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The 3 red lines that could bring iron ore prices back to earth

Chinese property construction accounts for close to 30 per cent of world seaborn iron ore demand, and is probably the most important demand driver impacting the iron ore price. But with Chinese regulators trying to crimp the sector, population growth…

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Chinese property construction accounts for close to 30 per cent of world seaborn iron ore demand, and is probably the most important demand driver impacting the iron ore price. But with Chinese regulators trying to crimp the sector, population growth turning negative, and urbanization peaking, I think today’s lofty iron ore price will prove to be short-lived.

One of the factors that we follow to try to assess the risk/reward equation of investing in iron ore producers is the health of the Chinese property development sector. You might ask, why is Chinese property development important for the Iron Ore price?

To explain that, let’s go through some charts with data from Bloomberg.

Firstly, as people probably know, China is the major driver of iron ore demand, accounting for 78 per cent of worldwide seaborn iron ore imports:

Source: Bloomberg

Secondly, Chinese domestic iron ore production (18 per cent) is small compared to imports (82 per cent) so demand changes in China will mostly translate into changes in import volumes:

Screen Shot 2021-06-30 at 4.17.56 pm

Source: Bloomberg

Thirdly, Real Estate construction is by far the largest demand driver for Chinese steel demand accounting for 42 per cent of total Chinese steel demand:

Screen Shot 2021-06-30 at 4.18.16 pm

Source: Bloomberg

About 26 per cent (= 78 per cent * 82 per cent * 42 per cent) of the world’s seaborn iron ore demand is therefore directly dependent on Chinese property construction activity (or even more as domestic iron ore is probably more likely to be stable rather than ramp up and down for domestic political reasons) and it is hence clear that Chinese property construction is probably the most important demand driver impacting the iron ore supply/demand balance.

So, let’s now see what we can say about the health of the Chinese property developers!

We should first note that since mid-2020, Chinese regulators have been trying to lower leverage in the property development sector by regulating how quickly developers can grow their total debt through the introduction of “Three Red Lines” which are:

  • Liability-to-asset ratio (excluding advance receipts) of less than 70 per cent
  • Net gearing ratio of less than 100 per cent
  • Cash-to-short-term debt ratio of more than 1x

If companies do not fulfill one or more of these criteria, they have limits imposed on them in how quickly they can add debt as per this table:

Screen Shot 2021-06-30 at 4.18.42 pm

If we now look at this list that shows the major property developers in China, we can point out some interesting things:

Screen Shot 2021-06-30 at 4.18.59 pm

  • Debt accounts for a large portion of the enterprise value of the sector. On a straight average the market cap is 35 per cent of enterprise value and 43 per cent if we market cap weight the average.
  • Share prices have in general been very weak over the last 3 months and are down on average 16 per cent vs. a Hong Kong index that is flat and a Shanghai index that is up around 5 per cent.
  • Some of the companies have very substantial gearing ratios with net debt to equity ratios well above 100 per cent and net debt to EBITDA over 7x.
  • Credit ratings are generally sub investment grade with some exceptions.
  • Only one company in the top 20 developers meets all “Three red lines” in the regulations and most miss on at least 2 points with some missing all 3 criteria (last 3 columns in table above)
  • This means that the sector as a whole is severely limited in its ability to take on more debt and the Chinese regulators have also been expanding the number of developers that are covered by this policy and now virtually all developers are covered.

We can also see that the cost of accessing new debt looks challenging with the Chinese Junk bond index trading at a significant discount to international markets (highest delta in yield since 2015). Junk bonds in China are generally issued by property developers so this shows how expensive new debt is for them.

