运输和分配都存在较大困难。这样看来，疫情何时能够被控还不确定。时间拖得越长，公司倒闭越多，企业和个人财政状况越恶化，工人重新就业越困难，疫情对经济活力的长期影响就可能越深，复苏就越困难。\n\n（每10万人口新冠确诊数目：美国深红，欧盟深绿，加拿大红色，日本绿色，韩国粉色）\n第三，政府政策：难以起到足够作用真正扭转经济颓势。一方面，财政政策虽然可以较好缓解需求不足问题推动经济复苏，但美国资本不愿为公共投资和社会福利买单，实施面临重重政治阻力。例如新一轮的财政救助计划，虽然规模由预期的1.5万亿美元降低到9000亿美元，但依然在国会扯皮尚未通过，而对经济提振行之有效的基建计划更是渺无踪影。另一方面，超宽松货币政策虽然可以支撑资产泡沫滋生，但美日欧盟的长期实践结果证明对实体经济作用有限，而且会加剧贫富分化，恶化投资和需求的不平衡，加剧经济危机而引发泡沫破裂。\n\n（红色为道琼斯股指，蓝色为3月期国债利率，红色为AAA级企债收益率，灰色为经济危机）\n美联储主席鲍威尔近期表示将长期保持利率低迷，同时他赞同市场主流观点，表示长期低利率环境下股市高估值合理。但历史数据却没有这么乐观：由上图可见，在1929年大萧条后，从1934年到1945年间，美国利率长期低迷，3月期国债一直在0.5%以下，而企债收益率也在1937年降到了3%左右。道琼斯股指在1934至1937年间大涨近一倍，但好景不长。1937年周期性经济危机再度爆发，股市在一年内暴跌近40%，后来4年震荡下行15%。看来低息环境并不能保障股市长盛不衰，涨到何时要看经济是否会深陷危机。\n\n（美国消费信贷总量。数据来源：美联储经济数据库FRED）\n第四，债务风险：企业个人债台高筑，债务危机风险急剧累积。首先，目前企业借贷和个人消费负债程度已经远超过2008次贷危机前夕水平。由上图可见，美国消费信贷总量近年不断增长，比2008年危机前增加了62%。而下图显示，美国非金融公司的杠杆率目前已经上升到2008年危机前的2倍。更为严重的是，数据显示目前次贷规模比次贷危机前还要高。投资级企债最低档的BBB级债券的发行量过去10年不断飙升，到2019年已经是次贷危机前夕3倍，而低评级公司债的占比由2008年的不到20%上升到近40%，翻了一番。彭博报道显示，2020年在疫情冲击和美联储放水作用下，美国垃圾债发行量创历时记录。在目前经济形势严峻的情况下，债务危机风险不可忽视。如果债务危机传导到金融系统引发金融危机，那后果将更加不堪设想。\n\n（美国非金融公司杠杆率。数据来源：美联储经济数据库）\n总而言之，2020年美国股市在惨淡经济背景下由于前述原因疯狂暴涨，但2021年前景并不那么乐观，支撑股市的一系列前提假设难保全部实现，可能引发泡沫破裂的重重风险不可忽视。","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{".IXIC":0.9,".DJI":0.9,"SPY":0.9,".SPX":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":4621,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"hots":[{"id":333792780,"gmtCreate":1609348981740,"gmtModify":1704978608848,"author":{"id":"3472640255046348","authorId":"3472640255046348","name":"回心转意","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/53f698175ab5e3e0270c3904f255ce30","crmLevel":6,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"3472640255046348","authorIdStr":"3472640255046348"},"themes":[],"title":"","htmlText":"PC","listText":"PC","text":"PC","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/333792780","repostId":"1154691529","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1154691529","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1609327661,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/1154691529?lang=en_US&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2020-12-30 19:27","market":"us","language":"zh","title":"U.S. Macroeconomic Outlook 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Crises","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1154691529","media":"新浪财经","summary":"一、回顾2020，经济惨淡市场疯狂\n回顾2020，我们正确预测了美国经济颓废走势，然而市场的疯狂却出乎意料。\n（一）一方面，我们的分析正确预测了经济的颓废走势。\n我们分析的主要依据，首先是美国经济原本","content":"<p><b>I. Looking Back at 2020: A Dismal Economy and a Crazy Market</b></p><p>Looking back at 2020, we correctly predicted the declining trend of the US economy, but the market frenzy was unexpected.</p><p>(a) On the one hand, our analysis correctly predicted the declining trend of the economy.</p><p>Our main basis for analysis is that, firstly, the US economy was already on the verge of a cyclical economic crisis; secondly, the US government's passive response to the pandemic, which led to the pandemic spiraling out of control, further exacerbated the economic woes; and finally, although the national bailout measures were unprecedented in scale, their bias and limitations limited their effectiveness. All of this has seriously hindered the economic recovery of the United States. Specifically:</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6f651ec27751bf737490082d7ad19609\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"220\"></p><p>(Credit card delinquency rates at small and medium-sized banks in the United States. Gray indicates the economic crisis. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database)</p><p><b>First, the U.S. economy was already quite fragile at the end of last year and is gradually heading towards the next cyclical economic crisis.</b>Although mainstream institutional economists in the United States were generally optimistic about US economic development at the beginning of the year, we disagreed. The root cause of the cyclical economic crisis lies in the restricted consumption of the people. With sluggish wage growth, people have to rely on borrowing to maintain consumption growth. However, borrowing money for consumption is unsustainable, resulting in people's limited purchasing power being insufficient to absorb the continuously expanding supply, resulting in relative overproduction. Product backlogs lead to a decline in corporate profit margins. When profit margins decline to a certain point, companies will begin to reduce investment, cut working hours, and even lay off employees. However, this will further reduce investment and consumer demand, and the oversupply will become more serious, leading to a further decline in corporate profits, thus plunging into an a vicious circle and ultimately triggering an economic crisis. As shown in the chart above, as of the fourth quarter of 2019, the credit card delinquency rate of small and medium-sized banks in the United States (which have more underlying customers and are more sensitive to the economy) has exceeded the pre-crisis levels of 2000 and 2008, indicating that consumption growth can no longer be supported by debt. The chart below shows that historically, a decline in corporate profit margins to a certain extent has often triggered an economic crisis, and last year it approached this level.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1a0da671f84ef56a0ded9d477c0d76c6\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"261\"></p><p><b>Other effective leading indicators, including working hours and discretionary consumption growth, also point to an economic crisis.</b>When corporate profits decline, whether it's shortening workers' working hours or laying off staff, the total number of hours worked will be reduced. When people's incomes decline due to unemployment and insufficient working hours, or when their debts become unaffordable, they will reduce consumption expansion, especially for non-essential goods. The following two charts show that the year-on-year growth rate of total working hours and non-essential goods would begin to decline continuously for several quarters before the onset of economic crises in the past, warning of a crisis. As of the fourth quarter of 2019, both indicators had shown a downward trend. These data, along with a range of other indicators we observed, suggest that the economic crisis was drawing ever closer at the end of 2019.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2d1dae247273fd00fc067598efab7b4f\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"262\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/89a1d2d569ad36ff2653fd34bbbcb9ec\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"268\"></p><p><b>Second, the passive fight against the epidemic, prioritizing profits, only exacerbated the situation if the epidemic got out of control.</b>Based on our understanding of the nature of the U.S. government serving capital, we anticipated from the outset of the pandemic that the U.S. government would prioritize capital profits over public health and lives, and might refuse to take necessary anti-pandemic measures that would harm profits. The passive response to the pandemic has led to the outbreak spiraling out of control. As of December 19, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States has exceeded 17.8 million, and the death toll has exceeded 310,000. As the U.S. government continues to relax its anti-epidemic measures, the epidemic has become increasingly severe, with the daily number of confirmed cases exceeding 250,000 (see chart below) and the daily death toll exceeding 3,000, which is worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2,606 deaths) every day. The out-of-control pandemic was not due to the incompetence of the US government, the global military hegemon, but rather to deliberate planning. After all, the vast majority of those infected and killed came from the lower classes, especially people of color, while the wealthy hid in luxury homes or even islands and enjoyed the best medical conditions in the world. If we consider only profits, even if one million people at the bottom of the population die (less than 0.3% of the total population), the loss would be less than shutting down the economy for two months. However, the greedy, short-sighted, and cruel policies of the American ruling class have led to repeated and intensified outbreaks of the pandemic, causing the US economic recovery to lag behind that of countries where the pandemic has been controlled.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/47ba07e5188dd7a48630121bb33ceda1\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"222\"></p><p>(Daily number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States and its 7-day average, data source: The New York Times)</p><p><b>Third, government bailouts are heavily biased towards capital, and although their scale is unprecedented, their effectiveness is limited.</b>Similarly, based on our understanding of the nature of the U.S. government's service to capital, we predict that U.S. government bailouts will be heavily biased towards big capital rather than ordinary people. This means that monetary policy, which prints money out of thin air to save capital, will be extremely loose, while fiscal policy, which requires capital to pay for it, may be sluggish and biased. As expected, the Federal Reserve quickly lowered interest rates to zero in early March, when the pandemic first appeared, and launched an unprecedented \"unlimited quantitative easing\" monetary policy, expanding its balance sheet by $3 trillion within three months to save the market (see chart below). At the end of March, the U.S. government launched its first round of $2 trillion fiscal stimulus package, the largest portion of which was used to bail out American businesses (44%), only 15% to subsidize American families, and 15% to increase unemployment benefits. Even the relief provided to the American people was designed to ensure that they could pay their mortgages and rent, so as not to harm the interests of American banks and homeowners. However, relief for the American people expired at the end of July, and the U.S. Congress has been wrangling for months to block the introduction of a new relief plan. Loose monetary policy can boost asset markets, but history has shown that its effect on the real economy is limited. Fiscal stimulus, which has a greater impact on the real economy and people's livelihoods, especially effective public investment in infrastructure, science and education, and welfare, is nowhere to be found. The U.S. government's policies will create debt and asset bubbles, exacerbate public suffering, and hinder the true recovery of the U.S. economy.