Hello, my friends. Today is January 27th and this is Markets Weekly. So this week we're going to talk about three things. First, let's talk about what's going on in China. There's been a lot of news this past week and it looks like the government is pulling out all the stops and trying to support the market. Let's talk about what's going on there.
Secondly, this past week we got an amazing GTP print and it looks like the soft landing is fully achieved and it's time to move on and think about what the economic data might look like going forward. And lastly, let's preview what's happening this coming week because it's going to be a huge week for markets. We got the Fed, we got the Treasury, we got big tech earnings and we got the non-form payroll report on Friday. It's going to be exciting.
Okay, starting with China. Well, first, a little bit of background. Let's look at the Chinese stock market index, the CSI 300. So as you can see, it's not been having a good time. It's been steadily declining for a few years in a big way. In contrast, when you look at the US, when you look at Germany, when you look at India, these stock markets all across the world have been going up and making new highs, Japan and Brazil as well. So China really stands out as having a stock market that's not been doing well. And there are a lot of reasons for this.
For example, as we all know, the Chinese government kept their COVID policy much more strict than many other governments. So for many of the people there, they were under lockdown for a long time. We also have, say, trouble in the property sector, where as we've all read in the news, property prices have been tanking and property is a big part of their economy. And of course, we have big crackdowns from the government on Chinese big tech, where even stored companies like Alibaba have really been not doing well. And I think there has also appeared where it seems like the founder of Alibaba magically disappeared for some time. So there's been a lot of things going there that have obviously not been stock market positive.
But what we're beginning to see now is that there's more and more, I guess, political will over there for the government to try to stem the bleeding and put a bottom on the stock market. So when you're looking at China, I think it's really important to realize that China operates very differently from Western economies. One way of thinking about this that I heard on a podcast recently is that in, say, the US capital directs policy, but in China policy directs capital.
Now, what does that mean? So in the US, if you are a big company, then you pay lobbyists, you make political donations and the political class shapes policy that is beneficial to you, maybe giving you permits, tax breaks, and so forth. So industry shapes policy in the US. But in China, the government official there decides, hey, this is our GDP target, this is what we're going to do. And every, all the businesses there then figure out how to make it happen over there. The political class has more power than businesses. And so it seems like the political class is deciding that, you know, stock market is too low, time to make it go up. So what are they doing? And is it going to work?
So the first thing that was announced earlier in the week is that they're going to basically buy stocks. So it sounds like they're going to take the offshore earnings of their state-owned enterprises. And there's a few hundred billion dollars worth and plow that into Chinese stocks. And of course, if you have a lot of money buying stocks, that puts upward pressure on the price.
So that's one thing. Now, the second thing they're doing, of course, is that they're doing what governments traditionally do when they don't like the stock price going down. They're going to strongly discourage people from short selling. Now, I recall during the European sovereign debt crisis, the European governments basically banned investors from short selling banks because the bank prices keep going lower. And it looks like the Chinese government is also beginning to encourage investors to not short sell stocks.
And it seems like the last thing that they're doing the past week is that they are having the central bank try to continue to ease monetary policy. So there's an announcement from the PBOC that they're going to cut the reserve ratio by 50 basis points. And traditionally, they cut about 25. So a 50 basis point cut is quite large. And there is speculation that in addition to that, going forward, the PBOC will also cut their interest rates.
Now, the way that the banking system in China works is that unlike the US, where we no longer have a reserve ratio, the reserve ratio is still a big part of how they conduct monetary policy. When you reduce the reserve ratio, banks have more capacity to make loans. So in theory, it could increase the amount of lending by commercial banks and thus the amount of cash available to the economy.
Now, this is not the first time the Chinese stock market has not done well. And that authorities have tried to pop it up. This happened a few years ago as well. Now, historically speaking, these interventions, you know, they they work for a period of time and they improve sentiment, but sometimes it's not enough. So going forward, it's going to be really interesting to see whether or not these measures announced last week are finally going to put a bottom on the Chinese stock market. My sense is that even if it's not, the government seems to be very interested in stemming the declines. And so they were just announced other measures until they finally get what they want. Remember, in China, the government has a lot more levers to pull. And so I think that they could make it happen.