Screen Shot 2021-06-30 at 4.19.22 pm

As a result, it is clear that Chinese property developers are slowing down their construction activities which we can see from this chart that shows Bloomberg data on new residential construction starts where we can see that we are currently running below both 2019 and 2020 levels by about 5 per cent:

Screen Shot 2021-06-30 at 4.19.39 pm

Source: Bloomberg

This raises a couple of questions:

  • Given that it is increased government regulations that has triggered a downturn in the growth rates, what would happen if the government decided to again unshackle the property developers? Given the increase in funding costs, it is clear that the market has perceived the risk with lending to property developers increase significantly and with the Chinese government seeming to have stepped back from the concept of “too big to fail” in the property sector, I very much struggle to see investors being willing to step up again and lower the cost of funding. (Goldman Sachs has a good video on it here).
  • It also raises the question: could there be a sudden crash for the sector given that so big a portion of the total enterprise value is made up by debt similar to what we saw in 2007 in connection with the GFC or in March 2020 when COVID-19 first emerged? At the end of the day, property developers need to be able to sell their developments for good prices to be able to repay their debt and if we were to see a fall in real estate prices, this would be very worrying and could definitely trigger a similar crisis for the sector. So far, we have only seen a significant slowdown in price growth but we are still seeing about 5 per cent YoY increases which is down from over 10 per cent per year a couple of years ago (chart from Bloomberg shows price growth YoY in percentage for newly built developments).

Screen Shot 2021-06-30 at 4.20.04 pm

Source: Bloomberg

My high level outlook for the property development sector in China can therefore be summarized as follows:

  • China has recently turned negative in population growth rate and this was well publicized and with the long standing one child policy only just recently changed, it will take a long time for this to turn around meaning that there will not be an underlying population growth supporting the demand for property.
  • The Chinese urbanization rate has reached well over 60 per cent. It can of course go higher still but at least the majority of the move to the cities from the countryside is over. With many industries with large parts of their supply chain in China likely to consider relocating at least part of manufacturing outside given the increasing geopolitical tensions between China and the western world, one of the main drivers of urbanization is likely to be less in the future than in the past.

Screen Shot 2021-06-30 at 4.20.24 pm

  • The Chinese government wants to encourage investments into higher tech sectors and less into property speculation and it seems like they have taken their hands off the sector at least to some extent.
  • The cost of debt has increased a lot for the developers, and they are limited in the amount of additional debt they can add despite the global availability of cheap debt funding and it seems like the cost of equity has also increased significantly for the sector recently.
  • There is a massive amount of inventory in the Chinese property sector already with figures of 65 million empty apartments being quoted and the stories of “ghost cities” being plentiful.

With a sector that accounts for close to 30 per cent of the total seaborn iron ore demand looking this shaky and with iron ore prices at all time highs, we are very hesitant to consider investing into the sector.

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Home buyers must now navigate higher mortgage rates and prices

Rates under 4% came and went during the Covid pandemic, but home prices soared. Here’s what buyers and sellers face as the housing season ramps up.

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12 mins ago

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March 17, 2024

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Springtime is spreading across the country. You can see it as daffodil, camellia, tulip and other blossoms start to emerge. 

You can also see it in the increasing number of for sale signs popping up in front of homes, along with the painting, gardening and general sprucing up as buyers get ready to sell. 

Which leads to two questions: 

  • How is the real estate market this spring? 
  • Where are mortgage rates? 

What buyers and sellers face

The housing market is bedeviled with supply shortages, high prices and slow sales.

Mortgage rates are still high and may limit what a buyer can offer and a seller can expect.  

Related: Analyst warns that a TikTok ban could lead to major trouble for Apple, Big Tech

And there's a factor not expected that may affect the sales process. Fixed commission rates on home sales are going away in July.

Reports this week and in a week will make the situation clearer for buyers and sellers. 

The reports are:

  • Housing starts from the U.S. Commerce Department due Tuesday. The consensus estimate is for a seasonally adjusted rate of about 1.4 million homes. These would include apartments, both rentals and condominiums. 
  • Existing home sales, due Thursday from the National Association of Realtors. The consensus estimate is for a seasonally adjusted sales rate of about 4 million homes. In 2023, some 4.1 million homes were sold, the worst sales rate since 1995. 
  • New-home sales and prices, due Monday from the Commerce Department. Analysts are expecting a sales rate of 661,000 homes (including condos), up 1.5% from a year ago.

Here is what buyers and sellers need to know about the situation. 

Mortgage rates will stay above 5% 

That's what most analysts believe. Right now, the rate on a 30-year mortgage is between 6.7% and 7%. 

Rates peaked at 8% in October after the Federal Reserve signaled it was done raising interest rates.

The Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey of March 14 was at 6.74%. 

