Sunday, June 21, 2015

Phisix 7,600: Shrinking Market Liquidity and Media’s Demand for More Stimulus!

If you react to that by piling more intervention on intervention, you encourage more untoward risk taking and you end up with even greater amount of mispriced risk, you end up with a never-ending cycle that is harder and harder to get out of- Ashley Alder, chief executive officer of Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission on central banks as market makers of last resort

In this issue

Phisix 7,600: Shrinking Market Liquidity and Media’s Demand for More Stimulus!

-Record Phisix in the Face of Shrinking Market Liquidity
-Divergences Even Among Key Phisix Issues
-Philippine Stocks: SECOND MOST Expensive in the World!
-More Signs of Shrinking Liquidity at the Treasury Markets
-Bureau of Customs April’s 8.5% Deficit: It’s Not About Oil, It’s About the Economy
-Media Downscales on G-R-O-W-T-H! Pressures Government for More Stimulus!

Phisix 7,600: Shrinking Market Liquidity and Media’s Demand for More Stimulus!

So finally the Philippine equity benchmark finally broke the recent losing streak.

With a sizeable 1.3% advance, the Phisix posted its first weekly gain in four. This week’s gains have added some cushion to protect the record levels from the incursion of the bears.

To recall, just the other week, the bears launched a blitzkrieg which easily smashed through the lines of record 7,400 Phisix, as well as, the 7,350 support levels before the selling momentum faded.

So far, the Phisix has recovered 3.79% from its closing low last June 9th at below record 7,323.44. But the headline index remains 6.48% off the April 10th record of 8,127.48.


The benchmark’s resistance can be seen at 7,728. On the other hand, the support, which was also encroached the other week, remains at 7,350.

The chart above also shows of the peso which partially recovered this week at 45.11 to a US dollar from the other week’s 45.15.

Incidentally, the current ‘peak’ in the USD-php has almost coincided with trough of the Phisix. Should history repeat where the peso’s performance will resonate with the equity benchmark—then a weak peso will suffuse onto a lackluster Phisix and vice versa.

Both have served as primary indicators to herald the 1997 Asian Crisis.

Record Phisix in the Face of Shrinking Market Liquidity

Last week, I noted that developments at the general marketplace should CONFORM with the actions of the index for a trend to be reckoned as sustainable[1]
Little has been appreciated that the headline index DEPENDS on the OVERALL health conditions of the entire population of listed stocks.
So watching the underlying actions of the bids (or the buyers) will be crucial in establishing whether last week’s activities represented an oversold bounce or a resumption of a secular trend.

For a week where the Phisix scored a substantial 1.3% headline advance, the considerable degree of gains should have filtered into the general market.

Additionally, considering the sustained dominance of bears at the broader market—or bears as the overriding force behind the scenes—it would have been natural to expect some reprieve in favor of the bulls.

But reprieve seems nowhere been in sight yet. 


This week’s headline improvement came with attenuated peso trading volume. 

The daily peso average of Php 7.78 billion per day ranks the FIFTH lowest for the year (left)! Moreover, it’s been four out of the five weeks where peso volume has traded below the Php 8 billion even as the Phisix drifts at record territory!

While sellers haven’t been aggressive, the bulls led by index managers can only do so much. Sellers have only taken advantage of aggressive buyers to sell at higher levels. So unless bulls can muster more volume, the task to regain the old high will signify an arduous challenge.

Importantly, whatever trading volume generated has increasingly been directed to the top 15 issues of the headline index. And the dearth of volume on the general market reveals of the increasing concentration of trading activities and risks on headline sensitive issues.

Aside from volume, this week’s frenetic push of the benchmark has seen little participation from the broad market in the context of market breadth or the advance decline spread.

So what else has been new?

With index’s 1.3% gain, one would at least expect SOME improvements. Yet as a continuing trend for the year, losers still edged out gainers 413 to 391 for the week. (right window)

The distribution of days has been in favor of losers: 3 against 2. The tally board: June 15: 72 advancers 91 decliners, June 16: 77 to 85, June 17: 77 to 90. The single day in favor of winners Thursday June 17: 89 to 71. Friday June 19 was dead even at 76 all.

