Each new jolt the markets, in this memorable 2008, are wasted references to the crisis of '29 and Great Depression of the '30s. It is usually stereotyped statements stingy substance. But in any case the hyperbole have substance. They are in facts and numbers, charts show how some that I found useful to gather below for a couple of reasons: they give an idea of \u200b\u200bthe exceptional nature of the "crush" taken by investors in this annus horribilis and offer the right for to a reassurance that a warning, both valuable to find some 'equilibrium in time so unbalanced.
The first graph, by Value Square Asset Management and Yale University, which I took from blog Investment Postcards from Cape Town , shows the distribution of total returns (including dividends so) of mercato azionario americano, anno per anno, dal 1825 a oggi. La perdita del 45% circa registrata sinora nel 2008 colloca il corrente anno all’estremità negativa del range, alla pari solo col 1931 .
A chi non trovi in questo nulla da eccepire, va rammentato cosa fu il 1931 . Fu l’anno in cui la produzione industriale negli Stati Uniti crollò del 30% rispetto al picco di due anni prima e la disoccupazione raggiunse il 16% della forza lavoro. Era stata appena del 3% nel 1929, culminò al 25% nel 1933. (Oggi, per dare un’idea, si trova al 6,5% e si stima che possa valicare l’8% alla fine del prossimo anno)
Il 1931 fu poi l’anno delle crisi bancarie e valutarie internazionali, che in alcuni casi, come in Gran Bretagna e in Austria, portarono anche alla caduta dei governi. Negli Stati Uniti chiusero i battenti 2293 istituti di credito (oltre il 10% del totale) con perdite per i depositanti di 391 milioni di dollari, una cifra pari a circa 70 miliardi di dollari di oggi se si tiene conto di quanto è cresciuta da allora l’economia. Stiamo parlando dello 0,5% del PIL.
Immaginiamo, per attualizzare il discorso alla nostra Italia, come ci sentiremmo se nel 2008 fossero andati in fumo quasi 8 miliardi di euro di depositi, svaniti nei crack of eighty banks.
Here, in 2008, banks are not insolvent. But in America, yes, though in very different ways since 1931. The site of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) says that the closure of credit institutions, the U.S., were 22. In almost all cases, the deposits have been detected by other banks. Where this was not possible, as the bankruptcy of IndyMac Bank in California, took the FDIC, created in 1933 under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, just to ensure federal funds for the deposits of Americans.
I was saying that 1931 was the year of internationalization the Great Depression. Declared bankruptcy in May the Austrian Credit Anstalt , the largest bank in Central and Eastern Europe, created in the mid-nineteenth century by the Rothschild (Credit Anstalt was later rescued by the Austrian central bank and then acquired, in time much more recent, Bank Austria, which merged with the then German HypoVereinskBank, which is ultimately become part of Unicredit). The
panic sparked by the collapse of the largest and most prestigious race for the Credit Anstalt produced a conversion of liquid deposits in gold that ravaged in a hellish game of dominoes, financial and monetary systems of most del mondo allora avanzato. La crisi fu particolarmente acuta in Germania e in Gran Bretagna, dove il tentativo disperato di difendere il cambio indusse la Banca d’Inghilterra ad alzare i tassi a breve (in piena depressione!) di 350 punti base fino al 6%.
Alla fine, il governo britannico rassegnò le dimissioni e la parità della sterlina con l’oro – riconquistata a stento, ad opera di Churchill , appena sei anni prima – fu definitivamente abbandonata. Il contagio, a quel punto, si trasferì di nuovo oltre Atlantico, dal momento che gli investitori – una volta caduta una delle due valute più importanti dell’epoca – cominciarono a scommettere che anche l’altra, e cioè il dollaro , sarebbe andata a rotoli.
La parità aurea del biglietto verde fu difesa inizialmente con successo (sospesa alla fine nel 1933, fu ristabilita in seguito a un livello svalutato) ma il prezzo da pagare fu straordinariamente elevato. Nell’ottobre, la Federal Reserve alzò i tassi a breve di 200 punti base, una mossa che consentì di arrestare il rapido deflusso di riserve auree ma al costo di infliggere un altro fatale shock alla già depressa attività economica.
Questo fu il 1931. Quale sarebbe il consuntivo del 2008 se la Fed, al suo prossimo incontro di metà dicembre, anziché mettere in atto – as everyone expects - a further reduction in interest rates toward zero, it announced a rise of two percentage points?
Today, apparently, to create panic on the markets are other factors that have to do with the sudden deleveraging process pursued simultaneously by a crowd of big financial players more than with the trend of the real economy. What panic it anyway - and one of its incarnations as paroxysmal - no doubt. They tell us a couple of other charts, this time taken from the blog of Bespoke Investment Group. The first
shows the spread between the S & P index 500 and its 200-day moving average , 1927-17 November, when the price had dropped by 32% below the average level of 200 previous sessions. In recent days, this differential has come to touch 40%, an extreme as to have a single precedent, between 1931 and 1932.