Freddie Mac buys mortgages from lenders and sells securities to investors. The effect is to replenish lenders' cash levels to make more loans. 

A hotter-than-expected Producer Price Index released that day has pushed quotes to 7% or higher, according to data from Mortgage News Daily, which tracks mortgage markets.

Home buyers must navigate higher mortgage rates and prices this spring.

TheStreet

On a median-priced home (price: $380,000) and a 20% down payment, that means a principal and interest rate payment of $2,022. The payment  does not include taxes and insurance.

Last fall when the 30-year rate hit 8%, the payment would have been $2,230. 

In 2021, the average rate was 2.96%, which translated into a payment of $1,275. 

Short of a depression, that's a rate that won't happen in most of our lifetimes. 

Most economists believe current rates will fall to around 6.3% by the end of the year, maybe lower, depending on how many times the Federal Reserve cuts rates this year. 

If 6%, the payment on our median-priced home is $1,823.

But under 5%, absent a nasty recession, fuhgettaboutit.

Supply will be tight, keeping prices up

Two factors are affecting the supply of homes for sale in just about every market.

First: Homeowners who had been able to land a mortgage at 2.96% are very reluctant to sell because they would then have to find a home they could afford with, probably, a higher-cost mortgage.

More economic news:

Second, the combination of high prices and high mortgage rates are freezing out thousands of potential buyers, especially those looking for homes in lower price ranges.

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal noted that online brokerage Redfin said only about 20% of homes for sale in February were affordable for the typical household.

And here mortgage rates can play one last nasty trick. If rates fall, that means a buyer can afford to pay more. Sellers and their real-estate agents know this too, and may ask for a higher price. 

Covid's last laugh: An inflation surge

Mortgage rates jumped to 8% or higher because since 2022 the Federal Reserve has been fighting to knock inflation down to 2% a year. Raising interest rates was the ammunition to battle rising prices.

In June 2022, the consumer price index was 9.1% higher than a year earlier. 

The causes of the worst inflation since the 1970s were: 

  • Covid-19 pandemic, which caused the global economy to shut down in 2020. When Covid ebbed and people got back to living their lives, getting global supply chains back to normal operation proved difficult. 
  • Oil prices jumped to record levels because of the recovery from the pandemic recovery and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

What the changes in commissions means

The long-standing practice of paying real-estate agents will be retired this summer, after the National Association of Realtors settled a long and bitter legal fight.

No longer will the seller necessarily pay 6% of the sale price to split between buyer and seller agents.

Both sellers and buyers will have to negotiate separately the services agents have charged for 100 years or more. These include pre-screening properties, writing sales contracts, and the like. The change will continue a trend of adding costs and complications to the process of buying or selling a home.

Already, interest rates are a complication. In addition, homeowners insurance has become very pricey, especially in communities vulnerable to hurricanes, tornadoes, and forest fires. Florida homeowners have seen premiums jump more than 102% in the last three years. A policy now costs three times more than the national average.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

 

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Mistakes Were Made

Mistakes Were Made

Authored by C.J.Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

Make fun of the Germans all you want, and I’ve certainly done that…

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20 hours ago

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March 17, 2024

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Mistakes Were Made

Authored by C.J.Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

Make fun of the Germans all you want, and I’ve certainly done that a bit during these past few years, but, if there’s one thing they’re exceptionally good at, it’s taking responsibility for their mistakes. Seriously, when it comes to acknowledging one’s mistakes, and not rationalizing, or minimizing, or attempting to deny them, and any discomfort they may have allegedly caused, no one does it quite like the Germans.

Take this Covid mess, for example. Just last week, the German authorities confessed that they made a few minor mistakes during their management of the “Covid pandemic.” According to Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health, “we were sometimes too strict with the children and probably started easing the restrictions a little too late.” Horst Seehofer, the former Interior Minister, admitted that he would no longer agree to some of the Covid restrictions today, for example, nationwide nighttime curfews. “One must be very careful with calls for compulsory vaccination,” he added. Helge Braun, Head of the Chancellery and Minister for Special Affairs under Merkel, agreed that there had been “misjudgments,” for example, “overestimating the effectiveness of the vaccines.”

