市场概览与劳动力市场信号
本周市场表现强劲，S&P 500指数创下历史新高，显示出一定的韧性。然而，深入分析指数构成可以发现，市场内部正在经历一次显著的轮动（rotation）。资金正从**大型科技股（big tech）流出，转向如矿业（miners）和材料（materials）**等其他板块。与之形成对比的是，**纳斯达克指数（NASDAQ）**尚未触及新高，这可能预示着市场广度不足。尽管我们仍处于一年中季节性表现积极的时期，但不可否认的是，市场似乎正在失去部分动能。
本周数据方面尤为关键，我们接收到大量关于**劳动力市场（labor market）的数据。首先，让我们探讨这些数据以及美联储（Fed）可能如何解读它们。其次，总统还发布了一系列与住房（housing）相关的政策公告。其中包括禁止机构投资者（institutional investors）购买独栋住宅，以及要求房利美（Fannie Mae）和房地美（Freddie Mac）购买价值2000亿美元的抵押贷款支持证券（mortgage-backed securities）。最近，总统还宣布将限制信用卡（credit card）**的利率。我们将逐一分析这些公告如何影响经济和市场。
Original English
Hello, my friends. Today is January 10th and this is Markets Weekly. So, this past week was a good week in markets. We had the S&P 500 make new all-time highs. When you look at the index a bit more closely, it's very clear that the market is undergoing a rotation out of big tech and into the other stuff like miners and materials, for example. So, you can see that the NASDAQ basically hasn't yet made a new all-time high. Now, we continue to be in a seasonally positive part of the year, although I have to admit that it does look like the market is losing a bit of momentum.Now, this past week was a big week when it came to data. We have a whole bunch of labor market data. So, today, first, let's talk about uh all the labor market data we got and how the Fed could be thinking about this. And secondly, we also got a flurry of policy announcements from the president uh with regards to housing. We got a ban on institutional u investors buying homes. We got u very very interesting use of Fanny and Freddy ordering them to buy 200 billion in mortgage back securities. And most recently we have the president announcing that he's going to put a limit on credit card interest rates. So let's talk about all those u announcements and how that affect the economy and the markets. All right, first starting with the labor market. So
在劳动力市场方面，本周我们收到了**Jolts（职位空缺与劳动力流动调查）数据，该数据反映了职位空缺的数量。此外，还有每周失业救济金（unemployment claims）数据，以及最重要的非农就业（non-farm payroll）**报告。Jolts数据持续显示与过去几个月相同的趋势：在疫情期间，由于大规模刺激和需求激增，职位空缺曾飙升；而在随后的几年里，这一数字逐渐正常化。Jolts持续表明职位空缺呈下降趋势，甚至低于疫情前水平，这清晰地指向一个招聘需求较低的经济环境。
同时，也有数据显示**劳动生产率（labor productivity）正在提高。这意味着雇主能更有效地利用现有员工，这可能是劳动力需求减少的一个原因。一些人也可能认为人工智能（AI）**在其中扮演了角色，尤其是在某些行业。然而，目前仍处于AI采用周期的早期阶段。
关于失业救济金，**持续申领失业救济金人数（continuing claims）**保持在较高水平，但从这一视角来看，劳动力市场并未出现明显的恶化迹象。如果出现突然恶化，我们预期失业救济金申领人数会激增，因为许多被解雇的员工会去申请失业保险，但目前情况并非如此。
最后，也是最重要的，是月度的非农就业报告。有趣的是，这份报告似乎被总统本人在前一天晚上无意中泄露了。白宫会提前一天收到数据，总统似乎基于这些数据发布了一条Truth Social帖子，称赞数据表现优异。然而，当回溯分析该帖子的数据时，这些数字只有在包含尚未发布的最新数据时才说得通。问题在于，很少有人会关注Truth Social，其界面糟糕且充斥着广告。因此，尽管白宫团队提前泄露了数据，但并未引起广泛关注。
即使你知道具体数字，市场如何解读也并非显而易见。非农就业报告本身，正如其常态一样，略显令人失望。**新增就业岗位（headline job growth）**略低于市场预期的约5万人，并且我们还看到了一些下修。但真正值得注意的是，**失业率（unemployment rate）**有所下降。
综合来看，我们看到劳动力供需关系的变化，以及**移民政策（immigration policy）**的调整（如非法移民减少，导致供给收缩）。同时，经济运作方式可能也在改变，例如AI可能影响了需求总量。因此，尽管新增就业岗位数量明显呈下降趋势，但美联储一直更加关注失业率。失业率的下降，从他们的角度看，是劳动力市场月度环比的明确改善。市场对此的反应是立即排除了1月份降息的可能性。
尽管如此，劳动力增长依然非常疲软，即使本月失业率有所改善。这将是一个持续的争论点。如果我们需要**美联储（Fed）进一步降息，那么非农就业数据需要进一步恶化。此外，我们即将迎来新的美联储领导层，情况可能会发生变化。总统预计在本月晚些时候宣布新任美联储主席（Fed chair）**的提名。
Original English
Now Joltz is basically telling the same story that it's been telling for uh several months now. If you look at the number of job openings according to Joltz totally totally surged during the pandemic huge amounts of demand. Everyone had stimuli money. Everyone was spending money and then over the I guess the few years after gradually normalizing and jolts continues to show that the number of job openings is on a downward trend and actually below where it was during the pandemic. So very clearly a low hiring economy.Now there is also some data though that suggests that labor productivity is increasing. What that means is that employers are able to use the same employees more effectively and so that is one reason why there could be less demand for labor. Now some people could also say that maybe AI is playing a role. I'm sure it is in certain industries but again this is still very early in the AI adoption cycle.
