Sunday, April 8, 2018

8/4/18: Talent vs Luck: Differentiating Success from Failure


In their paper, "Talent vs Luck: the role of randomness in success and failure", A. Pluchino. A. E. Biondo, A. Rapisarda (25 Feb 2018: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07068.pdf) tackle the mythology of the "dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western cultures... rooted on the belief that success is due mainly, if not exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, efforts or risk taking".

The authors note that, although "sometimes, we are willing to admit that a certain degree of luck could also play a role in achieving significant material success, ...it is rather common to underestimate the importance of external forces in individual successful stories".

Some priors first: "intelligence or talent exhibit a Gaussian distribution among the population, whereas the distribution of wealth - considered a proxy of success - follows typically a power law (Pareto law). Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes."

The authors show evidence that suggests that "such an [missing] ingredient is just randomness". Or, put differently, a chance.

The authors "show that, if it is true that some degree of talent is necessary to be successful in life, almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success, being overtaken by mediocre but sensibly luckier individuals."

Two pictures are worth a 1000 words, each:

Figure 5 taken from the paper shows:

  • In panel (a): Total number of lucky events and
  • In panel (b): Total number of unlucky events 

Both are shown as "function of the capital/success of the agents"


Overall, "the plot shows the existence of a strong correlation between success and luck: the most successful individuals are also the luckiest ones, while the less successful are also the unluckiest ones."

Figure 7 shows:
In panel (a): Distribution of the final capital/success for a population with different random initial conditions, that follows a power law.
In panel (b): The final capital of the most successful individuals is "reported as function of their talent".

Overall, "people with a medium-high talent result to be, on average, more successful than people with low or medium-low talent, but very often the most successful individual is a moderately gifted agent and only rarely the most talented one.


Main conclusions on the paper are:

  • "The model shows the importance, very frequently underestimated, of lucky events in determining the final level of individual success." 
  • "Since rewards and resources are usually given to those that have already reached a high level of success, mistakenly considered as a measure of competence/talent, this result is even a more harmful disincentive, causing a lack of opportunities for the most talented ones."

The results are "a warning against the risks of what we call the ”naive meritocracy” which, underestimating the role of randomness among the determinants of success, often fail to give honors and rewards to the most competent people."

7/4/18: Markets Message Indicator: Ouuuuch... it hurts


An interesting chart from the VUCA family, courtesy of @Business:


'Markets Message Indicator', created by Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Leuthold Weeden Capital Management, takes 5 different data ratios: stock market relative performance compared to the bond market, cyclical stocks performance relative to defensive stocks, corporate bond spreads, the copper-to-gold price ratio, and a U.S. dollar index. The idea is to capture broad stress build up across a range of markets and asset classes, or, in VUCA terms - tallying up stress on all financial roads that investors my use to escape pressure in one of the asset markets.

Bloomberg runs some analysis of these five components here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-03/paulsen-says-proceed-with-caution-across-many-asset-classes. And it is a scary read through the charts. But...

... the real kicker comes from looking back at the chart above. The red oval puts emphasis on the most recent market correction, the downturn and increased volatility that shattered the myth of the Goldilocks Markets. And it barely makes a splash in drawing down the excess stress built across the 'Markets Message Indicator'.

Now, that is a scary thought.

Friday, March 30, 2018

29/3/18: Credit downgrades and the sunny horizons of peak growth


The global economy is picking up steam. The U.S. economy is roaring to strength. 2018 is going to be another 'peak year'. Tax cuts are driving equity valuations up. Corporate balance sheets are getting healthier by a day... and so on.

The positivity of recent headline has been contrasted by the realities of the gargantuan bubble in corporate debt. A bubble that is not going to get any healthier any time soon. In fact, based on the latest data (through 4Q 2017) from the S&P Global Market Intelligence, H1 2017 trend toward relatively balanced (or rather relatively moderately negative skew) credit ratings has turned decisively negative in 2H 2017. Worse, 4Q 2017 dynamics were markedly worse than 3Q 2017 dynamics:


Which brings up the following question: if things are getting downgraded that fast, what's likely to happen with the Fed policy 'normalization' impact on the corporate credit markets? Answers on tears-proof napkins, please.

Thursday, March 29, 2018

29/3/18: Matthew Rojansky on U.S.-Russia relations


It is rather rare that an occasion comes up on which I comment on political issues directly (absent the prism of economics or finance). A rarer, yet, are the occasions when such comments involve a positive assessment of the power-broker or 'power elite' analysts contributions on the topic of the U.S.-Russia relations.