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/632d4b87e4d45512790a4f708967523d\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"239\"></p><p>(Federal Reserve's net total assets. Gray indicates the economic crisis. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database FRED)</p><p><b>The actual data validated our predictions: the U.S. economy is in a severe downturn, and the recovery is stalling.</b></p><p><b>First, GDP has shrunk severely.</b>As shown in the chart below, US GDP plummeted by 9% year-on-year under the impact of the pandemic. Despite resuming work at the end of April, GDP still contracted by 2.9% year-on-year in the third quarter, and forward-looking private investment contracted by 3.8% year-on-year. Subsequent data showed that the improvement tended to stagnate.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bd4cc475fe14a0160091059bdf898b2d\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"222\"></p><p>(US GDP year-on-year growth rate, data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/be5b3bd52de2660ae58c5556db18cfc8\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"217\"></p><p>(Monthly year-on-year growth rate: Blue represents industrial production, red represents real private consumption. Data source: FRED)</p><p><b>Worse still, the recent recovery in both production and consumption has stalled.</b>The latest monthly data shows (above) that GDP contracted by 5.5% year-on-year in November, worse than in October; Real private consumption, which accounts for 70% of U.S. GDP, grew by -1.8% year-on-year in October (nearly 5 percentage points lower than the pre-pandemic growth rate). High-frequency data as of December 14 (see chart below) shows that credit card spending shrank by 4.7% compared to the same period last year, and the recovery that began in October has stalled.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/093623e7822b7c5a3ff823d9f402fdfe\" tg-width=\"405\" tg-height=\"264\"></p><p>(7-day year-over-year average of Chase Bank credit card spending, as of December 14. Data source: JPMorgan Chase)</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c775b545636006c32be575d3ed551881\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"239\"></p><p>(U.S. non-farm payrolls increased month-on-month; data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><b>Most seriously, the improvement in employment has reversed.</b>Employment is the pillar of consumption and the most important intrinsic driving force for economic recovery, and therefore a core indicator for measuring economic recovery. As shown in the chart above, as of early November, the month-on-month growth of U.S. non-farm payrolls has continued to slow since May. High-frequency data as of December 14 (see chart below) shows that the improvement in employment has begun to reverse in the past month, with total employment declining by more than 10 million compared to February. This does not include the underemployed due to the economic downturn.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/227c3e19fd3b768a13b57d197f62dcd4\" tg-width=\"433\" tg-height=\"262\"></p><p>(Total non-farm payrolls: official data (blue) and other data (yellow). Data source: JPMorgan Chase)</p><p><b>In addition, due to the bleak economic outlook, banks continued to tighten monetary policy despite ample liquidity.</b>According to bank survey data released by the Federal Reserve in November (see chart below), banks generally raised commercial lending standards for large and medium-sized enterprises in the second quarter (70 percentage points more banks raised standards than those that did not), and the vast majority of banks continued to raise lending standards in the third quarter (38 percentage points more banks raised standards than those that did not). Similarly, after banks generally raised their personal consumer credit standards in the second quarter, most banks continued to raise them in the third quarter. Banks' continuous raising of credit standards reflects their increasing pessimism about the economic outlook, which can also lead to credit crunch and affect corporate operations and consumption recovery.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e0e2a88c1f32b115bd13657865b2ee15\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"234\"></p><p>(Net proportion of banks raising credit standards: blue for commercial loans, red for personal consumer credit. Data source: FRED)</p><p><b>At the same time, the increasingly difficult lives of the lower classes in the United States are hindering economic recovery.</b>Severe unemployment, insufficient government aid, and a lack of access to loans have made it difficult for many American families to afford their most basic living needs. According to U.S. government data (see chart below), 12.7% of American households currently face food shortages, and 9.1% lack housing security. For the world’s most powerful country, this not only reflects extreme social injustice (the wealth of the richest classes in the United States reportedly increased significantly during the pandemic due to government bailouts), but also a sharp decline in the spending power of ordinary people, which will hinder economic recovery.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8aef3db6e58d10c666a84973ed058846\" tg-width=\"479\" tg-height=\"266\"></p><p>(Percentage of households in the United States facing food shortages and housing insecurity. Data source: U.S. Census Bureau)</p><p><b>(ii) On the other hand, the market frenzy was unexpected.</b></p><p><b>First, the stock market rebounded exceptionally quickly and repeatedly hit new highs.</b>The S&P 500 fell nearly 30% within a month of the first quarter, then rebounded quickly, recovering its losses within six months and hitting a new high, rising 15% this year as of December 18. The Nasdaq 100 index, which is mainly composed of large high-tech companies, rebounded even more sharply after falling nearly 30%, rising more than 45% this year as of December 18. In contrast, during the 2000 crisis, the S&P 500 fell by nearly 50% in two and a half years, while the Nasdaq fell by more than 75%. During the 2008 crisis, the S&P 500 fell 56% in a year and a half, while the Nasdaq fell 54%. In the 2008 crisis, the S&P 500 did not recover its lost ground until six years later, while in the 2000 crisis, the stock index did not truly recover until 13 years later.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8cf2e241a5358bbd56baf375d616e0af\" tg-width=\"531\" tg-height=\"282\"></p><p>(Trends in the US Standard 500 and Nasdaq stock indices. Data source: Yahoo Finance)</p><p><b>In addition, the P/E of the stock market has also risen to a historical high.</b>Nobel laureate economist Chairman Shiller advocated using the Shiller P/E (P/E), where the denominator uses the average of a company's long-term earnings (10-15 years) instead of the commonly used earnings of the past or next 12 months. This can cover the entire economic cycle and better reflect the reasonable valuation of the stock market. As shown in the chart below, at the beginning of this year, the Shiller P/E (15 years) had reached 35, significantly exceeding the level before the stock market crashes of 1929 (27) and 2008 (29), and only lower than the level during the dot-com bubble in 2000. High valuations do not necessarily mean a sharp drop in the stock market. For example, the current stock market valuation is equivalent to the level of 1998, when the stock market still rose for two years before finally collapsing. As can be seen from the chart below, stock market bubbles in history have often been burst by economic crises, and the higher the stock market valuation, the more severe the crisis, and the greater the decline. As of December 18, Shiller's P/E (15 years) had risen to 39. Investment experts often justify high valuations by citing low interest rates and a lack of alternative investment options, which we will discuss using historical data in the next section.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b7fd7fe83806353768a2e0d19ac8a536\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"246\"></p><p>(The 15-year Shiller PE ratio of the US S&P 500 indicates the economic crisis in gray. Data source: dqydj.com)</p><p>meanwhile<b>The IPO market is also in an unprecedentedly hot state, and it also ignores the company's fundamentals.</b>IPO financing in 2020 approached $150 billion, far exceeding the $100 billion level of the previous peaks in 1999 and 2000 (see chart below). At the same time, investors seem to disregard company performance, with more than 80% of IPO companies operating at a loss, a rate similar to that at the height of the internet in 2000. For example, the recent IPO of Airbnb, an internet travel rental company whose business was severely impacted by the pandemic, not only achieved a valuation of $100 billion in its IPO, but its stock price also doubled on the day of its listing. This inevitably brings to mind the frenzy of investing in internet companies in 2000.