Weekly Research Briefing: Unsurety Sets In

"We have had a 'soft landing' view for the US for a long time. The pushback has consistently been that previous cycles have not had soft landings, so it is not reasonable to forecast one now. We were comfortable that there were enough differences in the cycle to produce a different outcome. The market narrative has shifted toward us, and now the question arises whether we are actually seeing enough slowing or even a re-acceleration. So far, we do not think that there is sufficient evidence to change our fundamental view of a slowing economy...the data for January do reflect underlying strength. The seasonally adjusted non-farm payrolls were strong, reflecting much less of a contraction in jobs than is typical for a January. This labor hoarding dynamic is a key part of why we have been in favor of a soft landing. In past cycles, when there has been a slowdown, there have been waves of layoffs. This time, we see that pattern in tech, but not across the rest of the economy. So, maybe this time is different."

“The economy outside the interest rate-sensitive components - which only make up 20% of GDP - is simply not slowing down:” Apollo’s Slok. “A Fed-driven tightening in financial conditions…increases the probability that no landing will be followed by a hard landing.”

@AtlantaFed: On February 27, the #GDPNow model nowcast of real GDP growth in Q1 2023 is 2.8%.

"We also still see a healthy customer. I mean we have good jobs, job growth, growing wages, still strong balance sheets." - Home Depot CEO Edward Decker

"I mean, I don't -- I'm no economist. So I don't know that I'm surprised by what's happening. I think we locked people up in their homes to for some period of time throughout the country…But all I can tell you is what we see in the business is continued strength…we certainly don't see anything in our destination business today that suggests that [recession] is on the horizon." - Caesars Entertainment CEO Thomas Reeg

“Since the start of the calendar year, we have seen a marked increase in demand beyond normal seasonality as buyer confidence appears to be improving. We believe the recent pick-up in demand is a sign that the long-term fundamentals underpinning the housing market remain intact….demand improved each month as the quarter progressed. In fact, our January 2023 net agreements exceeded both November and December combined. As Doug mentioned earlier, February continues to show strength through this past weekend" - Toll Brothers CEO Douglas Yearly

Joe Berchtold, CFO

I'll just start with some of the numbers and then Michael can fill in with some color. So as Michael said, we're up 20% this year relative to where we were at this point last year. That's even with last year having the benefit of all those rescheduled shows, which totaled around 20 million fans. About 20 million fans got rescheduled. We think half of those would have happened last year anyway, but that means that 20% growth comp is against an inflated number, if you will. So the actual growth even stronger than that.

As we noted in the release – within that international is up around 25%, which would mean that North America is still up high teens. So very good growth. If you look just at the ticket sales sold in January through mid-February this year on a global basis, we've sold roughly twice the number of tickets as we sold last year. So even looking at the most recent activity continues to be very robust globally.

Michael Rapino, CEO

Yes. And my commentary is similar. We are just amazed at the resilience of the customer this year. I think we all lived the November air pocket thesis and everyone's view on was 2022 an exception to the rule. Could we keep growing? Where was the customer? Was it just a bubble?

We see nothing but strong growth demand everywhere in the world right now. We're up right now with stadiums in Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, all of our festivals are outperforming last year around the world. Our clubs and theaters are doing well. Our on-site spend in most of those clubs and theaters we see tracking in the right direction. We'd always – in this business, you always worry about the first – the superstars are going to sell out, and then how is the rest of the business do? That's kind of the meeting the potatoes of our business. How the amphitheater shows? How is all the middle stuff going to do? And we're just seeing incredible strength right now across the board on our festivals, our big festivals or niche festivals, our theaters, clubs, we think this is going to be a continual buyer, consumers, as we said.

(US) JAN PCE DEFLATOR M/M: 0.6% V 0.5%E; Y/Y: 5.4% V 5.0%E (1st acceleration in annual pace in 7 months)

• PCE Core M/M: 0.6% v 0.4%e; Y/Y: 4.7% v 4.3%e (highest annual pace since Nov 2022)
• Prior PCE MoM revised higher from 0.1% to 0.2%
• Prior PCE YoY revised higher from 5.0% to 5.3%
• Prior Core PCE MoM revised higher from 0.3% to 0.4%
• Prior Core PCE YoY revised higher from 4.4% to 4.6%

@NickTimiraos: Fed officials have focused attention on inflation in services that exclude housing, given the potential for it to be stickier (and because housing inflation is set to slow)

January core PCE services inflation ex-housing: 12-month change: 4.5%

While some seasonal stalling in rents is normal, the market faces a significant headwind in the biggest delivery of new supply since 1986, according to projections from CoStar Group. Nearly half a million new apartments are coming on line this year as developers seek to cash in on the high rents that tenants have been paying. Many renters are unable to afford to buy a home because of higher mortgage rates and steep prices, so rentals have been in high demand.