As the chart makes clear, the bounce from a level much exaggerated, when it finally materialized, was equally withering. The index went from almost 60% over the 200-day moving average. Whether in the summer of 1932 that at the turn of the spring and summer of 1933 Wall Street embarked on furious rally that made roughly double the quotazioni azionarie, in entrambe le occasioni, nel giro di pochi mesi.
Per capire come fu possibile, e come sul mercato azionario si siano di recente create condizioni analoghe, vale la pena considerare un secondo grafico di Bespoke Investment Group, che illustra la volatilità dell’indice S&P 500, espressa in termini di media a 50 giorni della variazione giornaliera assoluta.
L’11 novembre scorso, quando il grafico è stato pubblicato, il dato era pari al 3,26%. Da allora non ha fatto che aumentare, visto che si sono succedute diverse sedute con variazioni superiori al 5% mentre sono uscite dalla media le giornate ancora relativamente compassate that preceded the collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-September.
Similar levels of volatility, once again, have only one precedent, in the darkest period of the crisis of the '30s.
There are, therefore, or there are similarities between now and then? By all appearances a Great Depression is still among us does not seem sensible to anticipate their arrival - only if one considers the huge injections of liquidity offered by central banks and large expansive fiscal maneuvers that almost all governments are going to fielding. In 2008, in hindsight, it is very different from 1931. But for the markets to some extent, an era that is the other - Or so it seems.
Here is a contradiction or at least a gap between the real economy and finance, in order to be better understood, would need a closer examination of unparalleled excesses (of arrogance, ruthlessness, of detachment from reality and common sense of leverage and speculation) drawn from the world of finance in recent years - the excesses that eventually contributed to the unsustainably large part finance the economy.
Elsewhere in this blog, I mentioned it. We return, for now constrained to add only the link a devastating, sometimes hilarious, reconstruction of such insanity, published recently by Michael Lewis , author of the late '80s Liar's Poker , one of the most classic exposé of the follies of Wall Street (book unfortunately never translated into Italian).
Here I would like to conclude this collage instead of graphs with the two notes - one of reassurance and another warning - which I announced in the opening.
We have seen that there are indeed parallels between some of the negative traits of the equity markets of today - the extent and rapidity of the collapse of prices, the volatility - and those between 1931 and 1932 pushed to the bottom of Grande Depressione. Ne vorrei aggiungere un altro, che è invece di buon auspicio. Lo si coglie nel grafico che segue, a cura di Bespoke Investment Group, tratto da un recente articolo di Joseph Dancy , professore della SMU School of Law di Dallas. Mostra l’andamento dei rendimenti totali decennali del mercato azionario americano dal 1900 a oggi.
Come si vede, nel 2008 la linea finisce per cadere sotto lo zero, a indicare che un investimento fatto in azioni americane dieci anni fa – comprensivo dei dividendi – avrebbe dato a oggi un rendimento negativo. E’ accaduto prima solo negli anni ’30, esattamente nel 1932 e poi di nuovo nel periodo 1936-1939.
Da quei punti di minima i rendimenti decennali sono poi sempre risaliti fino a toccare picchi del 600%. Alle fasi di bassi rendimenti ne sono seguite altre di rendimenti elevati, in una continua oscillazione attorno a una media decennale del 250% circa, che corrisponde a poco meno del 10% annuo.
Il grafico, in altri termini, aiuta a capire come l’attuale devastante fase di declino dei prezzi, che va a cumularsi, dopo un lasso di tempo relativamente breve, al grande bear market del 2000-2002, abbia compresso i mercati azionari verso quelle condizioni di profonda sottovalutazione da cui, prima o poi, hanno preso le mosse i grandi bull market secolari.
Gli anni horribiles , combined with attractive pricing conditions, have always proven to be golden opportunities for investors realized and patients are able to operate in the long run.
This tells us the trend of the U.S. market. And this is the rule for most of the equity markets over the past century or more. It 'good to remember also - and this is the warning - that there were some exceptions , as we understand it Japanese Nikkei index chart always by Bespoke Investment Group .
The Japanese market has collapsed in recent weeks to levels of 1982, ie 26 years ago. A box of forty, who had invested all his savings in the Nikkei in 1982 (when it was commonplace to optimism about the fate of Japan - which, they said, to overcome in the short-America), would find itself in a board with nothing in fact, after witnessing the most pyrotechnic changes in the value of its investment.
How was that possible? This must be the exceptional size of the bubble that swept the Japan in the '80s (when Japan's stock market capitalization surpassed that of Wall Street and it was estimated that the land on which stands the Imperial Palace in Tokyo were worth more all the real estate California) and the accumulation of errors committed by the Japanese authorities when a bubble burst, was allowed to depression and deflation set foot in the economic system and their roots for over a decade.
The Japanese case should serve as a lesson. As the current acute financial crisis and the inevitable and often is followed by deep recessions are periods in which far outweigh the opportunities, provided we do not ignore the risks. If
in most cases the outcome will be positive and regenerative current collapse, the failures - on the other hand - do not miss them. There listed companies that will not make it to survive but not all areas of economic systems and the country will overcome the challenges with equal dexterity. The emergence of new players will also get lost in contrast to the ragged edge of history of players.
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