Posts tagged ‘manufacturing’
Nail Not in Emerging Market Coffin Yet
I wouldn’t say the nail is in the emerging market coffin quite yet. During the financial crisis, the EMSCI Emerging Market Index (EEM) was left for dead (down -50% in 2008) before resurrection in 2009 and 2010 (up +74% and +16%, respectively). For the last two years however, the EMSCI index has underperformed the S&P 500 Index massively by more than -30%. Included in this international index are holdings from China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Korea, and South Africa, among others.
The question now becomes, can the emerging markets resurrect themselves from the dead again? Recent signs are flashing “yes”. Over the last three months, the emerging markets have outperformed the S&P 500 by more than +8%, but these stocks still have a lot of ground to make up before reaching the peak levels of 2007. Last year’s slowing growth in China and a European recession, coupled with talks of the Federal Reserve’s “tapering” of monetary stimulus, didn’t provide the EMSCI index any help over the last few years.
With all the distracting drama currently taking place in Washington D.C., it’s a relief to see some other indications of improvement. For starters, China’s most recent PMI manufacturing index results showed continued improvement, reaching a level of 51.1 – up from August and signaling a reversal from contraction earlier this year (levels above 50 point to expansion). Chinese government leaders are continuing their migration from an externally export-driven economy to an internally consumer-driven economy. Despite the shift, China is still targeting a respectable +7.5% GDP economic growth target, albeit a slower level than achieved in the past.
Adding to emerging market optimism is Europe’s apparent economic turnaround (or stabilization). As you can see from the chart below, the European Institute for Supply Management (ISM) service sector index has lately shown marked improvement. If the European and Chinese markets can sustain these recovering trends, these factors bode well for emerging market financial returns.
Source: Calafia Beach Pundit
While it is clear these developments are helping the rebound in emerging market indices, it is also clear the supply-demand relationship in commodities will coincide with the next big up or down move in developing markets. Ed Yardeni, strategist and editor of Dr. Ed’s Blog, recently wrote a piece showing the tight correlation between emerging market stock prices and commodity prices (CRB Index). His conclusions come as no surprise to me given these resource-rich markets and their dependence on Chinese demand along with commodity needs from other developed countries. Expanding populations and rising standards of living in emerging market countries have and will likely continue to position these countries well for long-term commodity price appreciation. The development of new, higher-value service and manufacturing sectors should also lead to sustainably improved growth in these emerging markets relative to developed economies.
Source: Dr. Ed’s Blog
Adding fuel to the improving emerging market case is the advancement in the Baltic Dry Index (see chart below). The recent upward trajectory of the index is an indication that the price for moving major raw materials like coal, iron ore, and grains by sea is rising. This statistical movement is encouraging, but as you can see it is also very volatile.
Source: Calafia Beach Pundit
While the emerging markets are quite unpredictable and have been out-of-favor over the last few years, a truly diversified portfolio needs a healthy dosage of this international exposure. You better check a pulse before you put a nail in the coffin – the emerging markets are not dead yet.
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients hold positions in certain exchange traded funds (ETFs) including emerging market ETFs, but at the time of publishing, SCM had no direct position in EEM, or any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is the information to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC Contact page.
Magical Growth through Manufacturing Decline
In a data driven world, we can never get enough numbers. The market magicians and the media machines have no problem overhyping or overselling the importance of each pending data-point. With a quick economic sleight of hand, the industry pundits have converted the average investor into a frothing Pavlovian dog, begging for another market shaking statistic. One of the supposed earth-rattling data points is the monthly ISM Manufacturing Index figure, but the release of the ISM number alone isn’t enough for the audience. The real fun comes in determining whether the monthly number registers above or below a schizophrenic 50 level – a number above 50 indicates the manufacturing economy is generally expanding (August came in at 50.6).