This is an occasion to do both. Here is an interview that is a must-watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=oiOrU5_JWao&utm_content=buffer011ee&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer.

In it, Matthew Rojansky, Director of the Wilson Center’s Kenan Institute, discusses US-Russia relations in the Trump-Putin era and makes several pivotal points, some of which I have raised before, but I have not heard being raised by an analyst who is, like Rojansky, is wired into Washington elite. At just over 5 minutes, is is a MUST-watch.


Monday, March 26, 2018

25/3/18: Average Tariffs: 2000-2016


So how do the world's largest 50 economies (by size) score when it comes to the average trade tariffs they have in place? Who is the free trade champion? And who is not?

Here is the data on top 50 largest global economies (I have aggregated EU members of the top 50) into one group, as they share common tariffs against the rest of the world:

Source: data from the World Bank

One thing is clear: tariffs did come down quite substantially between 2000 and 2016. Average world-wide tariff in 2000 stood at just over 8.69%, which fell to just under 4.29% by 2016.

Another interesting fact is that the U.S. average tariff of 1.61% is matched by the EU's 1.6%, with both higher than Australia's 1.17%, Canada's 0.85%, Japan's 1.35%, and Norway's 1.02%. So, the free trade champions of the U.S. and EU are, sort of, poorer than average for the advanced economies, when it comes to trading free of tariffs protection.

Third point worth noting relates to the BRICS: these the largest emerging economies, jointly accounting for 32.0% of the global GDP (PPP-adjusted). Brazil's average tariff in 2016 stood at 8.01%, down from 12.69% in 2000. Russia's average tariff in 2016 stood at 3.43% and we do not have that figure for 2000, while India's was at 6.32% (down from 23.28% in 2000), China's fell from 14.67% in 2000 to 3.54% in 2016, while South Africa's average tariff declined from 4.5% in 2000 to 4.19% in 2016. So, amongst the BRICS, today, Brazil imposes the highest tariffs (86.8% higher than the global average), followed by India (47.4% above the global average), S. Africa (2.3% below the global average),  China (17.4% below the global average), and Russia (20% below the global average). In other words, based on average tariffs, Russia is the most open to trade economy in the BRICS group, followed by China.

Of course, tariffs are not the only barriers to trade, and in fact, non-tariff protectionism measures have been more important in the era of the WTO agreements. However, the data on tariffs is somewhat illustrative.

Here is the same data, covering 2010 and 2016 periods, arranged by the order of magnitude for 2016 tariffs:
Source: data from the World Bank

Sunday, March 25, 2018

24/3/18: Secular Stagnations Visit Morgan Stanley


Morgan Stanley jumps onto the secular stagnations thesis band wagon: http://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/ruchir-sharma-trends-2018 and adds an obvious cross-driver to the equation: monetary policy heading for the end of the Great Liquidity Wash.


25/3/18: Quantum computing and cyber security: a perfectly VUCA mix?

One interesting topic worth discussing in the context of VUCA and systemic resilience is quantum computing. The promise of quantum computing offers a prospect of altering completely the existent encryption methods effectiveness. 

Here is one view:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361372317300519 suggesting that quantum computing is not a threat to current cryptographic systems, although the core argument here is that it is not a threat in its current state.



There is a lot of technical stuff involved, but an interesting topic from geopolitical risks perspective for sure, and involves long term strategic positioning by the usual adversaries, the U.S. and China. 



24/3/18: Dysfunctional Labour Markets? Ireland’s Activity Rates 2007-2016


Having posted previously on the continued problem of low labour force participation rates in Ireland, here is another piece of supporting evidence that the recovery in unemployment figures has been masking some pretty disturbing underlying trends. The following chart shows labour force Activity Rates reported by Eurostat:


Note: per Eurostat: "According to the definitions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) the activity rate is the percentage of economically active population aged 15-64 on the total population of the same age group."

Ireland’s showing is pretty poor across the board. At the end of 2016, Irish labour force activity rate stood at 69.3%, or 16th lowest in the EU. For Nordic countries, members of the EU, the rate stood at 71.2, while for Norway, Switzerland and Iceland, the average rate was 78.2.

Over time, compared to 2007-2008 average, Irish activity rate was still down 1.6 percentage points in 2016. In the Euro area, the movement was up 2 percentage points. Of all EU countries, only two: Cyprus and Finland, posted decreases in 2016 activity rates compared to 2007-2008 average.