Um moving on to unemployment claims. um you know really not much continuing claims continue to stay elevated but there's not a very clear deterioration in uh in the labor market from this perspective. If there was a sudden deterioration you would expect a jump in unemployment claims as many people who are fired go and claim unemployment insurance. That's not happening at the moment.
And lastly of course the most important is the monthly non-farm payroll print. Now, interestingly, the print was, I guess, unintentionally disclosed by the president himself the night before. Uh, so the way this works is that the White House actually gets the data be uh the night before uh the print. And it seems like the president based on this data made a truth social post uh telling everyone how great the data is. But when you back out the numbers from the Truth Social Post, that could only have happened uh the numbers only made sense if if it incorporates the latest numbers, which at that point in time, Thursday evening, had not yet been published. Uh the thing is, no one actually pays attention to Truth Social. It's actually terrible to navigate, full of terrible ads. And so, even though uh it seems like the White House team accidentally disclosed this data ahead of time, no one actually picked it up.
And honestly, even if you knew what the print was, it's not really obvious how the market would take it. Now, the non-farm payroll sprint itself was, as it tends to be, disappointing. The headline job growth was a bit lower and the market anticipated about 50,000 and of course we had some downward revisions. But what was really notable though, of course, is the unemployment rate dropping uh back down. So um when we're looking at this data again the going thinking is that we have all these changes in labor demand and supply. We have changes in immigration policy less illegal immigrants. So that's a contraction in supply and maybe there's changes in how the economy works as well. Maybe AI and stuff like that is changing the amount of demand we have. So even though the number of headline jobs created is clearly clearly trending lower uh the Fed has been paying a lot more attention to the unemployment rate. with the unemployment rate coming down, it's a very clear um I guess month- over-month improvement in the labor market from their perspective. So, the market took one look at this and immediately priced out any possibility of a January rate cut.
Now, that being said, again, labor market labor growth continues to be very very sluggish even though uh this month shows the an improvement in the unemployment rate. So, uh, it's going to be an ongoing debate we continue to have. If we want further rate cuts from a power Fed, we'll need that number to deteriorate. And beyond that, again, we're going to have a new Fed and so things could change. We'll see what happens. The president is expected to announce his new Fed chair sometime this month. Uh, it's not I don't think Kevin Hassett is a front runner, although he continues to be very, very close to the front runner. Uh it seems like um the other Kevin is is gaining some speed.
