Bill Gross – Monopoly

The latest paper from Bill Gross is focused on credit, credit growth and a usual critique of central bankers. So why bother with this? Well it’s a good concise argument that slow credit growth has led to sub-optimal global GDP growth and perhaps the original methods of running a central bank isn’t quite up to par these days.

• A highly levered economic system is dependent on credit creation for its stability and longevity, and now it is growing sub-optimally
• Thus, over the past 5-6 years post-Lehman, as the private system has created insufficient credit growth, the lower and lower interest rates have increased velocity and therefore increased GDP, although weakly

Source: Janus Capital 

Taking money out of Thailand getting easier?

If you have ever walked to your bank in Thailand to transfer money overseas, you’ll understand what an incredible pain it is, most of the time you’ll be dealing with tellers and managers that are rather inexperienced with international finance, and if you’re doing this for investments you’ll most likely get the transfer rejected. Now apparently things are going to get easier, but only if you have a fortune.

• From July 20, individuals or firms with deposits or securities of 100 million baht or more can directly invest up to $5 million per year in overseas securities, Bank of Thailand Assistant Governor Chantavarn Sucharitakul said in a statement.
• The central bank also relaxed rules on corporate treasuries, allowing them to raise funds by issuing foreign-currency securities in both Thailand and abroad from July 28.

Source: Bangkok Post

Thais still drink!

One of the best performing names listed on the Singapore indices is Thai Beverage, that’s right, a Thai company listed in Singapore is considered a best performer. I’ve been receiving a tonne of emails regarding this and I still don’t quite get it, perhaps it’s time to start going for drinks again to understand this market.

Beer sales volumes soared 61 percent, lifting the brewery operation’s contributions to group revenue to 33 percent from 23 percent. The spirits business remained its cash cow.

Thai Beverage is trading at the highest level ever relative to the broader MSCI All Country World Index.

Speculation that Charoen will further revamp his beverage businesses in Thailand and Singapore may spur more rallies in the stock, said Religare Capital Markets in a May note.

Source: Bloomberg

Mobius on Thailand

His latest paper is about Thailand and about 2/3’s of it feels like a tourist advertisement but he does make some good points on infrastructure and the economy’s resilience.

• Thailand’s GDP growth has been stable, with a rise in tourism and domestic demand helping to offset the impact from a contraction in merchandise exports this year

Source: Franklin Templeton

Brexit

A non-event for effectively all equity markets except in Europe and England. Do I think England/UK will fall apart? Well you can take 2 viewpoints for this:

The Bear:

• England will lose access to the EU market
• Europe will make an example of them
• No new FDI into the UK
• The UK will fall apart with Scotland the first to leave
• London will lose its place as a global financial hub
• The pound will drop to parity with the USD and effectively be at the same level as the EUR/USD thereby implying that they have joined the Euro (my favourite)

The Bull:

• The decrease in the pound will boost exports and tourism
• London will maintain it’s place because money will always go to places with where opportunities exist
• They are still part of the G5, G7, G9 (every G you can imagine), they still have trade agreements with multiple countries throughout the world
• There will be less regulation – which is normally always a good thing

My own thoughts?

• Well it’s old vs young, as callous as this sounds, is it right that those who have yet to still live their lives futures are decided by those who are retired?
• I haven’t read as much about the history and the laws of the EU as I did in the past few weeks, did anyone care about Article 50 until last week?
• Interesting that the FTSE 100 is doing ok, but the FTSE 200 which includes far more domestic companies isn’t
• I don’t quite care to be honest, I don’t think anything really changes except that the leaders of this Brexit aren’t really leaders given they’ve quit, or refused to be PM, rather spineless individuals. Plus like any other politician in the West, a lot of lies in their campaigning. But I do think that the in the end the power of the UK voice will continue to decline over time.

Finally, after catching up on some history books in the past month, is there any politician in office today that people will respect and write about positively in the future? I can’t think of one, except perhaps Putin (yeah I said it)