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b764c4abd0c78607d74993f9f6d1bab2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"216\"></p><p>(US IPO fundraising volume, in units of $1 billion. Light colors represent SPACs, dark colors represent other IPOs. Data source: Bloomberg)</p><p><b>The reasons behind the market frenzy are worth considering.</b>Before this economic crisis, stock market valuations were higher than before the 2008 crisis, and the degree of the crisis, whether measured by economic downturn or unemployment, was more severe than the crises of 2000 and 2008. However, the market's reaction was quite different, with a brief decline followed by a sharp rebound and continuous new highs. The stock market is severely disconnected from fundamentals, and we can see a series of special reasons behind this in the \"rearview mirror\".</p><p><b>First, the market does not believe this will be a lasting and deep crisis.</b>Cyclical economic crises, such as those of 2000 and 2008, are protracted, cause large numbers of companies to fail, and the recovery process is extremely slow. Although we realized before the US pandemic that the economy was on the verge of a cyclical crisis, markets and economists are often late to realizing cyclical economic crises. Therefore, they believe that this is only a temporary impact of the epidemic on the economy, and that things will return to normal after the epidemic. As the pandemic worsens, they are increasingly convinced that all bad news on fundamentals is a temporary impact of the pandemic, rather than a structural problem in the economy.</p><p><b>Second, the Federal Reserve's \"unlimited quantitative easing\" has fueled the situation.</b>During the stock market crash, the Federal Reserve not only cut interest rates to zero but also announced \"unlimited\" quantitative easing, injecting massive amounts of liquidity into the market by expanding its balance sheet by more than $3 trillion. Even the $1,200 given to each person by the U.S. government has become a bargaining chip for many retail investors in their gamble in the stock market. As shown in the chart below, the total money supply of M2 in the United States increased by as much as 25% year-on-year, far exceeding the 11% at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. This surge in liquidity has played a significant role in promoting the capital market. A popular saying on Wall Street is: \"Never go against the Federal Reserve.\"</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/82ee63596ffb216d1d2234190a093fd2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"229\"></p><p>(Year-on-year growth rate of US M2 money supply. Gray indicates the economic recession phase. Data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><b>Third, investors are subjectively looking for every reason to support the stock market's rise.</b>Investors who were completely unaware of the economic crisis, encouraged by ample liquidity, are willing to find any reason to justify the rise in stocks. This phenomenon of subjective self-rationalization can be seen in the impact of the general election on the stock market. The Democratic Party is expected to win both the presidency and the Senate before the election, which is explained by the Democratic government's strong stimulus package, which is conducive to economic recovery, leading to a surge in the stock market. Trump later led in the polls, explaining that Trump's policies were more favorable to investors, which led to a surge in the stock market. Finally, the Democrats became president, and the Republicans were likely to take control of the Senate. This was explained by the fact that dividing the government and checking and balancing each other was beneficial to policy stability, and the stock market still surged. It is evident that even contradictory news does not prevent investors from finding reasons to drive the stock market up.</p><p><b>Fourth, the story of the high-tech new economic model brought about by the pandemic is moving.</b>In the S&P 500 industry index, the technology, consumer discretionaries, and communications services sectors, which include U.S. tech giants, have surged by 40%, 28%, and 25% respectively this year, while the energy sector, which is directly related to the real economy, has plummeted by 33% (see chart below). To create a stock market surge, there must be a compelling story that everyone can understand. The 1990s saw the internet change the economic model, and the stock market continued to rise. The 2000s saw financial innovation reduce market risks, and the stock market continued to rise. The 2010s saw long-term low interest rates reduce return requirements, and the stock market will continue to rise. The story of the pandemic changing human life and ushering in a high-tech future is simple, easy to understand, and full of allure. Of course, many touching stories have ended with stock market crashes in the past. \"This time is different\"—which is hailed as the four most expensive words in financial history—will it really come true this time?</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ffc959c59156fb3c546594aee45347e2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"241\"></p><p>(This year's performance of the US S&P 500 industry index, data source: Yahoo Finance)</p><p><b>Fifth, retail investors flocked to the market to stimulate the market.</b>This story is so simple that all small investors can understand and agree with it. According to reports, in the United States, which has traditionally been dominated by institutional investors, individual trading accounts and trading activity have surged since the outbreak of the pandemic. Although retail investors do not have large amounts of capital, they often use derivatives as leverage, which can leverage large amounts of capital and have an excessive impact on the market.</p><p><b>Sixth, digitalization and passive trading have also exacerbated the market's trend of following trends.</b>Digital trading and passive investing have grown rapidly in the United States over the past 20 years and have become mainstream in recent years. Passive investing does not analyze fundamentals; it instead buys and sells according to market directions. Quantitative strategies, on the other hand, often focus on short-term trends and rarely make correct judgments about long-term macroeconomic trends. Moreover, their trading logic is mostly similar, leading to convergence in trading directions. The development of these trading strategies has exacerbated the disconnect between the market and fundamentals.</p><p><b>All of the above phenomena are classic characteristics of market bubbles.</b>Investors unaware of the risks of the crisis, driven by the Federal Reserve's massive liquidity, sought every reason to support the stock market's rise. They were captivated by a moving story, which drew countless retail investors to rush in. Coupled with digitalization and passive trading, this encouraged follow-the-trend investment. All of this inevitably leads to the formation of a bubble, and the stock market will deviate further and further from its fundamentals. However, history has proven that harsh realities will eventually pull the stock market back to ground level.</p><p><b>The biggest lesson we learned in 2020 was that we once again learned the old Wall Street saying: \"The market can remain irrational for longer than you can sustain it.\"</b>(The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent). Shorting the market against the tide during a severe market bubble may ultimately lead to success, but it may result in significant losses over a considerable period of time.</p><p><b>II. Looking Ahead to 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Risks</b></p><p><b>Looking ahead to 2021, the series of optimistic assumptions supporting the stock market are not guaranteed to be fully realized, and the risk of the bubble bursting cannot be ignored.</b>If the following situations occur, the market will make corresponding adjustments, and in severe cases, it may even cause a sharp decline in the stock market.</p><p><b>First, the economic crisis</b>Even if the pandemic is under control, the crisis may not yet be over, making it difficult for profits to grow rapidly. Demand in the United States was weak even before the pandemic, and it was on the verge of a cyclical economic crisis with relative overproduction, which further weakened demand. Even if the pandemic is under control, with a large number of workers losing their jobs and corporate finances weakening, consumer and investment demand will struggle to recover quickly, making it difficult for company profits to grow rapidly. More seriously, this extreme imbalance between supply and demand usually requires large-scale destruction of capital and production capacity in the form of a crisis to reduce supply in order to clear it out, allowing the remaining strong companies to resume profit growth and start a new economic cycle. According to Bloomberg data, during the economic crisis from January 2008 to June 2009, a total of 370 companies in the United States with debts exceeding $50 million went bankrupt. Given that the total liabilities of non-financial corporations in the United States ($31.2 trillion) have now doubled compared to 2008 ($15.4 trillion), the number of companies with liabilities exceeding $50 million should increase significantly compared to 2008. Therefore, to destroy the same proportion of capital and production capacity, the number of bankrupt companies would need to significantly exceed the 370 of the 2008 crisis. In contrast, as of December 12, only 236 companies with debts exceeding $50 million had gone bankrupt this year, thanks to an unprecedentedly large bailout from the U.S. government. This means that a large number of business failures may still be needed for the economy to truly clear out. Therefore, the economic crisis may not be truly over.