For an economy with no pressing ageing concerns, Ireland has a labour market that appears to be dysfunctionally out of touch with realities of the modern economy. In part, this reflects a positive fact: Ireland sports high rates of younger adults in-education, helped by our healthy demographics. However, given the structure of Irish migration (especially net immigration of the younger skilled workers into Ireland) and given sky-high rates of disability claims in Ireland, the low activity rate also reflects low level of labour force participation. In this context, younger demographic make up of the country stands in stark contradiction to this factor.

According to Census 2016, "There was a total of 643,131 people with a disability in April 2016 accounting for 13.5 per cent of the population; this represented an increase of 47,796 persons on the 2011 figure of 595,335 when it accounted for 13.0 per cent of the population." (Source: http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/newsevents/documents/census2016summaryresultspart2/Census_2016_Summary_Results_%E2%80%93_Part_2.pdf) However, "Of the total 643,131 persons with a disability 130,067 were at work, accounting for 6.5 per cent of the workforce. Among those aged 25-34, almost half (47.8%) were at work whereas by age 55 to 64 only 25 per cent of those with a disability were at work." Another potential driver of low economic activity rate in Ireland is the structure of long term care within the healthcare (or rather effective non-existent structure of such care), pushing large number of the Irish people of working age into provision of care for the long-term ill relatives.

Here is the OECD data (for 2016) on labour force participation rates:

Source: https://data.oecd.org/emp/labour-force-participation-rate.htm.

24/3/18: A Traders’ Nightmare: When all Risks Coincide



Really great analysis of recent volatility spike (early February correction) from the BIS Quarterly:

“The VIX is an index of one-month implied volatility constructed from S&P 500 option prices across a range of strike prices. …Because it is derived from option prices, theoretically the VIX is the sum of expected future volatility and the volatility risk premium. Model estimates indicate that the rise in the VIX on 5 February far exceeded the change in expectations about future volatility (Graph A1, centre panel). The magnitude of the risk premium (ie the model residual) suggests that the VIX spike was largely due to internal dynamics in equity options or VIX futures markets.”


“Indeed, the considerable expansion in the VIX futures market – market size (ie total open interest) rose from a daily average of about 180,000 contracts in 2011 to 590,000 in 2017 – means such dynamics are likely to have had a growing impact on the level of the VIX.”

And the dynamics were spectacular. Per BIS:
“Among the growing users of VIX futures are issuers of volatility exchange-traded products (ETPs). These products allow investors to trade volatility for hedging or speculative purposes. Issuers of leveraged volatility ETPs take long positions in VIX futures to magnify returns relative to the VIX – for example, a 2X VIX ETP with $200 million in assets would double the daily gains or losses for its investors by using leverage to build a $400 million notional position in VIX futures. Inverse volatility ETPs take short positions in VIX futures so as to allow investors to bet on lower volatility.” One that comes to mind immediately is XIV. 

And things went spectacularly South for these, once VIX started heading North.
“The assets of select leveraged and inverse volatility ETPs have expanded sharply over recent years, reaching about $15 billion at end-2017 (Graph A1, right-hand panel). …many market participants use these products to make long-term bets on volatility remaining low or becoming lower. Given the historical tendency of volatility increases to be rather sharp, such strategies can amount to “collecting pennies in front of a steamroller”.

“Even though the aggregate positions in these instruments are relatively small, systematic trading strategies of the issuers of leveraged and inverse volatility ETPs appear to have been a key factor behind the volatility spike that occurred on the afternoon of 5 February. Given the rise in the VIX earlier in the day, market participants could expect leveraged long volatility ETPs to rebalance their holdings by buying more VIX futures at the end of the day to maintain their target daily exposure (eg twice or three times their assets). They also knew that inverse volatility ETPs would have to buy VIX futures to cover the losses on their short position in VIX futures. So, both long and short volatility ETPs had to buy VIX futures. The rebalancing by both types of funds takes place right before 16:15, when they publish their daily net asset value. Hence, because the VIX had already been rising since the previous trading day, market participants knew that both types of ETP would be positioned on the same side of the VIX futures market right after New York equity market close.”

“The scene was set.” Or put differently, once information about leveraged funds having to go long at the end of the day became market information, arbitrage went to work like a sledgehammer over trading books. The impact risk, compounded by adverse price movements, went through the roof. The two key changes in trading environment were made even more egregious by the fact that intraday spreads are usually higher toward the day close, and risk of non-execution had become completely intolerable for the leveraged funds. Which means spreads ballooned. This was a classic trading nightmare:

“There were signs that other market participants began bidding up VIX futures prices at around 15:30 in anticipation of the end-of-day rebalancing by volatility ETPs (Graph A2, left-hand panel). Due to the mechanical nature of the rebalancing, a higher VIX futures price necessitated even greater VIX futures purchases by the ETPs, creating a feedback loop. Transaction data show a spike in trading volume to 115,862 VIX futures contracts, or roughly one quarter of the entire market, and at highly inflated prices, within one minute at 16:08. The value of one of the inverse volatility ETPs, XIV, fell 84% and the product was subsequently terminated.”



