Category Archives: Property

Monopoly

Monopoly defines a stable society and a stable economy

Human endures many different paths of society, democracy, oligarchy, communism, etc. They do try to create a stable society in their own way and to preserve wealth.

source: Wikipedia

Central banks have been long doing monopoly. They are monopolizing money printing. Local banks also have been long doing monopoly. They are the only ones can draw money from the central banks.

In public company, we do see many examples, Google and Adobe have been monopolizing their industry. Google search engine is no match to any. Adobe Photoshop is also no match to any other. We also do see merger and acquisition strategy which is simply an effort to create money from thin air after having bigger monopoly, 1+1=3. At the end, the monopoly can decide their price and PER ratio is no longer much working to them.

Monopoly may create higher PER/Price Earning Ratio

In technology, 5G, should also be in monopoly of the “greats” since they are a strategic global infrastructure. I mentioned in my article from early this year, we should just follow 5G monopoly. It simply works. Even in current high momentum of Telstra share price movement, we can clearly see a-not-so-invisible hand on play with the 5G monopoly, even though their NAS (Network and Application Services) is quite interesting to watch. Eventhough current technical may start to show a potential correction, previous strong hand plays is already detected and may surprise in future.

Telstra, source: yahoo finance

In Australia property, we should see big banks are starting to lower rate BUT something unique is being detected. We do see all big banks who has direct access to the currency monopoly, has been reluctant to pass full rate cut. In the mean time, currency supply from big banks and reverse carry trade should flood the market. We clearly see so many non confirming lenders are now offering 0.5% lower or more than big banks and attracts migrations from big banks to non-conforming lenders. It raises a question to me, why big banks who are monopolizing the currency access offers higher rate than the ones which can’t do monopoly. It should be clear that there are currently a lot of liquidity at the moment. I would have my own theory that they, who can do monopoly, should see profit margin and strength from property is deteriorating. Therefore they start to sell weak assets with help of their “grandfather”, in which in future they can simply make a policy change by orchestrating liquidity out from the market when good time for property comes back. In a normal action respond, it’s part of bounce back similar to death cat bounce.

How far monopoly can push their price before introducing too much competitors? In theory, Marginal Cost (MC) is equal to Marginal of Revenue (MR) and which is above Average of Total Cost (ATC). In property, marginal of revenue should have run down faster than decreasing of marginal of cost. For example when central banks cut rate from 1.5 to 1, the market rate should also decrease 4 to 3.5. While the profit margin is relatively same, the revenue and their profit margin should have gone down with fixed cost remains same. Therefore I believe it’s more profitable for big banks to run market rather than holding assets since cost to run market is lower. The other way around should happen when long term rate is starting to rebound or inflation is starting to kick in. That’s when I believe the big bank monopoly will start to reduce oxygen from the market.

We would then think bigger picture. When will inflation starts to kick in? We do know US is having benefit from monopolizing their strength of currency and enjoy this benefit while other countries like Europe and China are still having issue. I would have to agree with Fed, as long as they are still the only one monopolizing one biggest strong currency, they should be reluctant to cut rate like other countries. I would believe, when reversal time is coming, other countries could no longer do currency war and may start to increase rate. I would think that’s the time when Fed will start to do the other way around. With negative yield exceeds 13T$, there could be a big spike of inflation during the reversal. Market may fall, but inflation sensitive may then recover quicker than the other.

In the meantime, as predicted before, as the strongest currency, they can maintain Wall Street to continue their trend and slowly destroy global money value, unseen. This is what I describe as a stable currency where magic is happening and binary is formed. Inflation should be still far away because it broke MA200 ($TNX). As long as USD is strong, inflation should be in control. I don’t think we would see the reversal and market crash in next year or two. It’s simply because central banks currently demonstrate their habit of monopolizing money destruction and ample of liquidity is everywhere.

source: stockcharts

Monopoly is to make money. Money follows the monopoly.

My money theory is not in any case of financial advise.

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Property Trading

When you are exposed to a dream, you are exposing your weakness.

More than a decade ago, I might be a bit lucky that emerging and Australia properties were running very well until next decade. There were few arguments during that time that emerging might not follow US property price. Let’s fast forward, in 2012, many people were so afraid and RBA research did support the fear. It still didn’t fear me enough.