Rents have retreated alongside recent declines in home-sale prices, which fell 3.6% between June and November, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index. Higher mortgage rates and softening buyer demand have been weighing on home prices, despite a period this year when lower rates sparked an uptick in buyer interest.

But where housing inventory remains unusually low—to the benefit of home sellers—the crush of new apartment supply will give renters more choices, making it more difficult for landlords to raise rents at rates seen early in 2022, when rent growth was at a near-20% annual clip.

The new supply may already be having an impact. The share of apartment tenants who renewed leases declined in January to 52%, the lowest level for that month since 2018, according to property-management software company RealPage. The data suggests some tenants are finding better deals at other buildings.

“Renters facing lease renewals suddenly have a lot more options,” RealPage economist Jay Parsons said in a report. Landlords are likely to start dropping their renewal rents to prevent tenants from leaving, he added.

News has been particularly unfavorable for core goods prices, specifically for used cars. Used car wholesale auction prices have jumped 7½%, reflecting a combination of temporary disruptions to new car production and a more persistent drag on used car supply, and we have raised our December 2023 year-over-year used car inflation forecast from -15% to -7½% (worth +0.1pp to overall core PCE inflation).

In April 2021, Carvana purchased the land at 4700 E. Evans. Ave. for $5.8 million to build a vending machine. But the tower sat unused, raising serious questions among community members about whether the building would fulfill its purpose as reports began to surface about possible financial instability within the company.

This week, however, Denverites finally received an answer. Carvana opened its eight-story vending machine on Wednesday, with the capacity to hold 27 vehicles.

Head of Carvana corporate affairs Alan Hoffman hailed the opening. “It’s an exciting time for folks in the Denver area who want to do car buying a little bit differently.”

Despite the announcement, questions still linger about the state of the company and short-term prospects for the industry.

There was an aphorism in the mid-20th century known as the 3-6-3 rule that described the sleepy regulated banking world of that era. It referred to bankers who collected funds by paying 3% interest to depositors, lent out that money at 6%, earned the spread between the two rates and made it to the golf course for a 3pm tee time.

And while that may have been more fiction than fact, it’s the kind of situation many homeowners could find themselves in this year. Their low mortgage rates mean they’re borrowing at 3%. Nearly risk-free investments like Treasuries now yield as much as 5%, and that rate seems likely to increase over the next several months as the Fed continues to raise interest rates.

In a case where someone has a $300,000, 30-year mortgage with a rate below 3% while also having $300,000 available in cash, interest rates on low-risk short-term investments are getting high enough to generate income that can cover principal, interest, taxes and insurance on a mortgage. That would essentially allow them to live in their house for free before maintenance costs.

This is an illustration of the dynamic that’s going to keep a lid on the inventory of homes for sale until interest rates start falling again. It's not only that homeowners don't want to swap out of a low mortgage rate for a higher one on a new property. Why would anyone want to pay off a $300,000 loan at 3% when they can invest essentially risk-free at 5% or more? It’s a way they can make high interest rates work to their advantage.

“As mortgage rates increase, we see a kind of an interesting dynamic in homeowners who are happy with their fixed rate mortgage and then decided to improve in place. You just don’t have very many willing sellers in the market today...our homeowner customer is in such a healthy position that you just think about their motive for selling. As you know, 90% -- over 90% of U.S. homeowners either own their homes outright or have fixed rate mortgages under 5%. And so that incentive to sell and move to a higher rate mortgage just isn't there." - Home Depot CFO Richard McPhail

@WayneWhaley1136: When a +4% January is Followed by a Negative February

@SethCL: 52/52 Model @LeutholdGroup

It calculates each week for $SPX This model compares the 52-wk rate of change in an index to the 52-WMA of the rate of change

Bullish reading on the Model for 1st time since May 2021. We know what happened thereafter $SPY

Since 1930 annulzd = 12%

@MarcRuby: For all the talk of what a bad year 2022 was for Goldman, they made over $100m a day on over a third of trading days – a record!