住房市场政策干预及其影响
接下来，我们转向本周白宫发布的一系列令人关注的政策公告。正如我们长期讨论的，联邦政府拥有多种政策工具来刺激经济。需要注意的是，本届白宫在运用行政权力方面表现得更为开放和积极，这一点已反复得到印证。例如，上周我们看到了**委内瑞拉（Venezuela）石油的开采问题，以及与马杜罗总统（President Maduro）**相关的事件。
回到住房政策，总统宣布将禁止机构投资者购买独栋住宅。白宫明确传达的信息是，美国民众对住房**可负担性（affordability）**感到担忧，而总统的民调数字也不理想，加上年底临近大选，政府正竭尽所能改善可负担性。然而，需要明确的是，此举对房价的影响微乎其微。在美国，机构投资者拥有的独栋住宅比例并不高。这里的机构投资者指的是大型基金，而非个体投资者（如拥有两三套出租单元的“妈妈与爸爸”投资者）。因此，并非存在大量资本雄厚的“邪恶投资者”囤积房屋导致房价高企。
更重要的是，许多机构房东采用的是“建造即出租（build to rent）”模式，他们实际上是在投资建设新房，从而增加了住房供应，而非仅仅购买现有房屋。因此，关于大型资本（如私募股权公司）囤积房屋导致房价不可负担的担忧，很大程度上是夸大其词的宣传。这种政治宣传旨在让民众觉得政府在采取行动。我们在其他国家也能看到类似的做法，例如禁止外国投资者购房。
然而，另一项更具影响力的政策是，总统宣布**房利美（Fannie Mae）和房地美（Freddie Mac）**将购买价值2000亿美元的抵押贷款债券。这一举措产生了即时影响：抵押贷款债券价格上涨，收益率下降，并传导至抵押贷款利率，一些人报告称利率已降至5%区间（尽管是高位）。
要理解这一点，我们需要了解抵押贷款市场的运作。存在一级抵押贷款市场（primary mortgage market），即贷款发放的市场；以及二级抵押贷款市场（secondary mortgage market），即贷款交易的市场。在一级市场，抵押贷款公司或银行发放贷款给购房者，但通常不会持有这些贷款。它们会将大量贷款打包出售给“经销商”，经销商再将其卖给房利美或房地美，以换取抵押贷款支持证券（mortgage-backed securities, MBS）。这些MBS代表着一揽子由房利美或房地美担保的抵押贷款，可以在市场上自由交易，并出售给机构投资者。当购房者偿还抵押贷款时，这笔款项会进入由房利美或房地美管理的信托基金，最终流向MBS的持有者。
因此，当房利美和房地美在二级市场上大量购买抵押贷款债券时，这会推高债券价格，使得一级市场的抵押贷款发放更具吸引力，因为贷款公司可以以更高的价格将贷款出售。这促使一级市场竞争加剧，贷款公司会发放更多抵押贷款，产生更多抵押品，然后卖给二级市场。在疫情期间，**美联储（Fed）购买了数千亿美元的MBS，将价格推至高位，使得抵押贷款利率降至2.5%的低点。这在很大程度上导致了房价的飙升，是造成当前民众抱怨的高通胀（inflation）**和房价问题的根源之一。
此次房利美和房地美采取类似行动（尽管规模较小），无疑将改善抵押贷款利率，并可能在一定程度上帮助住房可负担性。然而，如果购房者希望购买新房，开发商通常会提供贷款利率补贴（buy down mortgage rates），例如降至4.5%或5%。因此，问题可能更多在于就业不安全感和房价过高，而非单纯的利率问题。尽管如此，此举仍可能对美联储的政策以及政府与其他政府赞助企业（GSEs）的合作产生影响。
Original English
All right. Secondly, let's talk about all the kind of exciting policy announcements that came out of the White House uh this week. So, as we've been talking for some time, uh the White House, the federal government has a ton of levers to pull when it comes to stimulating the economy. So, we have to be mindful that this is a very much, I guess, a bit more open-minded White House when it comes to using executive power. And we've seen that over and over again. Again, last week we had the um extraction of Vizwood and President Maduro. And then uh also on Friday, we had this huge televised real reality show style um round table with all the major oil executives talking about how they could go in and and help extract some of that oil. The conclusion seems to be that in order to get Venezuela back to 3 million barrels per day that it used to have many years ago, it's going to take a while and a lot of investment. But for it to improve from the current 750 KBD to something higher, that could actually happen pretty rapidly, at least according to Chevron, which is still there and has been there for I don't know many, many decades actually. I think since the beginning of their oil industry. So we are going to see a notable increase in oil from Venezuela, but it it's to get that huge u 3 million barrel target per day target. It's going to take a lot of time. In any case, um all right, so back to the big announcement. So of course the president first off told everyone that he's going to ban institutional investors from buying single family homes. He understands now and the White House has been clearly messaging that Americans are very concerned about affordability. um president's poll numbers have not been doing well. They have elections coming up in um at towards the end of the year. So they they are doing everything they can to try to improve affordability. Now to be perfectly clear this is not going to have any impact not okay so maybe that's too strong marginal marginal impact on house prices because in the US the institutional investors just don't own very many um homes. When I say institutional investors, we're talking about like these huge huge massive funds um either publicly traded or not. Now, a lot of the homes are actually just owned by mom and pop investors like individuals who own let's say two or three um rental units. So, it's not really something that is there is no dark dark uh evil investors with billions of capital buying up homes that keep everyone um unaffordable. Their their share of the market is just very small. And more importantly, a lot of institutional landlords actually have a build to rent model. And so they're taking their money and they're actually building homes. So they're increasing home supply and not just going out there and just buying homes. So uh a lot of this has been basically a lot of the fear that uh pools of capital, huge huge uh private equity firms just buying up homes, keeping homes unaffordable. Uh that's just honestly it's bunch of nonsense. It's very crude propaganda. But these political messages are things that the president does, every politician does to try to um you know make it look like they're doing something. We see this happen in other countries as well. Another common thing which we could actually see is foreign investor bans. You see that in other countries as well. All these foreigners are coming in buying up our homes. Homes are for Americans. So we got to keep them out. That has not been announced. But I think that's easily something in line with this