China

Daily China: The Burden of Too Big Government and more

In this briefing:

  1. The Burden of Too Big Government
  2. Xiaomi (1810 HK): Dead Money
  3. Ping An No Longer the Safe Haven – Call for New Lows in Progress

1. The Burden of Too Big Government

From our very own “Austrian” Leigh Skene:

Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt. Ezra Pound

Governments used public sector balance sheets to bail out private financial institutions and assist private companies to emerge from bankruptcy in the GFC. These actions transferred credit risk from the private to the public sector, yet falling nominal interest rates minimised, and in some cases froze, the cost of servicing the mounting government debt until late 2016. Since then, many borrowers have paid rising  interest rates on increasing amounts of debt. Debt service charges are rising faster than nominal GDP in a growing number of nations as a result. It is estimated that the US federal funding requirement will rise from minus US$ 700bn to US$ 2tr in 2022.

2. Xiaomi (1810 HK): Dead Money

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Xiaomi Corp (1810 HK)’s shares are around 43% below the IPO price partly due to the recent well-documented selling of shares following the end of a lock-up period. Ultimately, every share has a “right” value and the investors buying into the recent share placement presumably have the view that the shares are attractive at current levels.

While there is no longer a strong case to sell the shares at current levels, we do not recommend diving head first to buy the shares due to limited upside, potentially worsening market outlook and ongoing share overhang from lockup expiry.

3. Ping An No Longer the Safe Haven – Call for New Lows in Progress

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68.30 long entry was recommended to close at the 77-80 area with 80 acting as the macro bull/bear line in our insight Ping An Long Pair Working – Risk of New Lows . The rejection call at 80 was expected to usher in selling pressure to press on new lows.

Ping An’s safe haven status has evaporated and does exhibit future vulnerabilities in HK’s underlying cycle (late Q1 into Q2). In our last insight we outlined that Ping An shows increasing risk that its safer have position will come under pressure and so it has.

New lows are still targeted. The current bounce is knocking on formidable resistance that should be used to sell stale long positions or even take a short bet.

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