Now, one other thing that I would like to mention is that this past week, there was a very interesting letter from a hedge fund manager who basically lost 20% this month and is closing his fund. Now, this person, this hedge fund manager, basically went long China and short Japan. He looked at the world through the lens of valuation metrics and thought that these two markets would converge and they did not. The Nikkei continued to go higher and the Chinese stocks continued to go lower. And so they so he lost a lot of money and wrote a very, I think a very candid and heartfelt letter explaining how why he's shutting down his fund. And if you make your living off the markets, I'm sure many of you can relate to that, that sometimes we just have traits that we think should work but don't work. But what really stood out to me is this line where he thinks, where he talks about how the world doesn't seem to work the way that he thought it did. And it seems like his experience is becoming a liability. Now, this really, I think it's really important to realize because in markets, relationships change. It's not like physics. We have different regimes. Now, in from my perspective, the great financial crisis was a big regime change. For example, after the great financial crisis, everyone was thinking that the Fed would quickly raise rates to about 4%, which is what rates were beforehand. They were thinking that quantitative easing would be very inflationary, which it wasn't. And so those guys who were thinking about the past got things wrong. Now, I think COVID was another regime change. And for example, when people were looking at interest rates going higher, they were thinking that, you know, we're going to have a housing implosion thinking about the past world, how the world used to work. But instead, housing was fine. Prices continue to go higher. Many people were thinking that we would have a banking crisis because that's what happened in 2008. And the banking sector, with exception, a few banks that you've never heard of going under is by and large fine. So we have these regime changes. And it's important to be able to recognize how things change. Otherwise, you know, our experience is going to be a liability.
Now heading into this print, of course, we've been talking about the Atlanta Fed. Now GDP now passed, that has been printing at, let's say, mid two's. Now, if you look at the commentary, I think many people were thinking that, you know, fourth quarter last year probably wasn't a good quarter for GDP, because GDP in third quarter was a bonkers 4.9%. I'm sure we have to give some of that back in the fourth quarter. After all, maybe people just put for their expenditures from the fourth quarter to the third quarter, goosing that number. Now, to my surprise, the GDP data, again, first cut, and it's going to be revised going forward was actually 3.3%, which was really, really strong. And I think even above what the Atlanta Fed now GDP was indicating. So I thought that was very surprising. So remember, for the US economy, trend growth is estimated to be about 1.8%. So we are comfortably growing above trend and have been for the for the 2023 as a whole. So that is positive.
Now, the second thing that was also very positive is inflation. Now, this GDP period shows that core PCE over the fourth quarter of last year was 2%, which is bang on the Fed's target. It was also 2% in the third quarter as well. So all in all, you have to look at this past six months of data and conclude that, you know, self-landing is already here. It's all done. Now, remember, a couple years ago, Chair Powell was on TV telling you that inflation is too high. He wants to cause a recession. There's going to be some pain. And he was thinking that the way to get inflation under control was to cause a recession and thus bring down inflation.
Now, the soft landing path, of course, was to get inflation down without causing a recession. And we've already had that happen. That's just, we have enough data about that, right? We have a whole year where we continue to grow above trend and inflation over the past six months, core PC already at 2%. So from my perspective, we got to close the chapter on that soft landing is already done. We got to look forward.
Now, the forward, looking forward, I think the question is, again, does inflation come back? Which is my view? Or do we fall into recession as the view of, I guess, fewer and fewer people going forward? Now, we also have some interesting, I guess, more leading data that we came out last week. And that is the PMI indicators. So recall, PMI is a diffusion index. What that tells you is that Arthians getting better or worse compared to the last month. Now, these diffusion indexes have been misleading a lot of people over the past year, because they've been showing that things are getting worse. The direction of travel is lower. But I think what they fail to, no, I think what many people will point to this and think it's not doing well, fail to realize is that we were growing far above trend. For example, let's say that you're a car company and you're making, let's say, 100 cars a year, and you think that's a pretty normal year. Let's say one year, you suddenly have a huge surge in orders because your competitor will go into bankrupt. Then you're making 200 cars a year, hugely, hugely more than what you're used to. And then in the third year, a new competitor enters and then you start making 100 cars a year again. Now, compared to your baseline, things haven't really changed. You're still thinking 100 cars a year, and that's normal for you. But compared to last year, when you were making 200 cars, you're showing that things are not as good as it used to.
And so I think that's what's been happening with the PMI data over the past year, where PMI data has been showing things are not as good as it was the last month. But that's because you are merely normalizing. And so now that we've normalized, it looks like the recent PMI data is showing that things are actually picking up again. So PMI data from the S&P shows that services above 50 and manufacturing above 50 as well, that is to say, businesses are saying that the more recent month is better than the last month. So it seems like we are again heading towards, so we've normalized back to trend. And now it seems like we're going up again. So that's, I think, a positive indicator for the economy going forward and recall we still have a lot of momentum.