</p><p><b>Second, the development of the epidemic</b>The government's passivity has led to the epidemic spiraling out of control, and the prospects after the vaccine is released are not yet fully clear. Investors expect that once a vaccine is released, the US pandemic will be brought under control relatively quickly, normal life will basically resume, and consumer demand will be released. However, the epidemic in the United States is exceptionally severe, with the confirmation rate per capita far exceeding that of other Western countries (see the chart below). Furthermore, due to misleading propaganda from right-wing politicians such as Trump, many people do not believe in the dangers of the novel coronavirus. Many people who believe in the dangers have doubts about the safety of the vaccines hastily launched by the government and pharmaceutical companies, so most Americans are unwilling to accept vaccines. At the same time, because US vaccines require ultra-low temperature storage, there are great difficulties in transportation and distribution. From this perspective, it remains uncertain when the epidemic will be brought under control. The longer this drags on, the more companies go bankrupt, the worse the financial situation of businesses and individuals deteriorates, and the more difficult it is for workers to find new jobs, the deeper the long-term impact of the pandemic on economic vitality may be, and the more difficult it will be to recover.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/22992bcf89dd59641632c49c9e0e6a2d\" tg-width=\"510\" tg-height=\"322\"></p><p>(Number of confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people: dark red in the United States, dark green in the European Union, red in Canada, green in Japan, pink in South Korea)</p><p><b>Third, government policies are unable to play a sufficient role in truly reversing the economic downturn.</b>On the one hand, while fiscal policy can effectively alleviate the problem of insufficient demand and promote economic recovery, American capital is unwilling to pay for public investment and social welfare, and its implementation faces numerous political obstacles. For example, although the scale of the new round of fiscal rescue packages has been reduced from the expected $1.5 trillion to $900 billion, it has still not been passed by Congress, and infrastructure plans that have been effective in boosting the economy are nowhere to be found. On the other hand, while ultra-loose monetary policy can support the growth of asset bubbles, the long-term practices of the US, Japan, and the EU have proven that it has a limited effect on the real economy and will exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor, worsen the imbalance between investment and demand, exacerbate the economic crisis, and trigger the bubble to burst.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/555a11dee2888ad473cb3cfc2b6fa7ba\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"240\"></p><p>(Red represents the Dow Jones Industrial Average, blue represents the 3-month Treasury Bond yield, red represents AAA corporate bond yields, and gray represents the economic crisis.)</p><p>Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently stated that interest rates will remain low for an extended period, while agreeing with the mainstream market view that high stock market valuations are reasonable in a prolonged low-interest-rate environment. However, historical data is not so optimistic: as shown in the chart above, after the Great Depression of 1929, from 1934 to 1945, US interest rates remained low for a long time, the three-month Treasury Bond remained below 0.5%, and corporate bond yields also fell to around 3% in 1937. The Dow Jones stock index nearly doubled between 1934 and 1937, but it didn't last long. In 1937, the cyclical economic crisis broke out again, and the stock market plummeted by nearly 40% within a year, before fluctuating downwards by 15% over the next four years. It seems that a low-interest-rate environment cannot guarantee the stock market's long-term prosperity; how long it will rise depends on whether the economy will fall into a deep crisis.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/16bb84f7a4f42a58dcb8db7f9a133078\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"231\"></p><p>(Total U.S. consumer credit. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED))</p><p><b>Fourth, debt risk: Corporate and personal debts are high, and the risk of debt crisis accumulates rapidly.</b>First, the current levels of corporate borrowing and personal consumption debt have far exceeded those levels before the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. As shown in the chart above, total consumer credit in the United States has been growing steadily in recent years, increasing by 62% compared to before the 2008 crisis. The chart below shows that the leverage ratio of non-financial companies in the United States has now risen to twice what it was before the 2008 crisis. More seriously, data shows that the current scale of subprime mortgages is higher than before the subprime mortgage crisis. The issuance of BBB-rated bonds, the lowest tier of investment-grade corporate bonds, has soared over the past 10 years, and by 2019 it was three times that of the lead-up to the subprime mortgage crisis. Meanwhile, the proportion of low-rated corporate bonds has doubled from less than 20% in 2008 to nearly 40%. Bloomberg reports that in 2020, driven by the impact of the pandemic and the Federal Reserve's monetary easing, the issuance of junk bonds in the United States reached an all-time high. Given the current severe economic situation, the risk of a debt crisis cannot be ignored. If the debt crisis spreads to the financial system and triggers a financial crisis, the consequences will be even more unimaginable.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a4ab5853e27eeca6d818bd4841f82cf\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"234\"></p><p>(Leverage ratio of U.S. non-financial corporations. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database)</p><p><b>In conclusion, the US stock market surged in 2020 against a bleak economic backdrop due to the aforementioned reasons, but the outlook for 2021 is not so optimistic. It is difficult to guarantee that all the assumptions supporting the stock market will be realized, and the numerous risks that may trigger a bubble burst cannot be ignored.</b></p>","source":"XLCJ","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>U.S. Macroeconomic Outlook 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Crises</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nU.S. Macroeconomic Outlook 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Crises\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n<p class=\"head\">\n<strong class=\"h-name small\">新浪财经</strong><span class=\"h-time small\">2020-12-30 19:27</span>\n</p>\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\n<p><b>I. Looking Back at 2020: A Dismal Economy and a Crazy Market</b></p><p>Looking back at 2020, we correctly predicted the declining trend of the US economy, but the market frenzy was unexpected.</p><p>(a) On the one hand, our analysis correctly predicted the declining trend of the economy.</p><p>Our main basis for analysis is that, firstly, the US economy was already on the verge of a cyclical economic crisis; secondly, the US government's passive response to the pandemic, which led to the pandemic spiraling out of control, further exacerbated the economic woes; and finally, although the national bailout measures were unprecedented in scale, their bias and limitations limited their effectiveness. All of this has seriously hindered the economic recovery of the United States. Specifically:</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6f651ec27751bf737490082d7ad19609\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"220\"></p><p>(Credit card delinquency rates at small and medium-sized banks in the United States. Gray indicates the economic crisis. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database)</p><p><b>First, the U.S. economy was already quite fragile at the end of last year and is gradually heading towards the next cyclical economic crisis.</b>Although mainstream institutional economists in the United States were generally optimistic about US economic development at the beginning of the year, we disagreed. The root cause of the cyclical economic crisis lies in the restricted consumption of the people. With sluggish wage growth, people have to rely on borrowing to maintain consumption growth. However, borrowing money for consumption is unsustainable, resulting in people's limited purchasing power being insufficient to absorb the continuously expanding supply, resulting in relative overproduction. Product backlogs lead to a decline in corporate profit margins. When profit margins decline to a certain point, companies will begin to reduce investment, cut working hours, and even lay off employees. However, this will further reduce investment and consumer demand, and the oversupply will become more serious, leading to a further decline in corporate profits, thus plunging into an a vicious circle and ultimately triggering an economic crisis. As shown in the chart above, as of the fourth quarter of 2019, the credit card delinquency rate of small and medium-sized banks in the United States (which have more underlying customers and are more sensitive to the economy) has exceeded the pre-crisis levels of 2000 and 2008, indicating that consumption growth can no longer be supported by debt. The chart below shows that historically, a decline in corporate profit margins to a certain extent has often triggered an economic crisis, and last year it approached this level.