This display of the German authorities’ unwavering commitment to transparency and honesty, and the principle of personal honor that guides the German authorities in all their affairs, and that is deeply ingrained in the German character, was published in a piece called “The Divisive Virus” in Der Spiegel, and immediately widely disseminated by the rest of the German state and corporate media in a totally organic manner which did not in any way resemble one enormous Goebbelsian keyboard instrument pumping out official propaganda in perfect synchronization, or anything creepy and fascistic like that.

Germany, after all, is “an extremely democratic state,” with freedom of speech and the press and all that, not some kind of totalitarian country where the masses are inundated with official propaganda and critics of the government are dragged into criminal court and prosecuted on trumped-up “hate crime” charges.

OK, sure, in a non-democratic totalitarian system, such public “admissions of mistakes” — and the synchronized dissemination thereof by the media — would just be a part of the process of whitewashing the authorities’ fascistic behavior during some particularly totalitarian phase of transforming society into whatever totalitarian dystopia they were trying to transform it into (for example, a three-year-long “state of emergency,” which they declared to keep the masses terrorized and cooperative while they stripped them of their democratic rights, i.e., the ones they hadn’t already stripped them of, and conditioned them to mindlessly follow orders, and robotically repeat nonsensical official slogans, and vent their impotent hatred and fear at the new “Untermenschen” or “counter-revolutionaries”), but that is obviously not the case here.

No, this is definitely not the German authorities staging a public “accountability” spectacle in order to memory-hole what happened during 2020-2023 and enshrine the official narrative in history. There’s going to be a formal “Inquiry Commission” — conducted by the same German authorities that managed the “crisis” — which will get to the bottom of all the regrettable but completely understandable “mistakes” that were made in the heat of the heroic battle against The Divisive Virus!

OK, calm down, all you “conspiracy theorists,” “Covid deniers,” and “anti-vaxxers.” This isn’t going to be like the Nuremberg Trials. No one is going to get taken out and hanged. It’s about identifying and acknowledging mistakes, and learning from them, so that the authorities can manage everything better during the next “pandemic,” or “climate emergency,” or “terrorist attack,” or “insurrection,” or whatever.

For example, the Inquiry Commission will want to look into how the government accidentally declared a Nationwide State of Pandemic Emergency and revised the Infection Protection Act, suspending the German constitution and granting the government the power to rule by decree, on account of a respiratory virus that clearly posed no threat to society at large, and then unleashed police goon squads on the thousands of people who gathered outside the Reichstag to protest the revocation of their constitutional rights.

Once they do, I’m sure they’ll find that that “mistake” bears absolutely no resemblance to the Enabling Act of 1933, which suspended the German constitution and granted the government the power to rule by decree, after the Nazis declared a nationwide “state of emergency.”

Another thing the Commission will probably want to look into is how the German authorities accidentally banned any further demonstrations against their arbitrary decrees, and ordered the police to brutalize anyone participating in such “illegal demonstrations.”

And, while the Commission is inquiring into the possibly slightly inappropriate behavior of their law enforcement officials, they might want to also take a look at the behavior of their unofficial goon squads, like Antifa, which they accidentally encouraged to attack the “anti-vaxxers,” the “Covid deniers,” and anyone brandishing a copy of the German constitution.

Come to think of it, the Inquiry Commission might also want to look into how the German authorities, and the overwhelming majority of the state and corporate media, accidentally systematically fomented mass hatred of anyone who dared to question the government’s arbitrary and nonsensical decrees or who refused to submit to “vaccination,” and publicly demonized us as “Corona deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vaxxers,” “far-right anti-Semites,” etc., to the point where mainstream German celebrities like Sarah Bosetti were literally describing us as the inessential “appendix” in the body of the nation, quoting an infamous Nazi almost verbatim.

And then there’s the whole “vaccination” business. The Commission will certainly want to inquire into that. They will probably want to start their inquiry with Karl Lauterbach, and determine exactly how he accidentally lied to the public, over and over, and over again …

And whipped people up into a mass hysteria over “KILLER VARIANTS” …

And “LONG COVID BRAIN ATTACKS” …

And how “THE UNVACCINATED ARE HOLDING THE WHOLE COUNTRY HOSTAGE, SO WE NEED TO FORCIBLY VACCINATE EVERYONE!”