In 2014, just a year before a major change is happening to emerging properties, I did feel property might have a chance to run out from its course. During that time I predicted that commodities would rebound when dark pool of US properties closed its gap within a year and half, which might mean the bullish cycle of emerging property might finish soon. My strategies that time was to hedge half of the properties with 3 years fixed rate and as much amount of commodities. There were a lot of arguments and theories behind commodities rally in relation to where the money will go and property hedging but I’m not going to discuss here.

The commodity and money theory did work well. However fixing rate was failed miserably. The central bank continued to lower interest rate again in 2015 after standing still in 2014. And one that I failed to see most is the Australian dollar crashed from its trend in 2015/16 until today. I did see strong Australian dollar before 2015 as a reason that Australian property wouldn’t crash but I didn’t expect Australian dollar to crash back to year 2008/2009. The market is always smart, that it lowers expensive price in a very fast and hard-to-predict way. Unfortunately commodity rebound didn’t help the currency.

I always fancy math. Before 2015, I have my own equilibrium formula:

i (interest to bank) = r (rental income) + t (tax benefit)

I only consider investment properties and ignore owner occupier properties, because that is where my money theory will work well most. The formula is only working in effective healthy market. It basically says that in very competitive market, investor will not make any profit from just buying the property (Rf = risk free) because their rental income and tax benefit is just barely enough to pay the interest. Market will do its own way that supply and demand will make sure investor is taking risk from the investment properties.

Moving forward to past few years. Here comes the interesting part. Currency devaluation is not enough to hold price, and price is starting to fall and so is the i. This environment will cause a shock to the formula to response and it would take few years before it can find a new equilibrium.

Australian property is still a biggest weight in inflation formula. In my theory it means market players still use property as an important investment or trading factor. When the weight is lower, and in my money theory is possible, it would mean property is no longer important in money market portfolio.

Due to this importance, RBA did lower interest rate in 2015 to 2016/17.


Back to the formula, i=r+t, when interest rate is lower, i and t should also go lower. However the magnitude of t is much lower than i. Therefore r must go lower even-though might not be as much as i. We have to remember that price was peak in 2016/17 where there’s hardly chance to cut more rate because dispersion between Australian rate and US rate is going higher due to Federal Reserve aggressiveness and RBA effort to save their boat. It caused money to flow from Australia to US and causing more pressure to Australian property price.

Based on my money theory as well, the not so invisible hand would sacrifice currency and at same time is trying to save their boat. If those money is not the major player, rental should have been falling since 2015 but it didn’t. r is just falling from early 2019, and not since 2015. We can see from this number. Property rental price is just starting to fall from early 2019.

In any shock, there’s an opportunity and the opportunity will get lower after market responses. When r is not responsive, there’s an opportunity to make money. Currently the r is quite high. It’s almost equal to i and money is trying to benefit from t. I found it quite interesting that they debated negative gearing and many business benefit. If the negative gearing is abolished, in my theory, property will crash. Even if the negative gearing is grand-fathered in this situation, we won’t see any recovery. I’m not surprised with result of election.

It’s very clear from above arguments that r must go lower. However if it goes lower, it will hurt the economy and retailer will suffer most because property is still a cash machine of most investors to stay afloat in an increasing global rate. Lower r means lower income or deflation, a big issue to the portfolio.

When i is going lower and r is not responding quick, we can see market is now doing:

i = r

The math does its magic because the t is free from the equation. It means we might be able to get the t with very low risk.

Rather than owning a property, it might be more beneficial to go renting and might benefit from the t for almost free. I’ll show you a case. A owns a property and pay 4% of interest. Since r is equal to i, A can rent in market and paying same amount of 4%. A can then benefit t by switching his property into investment property and go renting. Of course r must be securely located and maintained to get the high r. A will pay same amount of interest but enjoy the t for almost free. It’s not 100% free and 0% risk though because anything can happen to the property. What is the different? If A keeps his property as owner occupier, A won’t benefit from the t. Since market is now doing i=r and r is starting to fall, i is expected to start falling to help r or the economy. Lower i previously causes or due to lower price and hopefully it won’t cause a snowball to drag the price further down.