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1a0da671f84ef56a0ded9d477c0d76c6\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"261\"></p><p><b>Other effective leading indicators, including working hours and discretionary consumption growth, also point to an economic crisis.</b>When corporate profits decline, whether it's shortening workers' working hours or laying off staff, the total number of hours worked will be reduced. When people's incomes decline due to unemployment and insufficient working hours, or when their debts become unaffordable, they will reduce consumption expansion, especially for non-essential goods. The following two charts show that the year-on-year growth rate of total working hours and non-essential goods would begin to decline continuously for several quarters before the onset of economic crises in the past, warning of a crisis. As of the fourth quarter of 2019, both indicators had shown a downward trend. These data, along with a range of other indicators we observed, suggest that the economic crisis was drawing ever closer at the end of 2019.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2d1dae247273fd00fc067598efab7b4f\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"262\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/89a1d2d569ad36ff2653fd34bbbcb9ec\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"268\"></p><p><b>Second, the passive fight against the epidemic, prioritizing profits, only exacerbated the situation if the epidemic got out of control.</b>Based on our understanding of the nature of the U.S. government serving capital, we anticipated from the outset of the pandemic that the U.S. government would prioritize capital profits over public health and lives, and might refuse to take necessary anti-pandemic measures that would harm profits. The passive response to the pandemic has led to the outbreak spiraling out of control. As of December 19, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States has exceeded 17.8 million, and the death toll has exceeded 310,000. As the U.S. government continues to relax its anti-epidemic measures, the epidemic has become increasingly severe, with the daily number of confirmed cases exceeding 250,000 (see chart below) and the daily death toll exceeding 3,000, which is worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks (2,606 deaths) every day. The out-of-control pandemic was not due to the incompetence of the US government, the global military hegemon, but rather to deliberate planning. After all, the vast majority of those infected and killed came from the lower classes, especially people of color, while the wealthy hid in luxury homes or even islands and enjoyed the best medical conditions in the world. If we consider only profits, even if one million people at the bottom of the population die (less than 0.3% of the total population), the loss would be less than shutting down the economy for two months. However, the greedy, short-sighted, and cruel policies of the American ruling class have led to repeated and intensified outbreaks of the pandemic, causing the US economic recovery to lag behind that of countries where the pandemic has been controlled.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/47ba07e5188dd7a48630121bb33ceda1\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"222\"></p><p>(Daily number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States and its 7-day average, data source: The New York Times)</p><p><b>Third, government bailouts are heavily biased towards capital, and although their scale is unprecedented, their effectiveness is limited.</b>Similarly, based on our understanding of the nature of the U.S. government's service to capital, we predict that U.S. government bailouts will be heavily biased towards big capital rather than ordinary people. This means that monetary policy, which prints money out of thin air to save capital, will be extremely loose, while fiscal policy, which requires capital to pay for it, may be sluggish and biased. As expected, the Federal Reserve quickly lowered interest rates to zero in early March, when the pandemic first appeared, and launched an unprecedented \"unlimited quantitative easing\" monetary policy, expanding its balance sheet by $3 trillion within three months to save the market (see chart below). At the end of March, the U.S. government launched its first round of $2 trillion fiscal stimulus package, the largest portion of which was used to bail out American businesses (44%), only 15% to subsidize American families, and 15% to increase unemployment benefits. Even the relief provided to the American people was designed to ensure that they could pay their mortgages and rent, so as not to harm the interests of American banks and homeowners. However, relief for the American people expired at the end of July, and the U.S. Congress has been wrangling for months to block the introduction of a new relief plan. Loose monetary policy can boost asset markets, but history has shown that its effect on the real economy is limited. Fiscal stimulus, which has a greater impact on the real economy and people's livelihoods, especially effective public investment in infrastructure, science and education, and welfare, is nowhere to be found. The U.S. government's policies will create debt and asset bubbles, exacerbate public suffering, and hinder the true recovery of the U.S. economy.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/632d4b87e4d45512790a4f708967523d\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"239\"></p><p>(Federal Reserve's net total assets. Gray indicates the economic crisis. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database FRED)</p><p><b>The actual data validated our predictions: the U.S. economy is in a severe downturn, and the recovery is stalling.</b></p><p><b>First, GDP has shrunk severely.</b>As shown in the chart below, US GDP plummeted by 9% year-on-year under the impact of the pandemic. Despite resuming work at the end of April, GDP still contracted by 2.9% year-on-year in the third quarter, and forward-looking private investment contracted by 3.8% year-on-year. Subsequent data showed that the improvement tended to stagnate.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bd4cc475fe14a0160091059bdf898b2d\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"222\"></p><p>(US GDP year-on-year growth rate, data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/be5b3bd52de2660ae58c5556db18cfc8\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"217\"></p><p>(Monthly year-on-year growth rate: Blue represents industrial production, red represents real private consumption. Data source: FRED)</p><p><b>Worse still, the recent recovery in both production and consumption has stalled.</b>The latest monthly data shows (above) that GDP contracted by 5.5% year-on-year in November, worse than in October; Real private consumption, which accounts for 70% of U.S. GDP, grew by -1.8% year-on-year in October (nearly 5 percentage points lower than the pre-pandemic growth rate). High-frequency data as of December 14 (see chart below) shows that credit card spending shrank by 4.7% compared to the same period last year, and the recovery that began in October has stalled.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/093623e7822b7c5a3ff823d9f402fdfe\" tg-width=\"405\" tg-height=\"264\"></p><p>(7-day year-over-year average of Chase Bank credit card spending, as of December 14. Data source: JPMorgan Chase)</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c775b545636006c32be575d3ed551881\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"239\"></p><p>(U.S. non-farm payrolls increased month-on-month; data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><b>Most seriously, the improvement in employment has reversed.</b>Employment is the pillar of consumption and the most important intrinsic driving force for economic recovery, and therefore a core indicator for measuring economic recovery. As shown in the chart above, as of early November, the month-on-month growth of U.S. non-farm payrolls has continued to slow since May. High-frequency data as of December 14 (see chart below) shows that the improvement in employment has begun to reverse in the past month, with total employment declining by more than 10 million compared to February. This does not include the underemployed due to the economic downturn.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/227c3e19fd3b768a13b57d197f62dcd4\" tg-width=\"433\" tg-height=\"262\"></p><p>(Total non-farm payrolls: official data (blue) and other data (yellow). Data source: JPMorgan Chase)</p><p><b>In addition, due to the bleak economic outlook, banks continued to tighten monetary policy despite ample liquidity.</b>According to bank survey data released by the Federal Reserve in November (see chart below), banks generally raised commercial lending standards for large and medium-sized enterprises in the second quarter (70 percentage points more banks raised standards than those that did not), and the vast majority of banks continued to raise lending standards in the third quarter (38 percentage points more banks raised standards than those that did not). Similarly, after banks generally raised their personal consumer credit standards in the second quarter, most banks continued to raise them in the third quarter. Banks' continuous raising of credit standards reflects their increasing pessimism about the economic outlook, which can also lead to credit crunch and affect corporate operations and consumption recovery.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e0e2a88c1f32b115bd13657865b2ee15\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"234\"></p><p>(Net proportion of banks raising credit standards: blue for commercial loans, red for personal consumer credit. Data source: FRED)</p><p><b>At the same time, the increasingly difficult lives of the lower classes in the United States are hindering economic recovery.