Now, the second thing that I will note is, as we all know, the U.S. economy is largely based on consumer spending. Now, wages have been growing, say, four or five percent, higher than they were pre-2020, but inflation has also been coming down. So real incomes have been growing, and we can see that in the data as well. Now, as people continue to have higher wage growing gains and inflation seem, inflation moderates, they're going to have more purchasing power and they're going to be able to spend more. And we see that in the data as well. So again, I think these are tailwinds. And I think that there is, I think that U.S. economy continues to do well throughout the year. And as we have financial assets continue to inflate, you know, that's more purchasing power as well. So all in all, like I said, like we've been talking about for the past few months, soft-learning was becoming more and more reality. Now, it's, all said and done. It's done. Let's move on. And moving on, I think things still look pretty good.
Okay. And the last thing I want to talk about is previewing this really, really big week. First, of course, we have the Fed. Now, going into this meeting, let's just look about look at the expectations. So right now, the expectations for this year is that the Fed is going to cut, let's say five to six times, where that's very aggressive in the Fed in their most recent dot plot themselves only penciled in three cuts this year. So I think what the market will want to see is how Chair Powell handles the discrepancy between what the market is pricing and what the Fed has indicated. Now, in my most recent work, I have suggested that the Chair Powell will not push back against any of this, I guess, aggressive easing priced into the market. Now, the second thing that we want to focus on is how Chair Powell will handle the ongoing discussion of when to taper quantitative tightening. In another piece that I wrote, I talked about the ongoing debate within the Fed as to what the Fed should do with quantitative tightening. Right now, we have three perspectives as to when to taper. Now, Chair Powell, I think, is going to give us more clues as to where he is sitting on this debate. And that could inform us when we think about the supply and demand of Treasury securities going forward. And earlier taper would be more bullish because that suggests that the Fed is going to potentially even stop QT earlier than expected. And that's fewer treasuries that the private sector has to digest.
Now, the second big thing is that what's happening with the Treasury. This week, the Treasury is going to have their quarterly refunding announcement. And over the past two QRA's, this has been a market moving event. In August, after the QRA, the tenure yield sewed off a lot. That is because the QRA suggested a much larger increase in supply of treasuries than the market had anticipated. In November, after the QRA, the tenure yield declined a lot. Why? Because the Treasury was announcing that they're going to increase issuance less than expected, and they're going to continue to increase the share of bills that they're issuing. So this QRA, I think, was also going to be market moving. And I will write about it in my blog this week, what I think is likely going to happen. And I think this is going to particularly interesting because there's an opportunity here for Treasury to take some control of monetary policy away from the Fed.
Okay, so those are two big events, which in of itself would have been really big for a week, but we also have two other events happening. We have, of course, big tech earnings from Google, from META, from Apple, and basically a lot of the Mac 7 that we know have been a big driver of the market rally and way heavily in the major indices are going to report their earnings.
Now Tesla, last week, in report of their earnings, and they were down a lot on Friday. Now, so it's looking like earnings now, you know, have been listening very violent reactions from the market. So if we have positive earnings from these big tech sectors, we can continue, I think we can continue to see the major indexes continue to power higher simply because big tech is such a big component in them. And conversely, if they disappoint like Tesla, then we could have a lot of volatility.
And I have new view on these individual stock earnings. I don't follow them. But I think that there's potential for large volatility here. And of course, the last major event next week is the nonform payroll report. People are going to be continuing to follow NFP for clues as to whether or not we have persistent labor market strength, or maybe we have labor market weakness. And of course, we're whether wage growth will moderate.
Now, as we all know, what happens in the labor market is going to have a big impact on monetary policy. As inflation has moderated towards the Fed's target, the Fed is going to be also focused on employment, their other mandates. Now weakness in the nonform payrolls will argue for a more dovish approach towards monetary policy, and maybe more rate cuts and more rate cuts and maybe sooner than expected on in the event, maybe weak nonform payroll spread.
So next week is going to be a very, very exciting week. And as usual, I will be back after the FOMC meeting to give you guys my debrief as to what I think happened. Okay, so that's all I prepared for today. Hope that was helpful. And as usual, check me out at my blog, fedguy.com. And if you're interested in learning more about how markets function, check out my courses at centralbanking101.com. Talk to you all soon.