So seller’s still rule the market despite the 1.3% headline.

And low volume coupled with the dominance of sellers seems to have NOW been accompanied by rapidly shrinking trading activities.


This week’s average daily trades have dwindled to the lowest level since December 2014, or accounts for the lowest number for the year! 

Meanwhile, average total daily traded issues have collapsed to 1Q 2014 lows!

Both daily trades and total traded issues can serve as a measure of market sentiment.

Although both have surged to records in 2014, it appears that these sentiment gauges has hardly helped market breadth. Instead, they seem to indicate of rotational actions: partial selling of broad market, partial pushing of select or a few non-Phisix and the key thrust has been to power headline issues via significant accounts of churning (as possibly seen in average daily trades).

While the collapse in average total traded issues may translate to the easing of selling pressures at the broad market, it is also telling sign of the massive contraction of trading activities.

All these suggest of a materially withering market liquidity now being ventilated as immensely reduced trading activities!

And again, the only thing that has kept the Phisix at record levels has been the tenacious concentration of rotational pumping of big ticket headline sensitive issues!

And current market activities hardly seem about reflecting price discovery, but about the propping of headline stocks.

When price discovery has been rendered dysfunctional, then the vast distortions of said security prices will be subject to the risk of an eventual violent market clearing process.

The obverse side of every artificial boom is a bust.

Divergences Even Among Key Phisix Issues


Stunningly, not even the 15 largest heavyweights had been unanimous. 

Seen from the perspective of the sectoral indices, the property and service sectors have defied the selective pumps in the Industrial, Holding and Financial sectors.

And interestingly, the index outperformers had largely been products of huge price pops by JUST five companies: URC (+7.03%), JG Summit (+5.15%), Security Bank (+7.84%), Ayala Corp (+4.24%) and EDC (+3.98%).

And remarkably, four of these five issues are members of the PSEi indices. Furthermore, three of the four issues belong to the elite 8 largest market cap. As of Friday, the market cap share of these issues as follows: URC 5.66%, JG Summit 5.33%, Ayala Corp 5.9% and EDC 2.11%. In total, the combined weights of the four accounts for 19% share of the basket. Thus the huge gains by these issues embellished the sectoral advances, and more importantly, the headline index.

Additionally only 21 of the 30 issues (or two thirds) closed the week in green while one third or 9 ended the week with a loss. So divergences exist even within the headline index basket.

The bottom line is that only four issues have been responsible for the gist of this week’s 1.3% advance!

And essentially the same dynamics has underscored record Phisix of 2015: a manipulated pump!

Yet the deepening corrosion of foundations undergirds record Phisix!

Philippine Stocks: SECOND MOST Expensive in the World!

And as increasing signs of the pricing system contortions, it’s becoming a lot obvious even to foreign investors that Philippine equity prices has become massively overvalued!


Well, the prestigious rank of the SECOND most EXPENSIVE stock market in the world belongs to the Philippines! Indonesia has been in close THIRD.

The prolific Gavekal team commented[2] (bold mine)
To put that in more perspective, only 9 out of 46 countries currently have price to cash flow below 10x and five countries (Switzerland, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, and India) have a price to cash ratio above 20x. The US is currently trading at 16.9x cash flow.
Just awesome!

Of course, the reason for the artificially “lower” P/E ratio has been because some of the non-participating issues in the making of the headline record, which have been in bear markets, have weighed on the overall P/E or has offset the overvaluations of the others. Fundamentally, the biggest mispricing have mostly been in the top 15 headline stocks.

Current price levels should be seen instead as manifestations of wanton speculative PUMPs rather than from stocks as a function of discounted stream of expected cash flows

Thus, popular claims that paying for 28.8 price per cash flow represents ‘fundamentals’ or G-R-O-W-T-H should be seen instead as unalloyed hokum.