</b>Severe unemployment, insufficient government aid, and a lack of access to loans have made it difficult for many American families to afford their most basic living needs. According to U.S. government data (see chart below), 12.7% of American households currently face food shortages, and 9.1% lack housing security. For the world’s most powerful country, this not only reflects extreme social injustice (the wealth of the richest classes in the United States reportedly increased significantly during the pandemic due to government bailouts), but also a sharp decline in the spending power of ordinary people, which will hinder economic recovery.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8aef3db6e58d10c666a84973ed058846\" tg-width=\"479\" tg-height=\"266\"></p><p>(Percentage of households in the United States facing food shortages and housing insecurity. Data source: U.S. Census Bureau)</p><p><b>(ii) On the other hand, the market frenzy was unexpected.</b></p><p><b>First, the stock market rebounded exceptionally quickly and repeatedly hit new highs.</b>The S&P 500 fell nearly 30% within a month of the first quarter, then rebounded quickly, recovering its losses within six months and hitting a new high, rising 15% this year as of December 18. The Nasdaq 100 index, which is mainly composed of large high-tech companies, rebounded even more sharply after falling nearly 30%, rising more than 45% this year as of December 18. In contrast, during the 2000 crisis, the S&P 500 fell by nearly 50% in two and a half years, while the Nasdaq fell by more than 75%. During the 2008 crisis, the S&P 500 fell 56% in a year and a half, while the Nasdaq fell 54%. In the 2008 crisis, the S&P 500 did not recover its lost ground until six years later, while in the 2000 crisis, the stock index did not truly recover until 13 years later.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8cf2e241a5358bbd56baf375d616e0af\" tg-width=\"531\" tg-height=\"282\"></p><p>(Trends in the US Standard 500 and Nasdaq stock indices. Data source: Yahoo Finance)</p><p><b>In addition, the P/E of the stock market has also risen to a historical high.</b>Nobel laureate economist Chairman Shiller advocated using the Shiller P/E (P/E), where the denominator uses the average of a company's long-term earnings (10-15 years) instead of the commonly used earnings of the past or next 12 months. This can cover the entire economic cycle and better reflect the reasonable valuation of the stock market. As shown in the chart below, at the beginning of this year, the Shiller P/E (15 years) had reached 35, significantly exceeding the level before the stock market crashes of 1929 (27) and 2008 (29), and only lower than the level during the dot-com bubble in 2000. High valuations do not necessarily mean a sharp drop in the stock market. For example, the current stock market valuation is equivalent to the level of 1998, when the stock market still rose for two years before finally collapsing. As can be seen from the chart below, stock market bubbles in history have often been burst by economic crises, and the higher the stock market valuation, the more severe the crisis, and the greater the decline. As of December 18, Shiller's P/E (15 years) had risen to 39. Investment experts often justify high valuations by citing low interest rates and a lack of alternative investment options, which we will discuss using historical data in the next section.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b7fd7fe83806353768a2e0d19ac8a536\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"246\"></p><p>(The 15-year Shiller PE ratio of the US S&P 500 indicates the economic crisis in gray. Data source: dqydj.com)</p><p>meanwhile<b>The IPO market is also in an unprecedentedly hot state, and it also ignores the company's fundamentals.</b>IPO financing in 2020 approached $150 billion, far exceeding the $100 billion level of the previous peaks in 1999 and 2000 (see chart below). At the same time, investors seem to disregard company performance, with more than 80% of IPO companies operating at a loss, a rate similar to that at the height of the internet in 2000. For example, the recent IPO of Airbnb, an internet travel rental company whose business was severely impacted by the pandemic, not only achieved a valuation of $100 billion in its IPO, but its stock price also doubled on the day of its listing. This inevitably brings to mind the frenzy of investing in internet companies in 2000.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b764c4abd0c78607d74993f9f6d1bab2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"216\"></p><p>(US IPO fundraising volume, in units of $1 billion. Light colors represent SPACs, dark colors represent other IPOs. Data source: Bloomberg)</p><p><b>The reasons behind the market frenzy are worth considering.</b>Before this economic crisis, stock market valuations were higher than before the 2008 crisis, and the degree of the crisis, whether measured by economic downturn or unemployment, was more severe than the crises of 2000 and 2008. However, the market's reaction was quite different, with a brief decline followed by a sharp rebound and continuous new highs. The stock market is severely disconnected from fundamentals, and we can see a series of special reasons behind this in the \"rearview mirror\".</p><p><b>First, the market does not believe this will be a lasting and deep crisis.</b>Cyclical economic crises, such as those of 2000 and 2008, are protracted, cause large numbers of companies to fail, and the recovery process is extremely slow. Although we realized before the US pandemic that the economy was on the verge of a cyclical crisis, markets and economists are often late to realizing cyclical economic crises. Therefore, they believe that this is only a temporary impact of the epidemic on the economy, and that things will return to normal after the epidemic. As the pandemic worsens, they are increasingly convinced that all bad news on fundamentals is a temporary impact of the pandemic, rather than a structural problem in the economy.</p><p><b>Second, the Federal Reserve's \"unlimited quantitative easing\" has fueled the situation.</b>During the stock market crash, the Federal Reserve not only cut interest rates to zero but also announced \"unlimited\" quantitative easing, injecting massive amounts of liquidity into the market by expanding its balance sheet by more than $3 trillion. Even the $1,200 given to each person by the U.S. government has become a bargaining chip for many retail investors in their gamble in the stock market. As shown in the chart below, the total money supply of M2 in the United States increased by as much as 25% year-on-year, far exceeding the 11% at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. This surge in liquidity has played a significant role in promoting the capital market. A popular saying on Wall Street is: \"Never go against the Federal Reserve.\"</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/82ee63596ffb216d1d2234190a093fd2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"229\"></p><p>(Year-on-year growth rate of US M2 money supply. Gray indicates the economic recession phase. Data source: Federal Reserve economic database FRED)</p><p><b>Third, investors are subjectively looking for every reason to support the stock market's rise.</b>Investors who were completely unaware of the economic crisis, encouraged by ample liquidity, are willing to find any reason to justify the rise in stocks. This phenomenon of subjective self-rationalization can be seen in the impact of the general election on the stock market. The Democratic Party is expected to win both the presidency and the Senate before the election, which is explained by the Democratic government's strong stimulus package, which is conducive to economic recovery, leading to a surge in the stock market. Trump later led in the polls, explaining that Trump's policies were more favorable to investors, which led to a surge in the stock market. Finally, the Democrats became president, and the Republicans were likely to take control of the Senate. This was explained by the fact that dividing the government and checking and balancing each other was beneficial to policy stability, and the stock market still surged. It is evident that even contradictory news does not prevent investors from finding reasons to drive the stock market up.</p><p><b>Fourth, the story of the high-tech new economic model brought about by the pandemic is moving.</b>In the S&P 500 industry index, the technology, consumer discretionaries, and communications services sectors, which include U.S. tech giants, have surged by 40%, 28%, and 25% respectively this year, while the energy sector, which is directly related to the real economy, has plummeted by 33% (see chart below). To create a stock market surge, there must be a compelling story that everyone can understand. The 1990s saw the internet change the economic model, and the stock market continued to rise. The 2000s saw financial innovation reduce market risks, and the stock market continued to rise. The 2010s saw long-term low interest rates reduce return requirements, and the stock market will continue to rise. The story of the pandemic changing human life and ushering in a high-tech future is simple, easy to understand, and full of allure. Of course, many touching stories have ended with stock market crashes in the past. \"This time is different\"—which is hailed as the four most expensive words in financial history—will it really come true this time?