Friday, March 23, 2018

23/3/18: Still Printing Their Ways Into Prosperity: The Big Three


Just a gentle reminder... the QE is still going on, folks...


As of mid-March, total assets on BOJ, ECB, PBOC and Fed balancesheets have amounted to USD 20.6 trillion, excluding PBOC - USD 14.9 trillion. In Q4 2017 terms (the latest comparable data for GDP), US Fed's assets holdings amounted to 22.4% of GDP of the country, ECB's to 38.9% and BOJ's to 94.5%.  In three largest advanced economies in the world, the Central Banks' created liquidity (printing money for Governments) remains the only game in town, when it comes to sustaining both, asset prices and fiscal profligacy.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

22/3/18: The Fed is boldly going where it was going before


My article on yesterday's Fed meeting is now up on Business Post page: https://www.businesspost.ie/opinion/fed-boldly-going-going-412191.



And a handy chart from Bloomberg on the relative size of the U.S. Fed's balancesheet, compared to other major Central Banks:


My key takeaway from the Fed meeting:

On the net, the Fed opted to continue underwriting the complete lack of fiscal discipline sweeping Washington these days. Since taking office, the current Presidential Administration has embarked on two major fiscal stimuli, involving the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2017 and the Government funding agreement that was delivered to the Congress late Wednesday night. The latter amounts to $1.3 trillion of new spending, $700 billion of which will flow to Pentagon. The new Bill will push projected 2018 U.S. fiscal deficit beyond $1 trillion mark, up on $665 billion last year. In January, President Trump has promised a third stimulus - the proposed $1.5 trillion infrastructure development plan - to be delivered later this year. By committing to continue slow deleveraging of the Fed’s  $4.4 trillion balance sheet, and by holding steady on small-step rates increases through 2018, Powell is de facto sustaining financing support for the swelling Federal deficits.

With calm and poise, the Fed’s new Chairman delivered no surprises, no dramas, a little dose of bitter medicine, and a lot of hopes. Unsurprisingly, dollar fell back 0.77 percent against the basket of major currencies, stocks slipped by less than 0.2 percent, and yields ended the day lower, following some volatile trading, while the yield curve flattened in the wake of the Fed’s decision. Like the FOMC projections for economic growth, the markets’ reaction to the Fed’s musings lacked conviction.

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

20/3/18: Market Power and 5 Macroeconomic Puzzles: Rotten State of the ‘Competitive Markets’


Washington Centre for Equitable Growth has recently published a new modified version of the neoclassical model attempting to explain a number of empirical facts. A paper by Gauti Eggertsson, Jacob A. Robbins, Ella Getz Wold, titled “Kaldor and Piketty’s Facts: The Rise of Monopoly Power in the United States” (February 2018: http://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/kaldor-piketty-monopoly-power/) departs from the empirical observation that the empirical facts of the real economy can be reconciled with in contrast to the traditional neoclassical models. Specifically, per authors:

  • “(P1) An increase in the financial wealth-to-income ratio despite low savings rates, with a stagnating capital-to-income ratio.”
  • “(P2) An increase in Tobin’s Q to a level permanently above 1.” So that stock market value of assets exceeds productive value of assets.
  • “(P3) A decrease in the real rate of interest, while the measured average return on capital is relatively constant.” So profit margins on investment rise.
  • “(P4) An increase in the pure profit share, with a decrease in the capital and labor share.” So shareholders get to carry away more in returns, while capital suppliers and workers get less.
  • “(P5) A decrease in investment-to-output, even given historically low borrowing costs and a high value of empirical Tobin’s Q.” In  other words, low investment, even as the interest rates (cost of investment) fall.


Table 1: Factor shares. 5-year moving averages

The paper then modifies the standard neoclassical model. The authors introduce a market concentration distortion: “an increase in monopoly profits, [coupled] with a decrease in the natural rate of interest”.

To justify this, they, first, “depart from perfect competition, and posit that market power allows firms to make pure profits”. Second, authors assert that “there are barriers to entry, which prevent competition from driving these profits to zero.” This is consistent with the proposition that we are witnessing increased pressure of monopolistic and oligopolistic competition in the U.S. economy, as covered by me in a range of previous posts and articles.