G-R-O-W-T-H has been transformed into a catchphrase or a shibboleth used by the establishment to unduly seduce the gullible public to jump into the speculative bandwagon and become part of the invisible transfer process as sources of funds/savings from which the establishment taps (aside from equity pumps, think equity and bond offerings, placements and etc..; inflated tax revenues financing government budgets)

This invisible transfer process, or stimulus in favor of the government and the oligarchy, that has been enabled and facilitated by financial repression policies through negative real rates, has only penalized the average person’s savings, incomes and of the currency holders with little or no assets. Negative real rates nudge via implied coercion the susceptible and unsuspecting public to join the transfer process. Yet unknowingly, the public carries with them the burden of various risks from such transfers (market, credit, currency and interest rate risks). Bizarrely, the BSP calls this reverse Robin Hood policy as ‘responsible’

Yet any signs of downturn on headline G-R-O-W-T-H numbers will only send valuations even higher (if prices don’t adjust ahead). Also any sustained PUMP will likewise do the same.

Hence the valuations or earnings trap means buying at present levels specifically on headline issues, which provides ZERO margin of safety, should be a recipe for prospective massive losses overtime.

More Signs of Shrinking Liquidity at the Treasury Markets


Yet more signs of shrinking liquidity? 

Look no further than the rapidly flattening yield curve at the Philippine treasury markets

Since March 2015, yields of Philippine government papers have become extremely volatile.

But let noise not be an obstacle in establishing signals.

Since December, the flattening of the yield curve has been intensifying. Such dynamic appears to have accelerated in March where the volatility emerged.

Since March to date, there have been repeated attempts to forcibly steepen the curve.

Yields of 1 month bills relative to 5, 7 and 10 year maturities epitomize on the current state of volatility (left).

The spread of the 1 month yield continued to narrow relative to her longer curve equivalents from November to March. However in April the spread just collapsed. Then intervention occurred to abruptly widen the spread!

In May, the spread not only collapsed but part of the curve even INVERTED! The response has been the same, force a widening. Then again last week, the curve precipitately narrowed again.

Part of the same volatility can be seen from the other spreads (6 months, 1 year, 2 year relative to 10 and 20 year). But overall, the volatility (most likely from interventions) has emerged primarily to prevent the yield curve from substantially narrowing.

As you can see, those headline numbers (whether the Phisix or economic statistics) have been decaying from the inside. And the rotting core has begun to affect the surface.

And all these have been unseen, ignored, denied or whitewashed by the establishment and their allies.

Manipulations can only do so much, economic reality will ultimately prevail.

Bureau of Customs April’s 8.5% Deficit: It’s Not About Oil, It’s About the Economy

Oh if you haven’t noticed…headlines today have become LESS and LESS optimistic. 

Or let me frame it from a different angle, if you haven’t noticed, headlines today seem to have been designed to program or to condition the public to expect LESS from published economic performance statistics or G-R-O-W-T-H

It’s like central banking “forward guidance” only that they have been channeled implicitly to influence the public outlook through media.

Thursday June 18th headline reports that the collection of revenues by Philippines Bureau of Customs (BOC) have fallen 8.5% below the agency’s target.

Well, curiously, the BOC doesn’t seem to share the establishment’s romance with falling oil prices as equivalent to consumer spending growth. Instead, media as mouthpiece of the BOC bannered a secondary headline: “Cheaper oil imports blamed for decline in collection”[3]

The article goes on to say that last April, BOC collection “slid by 8.5 percent to P28.1 billion, as the take from imported oil fell by more than half year-on-year.” Collections from oil “skidded by a hefty 40.5 percent year-on-year to P5.4 billion last April from P9.1 billion a year ago” that has reduced oil’s share of tax and duties collection “to 19 percent in April from 30 percent in the same month last year”

So while “non-oil imports rose 5 percent”, the gains hardly offset the losses in oil revenues! Thus media concludes, low oil prices accounted for as the notorious culprit for the collection shortfall!

Wonderful.

Perhaps the establishment should send a memo to the BOC to remind them of the meme ‘low oil prices equals consumer spending growth’!

Never mind the economics of spending as MAINLY a derivative of INCOME growth—secondarily the reduction of savings and the use of credit—and NOT from the changes in spending patterns or the redistribution of spending from static income.

And never mind too, the fact that non-oil imports have basically FAILED to offset deficits arising from oil tax and duty collections.