</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ffc959c59156fb3c546594aee45347e2\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"241\"></p><p>(This year's performance of the US S&P 500 industry index, data source: Yahoo Finance)</p><p><b>Fifth, retail investors flocked to the market to stimulate the market.</b>This story is so simple that all small investors can understand and agree with it. According to reports, in the United States, which has traditionally been dominated by institutional investors, individual trading accounts and trading activity have surged since the outbreak of the pandemic. Although retail investors do not have large amounts of capital, they often use derivatives as leverage, which can leverage large amounts of capital and have an excessive impact on the market.</p><p><b>Sixth, digitalization and passive trading have also exacerbated the market's trend of following trends.</b>Digital trading and passive investing have grown rapidly in the United States over the past 20 years and have become mainstream in recent years. Passive investing does not analyze fundamentals; it instead buys and sells according to market directions. Quantitative strategies, on the other hand, often focus on short-term trends and rarely make correct judgments about long-term macroeconomic trends. Moreover, their trading logic is mostly similar, leading to convergence in trading directions. The development of these trading strategies has exacerbated the disconnect between the market and fundamentals.</p><p><b>All of the above phenomena are classic characteristics of market bubbles.</b>Investors unaware of the risks of the crisis, driven by the Federal Reserve's massive liquidity, sought every reason to support the stock market's rise. They were captivated by a moving story, which drew countless retail investors to rush in. Coupled with digitalization and passive trading, this encouraged follow-the-trend investment. All of this inevitably leads to the formation of a bubble, and the stock market will deviate further and further from its fundamentals. However, history has proven that harsh realities will eventually pull the stock market back to ground level.</p><p><b>The biggest lesson we learned in 2020 was that we once again learned the old Wall Street saying: \"The market can remain irrational for longer than you can sustain it.\"</b>(The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent). Shorting the market against the tide during a severe market bubble may ultimately lead to success, but it may result in significant losses over a considerable period of time.</p><p><b>II. Looking Ahead to 2021: Uncertain Prospects and Full of Risks</b></p><p><b>Looking ahead to 2021, the series of optimistic assumptions supporting the stock market are not guaranteed to be fully realized, and the risk of the bubble bursting cannot be ignored.</b>If the following situations occur, the market will make corresponding adjustments, and in severe cases, it may even cause a sharp decline in the stock market.</p><p><b>First, the economic crisis</b>Even if the pandemic is under control, the crisis may not yet be over, making it difficult for profits to grow rapidly. Demand in the United States was weak even before the pandemic, and it was on the verge of a cyclical economic crisis with relative overproduction, which further weakened demand. Even if the pandemic is under control, with a large number of workers losing their jobs and corporate finances weakening, consumer and investment demand will struggle to recover quickly, making it difficult for company profits to grow rapidly. More seriously, this extreme imbalance between supply and demand usually requires large-scale destruction of capital and production capacity in the form of a crisis to reduce supply in order to clear it out, allowing the remaining strong companies to resume profit growth and start a new economic cycle. According to Bloomberg data, during the economic crisis from January 2008 to June 2009, a total of 370 companies in the United States with debts exceeding $50 million went bankrupt. Given that the total liabilities of non-financial corporations in the United States ($31.2 trillion) have now doubled compared to 2008 ($15.4 trillion), the number of companies with liabilities exceeding $50 million should increase significantly compared to 2008. Therefore, to destroy the same proportion of capital and production capacity, the number of bankrupt companies would need to significantly exceed the 370 of the 2008 crisis. In contrast, as of December 12, only 236 companies with debts exceeding $50 million had gone bankrupt this year, thanks to an unprecedentedly large bailout from the U.S. government. This means that a large number of business failures may still be needed for the economy to truly clear out. Therefore, the economic crisis may not be truly over.</p><p><b>Second, the development of the epidemic</b>The government's passivity has led to the epidemic spiraling out of control, and the prospects after the vaccine is released are not yet fully clear. Investors expect that once a vaccine is released, the US pandemic will be brought under control relatively quickly, normal life will basically resume, and consumer demand will be released. However, the epidemic in the United States is exceptionally severe, with the confirmation rate per capita far exceeding that of other Western countries (see the chart below). Furthermore, due to misleading propaganda from right-wing politicians such as Trump, many people do not believe in the dangers of the novel coronavirus. Many people who believe in the dangers have doubts about the safety of the vaccines hastily launched by the government and pharmaceutical companies, so most Americans are unwilling to accept vaccines. At the same time, because US vaccines require ultra-low temperature storage, there are great difficulties in transportation and distribution. From this perspective, it remains uncertain when the epidemic will be brought under control. The longer this drags on, the more companies go bankrupt, the worse the financial situation of businesses and individuals deteriorates, and the more difficult it is for workers to find new jobs, the deeper the long-term impact of the pandemic on economic vitality may be, and the more difficult it will be to recover.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/22992bcf89dd59641632c49c9e0e6a2d\" tg-width=\"510\" tg-height=\"322\"></p><p>(Number of confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people: dark red in the United States, dark green in the European Union, red in Canada, green in Japan, pink in South Korea)</p><p><b>Third, government policies are unable to play a sufficient role in truly reversing the economic downturn.</b>On the one hand, while fiscal policy can effectively alleviate the problem of insufficient demand and promote economic recovery, American capital is unwilling to pay for public investment and social welfare, and its implementation faces numerous political obstacles. For example, although the scale of the new round of fiscal rescue packages has been reduced from the expected $1.5 trillion to $900 billion, it has still not been passed by Congress, and infrastructure plans that have been effective in boosting the economy are nowhere to be found. On the other hand, while ultra-loose monetary policy can support the growth of asset bubbles, the long-term practices of the US, Japan, and the EU have proven that it has a limited effect on the real economy and will exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor, worsen the imbalance between investment and demand, exacerbate the economic crisis, and trigger the bubble to burst.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/555a11dee2888ad473cb3cfc2b6fa7ba\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"240\"></p><p>(Red represents the Dow Jones Industrial Average, blue represents the 3-month Treasury Bond yield, red represents AAA corporate bond yields, and gray represents the economic crisis.)</p><p>Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently stated that interest rates will remain low for an extended period, while agreeing with the mainstream market view that high stock market valuations are reasonable in a prolonged low-interest-rate environment. However, historical data is not so optimistic: as shown in the chart above, after the Great Depression of 1929, from 1934 to 1945, US interest rates remained low for a long time, the three-month Treasury Bond remained below 0.5%, and corporate bond yields also fell to around 3% in 1937. The Dow Jones stock index nearly doubled between 1934 and 1937, but it didn't last long. In 1937, the cyclical economic crisis broke out again, and the stock market plummeted by nearly 40% within a year, before fluctuating downwards by 15% over the next four years. It seems that a low-interest-rate environment cannot guarantee the stock market's long-term prosperity; how long it will rise depends on whether the economy will fall into a deep crisis.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/16bb84f7a4f42a58dcb8db7f9a133078\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"231\"></p><p>(Total U.S. consumer credit. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED))</p><p><b>Fourth, debt risk: Corporate and personal debts are high, and the risk of debt crisis accumulates rapidly.