Mutual funds and hedge funds generally agreed on sectors, except for in Energy and Financials. The average mutual fund is 138 bp overweight Financials, the largest of any sector, and 44 bp overweight Energy. Hedge funds are underweight Financials (-343 bp) and Energy (-112 bp) relative to the Russell 3000. Hedge funds entered 2023 with their lowest net tilt to Energy since 3Q 2007 while the mutual fund tilt in the sector ranked at the 90th percentile vs. the past decade. Last quarter, both mutual funds and hedge funds rotated from value sectors (Energy, Industrials) into growth sectors (Tech, Discretionary, Comm Services). However, hedge fund and mutual fund positioning in Industrials still ranked near the 90th percentile vs. the past decade.

@JohnHuber72: $BKNG outlining how paying employees with stock is an actual expense. So many companies talk about "FCF" and even net income that excludes this very real expense. Bravo

A very minor gain in per-share intrinsic value took place in 2022 through Berkshire share repurchases as well as similar moves at Apple and American Express, both significant investees of ours. At Berkshire, we directly increased your interest in our unique collection of businesses by repurchasing 1.2% of the company’s outstanding shares. At Apple and Amex, repurchases increased Berkshire’s ownership a bit without any cost to us.

The math isn’t complicated: When the share count goes down, your interest in our many businesses goes up. Every small bit helps if repurchases are made at value-accretive prices. Just as surely, when a company overpays for repurchases, the continuing shareholders lose. At such times, gains flow only to the selling shareholders and to the friendly, but expensive, investment banker who recommended the foolish purchases.

Gains from value-accretive repurchases, it should be emphasized, benefit all owners – in every respect. Imagine, if you will, three fully-informed shareholders of a local auto dealership, one of whom manages the business. Imagine, further, that one of the passive owners wishes to sell his interest back to the company at a price attractive to the two continuing shareholders. When completed, has this transaction harmed anyone? Is the manager somehow favored over the continuing passive owners? Has the public been hurt?

When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).

@TheTranscript_: 1. Buffett on his good returns: "Our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions...it takes just a few winners to work wonders & yes, it helps to start early & live into your 90s as well"

@conorsen: Look at the interest rates on the debt Berkshire Hathaway has issued. That 2059 paper trades at 62 cents on the dollar:

A new model: Private equity and employee ownership

All 800 workers at an Illinois factory received an average payout of about $175,000 when their company sold, because they had been made part-owners. It's part of a new business model to tackle wealth inequality, and it's coming from an unlikely force: private equity, which has long had a reputation for layoffs and cost-cutting. National Public Radio's Allison Aubrey talks with workers about their big payday; and with an executive at private equity firm KKR, who believes ownership can increase employee loyalty and boost profits.

Based in New York, Mr. Stavros, 48 years old, has done deals across the healthcare, consumer and industrial sectors. In 2010, he began leading the industrials investment team, where he started a program to give ownership stakes to the hourly employees of portfolio companies, including factory workers. He implemented the model at companies including the manufacturer Ingersoll Rand Inc., the garage-door maker CHI Overhead Doors and Minnesota Rubber & Plastics.

The firm has since rolled out the employee-ownership model across its U.S. private-equity portfolio. Mr. Stavros last year launched a nonprofit organization aimed at promoting employee ownership and has persuaded competitor firms to commit to implementing it at their own portfolio companies.

22 Feb 2023

KEY TOPICS

Mario explains the benefits of investing in private markets and outlines the current dynamics in private markets versus their public counterparts, as well as some of the risks investors should be aware of when investing.

Private debt secondaries are on the rise as investors increasingly hunt for liquidity options.

Dealmakers say, however, that the market remains undercapitalized, even as secondary buyers pour in more money at a faster pace.

Although some heavyweight buyers have snatched up debt secondaries, investors say the market has been pulling out all the stops to absorb big-ticket LP portfolio sales, and it’s been difficult to find buyers for some larger GP-led transactions.

According to secondaries specialist Coller Capital, the trade in secondhand stakes of private debt funds hit $17 billion in 2022—more than 30 times the total volume in 2012. At the current rate, the value of secondary deals is expected to reach $50 billion by 2026, the firm estimated.

Last year's rise in the private debt secondaries market was mainly driven by LP-led sales, according to several investors. This was primarily due to the denominator effect, as falling stock prices have left limited partners overexposed to private debt and other alternative asset classes. As a result, many investors are selling their private debt holdings on the secondary market.