In other words, ceteris paribus*, consumer or even capital spending has been unsuccessful to neutralize the deficit from a “supposed” low oil price dynamic.

Therefore, contra the article which labors to explain BOC collection shortfall as a product of oil, it’s really NOT about oil.

“Cheaper” oil imports depend on the frame of reference. Compared to when? What would be the basis for the use of such adjective?

Based on April’s oil data, it’s NOT about oil.



The Philippines imports 70% of its oil requirements from the Middle East. Based on Department of Energy 2012 data, oil imports from Saudi Arabia and the UAE accounted for 45.9% and 25.18% share. This means Philippine oil have been mostly sensitive to the Dubai-Oman crude as benchmark. 

Since I don’t have access to Dubai-Oman data, I’m going to use US benchmark WTI only as reference for this analysis.

In April, WTI prices leapt 23.47% from $47.72 (end March) to $58.92 (end April).

So the claim of oil prices as being responsible for the BOC’s collection gap may have been based on other periods, because if April was the source of reference then the article misleads.

In this period, the USD php hardly budged.

So to extrapolate oil prices in peso, which also jumped by 23.36% over the same period, oil prices virtually reflected mainly changes in USD oil prices alone outside the foreign currency translation effect! (see right)

We can see how changes in domestic prices of oil via its byproducts affect the real economy.

In April, the first two weeks (April 7 and April 14) resulted to a rollback as announced by the DoE in response to falling oil prices in March. However, the next two weeks, (April 21 and April 28), the DoE announced price increases to exhibit the jump in world oil prices!

From April to June 16, there had been three rollbacks vis-à-vis SEVEN price increases. The last increase as stated by the DOE: “Year-to-date total adjustment rose to net increases of P5.69/liter for gasoline and P1.06/liter for diesel. LPG remained with net decrease of P6.60/kg”

So gasoline and diesel prices have gone up as LPG prices have gone down year to date as of June 16. Part of this must be due to the weak peso.

So the headline should have been rephrased as: Expensive Cheaper oil imports blamed for decline in collection

*And speaking of ceteris paribus, collection deficiency can also be a function of smuggling, or domestic production. The former looks plausible, but the latter doesn’t seem as to satisfy current conditions.


It’s interesting to note of the fabulous emergence of volatility in BOC’s collections (left). 

Based on the data from Bureau of Treasury, year on year changes in the Bureau of Customs revenues turned NEGATIVE in THREE of the last five months. On the other hand, December posted a HUGE 85% spike. Yet, April’s significant negative 8.5% data would mean FOUR negatives in the last 6 months. The most likely implication from the substantial decrease in collections data by the government agency must be that Philippine imports continue to underperform in April. Except for February 2015, import growth have been quite sluggish since November 2014

If this turns out correct, then again it’s not about oil.

Instead, to borrow James Carville’s election slogan for ex-US president Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy stupid”

Media Downscales on G-R-O-W-T-H! Pressures Government for More Stimulus!

Mood changes have become apparent.

As I noted above and as I have previously pointed out, there seems to be an orchestrated publicity campaign to gradually dampen the public’s heavy optimistic expectations on G-R-O-W-T-H!

Media communications seem as painting a soft landing in order to avoid a panic.

Wednesday’s (June 17) business headlines came with “PH faces economic headwinds, gov’t warned”[4] where the subsidiary headline revealed of the alleged reason: WEAK FISCAL SPENDING, SLOWING OFW REMITTANCES NOTED

Saturday’s (June 20) business headlines seem to reiterate the point “Underspending threat to growth”[5], except that this article came with an appeal to authority: MOODY’S URGES EFFECTIVE BUDGET EXECUTION



Ironically the BSP recently cheered April’s OFW remittances data to state of “sustained” G-R-O-W-T-H. Personal remittances grew by a modest 4.9% while year to date remittances increased 5.1%. Meanwhile cash remittances rose 5.1% on an annual basis ad 5.1% for the first four months.


It’s a curiosity to see how establishment experts have discounted on what the BSP has just lauded on.

