September 14, 2023 | Daily JAM, Dividend Income, Jubak Picks, Mid Term, SCCO, Top 50 Stocks |
The People’s Bank of China cut the amount of cash banks must hold in reserve for the second time this year. The move is an effort to boost flagging economic growth in China. The bank could have cut its benchmark interest rate in pursuit of the same goal. But that would have led to more selling against the yuan and the People’s Bank has been busy in the trenches in recent weeks trying to prop up the yuan agains the dollar. The question, of course, is whether the cut in reserve requirements will be enough, without a reduction in interest rates, to revive growth in China’s economy.
June 15, 2023 | Daily JAM, Videos |
Today’s Trend of the Week is China Weaker Than Expected. The key part here is “than expected.” In the most recent official government report, Chinese exports were down 7.5% year over year. Economists were expecting a much more modest drop of 0.4%. The semi-annual projections from the World Bank and the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) predicted a slowing for the global economy, but still a relatively positive outlook. However, those projections were based on solid growth from China, which the latest official figures suggest is certainly not a done deal. The World Bank and OECD reports imply that if China’s growth disappoints, world economic growth projections of 1%-2% will be high. At this point, the global economy is leveraged to Chinese economic growth, so if China doesn’t do well, that spreads throughout the world. Low-income countries that cannot pay their debts and are facing higher interest rates are sounding the alarm that they may soon be unable to feed their people. A slowing global economy would essentially amount to a run on low-income countries, which could spread to the rest of the economy. This is a trend to keep an eye on and a good time to make sure your investments are in dollar-denominated assets. (Not that the dollar is in such great shape.)
April 19, 2023 | BABA, Daily JAM, FXI, JD, Videos |
Today’s topic is China’s Economy is Back. On April 18, China reported 4.5% year-over-year GDP growth for the first quarter. While it wasn’t the 5% growth rate that the Chinese government has set as a target, it was better than the 4% forecast by economists. This growth rate comes on the heels of a 4th quarter with only 2.9% year-over-year growth. Other numbers showed strength too. For example, retail sales rose 10.6% year-over-year beating forecasts of 7.4%. But the economy isn’t cooking on all burners: Industrial production was up only 3.9%, just missing the forecasts of 4%. The iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) is a good way to buy into China’s economy. There was a big rally from November to December as investors anticipated China’s economy speeding out of its Covid slump. But that rally was followed by a drop as the Chinese economy struggled with a resurgence in Covid cases. Now we’re seeing that drop start turn around. Individual stocks like Alibaba (BABA) and JD.com (JD) show charts with a similar pattern and can be expected to start to climb as the economy continues to pick up.
January 31, 2022 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Output from China’s manufacturing sector slowed to its weakest in almost two years in January, according to the Caixin/Markit Purchasing Managers Index. The index dropped to 49.1 in January from 50.9 in December. In the index a reading below 50 indicates that output is contracting rather than expanding. The January level is the weakest since February 2020 when much of the country was on lockdown during the first wave of the Covid-19 virus.
August 14, 2020 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
In July China's industrial output climbed by 4.8% year over year, Beijing announced today. That's the same rate as in June. This good news in that it shows the post-coronavirus recovery continues in the industrial sector. But it's bad news in that growth isn't...
June 15, 2020 | Daily JAM, Short Term, You Might Have Missed |
New economic data from China over the weekend point to a recovery of growth for the economy in the second half of 2020 but not the kind of surge needed to produce a V-shaped recovery. Industrial output rose 4.4% from a year earlier in May with steel output rising to a...
April 17, 2019 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
China’s economy expanded at 6.4% year over year. That beat the 6.3% expected by economists surveyed by Briefing.com. That projected 6.3% growth itself marked a step up in optimism about China’s economy.
January 21, 2019 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The growth rate for China's GDP slowed to 6.4% in the fourth quarter, government data showed today. That's the slowest rate of growth since 2009. (GDP growth in the third quarter was 6.5%.) For all of 2018, China's economy grew by 6.6%. That hit government targets and...
January 9, 2019 | Daily JAM, Notes You Need |
In my daily trawling through the market I come upon lots of tidbits of knowledge that I think are important to investors but that don't justify a full post. I've decided to start compiling these notes here each day in a kind of running mini blog that I'm calling Notes...
December 14, 2018 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
I recently noted that I thought stocks wanted to climb, and would through the end of the year--if news let them. Well, this morning, the news has put a big downward thumb on the scale. First off, China's November retail sales grew 8.1% year over year, China's...
June 21, 2018 | Daily JAM, Stock Alerts |
One of my core beliefs after running the Jubak Picks portfolio for more than 20 years now is that when the reason I picked a stock to buy evaporates, then it's time to sell. So today I'm selling Starbucks (SBUX) out of my Jubak Picks portfolio. When I added the stock...
March 5, 2018 | Daily JAM, Mid Term, Morning Briefing |
Meeting in Beijing today, the National People’s Congress approved plans laid out by President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang to set the target for economic growth at 6.5% for the next year and to reduce the government deficit to 2.6% of GDP from the 3% of the last two years.