“Third, claims to the (nonzero) pure profits of firms are traded and priced, and the ratio of the market
value of firms (which includes the rights to pure profits) to the replacement value of the productive capital stock is permanently above one; this ratio is commonly known as “empirical Tobin’s Q”.” Note that the tradability of pure profits of the firm (as opposed to rents on capital) is a distinct part of the model. Traditionally, we think of stock markets valuations as reflective of economic rents, not pure profits. That is so, because we assume that over the longer run, pure profits are driven down to zero. However, if/when pure profits are non-zero, stock market valuations are reflective of both: capital rents (low, due to extremely low cost of credit), plus pure profit (high, due to the transfers from interest rate subsidy from labor and technology logical capital to financial capital via pure profit monetisation, plus, dare I say it, the monetary policies excesses of the recent past).

CHART 1

Now, the authors confine their explanation for market power perpetuation to the following: “Because of the barriers to entry, the assets which hold the rights to the pure profits are non-reproducible: unlike productive capital, individuals cannot recreate these assets through investment, they must instead purchase them from others.” Personally, I would agree that barriers to entry - formal ones, e.g. via licensing and regulation - are one part of the problem. But there is a more direct problem arising in the American economy as well: concentration driven by pure monopolistic differentiation (see buy post on this here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2018/03/28218-san-francisco-fed-research.html, and here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2018/02/7218-american-wages-corporotocracy-why.html, and here: http://trueeconomics.blogspot.com/2018/02/9218-angus-deaton-on-monopolization-and.html.

The authors simply ignore this consideration as if it represents an uncomfortable truth about the state of the modern American society and economy. Instead, they create a marginal wrap-around argument to explain these dynamics: “This produces an interesting result: returns to assets that receive the rights to pure profits are significantly riskier than the returns to productive capital.” Why would returns to pure profit assets be riskier? Because the authors want to explain the differential between the returns to pure profit (higher) and the returns to productive capital (lower) by something ‘organic’, related to traditional financial theory. In other words, they need to show that pure profits returns bear additional risk and are paid additional risk premium over and above the returns to productive capital.

Here’s the authors’ argument: “The reason for this result is closely connected to the non-reproducibility of the assets which hold the rights to pure profits. When the economy is shocked, the price of these assets show large fluctuations, because their supply is fixed. In comparison, there is less fluctuation in the price of productive capital, since the supply is not fixed and it can be produced through new investment; the variance of the price of productive capital is determined in our model by the level of capital adjustment costs. As the economy transforms from one in which the majority of assets by market value are productive capital into one dominated by pure economic rents, this generates an endogenous increase in risk premium.”

CHART 2: Average return on capital


I do not buy this argument AT ALL. Let me explain. Non-reproducibility of these assets is a pure, unadulterated nonsense. We used to have Microsoft (a monopoly) and then we got Google (another monopoly), then we got FAANGS (more monopolies), and so on. If anything, rising concentration of the S&P 500 at the hands of larger, monopolistic issuers strongly suggests not only that the monopolistic assets ARE reproducible, but the our financial markets are solely preoccupied with reproducing them. Behold the ‘unicorns’.

The real driver for the abnormal (pure profit-linked) returns is the very existence of that pure profit, driven by: (a) regulatory barriers to entry (think banks), (b) state subsidies (think Tesla), (c) market macrostructure (think Google and Facebook), (d) rampant rent-seeking (think all), (e) outdated anti-trust regulations (think the U.S. system dominated by only one consideration, that of the material harm to consumers, that ignores the fact that modern ICT services are NOT your typical transactions, and involve a barter-type set of transactions between consumers and, say, Google). Majority of these drivers are reinforced by the selectively ultra-low cost of funding for the monopolistic competitors, available courtesy of the rounds and rounds of global risk-mispricing, aka, QE.

Despite the above shortcomings, the paper is an important one. Its conclusions are succinct and far-reaching. “There are a number of reasons why we argue for this hypothesis (i) there is a wide variety of confirmatory evidence that concentration, profits, and markups have increased over the time period, while the natural rate of interest has decreased (ii) it is parsimonious, in the sense that we use two data series (markups and interest rates) to explain the movements of 5 separate trends (iii) our model does not generate counterfactual implications.”

“In this paper, we argue that these trends can be explained by an increase in market power and pure profits in the US economy, i.e., the emergence of a non-zero-rent economy, along with forces that have led to a persistent long term decline in real interest rates.” Whatever your views on the causal factors might be, the dangers inherent in this systemic dismantling of the competitive, open, entrepreneurial model of the American economy of the past is a major source of future risks, uncertainties and social risks.