If people think lower r is not worrying, let’s see what RBA will do. RBA may race the falling r with reducing i until they find a bottom. It’s because money growth/velocity may go slower with lower r. During that time, currency may continue to suffer most. If i doesn’t go down with lower r, investors will start paying more and see less and less benefit to own investment properties and may cause more property to sell and less property to build. It doesn’t need to abandon negative gearing. If r drops a lot, maintaining higher i may cause investment property selling. With raising payment behind schedule, it should raise enough alarm for RBA to lower rate. It may also pressure APRA decision to reduce buffer in effort to stop this bleeding and boost more investment in properties. I only worry it would cause price to further down.

Current numbers (might change) show that within 3-6 months RBA should start lowering rate up to 0.375% within 3 years. i is expected to fall a bit further from 1.5% to 1% thus causing r to fall at about 12.5% (lenders are passing 0.5% or from 4% to 3.5%). If r is falling at above 10%, that will be catastrophic enough. The not so invisible money hand should help this from falling. If A switches to investment property, A will benefit high r and get t for almost free. I won’t surprise if at the end, outcome will benefit the investors. What it does hide is, going renting will pay more money because r tries to stay high. Let’s look 2015 to 2018. Isn’t it more beneficial to go renting rather than owning a property? If we own a property at 20% deposit, 10% fall in price is equal to 50% loss in deposit asset. Sometimes it can be better at paying a bit more money to save the bigger money. We should realize that Australian dollar has been falling more than 30%. If we add 12% price correction on top of the 30%, Australians have lost 42% of equity wealth from their property price. If they maintain 80% LVR, it means, unfortunately, they already loss 5 x 42% of value which may already lead to bankruptcy (over 2x of 100% loss) if currency does not fall down. It would then need many decades to bring the equity wealth back, unless of course, the price and currency rebounds. This graph is good but also tells it won’t happen soon.

I still don’t think Australian property will crash anytime soon. However I have my own theory of when bigger issue may come. There’s sign where authorities will start giving hands to weak hand instead of investors. It’s just a matter of time when the weak hand falls with holding asset. However, for now, I may expect price to rebound within 3-6 months to the next 3 years if RBA is willing to cut rate as soon as in June 2019. It can be wrong and may change tomorrow, but that’s what my numbers can say for now.

When I would expect price to rebound in conjunction to strong rental? I think this research, A Model of the Australian Housing Market, does provide many good numbers and formula. I would be more interested to see the impact from building approval (in relation also to bank lending) and interest rates changes.

source: RBA research

Property is the dream of many citizen. Unfortunately they are exposed to their weakness for others to make money.

Above is just my theory and should be debated. It’s definitely not in any case of financial advise.

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Time and Frequency

20 years ago I majored my bachelor in Adaptive learning. I realize now, that’s actually the most basic idea of AI (Artificial Intelligence).

Time is what is happening in our life. We do this, we do that. It’s also what is happening to price, index, etc. We could easily transform time into frequency, for example is using a Fourier Transform or simply use Fast Fourier Transform (FFT).

source: wikipedia

A very basic formula of time is

T (period) = 1 / f (frequency)

We agree on this very simple basic math formula. It means we CAN transform something between them, vice versa.

Here comes learning into play. Once the time is transformed into frequency, we could easily see a pattern. In a most simple case, a continuous noise sound at x frequency will only look like a single x dot/line in frequency. It’s then being fed into learning algorithm and we found a pattern. Amazingly I could reduce up to 80dB (decible) in real time using technology that time (i386 processor) in a very easy way. In today’s world, we wear this noise cancellation, almost everywhere.

When life is going more complicated, the frequency is becoming more complex and thus require more advanced learning.

With their module being shared freely, we can have a 5 years old person to operate. We don’t need to become master of microconductor to become an artist of computer, to create many arts like app, robot, etc. Using the same logic, we don’t need to master the learning formula to become an artist of AI. Today, we can do much more complicated learning pattern without having to know how it mathematically works. A three years old kid with no English-speaking parents or friends, learning English from digital media since 6 months old, can speak English fluently in his/her grammar and vocabulary without any knowledge yet on how to write and spell. Many developers know less about how computer works nor they do know how machine language and all other people modules are working, but they can use them to develop so many arts already.

Here comes our not so complicated aging finance industry. When an evidence is repeated in time series, AI can learn the pattern easily and then can do better prediction. Thus the response time to make profit is getting shorter. The good thing is, finance industry is not doing random signals because they are managed by same parties who try to maintain their wealth. Indeed central banks decisions are based on multi years of historical facts/evidences and is afraid enough to do a new experiment to the market. Therefore index/price movement IS DEFINITELY NOT random.