Two days after, through media they declared “SLOWING remittances and weakness in the country’s manufacturing sector may be early signs of a cycle that may lead to the further moderation of economic growth”. And for G-R-O-W-T-H to remain, experts have pushed the government “to pick up the slack and get out of its spending rut to provide stimulus to the economy by rolling out projects at a faster pace”

Three days after, the pressure on government to act has been applied by media again this time through the recommendations of the credit rating agency Moodys which claimed G-R-O-W-T-H will remain strong this year, but at the same time slashed their projections to 6% from 6.2%

I suspect that the reason the establishment raised “slowing remittances” as an obstacle to G-R-O-W-T-H has been because, as the chart above shows, the trend already shows the way.

I truly doubt if they understand or appreciate that remittances are subject to the forces of diminishing returns and the limits from the law of compounding given its size and scale of contribution to the economy.

And I suspect too that there has been little appreciation for insights involving world developments that influences remittance dynamics. For instance, how would a calamitous Grexit or a sustained collapse in Chinese stocks affect the world economy that could filter into remittance dynamics?

For the mainstream, statistics equals economics. It’s why growth numbers just jumps out from their computer screens!

It is even ridiculous to suggest that government spending will produce growth. It will produce statistical G-R-O-W-T-H, but not food on the table growth.

The fact that government competes with private sector for resources means that resources government will use, will come at the expense of the private sector.

Those who make such a claim, which presupposes governments makes more efficient of resources, should look what happened to USSR, Mao’s China and or North Korea where all spending have been by governments.

Second, government use of resources means taxes on the public.

As the great Ludwig von Mises explained[6]
However, the means which a government needs in order to run a plant at a loss or to subsidize an unprofitable project must be withdrawn either from the taxpayers' spending and investing power or from the loan market. The government has no more ability than individuals to create something out of nothing. What the government spends more, the public spends less. Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens. If the government had not interfered, the citizens would have employed them for the realization of profit promising projects the realization of which they must omit because their means have been curtailed by the government. For every unprofitable project that is realized by the aid of the government there is a corresponding project the realization of which is neglected merely on account of the government's intervention. Yet this nonrealized project would have been profitable, i.e., it would have employed the scarce means of production in accordance with the most urgent needs of the consumers. From the point of view of the consumers the employment of these means of production for the realization of an unprofitable project is wasteful. It deprives them of satisfactions which they prefer to those which the government-sponsored project can furnish them.
Yet all those controversies, corruption, pork barrel scams, wasteful expenditures (boondoggles, junkets and etc…) do nothing to demolish the myth from a widely embraced popular belief.

Third, the orthodoxy treats GDP as some homogenized factors at work.

I have quoted economic professor and blogger Arnold Kling[7]
In macroeconomics, the conventional misrepresentation treats the economy as one big GDP factory. Macroeconomists look at total output, as measured by GDP, and they think of it as produced by homogeneous labor and homogeneous capital. Again, this is camping-trip economics, with value assumed to be embedded in the endowment of labor and capital, rather than in the coordination required to create patterns of specialization, production methods, trade, and innovation.
The orthodoxy sees humans as unthinking automatons that are beyond the influence of incentives. The orthodoxy also seem to see people as knobs that can be closed or opened, put in high or mid or low gear.

Homogeneous labor simply means interchangeability; a doctor can be an engineer or versa. Homogeneous capital means that capital used for fishing and manufacturing are non-specific or the same. Everything signifies a one size fits all dimension.

From the above news account, just think of how government spending will substitute the slack from OFWs.

Let us make public works as example. 

The major beneficiaries of public works will be the bureaucracy (national or local) who will oversee and supervise such projects. The secondary beneficiaries will be the private sector contractor/s who will be awarded to execute or implement on such projects. The succeeding beneficiaries will be the employees of the private sector contractor/s, the sub-contractors, as well as, suppliers of the said contractor/s or the government. 

The next set of beneficiaries will be the ancillary industries from the public works project, and lastly, the industries which benefit from the spending of the above economic agents. 

Since government projects represent a monopoly and are centralized, the spending will flow from top to bottom or the trickle-down effect.

BUT since public works are location specific projects, then the popularly “seen” benefits will be limited largely to the areas involved.