</b>First, the current levels of corporate borrowing and personal consumption debt have far exceeded those levels before the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. As shown in the chart above, total consumer credit in the United States has been growing steadily in recent years, increasing by 62% compared to before the 2008 crisis. The chart below shows that the leverage ratio of non-financial companies in the United States has now risen to twice what it was before the 2008 crisis. More seriously, data shows that the current scale of subprime mortgages is higher than before the subprime mortgage crisis. The issuance of BBB-rated bonds, the lowest tier of investment-grade corporate bonds, has soared over the past 10 years, and by 2019 it was three times that of the lead-up to the subprime mortgage crisis. Meanwhile, the proportion of low-rated corporate bonds has doubled from less than 20% in 2008 to nearly 40%. Bloomberg reports that in 2020, driven by the impact of the pandemic and the Federal Reserve's monetary easing, the issuance of junk bonds in the United States reached an all-time high. Given the current severe economic situation, the risk of a debt crisis cannot be ignored. If the debt crisis spreads to the financial system and triggers a financial crisis, the consequences will be even more unimaginable.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8a4ab5853e27eeca6d818bd4841f82cf\" tg-width=\"550\" tg-height=\"234\"></p><p>(Leverage ratio of U.S. non-financial corporations. Data source: Federal Reserve Economic Database)</p><p><b>In conclusion, the US stock market surged in 2020 against a bleak economic backdrop due to the aforementioned reasons, but the outlook for 2021 is not so optimistic. It is difficult to guarantee that all the assumptions supporting the stock market will be realized, and the numerous risks that may trigger a bubble burst cannot be ignored.</b></p>\n<div class=\"bt-text\">\n\n\n<p> source：<a href=\"http://finance.sina.com.cn/zl/authority/2020-12-30/zl-iiznezxs9753548.shtml\">新浪财经</a></p>\n\n\n</div>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/41f81b99b97a59da55dd70fd1af475cb","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯",".SPX":"S&P 500 Index","SPY":"标普500ETF",".IXIC":"NASDAQ Composite"},"source_url":"http://finance.sina.com.cn/zl/authority/2020-12-30/zl-iiznezxs9753548.shtml","is_english":false,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1154691529","content_text":"一、回顾2020，经济惨淡市场疯狂\n回顾2020，我们正确预测了美国经济颓废走势，然而市场的疯狂却出乎意料。\n（一）一方面，我们的分析正确预测了经济的颓废走势。\n我们分析的主要依据，首先是美国经济原本就处于周期性经济危机边缘，其次美国政府消极抗疫导致疫情失控对经济更是雪上加霜，最后国家救助措施虽然规模空前，但其偏向性和局限性限制了有效程度。这都严重阻碍了美国的经济复苏。具体来讲：\n\n（美国中小银行信用卡拖欠率。灰色为经济危机。数据来源：美联储经济数据库）\n首先，美国经济体在去年底已经相当脆弱，正在逐步走向下一次周期性经济危机。尽管年初美国主流机构经济学家普遍看好美国经济发展，我们却不以为然。周期性经济危机爆发的根源在于民众受限制的消费。民众工资增长低迷，不得不依靠借债去维持消费增长。但借钱消费不可持续，导致民众有限的购买力不足以吸收持续扩张的供给，形成生产的相对过剩。产品积压导致企业利润率下降，而当利润率下滑到一定地步，企业便会开始降低投资、削减工时，甚至开始裁员。但这会进一步降低投资和消费需求，供过于求会变得更加严重，导致企业利润进一步下滑，因而陷入恶性循环，最终引发经济危机。从上图可见，截至2019年第四季度，美国中小银行（其底层客户较多，对经济更加敏感）信用卡拖欠率已经超过2000和2008年危机前水平，显示消费增长已难以再靠借债支撑。下图显示，历史上企业利润率下滑到一定地步往往便会引发经济危机，而去年已经接近这一水平。\n\n其他有效领先指标，包括工作时间和非必需消费增长，同样指向经济危机。当企业利润下降时，无论是缩短工人工作时间，还是裁减人员，都会压缩工作总小时数。而民众因失业和工时不足而收入下降，或者债务难以负担之时，便会减少消费扩张，尤其是非必需品。以下两张图表可见，工作总小时数和非必需品的同比增长率，在过去经济危机到来前若干个季度都会开始持续下降，预警危机到来。截至2019年第四季度，这两个指标均已显示出下滑趋势。这些数据和我们观察的其他一系列指标显示，经济危机在2019年底已经在步步逼近。\n\n第二，利润当先消极抗疫，疫情失控雪上加霜。出于对美国政府服务资本这一本质的理解，我们在疫情爆发之初便预计美国政府将把资本利润置于民众健康和生命之上，可能会拒不采取有损利润的必要抗疫措施。消极抗疫导致疫情失控，截至12月19日美国新冠确诊人数超过1780万，死亡人数超过31万。随着美国政府抗疫措施不断松懈，疫情一波比一波严重，目前每日确诊人数已经超过25万（下图），每日死亡人数超过3000人，比每天一次911恐怖袭击事件（死亡2606人）还要糟糕。疫情失控并非是作为全球军事霸主的美国政府无能所致，而更像是蓄意的谋划。毕竟被感染和死亡的绝大部分来自底层民众，特别是有色人种，富人则躲在豪宅甚至小岛之上，并且拥有世界最佳的医疗条件。如果仅从利润考虑，即使死掉100万人底层民众（不到总人口的0.3%），也比把经济关闭2个月损失要小。但美国统治阶级这一贪婪、短视和残酷的政策，却使疫情反复爆发且愈演愈烈，使得美国经济复苏滞后于疫情被控的国家。\n\n（美国新冠患者每日新确诊人数及其7日平均，数据来源《纽约时报》）\n第三，政府救助措施严重偏向资本，虽然规模空前但效果受限。同样是出于对美国政府服务资本这一本质的认识，我们预测了美国政府的救助措施将极大偏向大资本，而非普通民众。这意味着凭空印钱去拯救资本的货币政策将会极为宽松，而需要资本买单的财政政策则可能拖泥带水，而且偏向性明显。果不其然，美联储在疫情初显的3月初便首先迅速将利率迅速降低至零点，并且推出了空前的“无限量化宽松”货币政策，并在3个月内扩表3万亿美元拯救市场（下图）。3月末，美国政府推出2万亿首轮财政刺激计划，而其中最大部分用于救助美国企业（44%），仅15%补贴美国家庭，15%加大失业救济。即使对美国民众的救济，也是考虑到要保障百姓能够支付房贷和房租，以免损害美国银行和房主利益。然而，对美国民众的救济在7月底已经过期，美国国会已经扯皮数月，阻挠新一轮救济计划出台。宽松的货币政策可以推动资产市场，但历史证明对实体经济却效果有限。而对实体经济和民生作用更大的财政刺激，特别是行之有效的基建、科教和福利等的公共投资，更是渺无踪影。美国政府的政策，将在制造债务和资产泡沫的同时，加剧民众苦难，阻碍美国经济的真正复苏。\n\n（美联储净总资产。灰色为经济危机。数据来源：美联储经济数据库FRED）\n实际数据验证了我们的预测，美国经济严重下滑，并且复苏趋于停滞。\n首先，GDP严重萎缩。由下图可见，在疫情打击下美国GDP同比暴跌9%。尽管4月底已经开始复工，到第三季度GDP依然同比萎缩2.9%，具有前瞻性的私人投资同比萎缩3.8%，而之后的数据显示改善趋于停滞。\n\n（美国GDP同比增长率，数据来源：美联储经济数据库FRED）\n\n（月度同比增长率：蓝色为工业生产，红色为实际私人消费。数据来源：FRED）\n更糟糕的是，近期生产和消费复苏均趋于停滞状态。最新月度数据显示（上图），工业生产总值在11月份同比萎缩5.5%，比10月份还糟；而占美国GDP 70%的实际私人消费10月份同比增长率为-1.8%（比疫情前增长速度低5近个百分点）。截至12月14日的高频数据显示（下图），信用卡消费与去年同期相比萎缩4.7%，并且从10月份开始复苏出现停滞。\n\n（美国大通银行信用卡消费同比7天平均值，截至12月14日。数据来源：摩根大通银行）\n\n（美国非农就业人数环比增长，数据来源：美联储经济数据库FRED）\n最为严重的是，就业改善出现逆转。就业是消费的支柱，是经济复苏最主要内在动力，因此是衡量经济复苏的核心指标。由上图可见，截至11月上旬，美国非农就业环比增长自5月份以来持续放缓。而截至12月14日的高频数据显示（下图），最近一个月就业改善开始逆转，总就业人数开始下滑，比2月份降低超过1000万人，这还不包括因经济不景气而造成的半失业人口。\n\n（非农就业总人数：官方数据（蓝）与其他数据（黄）。数据来源：摩根大通银行）\n此外，由于经济前景黯淡，银行在充沛的流动性下，却继续收紧银根。美联储11月份发布的银行调研数据显示（下图），第二季度银行普遍对大中型企业提高商业贷款标准（提高标准的银行数量比未提高的要多出70个百分点），第三季度绝大部分银行在继续提高贷款标准（提高标准的比未提高的多38个百分点）。与此类似，银行在第二季度普遍提高个人消费信贷标准之后，大部分银行在第三季度继续提高标准。银行不断提高信贷标准，反映了银行对经济前景越来越悲观，也会导致信用紧张，影响公司运作和消费复苏。\n\n（提高信用标准的银行净比例：蓝色为商业贷款，红色为个人消费信贷。数据来源：FRED）\n同时，美国底层民众生活日益困难，阻碍经济复苏。严重失业、政府救助不足，再加上借贷无门，导致美国众多家庭难以负担最基本的生活需要。美国政府数据显示（下图），目前有12.7%的美国家庭面临食物短缺，9.1%的家庭缺乏住房保障。对于全球最强大的国家来说，这不仅反映了社会的极度不公（据报道美国最富有阶层在疫情期间由于政府救助而财富大增），而且体现了普通民众消费能力的大幅下降，这将会阻碍经济复苏。\n\n（美国面临食物短缺和缺乏住房保障的家庭比例。数据来源：美国人口普查局）\n（二）另一方面，市场的疯狂出乎意料。\n首先，股市反弹异常迅速，并且连创新高。标普500指数在第一季度一个月之内下跌近30%，然后迅速反弹，6个月内便收复失地且再创新高，截至12月18日今年上涨15%。主要由高科技大公司组成的纳斯达克100股指，在下跌近30%后，反弹更加猛烈，截至12月18日今年上涨超过45%。相比之下，2000年危机，标普500在两年半期间下跌近50%，纳斯达克下跌则超过75%；2008危机，标普500在一年半期间下跌56%，纳斯达克则下跌54%。2008年危机，标普500在6年之后才收复失地，而2000年危机，股指则在13年后才真正恢复。\n\n（美国标500和纳斯达克股指走势。数据来源：雅虎金融）\n此外，股市的市盈率也上升到历史高位。诺贝尔经济学奖得主席勒（Shiller）倡导使用席勒市盈率（P/E），其中分母使用公司长期盈利的平均值（10-15年），取代常用的过去或者未来12个月的盈利。这样可以覆盖整个经济周期，更好反映股市的合理估值。由下图可见，在今年年初席勒P/E（15年）已经高达35，显著超过1929年（27）和2008年（29）大股灾前的水平，仅低于2000年互联网泡沫时的水平。高估值并不意味着股市一定要大跌，例如目前股市估值相当于1998年水平，那时股市依然大涨了两年才最终崩溃。从下图也可以看出，史上历次股市泡沫往往是被经济危机刺破，而且股市估值越高，危机程度越重，下跌幅度就越大。截至12月18日，席勒P/E（15年）已经上升到39。投资专家往往用利率低迷缺乏其他投资选择来为高估值辩护，我们在下节会通过历史数据进行商榷。\n\n（美国标普500的15年席勒PE，灰色部分为经济危机。数据来源dqydj.com）\n同时，IPO市场也处于空前火热状态，而且同样无视公司基本面。2020年IPO融资量接近1500亿美元，远远超过上次高峰1999和2000年的1000亿美元水平（下图）。与此同时，投资人似乎不计公司业绩，有超过80%的IPO公司处于亏损状态，这一比率也与2000年互联网巅峰时相近。例如近日Airbnb的上市，这一在疫情冲击下业务受到沉重打击的互联网旅游租房公司，不仅在IPO中获得1000亿美元估值，而且上市当天股价翻倍。这让人不禁想起2000年投资互联网公司的疯狂。\n\n（美国IPO融资量，单位10亿美元。浅色为SPAC，深色为其他IPO。数据来源：彭博）\n市场疯狂背后的原因值得思考。本轮经济危机之前，股市估值比2008年危机前还高，而且危机程度不论是以经济下滑还是人员失业来衡量，都比2000年和2008年危机更为严重。然而，市场的反应却大相径庭，短暂下滑之后便剧烈反弹并不断创立新高。股市与基本面严重脱离，从“后视镜”中我们可以看到背后有一系列特别原因。\n首先，市场并不认为这将是一场持久、深度的危机。2000和2008年那样的周期性经济危机，旷日持久，会导致大批公司倒闭，而且复苏过程极为缓慢。虽然我们在美国疫情之前就意识到经济已经处于周期性危机的边缘，但市场和经济学家往往对周期性经济危机后知后觉。因此，他们认为这仅是一场疫情对经济的暂时冲击，疫情过后便会恢复常态。随着疫情愈发加重，他们越来越相信一切基本面的坏消息都是疫情的暂时冲击，而非经济出现结构性问题。\n第二，美联储“无限量化”推波助澜。美联储在股市大跌之时不仅降息至零点，而且宣布“无限量”量化宽松，通过扩表超过3万亿美元，为市场注入海量流动性。连美国政府给每人发放的1200美元也成为许多散户在股市上一搏的筹码。由下图可见，美国M2货币总量同比增长高达25%，远超过2008年金融危机高峰的11%。这样汹涌的流动性，对资本市场起到了巨大的推动作用。华尔街流行的一句话是：“永远不要和美联储作对”。\n\n（美国M2货币同比增长率。灰色为经济衰退阶段。数据来源：美联储经济数据库FRED）\n第三，投资人主观寻找一切理由支持股市上涨。本来就对经济危机毫无察觉的投资人，在充沛流动性的怂恿下，愿意寻找一切理由来解释股票上涨的合理性。从大选对股市的影响中就可以看出这种主观自我合理化的现象。民主党在大选前有望通吃总统和参院宝座，解释为民主党政府刺激幅度大、有利经济复苏，于是股市大涨。特朗普后来选票领先，解释为特朗普政策更有利于投资人，于是股市大涨；最后是民主党当总统，共和党大概率占参院，解释为分裂政府互相制约利于政策稳定，股市依然大涨。可见即使是互相矛盾的消息，也不影响投资人找到理由推动股市上涨。\n第四，疫情带来高科技新经济模式故事动人。标普500行业指数中，美国科技巨头所在的科技、非必需消费和通讯服务行业，今年分别暴涨40%、28%和25%，而与实体经济直接相关的能源行业则暴跌33%（下图）。要想形成股市狂涨大潮，一定要有所有人都听得懂的动人故事。1990年代是互联网改变经济模式，股市将持续上涨；2000年代是金融创新降低市场风险，股市将持续上涨；2010年代是长期低息降低回报要求，股市将持续上涨。疫情改变人类生活，迎来高科技未来的故事，简单易懂，充满诱惑。当然，从前多少动人故事都以股灾结束，“这次不同”--这被誉为金融史上最昂贵的四个字--这次真会实现吗？\n\n（美国标普500行业股指今年走势，数据来源：雅虎金融）\n第五，散户蜂拥而上撬动市场。这个故事简单到所有小股民都能理解和认同。据报道，一贯以机构投资者占统治地位的美国，个人交易账户和交易活动在疫情爆发之后剧增。散户投资者虽然资金量不大，但往往使用衍生品做杠杆，因此可以撬动较大资金，对市场造成超出比例的影响。\n第六，数字化和被动交易，也加剧了市场的跟风趋势。数字化交易和被动投资在过去20年在美国发展迅速，在近年已经成长为主流。被动投资对基本面不做分析，跟随市场方向买卖。而量化策略则往往注重短期趋势，鲜能对长期宏观走势做出正确判断，而且交易逻辑大多相近，导致交易方向趋同。这些交易策略的发展，加剧了市场与基本面的脱离。\n以上的一系列现象，其实都是市场泡沫的经典特征。对危机风险毫无察觉的投资人，在联储巨大流动性推动下，寻找一切支持股市上涨的理由，被一个动人的故事所折服，带动无数散户蜂拥而上，再加上数字化和被动交易助长跟风投资。这一切都导致泡沫的滋生在所难免，股市会背离基本面越来越远。然而历史证明，凝重的现实终究会将股市拉回地面。\n2020年给我们最大的教训，是再次学习了华尔街的那句老话：“市场保持非理性的时间能比你可以支撑的时间更长”（The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent）。在市场泡沫严重的情况下逆流做空市场，虽然最终或将获胜，但在相当长的时期内可能会损失惨重。\n二、展望2021：前景不定风险四伏\n展望2021，支撑股市的一系列乐观假设难保完全实现，泡沫破碎的风险不可忽视。如果以下情况发生，市场便会做出相应调整，情况严重的话甚至会造成股市大幅下行。\n第一，经济危机：即使疫情被控，危机可能尚未出清，利润难以高速增长。美国在疫情之前便需求疲软，处于生产相对过剩的周期性经济危机边缘，而疫情进一步减弱了需求。即使疫情被控，在工人大批失业、企业财政削弱的情况下，消费和投资需求也难以迅速恢复，公司利润便难以高速增长。更为严重的是，这种供需极端不平衡，通常需要以危机形式大规模摧毁资本和产能以降低供给才能出清，使得剩下的强壮公司能够重新开始盈利增长，开始新一轮经济周期。根据彭博数据，2008年1月至2009年6月经济危机期间，美国总共有370家债务规模在5000万美元以上的企业倒闭。由于目前美国非金融公司负债总量（31.2万亿美元）已经增长到2008年（15.4万亿美元）的两倍，负债在5000万美元以上的公司数量比2008年应会显著增加。因此，要摧毁同样比例的资本和产能，破产公司的数目需要显著超过2008年危机的370家。相比之下，截至12月12日，在美国政府的空前巨款救助下，债务规模在5000万美元以上的公司今年只有236家倒闭。这意味着可能依然需要大批企业倒闭才能使经济真正出清。因此，经济危机可能并未真正结束。\n第二，疫情发展：政府消极导致疫情失控，疫苗出笼之后的前景尚未完全明朗。投资预期疫苗出笼后美国疫情可以较快得以控制，正常生活可以基本恢复，消费需求得以释放。然而，美国疫情异常严重，单位人口确诊率远超过其他西方国家（见下图）。此外，由于特朗普等右翼政客的误导宣传，许多民众不相信新冠病毒的危害性。而那些相信危害性的民众，又有不少对政府和药商仓促推出的疫苗的安全性存在质疑，因此有大部分美国人表示不愿接受疫苗。同时，由于美国疫苗需要超低温存储，运输和分配都存在较大困难。这样看来，疫情何时能够被控还不确定。时间拖得越长，公司倒闭越多，企业和个人财政状况越恶化，工人重新就业越困难，疫情对经济活力的长期影响就可能越深，复苏就越困难。\n\n（每10万人口新冠确诊数目：美国深红，欧盟深绿，加拿大红色，日本绿色，韩国粉色）\n第三，政府政策：难以起到足够作用真正扭转经济颓势。一方面，财政政策虽然可以较好缓解需求不足问题推动经济复苏，但美国资本不愿为公共投资和社会福利买单，实施面临重重政治阻力。例如新一轮的财政救助计划，虽然规模由预期的1.5万亿美元降低到9000亿美元，但依然在国会扯皮尚未通过，而对经济提振行之有效的基建计划更是渺无踪影。另一方面，超宽松货币政策虽然可以支撑资产泡沫滋生，但美日欧盟的长期实践结果证明对实体经济作用有限，而且会加剧贫富分化，恶化投资和需求的不平衡，加剧经济危机而引发泡沫破裂。\n\n（红色为道琼斯股指，蓝色为3月期国债利率，红色为AAA级企债收益率，灰色为经济危机）\n美联储主席鲍威尔近期表示将长期保持利率低迷，同时他赞同市场主流观点，表示长期低利率环境下股市高估值合理。但历史数据却没有这么乐观：由上图可见，在1929年大萧条后，从1934年到1945年间，美国利率长期低迷，3月期国债一直在0.5%以下，而企债收益率也在1937年降到了3%左右。道琼斯股指在1934至1937年间大涨近一倍，但好景不长。1937年周期性经济危机再度爆发，股市在一年内暴跌近40%，后来4年震荡下行15%。看来低息环境并不能保障股市长盛不衰，涨到何时要看经济是否会深陷危机。\n\n（美国消费信贷总量。数据来源：美联储经济数据库FRED）\n第四，债务风险：企业个人债台高筑，债务危机风险急剧累积。首先，目前企业借贷和个人消费负债程度已经远超过2008次贷危机前夕水平。由上图可见，美国消费信贷总量近年不断增长，比2008年危机前增加了62%。而下图显示，美国非金融公司的杠杆率目前已经上升到2008年危机前的2倍。更为严重的是，数据显示目前次贷规模比次贷危机前还要高。投资级企债最低档的BBB级债券的发行量过去10年不断飙升，到2019年已经是次贷危机前夕3倍，而低评级公司债的占比由2008年的不到20%上升到近40%，翻了一番。彭博报道显示，2020年在疫情冲击和美联储放水作用下，美国垃圾债发行量创历时记录。在目前经济形势严峻的情况下，债务危机风险不可忽视。如果债务危机传导到金融系统引发金融危机，那后果将更加不堪设想。\n\n（美国非金融公司杠杆率。数据来源：美联储经济数据库）\n总而言之，2020年美国股市在惨淡经济背景下由于前述原因疯狂暴涨，但2021年前景并不那么乐观，支撑股市的一系列前提假设难保全部实现，可能引发泡沫破裂的重重风险不可忽视。","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{".IXIC":0.9,".DJI":0.9,"SPY":0.9,".SPX":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":4621,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"lives":[]}