It then makes it harder for big fund to maintain their wealth. Therefore they should keep introducing a new thing and work harder to lead to where human evolution will be, in order to protect their wealth.

I was expecting USDCNY to run a stable YUAN in January 2019 for quite some time but it seems it run much shorter than my expectation.

Again, technology is running faster and faster and they learn faster. The wealth creator should keep evolving or else they will lead to their extinction and policy barrier is their only last hope.

Theoretically, if we can bend the frequency or feed new frequencies, and transform it back into time, it may not be a time machine but it could possibly bend our future?

image
source: marvel

my money theory

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Pinocchio

“World without money, there is no economy, no economist.”

I’m still a fan of inflation since 2015 and I will keep my view intact. Please show me evidence that recent effort of normalization is working beautifully? It didn’t, it doesn’t. Recent bloomberg article shows a world awash with $8.6 trillion in negative-yielding debt, is still easily flipped when central bank blinks. The number is staggering, enough tail-wind.

Since Federal Reserve rapidly increased rate, USD was getting stronger than ever. PBOC at same time was tightening and China economy is slowing down, we can ensure PBOC is injecting big amount of liquidity since 2015 and for sure is growing faster than previous decades. However, is China the greatest easing after all TODAY? Bloomberg recently reports China injects huge amount of money, indeed USD is still weaken against CNY. Is it enough to raise our eyebrows?

People may question 2 policies that may seem to contradict to each other. History shows that financial navigation/auto-pilot always needs 2 ‘contradicting’ policies. After crisis, they may push long term and raise short term bank reserve rate, a different time frame. Same like driving, policies need gas and break, to better control market to their path.

Trump tax cut injection and deficit in 2018 is also greatest in history. At the same time, asset under Federal Reserve balance is starting to mature their belly since 2015. Once matured, the principal is transferred back to treasury. It’s treasury, who is now issuing more debt to roll them over. It’s Trump. It’s just unfortunate that recently Trump doesn’t have much support from Democrat (politics in regard to next election), already shown in a small thing like border wall. Both are still stubbornly enough to make a compromise, to inflate the world, to keep modern economy alive!

Pinocchio: I can move! I can talk! I can walk. I’m alive!

If China manipulates currency, why USDCNY is unable to break 7.0 during USD supremacy era? If Fed Balance sheet was greater than in 2008, why USDCNY fails to break 7.0 with PBOC injecting money bigger than ever. An argument may say PBOC is manipulating exchange rate. Question to this argument, can we manipulate currency in past 2 decades? Does this argument think that global market (intertwined currency) is smaller than PBOC? It doesn’t make sense. China is still second largest and itself is not big enough to put world under their knees.

Everytime USDCNY is back to what it WAS in 2008 around 7.0, with China and world injecting more than ever in history, Wall Street is still loosing ground, seen in Q4 2018. USD was too strong, causing Wall Street to ask for help. 1y bond is recently flashing inversion alert, everytime USD is too strong. It shows that if USD is too strong, financial suffers. I still think that if this burden is not cleared yet, probably with some correction next year, financial and most likely property issue may not get cleared/perform yet.

Global growth is also unable to handle strong USD and oil was crashing. Everything is now going well AFTER Federal Reserve blinks to the market and not to their own numbers. It follows by many other central banks. Australia is also considering cutting rate and AUD was down. Typical currency war is still here today.

Since human is greedy and hunger of money, USD shouldn’t be allowed from going too strong, that what Wall Street is. World shouldn’t stop issuing more easing. China shouldn’t stop injecting liquidity, or else they will see all of those printed money since 2015 goes waste to drain. At the end, there must be inflation rather than slow down, to support my inflation theory since 2014/2015. Isn’t everyone working to push weak global economy growth UP? It’s not without risk that global slowdown could create next global crisis. However we are human who created the systems, can decide when is the next crisis. It’s easy for each of us to keep party rolling, very easy, since we all have common interest, MONEY. However it’s strange that it’s just too hard to make compromise between US vs China and between Trump vs Democrat, INTEREST.