Keeping Lavrov in the dark was not unusual for Putin, who tended to concentrate his foreign policy decision-making among a handful of close confidants, even when it undermined Russia’s diplomatic efforts.

On this occasion, the phone call made Lavrov one of the very few people who had any knowledge of the plan ahead of time. The Kremlin’s senior leadership all found out about the invasion only when they saw Putin declare a “special military operation” on television that morning.

Later that day, several dozen oligarchs gathered at the Kremlin for a meeting arranged only the day before, aware that the invasion would trigger western sanctions that could destroy their empires. “Everyone was completely losing it,” says a person who attended the event.

While they waited, one of the oligarchs spied Lavrov exiting another meeting and pressed him for an explanation about why Putin had decided to invade. Lavrov had no answer: the officials he was there to see in the Kremlin had known less about it than he did.

Stunned, the oligarch asked Lavrov how Putin could have planned such an enormous invasion in such a tiny circle — so much so that most of the senior officials at the Kremlin, Russia’s economic cabinet and its business elite had not believed it was even possible.

“He has three advisers,” Lavrov replied, according to the oligarch. “Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great.”

Under Putin’s invasion plan, Russia’s troops were to seize Kyiv within a matter of days in a brilliant, comparatively bloodless blitzkrieg.

As Ozempic gains more attention and more people use the diabetes drug off-label to lose weight, doctors say that many patients are reporting similar experiences: They start the medication and then stop wanting to drink alcohol.

“It’s certainly something I’ve heard many of my patients say, usually in a positive way,” said Dr. Robert Gabbay, the chief scientific and medical officer of the American Diabetes Association.

Tina Zarpour, 46, who works at a museum in San Diego, used to have a glass of wine a few times a week while she cooked dinner. But after she started taking Wegovy — a weight loss drug containing semaglutide, which is the active ingredient in Ozempic — in 2021, she found herself “repelled” by alcohol, she said. She would try to have a drink but struggled to finish. “It was like, ugh, I don’t want to,” she said.

Even during a birthday lunch, the type of social event where she would typically enjoy a cocktail or two, she couldn’t bring herself to drink. She ended up ordering tea. “I just wasn’t expecting it,” she said of her new distaste for alcohol. But she said she was grateful for the push to cut back on drinking.

Scientists are working to understand why people like Ms. Zarpour experience this side effect. There are some clues: Semaglutide belongs to a class of drugs called glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonists, which mimic a hormone in our bodies that makes us feel full. Semaglutide helps control insulin and blood sugar levels, and can also potentially affect the areas in the brain that regulate our desire for food, said Dr. Janice Jin Hwang, the division chief of endocrinology and metabolism at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Some people taking Ozempic have reported feeling less excited or, in some cases, even disgusted by the foods they once enjoyed. It’s unclear why that reaction may extend to alcohol.

Nearly all of the existing research on GLP-1 receptor agonists and alcohol over the last decade has been conducted on animals and with compounds similar, but not identical, to semaglutide. Rats, mice and monkeys receiving GLP-1 receptor agonists have been shown to consume less alcohol and exhibit less of a desire for it than those that are not given the medication. (Animal studies involving these chemicals and drugs like nicotine, opioids and cocaine have reported similar findings.)

Caffeine is a gift in ways besides happiness. Combined with exercise, it can improve cognitive performance (that means it makes you smarter, in case you haven’t had your coffee yet), and if you’ve been sleeping less than optimally, it can enhance your reaction time and logical reasoning abilities. Remember this as you head out in traffic: The life your coffee saves could be your own.

It is no exaggeration to say that caffeine is a boon to humanity. As Michael Pollan argues in his audiobook Caffeine: How Coffee and Tea Created the Modern World, caffeine’s arrival into the European diet in the 17th century transformed the economy through enhanced productivity, innovation, and safety. If it weren’t for coffee, you would probably spend your days shivering in a dark cave, and die after getting a splinter. So don’t be an ungrateful wretch: If you like electricity, running water, and lifesaving medicines, give thanks for the miracle of caffeine.

Nothing in life is free, of course. Faced with the holy power of the Bean, adenosine’s malevolent forces fight back. As you consume more caffeine over time, adenosine receptors upregulate, increasing in number to accommodate the caffeine molecules and take in their intended guests as well. This leads to a state of tolerance, in which caffeine has a smaller effect after chronic use. However, this “problem” is really just an opportunity to enjoy more coffee.