kind of imagery. So that's not going to make any difference and hopefully they'll continue to let the institutional investors build to rent because that actually increases um how home supply.Now the second much more interesting thing that the president did is announced that Fanny and Freddy are going to buy $200 billion worth of mortgage bonds. Now this is actually something that had immediate impact. The market saw this and immediately uh mortgage uh mortgage bonds went up in price so went down in yield and that seems to have flown through into mortgage rates as well where uh some people are citing that mortgage rates now have a five handle 5.99 of course a very high five handle and that is something that can actually make a difference. So the way the mortgage market works and I go about this I talk about this in my uh market complete course as well is that you have a primary mortgage market and a secondary mortgage market. A primary mortgage market is the market where mortgage loans are originated. So if you want to buy a home you can go to a mortgage company um or a bank usually a mortgage company and they will originate create a loan for you. Uh but what happens is that they don't actually keep the loan. They they're not trying to invest in that. What they do is they collect a whole bunch of these homes. They sell it to a dealer. The dealer then takes those loans and gives them to Fanny May and exchange receives a bunch of mortgage back securities. So these mortgage back securities are basically um a pool of mortgage loans that have a Fanny and or Freddy guarantee and that can be freely traded on the market. So these are then sold to institutional investors who then ultimately are the beneficiary owners of the mortgage bond. So when you pay your mortgage, that money, that mortgage payment goes into a trust managed by Fanny or Freddy and then that payment then goes into the bond holder of the mortgage back security.
So the mortgage back security is the secondary market, right? That's not where the loans are originated, but where where they're traded afterwards on the secondary market. Now the the two markets, the primary mortgage market and the secondary mortgage market are connected. So when Fanny and Freddy go out and buy a whole bunch of mortgage bonds, they're buying a whole bunch of mortgages on the secondary market. So that means that mortgage bonds appreciate in price. It makes it more attractive for people to originate mortgage loans and then sell it to the secondary market because the price of mortgage bonds has gone up. So that uh compels competition in the primary mortgage market. people try to create more mortgage uh loans, basically more mortgage collateral, then they can sell it to the secondary market. And so that is actually something that had a tremendous impact during the pandemic. You had the Fed buying literally several hundred billion dollars worth of mortgage back securities, pushing mortgage back securities to very high prices. Again, mortgage mortgage back security that's to yield. It's hard to say yield because a lot of the yield is model based because you can prepay. But in any case, it made it more attractive for people to originate mortgage loans to sell it to the secondary market and you had this tremendous boom or mortgage rates and the primary market went to as low as say 2.5%. Uh honestly, the huge huge jump in house prices is is largely because of that policy. And if you have 2 and 12% mortgage rates, obviously everyone is going to buy a house. Now you know the Fed does many things. Uh I think they try to do their best and obviously policy has you know the impact of policy is not always clearly anticipated and it helps some sectors hurts others but in terms of policy errors this buying hundreds of billions of mortgages when house prices were up 25% year-over-year is as clear as a policy error as I've ever seen in in any central bank. actually is was totally ridiculous and largely why we have this huge huge inflation house prices that people are complaining about today.
And so when uh founding and fairly are going out to do something similar not to the same scale we definitely will see an improvement in mortgage rates already happening and you know maybe it will help housing affordability a little bit. Although I think though if you want to buy a new home, they already buy down your mortgage rates like 5% or maybe four and a half percent. So it's not really a rate problem. It's really I think a problem about um insecurity in employment and also that the prices are too high. So will help but really it's it's not the silver bullet. Also, I think this is actually has really implications on, you know, Fed policy and maybe what the administration can do with other GSC's as well. And what I will write about this week, it again, this is a super creative administration, super determined. They want to get u mortgage rates low. They want to get homes affordable. They have tools in their toolkit. Uh this is going to be a very uh very interesting year.
