8 Oct 2023

At some time I wrote that it is wrong to try to work out how much a company is worth and then compare that to the share price. It’s more productive to do the exercise backwards – look at the valuation of a business and ask if the implied outlook is plausible. You can do this equally effectively with optically high and low valuations. A bonus of this approach is that it indicates what people really think because whatever they say (e.g. about ESG…grrrr) if they don’t invest in it they don’t believe it. But it’s not as simple as that. The propensity to invest in anything is also affected by the cost of money.  If your cash earns zero you are more likely to take a bit of a punt. If National Savings is paying 6.2% (which it was until a few days ago), safety looks far more attractive.  FREE MONEY = GREEN MONEY I think we will look back on the Greta years (2018 – ?) and observe that the perceived virtue of reversing economic development was a luxury correlated with the age of QE and free money. From 2009 to 2021, the white collar classes were coddled by unprecedented government-sponsored liquidity. They worked from home while the less well-paid delivered the essentials of life to their front doors.  You could say that a general complacency crept in. Investments in electric cars and wind turbines were characterised almost as no brainers and if their promised financial rewards were rather long term, many public subsidies (more free money) were available. Low interest rates (10 year gilts still yielded only 1% at the end of 2021) apparently discouraged financial scrutiny and (historic term) cost-benefit analysis. .  In 2022 the Bank of England ceased its gilt purchases and, deliberately or not, infamously torpedoed the new PM Truss by commencing sales of its portfolio in September. Politics aside, the attitude to public and private investment has changed markedly in 2023. THE RETURN OF COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS The 2010 HS2 rail project was going to cost £33 billion. By 2020 this had risen to £88 billion and allegedly to more than £100 billion in 2023. Naturally the project...

26 Mar 2021

INFLATION – WHAT THEY TEACH YOU AT SCHOOL I remember from economics lessons at school that there were supposedly two categories of inflation, namely cost-push and demand-pull. This was simple enough for anyone, even a pubescent schoolboy, to understand.  Now I can see that this was something of an oversimplification (for which I was no doubt grateful). Supply and demand do not happen in isolation. They respond to each other over time. It is instructive to remember that the price of anything will rise when the current supply is insufficient to satisfy demand and of course it works in reverse.  Yet the demand element of inflation is what occupies most “informed” chatter. That’s probably because we have a more immediate feeling for it. At present there is said to be a dam of spending waiting to spill out as soon as the first world countries are released from lockdown (I’m assuming it will happen one day – stock markets are impatiently celebrating it already).  Consensus says that this will give a transitory boost to inflation which will then subside because private sector unemployment is too high – in short, the poor sods who have been screwed by lockdown will exert a deflationary effect that prevents the economy from overheating. This in turn is offered as a justification for the probability that central banks will not raise interest rates. Well, yes. Given that the US, European, UK and Japanese economies are all funded by the state balance sheets, I think we can reasonably act as if the date for the next increase in official interest rates is approximately never.  SUPPLY SIDE INFLATION But supply side inflation – now that’s a story. Energy, commodity and shipping prices are really moving this year. Given that most of the world’s major economies are still in recessionary territory that’s quite impressive.  SAMPLE OF PRICE CHANGES IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS   Carbon steel 107.8% Container rates 81.4% Oil 49.2% Lumber 44.7% Soybeans 39.8% Iron ore 38.8% Copper 31.7% Coal 31.4% Cotton 31.3% Sugar 23.1% Aluminium 22.9% Natural Gas 21.1% Wheat 12.9% Rice 8.1% IN THE PAST, TECHNOLOGY HAS BOOSTED EFFICIENCY AND CUT COSTS So what is going on? I...