“If we determine that this round of investment clock is a transition from the early recession to the late recession, the opportunity for equity assets will logically rise.” On December 24, Guo Lei, chief economist of Gf Securities Co.Ltd(000776) , made the above statement at the Gf Securities Co.Ltd(000776) 2022 annual investment strategy meeting.
Generally speaking, Guo Lei believes that the signs of the effectiveness of this round of policies are fixed capital and Peiyuan. At present, there is no obvious overdraft in stocks and bonds, and the investment clock has entered the next stage.
after the epidemic, the economy entered a zone without a map
For the economy after the epidemic, Guo Lei summarized it as “a section without a map”. “At the end of last year, the market generally overestimated the recovery of consumption and service industry, but generally underestimated the strength of exports.” Guo Lei said.
Reviewing the economic changes in the past two years, Guo Lei said that due to the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, on the demand side, the economy is facing the problem of insufficient effective demand, such as weak consumption; On the supply side, there are also many constraints on supply, such as the limited expression of export supply and demand.
Under the smallpox effect of demand and the cushion effect of supply, Guo Lei believes that the economy presents the characteristics of duality. On the one hand, foreign demand is very strong, on the other hand, domestic demand continues to be weak. Under such a background, the policy puts forward the concept of cross cycle regulation, and the performance of the asset side is relatively smooth.
Guo Lei said that one of the clues to the economic pressure in the second half of this year is the downward trend of the construction industry chain. In terms of infrastructure construction, there was penetration supervision of special debt in the first half of the year and the resolution of implicit debt in the second half of the year; In terms of real estate, this year has also promoted a relatively strong round of real estate regulation. “Such a trend from infrastructure to real estate will eventually lead to the decline of GDP of the construction industry.” Guo Lei said.
From the perspective of other economic drivers, Guo Lei believes that the risk of continued economic slowdown in 2022 comes from the high overseas manufacturing inventory and import cycle. “Consumption may have some resilience, but consumption has a ceiling effect.” Guo Lei said frankly.
“According to the whole calculation, under the neutral situation, the GDP growth rate will be about 5.3% next year.” Guo Lei said, “the pressure level is mainly in the first half of the year, especially in the first quarter. From this perspective, this is also an important background for us to stabilize growth at the end of this year.”
the sign of the effectiveness of this round of policies is to consolidate the foundation and cultivate the yuan
For the transmission mechanism from economy to policy, Guo Lei summarized it as follows: real estate affects finance, export affects employment.
“The number of higher education graduates will reach 10.76 million next year, 1.67 million more than this year, which also requires considerable economic activity in order to provide sufficient jobs.” Guo Lei pointed out, “from this perspective, we can clearly understand the six stabilities and six guarantees mentioned in the policy.”
“Nearly half of the content is related to finance and employment, such as stabilizing employment, ensuring residents’ employment, stabilizing investment, ensuring basic people’s livelihood, stabilizing expectations and ensuring grass-roots operation.” Guo Lei said, “the pressure of Finance and employment will eventually become the demand of policy steady growth.”
For how to stabilize growth, from the perspective of short-term economy, Guo Lei tends to think that the most important point is the investment rate. In terms of stable investment, Guo Lei believes that traditional investment is mainly infrastructure to make up for weaknesses; Emerging areas will focus on “double carbon”. Guo Lei believes that the policy promotion of “double carbon” has two strategic considerations. One is to hope that “carbon neutralization” will bear the space for fixed asset investment in the post real estate era, and the other is to hope that carbon neutralization will force the upgrading of the manufacturing industry.
Combined with the spirit of the latest central economic work conference, Guo Lei believes that the symbol of the effectiveness of this round of policies is to consolidate the foundation and cultivate the yuan. Specifically, Guo Lei believes that the meeting first clarified the importance of steady growth, followed by closely focusing on the stabilization of investment rate, and finally proposed a three-year action plan for the implementation of scientific and technological system reform, which can confirm the effectiveness of steady growth.
“With the confirmation of the effectiveness of policy steady growth, the investment clock will enter the next stage.” Guo Lei said.
at present, there is no obvious overdraft in stocks and bonds, and the investment clock has entered the next stage
Looking back on 2021, Guo Lei concluded that the asset style was relatively smooth during the year, and neither stocks nor bonds seemed to be overdrawn.
In terms of stocks, Guo Lei pointed out that the Shanghai stock index and the profit growth rate of industrial enterprises are in good agreement at the inflection point and slope. “In the first three quarters of this year, the two-year average growth rate of industrial enterprise profits was about 18% – 19%, and the increase of equity in the same period was also roughly in such a range.” Guo Lei said.
In terms of bonds, from the ratio of nominal GDP to 10-year Treasury bond yield, it is basically in the range of 3.6-2.2 from 2017 to 2019. “The change range of interest rate relative to nominal GDP basically represents the valuation of bond assets relative to fundamentals.” Guo Lei pointed out, “at the end of the third quarter of this year, the ratio was almost about 3.4, which means that there is no significant overdraft for interest rate pricing.”
From the perspective of investment clock, Guo Lei believes that the economy can be divided into four stages: early recession, late recession, early recovery and late recovery. “Once the policy of steady growth appears, then our investment clock will enter the second stage – the late recession.” Guo Lei pointed out, “if we determine that this round of investment clock is the transition from the early stage of the recession to the late stage of the recession, the opportunity of equity assets will logically rise.”
From the perspective of macro leverage ratio, Guo Lei pointed out that the leverage ratio has been declining in the first three quarters of this year, and with the emergence of this round of steady growth, it is expected that the leverage ratio will stabilize and rise slightly in the first half of next year.
the trend of the epidemic, the rhythm of the Fed’s interest rate increase and the background of global carbon neutrality are also important pricing factors
In addition to the above framework, Guo Lei also pointed out three other factors affecting asset pricing.
First, the global epidemic trend is an important factor. From the epidemic data, Guo Lei believes that the global new diagnosis is basically negatively correlated with crude oil prices, and most of the time negatively correlated with US bond yields. The local newly added bonds are negatively correlated with the overall yield of 10-year Treasury bonds, and also negatively correlated with the cycle / growth of CITIC industry index. This means that the impact of the epidemic trend on commodities, bonds and stocks is still obvious.
Secondly, the rhythm of the Fed’s interest rate hike and the US dollar and US bonds under this influence are also important factors. Guo Lei believes that there is a negative correlation between the US dollar and A-Shares as a whole, and US bonds mainly affect the valuation of comparable assets in global pricing. “If the change is relatively gentle in the future, the impact on assets will not be too great, but if the periodic upward movement is too fast, it may still have a certain impact.” Guo Lei pointed out.
Finally, under the background of global carbon neutrality, it is more difficult to balance the volume and price of global priced commodities, which will also have a very profound impact on the prices of bulk commodities, stocks and bonds.
(surging News)