信贷利率上限政策的经济考量
最后，总统于周五宣布的另一项重要举措是，希望将**信用卡贷款（credit card loans）**的利率上限设定在10%。纵观过去几年信用卡利率的走势，它们一直处于高位。疫情前约为15%，疫情后飙升至20%并维持至今。这对许多依赖信用卡的人来说一直是巨大的负担，20%的利率无疑令人担忧。总统此举旨在通过将信用卡利率上限设在10%来帮助公众。
然而，这种政策更多是出于政治考量和形象工程，而非真正帮助民众。在实践中，信用卡公司设定的利率与其对借款人风险的认知成正比。信用记录良好的人不太可能被提供20%的利率，他们可能会获得更优惠的条件或诱人的初始优惠。当限制信用卡公司可以收取的利率时，他们自然会减少向那些信用评分较低的人提供信贷。
一家信用卡公司提供高利率贷款并非全然是坏事，因为有些借款人确实风险较高。例如，一个有拖欠记录、FICO分数仅为500分的人，其选择要么是支付高利率，要么是完全得不到信贷。信用卡公司会评估其预期收益（高利率收入）与预期损失（高违约率）之间的权衡。
信用卡市场本身是一个高度竞争的领域，众多公司提供各种产品，对银行而言也相当有利可图。因此，这项政策本质上并非一个好的经济政策。它限制了低收入或信用评分较低人群获得信贷的额度，这对经济不利。同时，通过限制收费标准，也限制了信用卡公司的业务意愿，从而影响了那些拥有庞大信用卡业务的公司的财务状况。这种价格管制式的措施，在民粹主义政权中屡见不鲜，虽然可能在政治上受欢迎，但对经济和市场而言并非好事。
总而言之，这是新年的第二个星期，已经发生了许多重要事件。可以预见，未来还将出台更多值得关注的政策。
Original English
All right. The last thing that he just announced yesterday, Friday, is that uh president would like to cap interest rates on credit card loans to 10%. Now, if you look at a chart of in credit card interest rates over the past few years, you'll notice that they are really high. So, they were around say 15% before the pandemic and after the pandemic, they jumped to as high as 20% where they've remained. So for a lot of uh the people who actually rely on credit cards, it's been a struggle. 20% interest rates is obviously very concerning. So again, the president is signaling that he wants to help the public by capping these credit card interest rates to about 10%. And this is a policy that is uh really for politics for optics rather than actually helping people. So because what happens in practice is that well what a credit card company is willing to charge is going to be in proportion to uh their perception of the borrower's risk. Right? So if you are someone with very good credit, you're you're you're probably not going to be offered a 20% rate. You probably get something better or maybe you get some, you know, very generous introductory offer or something like that. So when you limit the interest rates that credit card companies can charge, obviously they're just going to uh just not offer as much credit to people, especially to those who are have very low credit scores. A credit card company offering high interest rate loans is not necessarily a bad thing uh because some people really are high risk, right? What if it's someone with a history of defaults, 500 FICO score, very low FICO score? uh the option for that person is either to pay high interest rates or get no credit at all. And the credit card company off obviously makes a judgment. You know, I'm going to get high interest income and I'm also have a high default rate. Is my expected value worth it? That's up to them to decide. The credit card landscape is very obviously a pretty competitive landscape. You have all sorts of companies offering products and so it's also very profitable for the banks. So, this is just going to be u honestly it's not a good policy. Maybe good politics, but it's not a good policy because one, you limit the amount of credit that low-inccome people or people with bad credit scores can get, and that's just not good for the economy. And also, you're limiting the amount of business these credit card companies are willing to do by limiting what they can charge. And so, it's going to be crimp uh the financials as well, at least those companies that have large credit card businesses. go. And I think this type of basically price control stuff is maybe good. Politics comes back over and over again in populist uh regimes. Uh but it's it's it's not going to be good for the economy or for the markets. Um all right. So that's just uh the second week of the year. We got so much things happening. I'm sure we'll have more interesting policies coming out. All right. So that's all prepared. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll talk to you guys next week.📌 文中提及的人物和组织
公司/组织: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac