investing on the waves: De muizen verlaten het schip

Saturday 2 October 2010

De muizen verlaten het schip

De gastauteur van blog zerohedge Alex Stanczyk legt de stijging van de goudprijs uit met een soort sprookje over de muizen die het schip verlaten (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-todays-gold-myth-its-topped-there-no-inflation-get-out-now-while-you-still-can).

Imagine a group of ships in the ocean, these ships represent the various currencies of the world. In the middle of this group is a ship, slightly bigger than the rest, that is currently the worlds reserve currency.

The funny thing about the saying "rats from a sinking ship" is that the rats instinctively know when a ship is going down, and flee from it.
So in today's economy, we are seeing the rats jumping ship, and swimming to another ship as the big one in the middle sinks.

The problem here is, when they arrive at another ship, they realize that the ship they are climbing onto is also sinking...in fact its Captain and crew are sinking it on purpose in order to compete with how fast the big ship in the middle is sinking.

Finally, as this pattern continues, the rats start to realize that none of the ships are safe, and instead start swimming over to a small island nearby, that isn't sinking at all. On this island as the rats arrive, they find a few very very smart rats who have been there for a while already, sitting under a nice shady umbrella and drinking iced refreshments. By the way, this island is made up of gold.

Afijn, dat eiland is te klein voor mensen, omdat al het goud in de wereld samen kleiner is dan een kubus met ribben van 20 meter.
De dollar is het grote schip, terwijl de valutareserves in de wereld op de schepen van China/Hongkong/Macau en Japan liggen.
Dat zijn niet de enige kopers van goud. Ook India en de OPEC willen goud in plaats van de dollars van het grote dollarschip waar de muizen weg zouden vluchten. Voorlopig zie ik de muizen van China/ Japan/ OPEC nog niet uitchecken uit Hotel California richting de Griekse/ Spaanse/ Portugese stranden (al lijkt het de afgelopen maand wel op, misschien is het een soort orgie van het Duitse Oktoberfest).

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Cycles

This blog will discuss from time to time the most important cycles, as we (ter Veer and Vermeulen) decribed in our book.

We illustrate the long wave, the Kondratiev wave, with the chart above the blog. So we see inaverage good times for investors until 2018 (maybe longer).

The four year cycle have we illustrated stylistic above the way ter Veer (and I) always did it. Other people describe the four year cycle difeerently.

From time to time I will try to indicate where we are on the four year cycle. You can't know for sure, so the indication will always be subjective and can be wrong.

At the moment I think we probably are in the phase FG (and we have seen the first correction in this phase).

Summary investing on the waves (beleggen op de golven)

This blog started because of the Dutch book Investing on the Waves (Beleggen op de golven in Dutch).

The summary of the book:

For being a good investor you must have views. You have to explain things well to judge what the future will bring.

We (Ter Veer and Vermeulen) think the next eight to ten years will bring prosperity as the world (dominated by the 85% of the world population that lives in Emerging Markets) has never seen.

We base that view on the study of several shorter and longer cycles in the economy. We use our investment chart (heading this blog) already for several decades: you can see the Kondratiev wave with its regular sequence of the scenarios recovery, creative transformation, prosperity, recession, chaotic downturn and depression.

To determine in which scenario we are you study the important powers in the society: business, employees, government and individuals. The shift of these powers goes in a regular cycle and causes the long wave (Kondratiev) in the economy with its long periods that things go well on average and its long periods that things don't go well.

In the current phase of the cycle business and indivuals are strong (and government plus employees weak). The strong powers cause a high growth of productivity and implementation of many innovations.

High productivity growth is much more important for economic growth than debts deleveraging.

That is why we -especially Emerging Markets- will get strong growth in the world. That will especially be the case when governments invest a lot in infrastructure (including what is necessary for the Green Revolution).

The growth in the world in the past years had three pillars: the ICT-Revolution, the Emerging Markets and the Financial Revolution with its Asset Economy.

All three pillars had its severe setbacks (The ICT-Revolution in 2000-2003, the Emerging Markets in the Asia crisis of 1997-1998 and the Financial Revolution in 2008-2009 because of the Credit crisis). The first two pillars saw very strong recoveries and we expect the same for the third pillar, especially when the Green Revolution will take off..

Gerhard ter Veer was CIO of PVF asset management that later merged with Achmea Asset Management and F&C. After his retirement he wanted together with Peter Vermeulen, then his head of strategy and now strategist at F&C extensively our theories about investing and our views that we had told to the boards of pension funds during decades.

To make things not too heavy and complicated we explain a lot with dreamings, the simple stories that aboriginals use to teach. On this blog you will see more new dreamings.

Explanation for the existence of a long wave (Kondratiev wave)

* Debt mechanism: over and under investment creates long cycles (Marxist explanation)

*Innovation mechanism: inventions, implementations follow long cycles (capitalist explanation). It explains productivity growth and so employment growth.

*Sociological mechanism: you have long periods where the society gets softer and harder.

All three mechanisms explain for a part the phenomenon of long waves. When you take them together, you can get a better picture.

The power shift between Business, Employees, Government and Individuals ( a social mechanism) is according to us the best explanation for long waves.. It explains why in some periods the incentives are right to have succesful innovations,inflation and high investment growth versus other periods in which inflation goes up,unemployment goes up and profit margins go down.

The current debt crisis is definitely a reason why growth is so low in high debt countries.

The possibilities for high growth are underestimated because productivity growth is high, many innovations have to be implemented and important new (emerging) markets grow fast.

In Emerging Markets and some developed markets like Germany you have the old classic situation of the powers for a prosperity scenario: strong Business (strong profit growth, high margins), strong position of employees (unemplyment rate is low or falling to low levels) and a weak position of government (has to downsize). Individualism is not yet strong.
In many dveloped markets like the US and the UK the situation of the important powers is differenT: employees are in a weak position and individuals (like knowledge workers with (international) networks) are in a strong position.

Because of the weak position of employees this is not the classic prosperity scenario, but you still can get high economic growth when the income of business and individuals grows strongly: a Goldilocks economy with a strong asset Economy. When this growth is strong enough this will lead to a more normal prosperity scenario with fast declining unemployment rates.

This situation will occur much sooner than most people realise: productivity growth is high, the housing market in the US will grow strongly from rock bottom levels, investment growth will be very high because of high profit margins and low real interest rates.

Because 85% of the world population lives in Emerging Markets and only 15% in Developed Markets and economic growth in the world is more than 4% (even while it is now only 2% in Developed Markets) for the world in total you can speak of a prosperity scenario.

investing on the waves

Investment Chart Kondratiev Wave

Saturday 2 October 2010

De muizen verlaten het schip

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