Global Investing

The Olympic medals have all been handed out and the athletes are on their way home.  Which countries surpassed expectations and which ones did worse than expected? And did this have anything to do with the state of their economies?

An extensive Goldman Sachs report entitled Olympics and Economics  (a regular feature before each Olympic Games) predicted before the Games kicked off that the United States would top the tally with 36 gold medals. It also said the top 10 would include five G7 countries (the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy), two BRICs (China and Russia), one of the developing countries it dubs Next-11  (South Korea), and one additional developed and emerging market. These would be Australia and Ukraine, it said.

Close enough, except that Hungary took the place of Ukraine as the emerging economy in the Top 10 and the United States actually took 46 gold medals — more than Goldman had predicted.

Goldman Sachs quite rightly pointed out in its report that progress and improvement in economic growth have historically equaled progress in sport  –check out South Korea’s 13 golds in London compared with none in Munich 40 years ago; its per capita income is now $23,000 compared with $2,300  back then.  Clearly wealth is key: hence 9 of the top 20 medal winning nations also have among the highest per capita incomes.

Second, countries with a socialist past (or present) also usually put up a strong showing even if the people are poorer — 8 of the top 20 from London are either communist (China, Cuba and North Korea)  or ex-Soviet bloc (Russia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and the Czech Republic).

Half of India’s 1.2 billion people have been without power today,  bringing transport, factories and offices to a grinding halt for the second day in a row and sparking rage amongst the sweltering population. That’s embarrassing enough for a country that prides itself as  a member of the BRIC quartet of big emerging powerhouses along with Brazil, Russia and China.  But the outages will also hit economic growth which is already at 10-year lows. And the power failures, highlighting India’s woeful infrastructure, bode poorly for the government’s plans to step up manufacturing and lure more foreign companies to the factory sector.

India urgently needs to increase production and exports of manufactured goods. After all, software or pharma exports do not create jobs for a huge and largely unskilled population. India should be making and selling toys, clothes, shoes –- the things that helped lift hundreds of millions of Chinese, Taiwanese and Koreans  out of poverty and fuelled the current account surpluses in these countries.  At present, manufacturing provides less than 16 percent of India’s gross domestic product (30 percent in China, 25 percent in South Korea and Taiwan)  but the government wants to raise that to 26 percent by 2022.  Trade minister Anand Sharma, in London last week, for a pre-Olympics conference, was eloquent on the plan to boost manufacturing exports to plug the current account gap:

In coming decades, India will be transformed into a major manufacturing hub of the world.

Where are the missing barrels of oil, asks Barclays Capital.

Oil inventories in the United States rose sharply last week, with demand for oil products  such as gasoline at the lowest in 15 years and crude stockpiles at the highest since last September. Americans, pinched in the wallet, are clearly cutting back on fuel use.

But worldwide, the inventories picture is different – Barclays calculates in  fact that oil stocks are around 50 million barrels below the seasonal average. And sustainable spare capacity in the market is less than 2 million barrels per day. What that means is that the world has “extremely limited buffers to absorb any one of the series of potential geopolitical mishaps.” (Barclays writes)

A big difference from the picture at the start of 2012. With the global economy weak, analysts predicted OPEC would need to pump 29.7 million barrels per day in the first quarter, more than a million barrels below what the group was actually pumping. Logic dictates inventories would have started to build.

Distressed debt broker Exotix, which specialises in the kind of bonds most of us are too risk-averse to touch, recommends buying North Korean defaulted debt following the death of Kim Jong-il.

Stuart Culverhouse, chief economist at Exotix, says the debt, which matures in 2020 but could be rolled over if holders agree, could reach 20-22 cents on the dollar near-term, from 14-18 now.

Risk-hungry investors buy rock-bottom defaulted debt  in the hope that terms of any settlement with creditors will be worth the investment.

Just when you think global financial markets are gradually winding down before Christmas, news of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s death hits the world.

Investors are reacting calmly, with the safe-haven dollar steady and world stocks down slightly. But what are the investment implications of North Korean uncertainty?

It was Goldman Sachs back in 2009 that said GDP of a united Korea could exceed that of France, Germany and possibly Japan in 30-40 years, should the growth potential of North Korea — notably its rich mineral wealth — be realised. (Link here, courtesy of the North Korean Economy Watch)

They may be among the only economies left to save the world — or at least the euro zone – but Russia, India and China are extremely risky bets, according to an economic, social and governance scale compiled by risk consultancy Maplecroft.

The company’s ESG Atlas and Risk Calculator allows investors to choose across ESG issues from 47 risk indices, to make country scorecards.

On that basis, China and India are among 38 countries classified as “extreme risk” in one or more categories. Among those, India is in the bottom 10 for environmental issues.

The opinion on Turkey’s unorthodox monetary policy mix is turning as rapidly as global growth forecasts are being revised down.

Earlier this month, its central bank was the object of much finger-wagging after it defied market fears over an overheating economy by cutting its policy rate. It defended the move, arguing that weaker global demand posed a greater risk than inflationary pressures.

Investors were not persuaded. When I told one analyst about the Turkish rate move, he practically sputtered down the phone: "You're not kidding?!"

By Ian Bremmer
The views expressed are his own.

All eyes should be peeled on China, but not for the reason you think. While the biggest structural risk right now is global rebalancing, especially between China and the U.S., there is another important threat from China: cyberwars. Cyberattacks are one of the biggest fat tails (along with climate and North Korea).

It’s no surprise that the latest Google hack attack came from China. The presumption is that the vast majority of cyber attacks hitting the U.S. are coming from the Chinese government. It’s very hard to know where threats are originating – country-wise and/or person-wise -- because it’s very difficult to go back and figure out the paper trail. But at a minimum, there is an environment in China that tolerates cyber attacks.

Proprietary information around technologies – gaining profit shares, increasing revenues – allows a country to be much more economically competitive. China has leverage because everyone wants to get into China. If you want to make something in their country, you have to share the technology.

It’s the year of Tiger in the Lunar calendar. JP Morgan Asset management says the Tiger year opens with a bang only to peter out with a whimper — it is a year of fluctuating fortunes with people doing dramatic things, often on the spur of the moment.

“In short, it is a year of massive change, but it can also be a year to inject new life into a losing cause,” the asset manager says.

Here are some events that happened in previous Tiger years, listed by JPM:

1950: The (then) USSR claimed to have developed the atomic bomb, while the Korean War began with the North invading the South.

As a fallout in emerging markets — once hailed as a safe-haven from the global financial crisis — gathers pace, asset managers are scrambling for newer markets.

What about North Korea? The Stalinist country boasts large untapped natural resources with deposits of gold, coal, zinc and other minerals. It has virtually no capital markets and its banks are all state-owned — making it a true safe haven from the global financial crisis.

The communist state has a good logistics route. It has borders with China, Russia and of course South Korea and a short sea route to Japan. South Korean firms such as Hyundai and LG already invest in the North.