Before October 2018, we used to hear a beautiful world normalization, and stronger US economy. Few months before October, I was arguing that in this intertwined economy, this hegemony shouldn’t last long. US is starting to slow down together with the global world slow down. It actually raises a question. Is US really the strongest economy in the world at the moment? If it’s, please explain to me USDCNY in past 2 decades and why it’s too hard to pass through 7.0?

I’m not saying that PBOC is cleaner. They both have their own agenda and their own defense. PBOC numbers also have a lot of irregularities. Communism is a living creature which can provide financial stability in expense of social pains. We are just a tiny molecule here who is just trying to study their behavior in seeking the truth. Indeed today, we are questioning central bank in-dependency from fiscal policy. My deep learning sometimes gets confused with too many contradicting signals. It definitely needs to weight down the contradictions.

Regardless of those human disagreements, let’s use numbers because that matters most here. Let’s look back in year 2000 when a dot com bubble burst which marked a start of IT evolution, the FANG. PBOC couldn’t hold USDCNY peg at 8.27 and greed had never been higher until year 2007 when PBOC tried again to hold USDCNY at 6.82. For sure PBOC (and no other central banks) could no longer again peg USDCNY at 6.82 when Fed conducted massive QEs. During that time in 2007, China GDP was still far very small compared to US GDP. As a simple rule, smaller GDP shouldn’t be able to strengthen their currency higher than higher GDP. It’s still raising a question, if China GDP was lower that time, why CNYUSD is getting stronger? Many argues trade surplus but why not considering account deficit? The issue is, trade surplus keeps going higher while account deficit can’t go lower. It causes the imbalance.

Between 2017 and October 2018, USD is loosing value much faster despite spectacular USD economy performance and USD divergence. Indeed world condemned some country and actually the rest of the world, to continue conducting biggest currency manipulation. USD has been loosing value in past 2 decades until today at same pace, despite spectacular USD divergence and beautiful normalization story. The intertwined credit of today is much higher than world trade balance between US and China. The value added product made in China is still far less than created trade account balance/deficit. The fact is Wall Street was unable to continue rally when USD was going stronger in October 2018.

Let’s read to this financial article from The New York Times. From all of its long story, I only can find that the writer argues from 2000 to 2014, China bought dollar and add 4T$ to reserve. None in this world could stand of not printing money when Fed did incredible ballooning 300% balance with QEs between 2009 to 2014. None can be crazier than issuing greatest CDS (Credit Default Swap) between 2000 and 2008. A simple theory is, whoever did first is always the biggest. Not just China, most countries in this world followed Fed printing during QEs, 2009 to 2014. Emerging countries (Asia, India, Venezuela, etc) are even worst than China and surprisingly they are not currency manipulators. They later got trouble with inflation, and not China. China is still smaller. China can’t just add 4T$ without US doing it first. It doesn’t support currency weakening effort. The writer then argues that in 2015, Chinese government kept pegged renmimbi to the dollar. Does the writer know that PBOC starts massive easing, injecting money greatest in their history and keep cutting rate since 2015 until today? At same time in 2015, Fed keeps raising rate faster than ever? It doesn’t make sense PBOC to keep renmimbi pegged against dollar to stop it FROM strengthening. It’s indeed should be an effort to stop it FROM weakening because inflation is very SENSITIVE to their 3 billion of society. This is the main reason of not allowing currency from weakening. Eventhough that massive efforts, China still fails to fight currency war from USD. At same time Wall Street is also part of symbiosis that requires China to help racing money value destruction.

Pinocchio, Pinocchio, please tell me the real truth!?

China for sure can’t compete the pace of information transmission. There should have been decades of efforts to make financial benefit. Don’t be surprised that most normal economist relying on these Pinocchio economy numbers usually fails. It’s no surprise that in decades China is building information wall. No chance to break out world dominance, no chance for HuaWei. It could be a no brain to collect few depressed 5G provider in the wake up of world monopoly, just some small side dish to inflation bet.

It doesn’t matter how hard number can explain, it won’t even be able to satisfy every part of human INTEREST. When I expand my deep learning to longer view or decades of numbers, it seems to be less prone from the irregularities because as the fairy said, “a lie keeps growing and growing until it’s as clear as the nose on your face.” At the end, Pinocchio said “I’d rather stay smart than be an actor“.

It’s my own opinion and not in any case of financial advice.

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