And so on. I could go on with this all day, but it will be much easier to just refer you, and the Commission, to this documentary film by Aya Velázquez. Non-German readers may want to skip to the second half, unless they’re interested in the German “Corona Expert Council” …

Look, the point is, everybody makes “mistakes,” especially during a “state of emergency,” or a war, or some other type of global “crisis.” At least we can always count on the Germans to step up and take responsibility for theirs, and not claim that they didn’t know what was happening, or that they were “just following orders,” or that “the science changed.”

Plus, all this Covid stuff is ancient history, and, as Olaf, an editor at Der Spiegel, reminds us, it’s time to put the “The Divisive Pandemic” behind us …

… and click heels, and heil the New Normal Democracy!

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/16/2024 - 23:20

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“Extreme Events”: US Cancer Deaths Spiked In 2021 And 2022 In “Large Excess Over Trend”

"Extreme Events": US Cancer Deaths Spiked In 2021 And 2022 In "Large Excess Over Trend"

Cancer deaths in the United States spiked in 2021…

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1 day ago

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March 16, 2024

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"Extreme Events": US Cancer Deaths Spiked In 2021 And 2022 In "Large Excess Over Trend"

Cancer deaths in the United States spiked in 2021 and 2022 among 15-44 year-olds "in large excess over trend," marking jumps of 5.6% and 7.9% respectively vs. a rise of 1.7% in 2020, according to a new preprint study from deep-dive research firm, Phinance Technologies.

Algeria, Carlos et. al "US -Death Trends for Neoplasms ICD codes: C00-D48, Ages 15-44", ResearchGate, March. 2024 P. 7

Extreme Events

The report, which relies on data from the CDC, paints a troubling picture.

"We show a rise in excess mortality from neoplasms reported as underlying cause of death, which started in 2020 (1.7%) and accelerated substantially in 2021 (5.6%) and 2022 (7.9%). The increase in excess mortality in both 2021 (Z-score of 11.8) and 2022 (Z-score of 16.5) are highly statistically significant (extreme events)," according to the authors.

That said, co-author, David Wiseman, PhD (who has 86 publications to his name), leaves the cause an open question - suggesting it could either be a "novel phenomenon," Covid-19, or the Covid-19 vaccine.

"The results indicate that from 2021 a novel phenomenon leading to increased neoplasm deaths appears to be present in individuals aged 15 to 44 in the US," reads the report.

The authors suggest that the cause may be the result of "an unexpected rise in the incidence of rapidly growing fatal cancers," and/or "a reduction in survival in existing cancer cases."

They also address the possibility that "access to utilization of cancer screening and treatment" may be a factor - the notion that pandemic-era lockdowns resulted in fewer visits to the doctor. Also noted is that "Cancers tend to be slowly-developing diseases with remarkably stable death rates and only small variations over time," which makes "any temporal association between a possible explanatory factor (such as COVID-19, the novel COVID-19 vaccines, or other factor(s)) difficult to establish."

That said, a ZeroHedge review of the CDC data reveals that it does not provide information on duration of illness prior to death - so while it's not mentioned in the preprint, it can't rule out so-called 'turbo cancers' - reportedly rapidly developing cancers, the existence of which has been largely anecdotal (and widely refuted by the usual suspects).

While the Phinance report is extremely careful not to draw conclusions, researcher "Ethical Skeptic" kicked the barn door open in a Thursday post on X - showing a strong correlation between "cancer incidence & mortality" coinciding with the rollout of the Covid mRNA vaccine.

Phinance principal Ed Dowd commented on the post, noting that "Cancer is suddenly an accelerating growth industry!"

Continued:

Bottom line - hard data is showing alarming trends, which the CDC and other agencies have a requirement to explore and answer truthfully - and people are asking #WhereIsTheCDC.

We aren't holding our breath.

Wiseman, meanwhile, points out that Pfizer and several other companies are making "significant investments in cancer drugs, post COVID."

Phinance

We've featured several of Phinance's self-funded deep dives into pandemic data that nobody else is doing. If you'd like to support them, click here.

 

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/16/2024 - 16:55

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