So if all the public works projects nationwide will be added up, this will account for only a minor share of the national economy, despite the peso amount involved.

And considering the trickle-down nature of government spending then such spending will be tilted largely on what the highest hierarchy spends on with limited amount of multiplier from the bottom.

Yet how about remittances? The population of OFW has been estimated at 10.5 to 13.5 million people. That’s about 10% or more of the local population. So it’s easy to deduce that most households depend on an OFW relative as source of financing.

And given that remittances also constitute about 10% (9.8% World Bank data 2013, which has been down from 13.3% in 2005) of the statistical GDP, or perhaps even more due to the shadow/informal remittances, this implies that the impact of OFW have been national.

Besides since remittances have hardly been about top-bottom political spending they are relatively more decentralized in nature. Thus, the decentralization dynamics limits the impact of global shocks on them. But they aren’t immune to such shocks.

Such intense fixation on the sustained benefits from OFW remittances has been the reason for the frenetic nationwide race to build shopping malls, housing, condos, hotels and resorts and other consumer spending related industries. Yet most of these projects have been built predicated on the linear growth rate trend for OFW remittances. SM’s Ms Coson’s projections for her projects seem as having been anchored on these.

Yet just how can limited specific local projects replace a nationwide slack from a remittance slowdown?

What will happen to the supply side chain—which has been desperately competing to gain market share through a race to build capacity mostly funded by debt—when OFW remittances fall?

How will the current capacity plus prospective capacity remain commercially feasible under such circumstances?

Of course, contra mainstream hyped expectations over the scale of OFW remittance contributions; it has been the leveraging of the supply side that has been delivering the meat of G-R-O-W-T-H growth. But much of these projects have been focused on remittances.

Yet what happens if an expected slowdown in OFW filters into supply side capex plans?

Will a double whammy occur that will self-reinforce the downturn? If it does, then how will these affect outstanding loan portfolios of banks, bonds and other creditors? 

Will all leveraged companies still have the capability to pay existing liabilities under such circumstances?

The establishment makes a lot of defective assumptions which they really don’t know about. All they do has been to conduct tea leaf reading in the context of statistics and equate them as economic reasoning.

Here is another example. Moody’s say that the Philippines “has demonstrated resilience to global shocks, which limits the possibility that improvements in fiscal or economic performance would be significantly undermined.”

Has Moody’s ever heard of the popular Wall Street mantra “Past performance does not guarantee future results?” The US agency the Security of Exchange mandates mutual funds to indicate this.

Does Moodys know of the changes in debt dynamics the Philippines has in the past relative to today and how these impact balance sheets?

Does Moody’s know that current fiscal regime has been almost entirely dependent on negative real rates stimulus such that once the stimulus will be lifted the entire façade will most likely crumble? So instead of fiscal discipline one would see massive deficits and soaring debt levels?

Yet Moodys, like all the rest, clamor for more stimulus even when the Philippine economy has been thriving on a 2009 stimulus. And BSP has only patronized them by refusing to do away with it.

Why?

Substance addiction has become so chronic such that a withdrawal syndrome can’t be tolerated?

A genuinely strong economy will not require dependence on invisible transfers or stimulus charged at the expense of the average citizenry. So how strong is strong?

Nonetheless media’s downshift in the reporting of economic developments has been quite revealing. 


And why shouldn’t they when the writing has been on the wall

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported of price DEFLATION in the construction industry for the month of May, as seen in wholesale price index (top) and retail price index (bottom).

Based on prices, construction boom, where?

Oh don’t worry, in the realm of the orthodoxy, real economy prices don’t seem to matter. Prices only matter if they are something to cheer or rally at, like surging stocks and properties.

[2] Eric Bush Gavekal Capital Blog Who would have guessed? Russia is the best performing, and cheapest, country index YTD Gavekal Capital Blog June 18, 2015

[3] Inquirer.net BOC tax take down 8.5% in April June 18, 2015


[5] Inquirer.net Underspending threat to growth June 20, 2015

[6] Ludwig von Mises 6. The Limits of Property Rights and the Problems of External Costs and External Economies XXIII. THE DATA OF THE MARKET (Human Action, p.655)

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