The trick can often be surprising, but more surprising to me is the importance placed on this relatively small, disappearing segment of our economy. With the manufacturing sector now accounting for just 11-13% of GDP (see also Manufacturing – Losing Out?), shouldn’t we be focusing more on the “Services” sector of the economy, which accounts for roughly 75% of our country’s output, up from 62% in 1971 (source: Earthtrends). I believe economist Mark Perry at Carpe Diem captured this phenomenon best in his post from earlier this year (Decline of Manufacturing – The World is Much Better Off ):
The fact of the matter is that manufacturing has been declining as a percentage of GDP over the decades just as the broader economy has seen massive growth. While manufacturing got chopped in half, as a percentage of GDP, from 1970 to 2011 we have seen GDP balloon from about $1 trillion to $15 trillion. If manufacturing declined by another 50% of GDP, I’d do cartwheels to see another 15x increase in economic expansion. I acknowledge the existence of certain synergies between product development and product manufacturing, but these benefits must be weighed against higher domestic costs that could make sales potentially unviable.
Déjà Vu All Over Again
This isn’t the first time in our country’s history that we’ve experienced explosive economic growth as legacy segments of the economy decline in relative importance. Consider the share of jobs agriculture controlled in the early 1800s – a whopping 90% of jobs were tied to farms (see chart below). Today, that percentage is less than 2% in the wake of the U.S. becoming the 20th Century global superpower. History has taught us that technology can be a bitch on employment, as robots, machinery, processes, and chemistry replace the demand for human labor. As Perry points out, there is no doubt that “tractors, electricity, combines, the cotton gin, automatic milking machinery, computers, GPS, hybrid seeds, irrigation systems, herbicides, pesticides” replaced millions of farming jobs, but guess what…American ingenuity ruled the day. As it turns out, those economic resources freed up by technology and productivity were redeployed into new, expanding, job-fertile areas of the economy like, “manufacturing, health care, education, business, retail, computers, transportation, etc.”
Source: Carpe Diem
More Apples or More GMs?
The farming lobby still cries for its inefficient, growth-muffling subsidies today, but many unproductive, unionized domestic manufacturing industries are also screaming for government assistance because cheap foreign labor and new technologies are stealing manufacturing jobs by the boatloads. So at the core, the real question is do we want government and investments supporting more companies like Apple Inc. (AAPL) or more companies like General Motors Company (GM)?
As you may know, by flipping over an iPhone, any observer can clearly notice the product is “designed by Apple in California – assembled in China.” It is clear that Apple and its customers value brains over manufacturing brawn. At $371 billion and the most valuable publicly traded stock in the universe, Apple is dominating the electronics world, all the while hiring employees by the thousands. These facts beg the question of whether Apple should revamp their manufacturing supply-chain back to the U.S. to save more domestic jobs? Of course the result of a manufacturing strategy shift to a higher cost region would make Apple less competitive, force them to charge consumers higher prices for Apple products, and open the door for competitors to freely steal market share? Would this strategy create more incremental jobs, or fewer jobs? I think I’ll side with the Steve Jobs philosophy of business, which says “more profitable businesses must fill more job openings.”
If this Apple case study isn’t illustrative enough for you, maybe you should take a look at companies like GM. The U.S. automobile industry has historically been notoriously mismanaged, thanks to a horrific manufacturing cost structure, anchored by unsustainable pension and healthcare costs. Should investors be surprised that an uncompetitive, bloated cost structure leaves companies like GM less money to invest in new products and innovation? This irrational cost management contributed to decades of market share losses to foreigners. If I’m the job creation czar in the U.S., I think I’ll choose the Apple path to job creation over GM’s route.
Global Competitiveness = Jobs
With a 9.1% unemployment rate and the recent introduction of the American Jobs Act, there has been plenty of emphasis and focus on job creation. At the end of the day, what will create durable, long-term job creation is innovative, competitively priced products and services that can be sold domestically and abroad. How do we achieve this goal? We need an education system that can teach and train a workforce sufficiently to meet the discerning tastes of a global marketplace. Government, on the other hand, needs to support (not direct) the private sector by investing in strategic areas to help global competitiveness (i.e., education, energy independence, basic research, infrastructure, entrepreneurial capital for business formation, etc.), while facilitating a business environment that incentivizes growth.
Regardless of the policy mixtures, the common denominator needs to be focused on improving global competitiveness. Excessive focus on a declining manufacturing sector and the monthly ISM data will only distract decision makers from the core issues. If the economic magician’s sleight of hand diverts investor attention for too long, we may see more jobs disappear.
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients own certain exchange traded funds, and AAPL, but at the time of publishing SCM had no direct position in GM, or any other security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC “Contact” page
Revenge of David: Technology Empowers Small-Fry
The garage tinkerer’s canvas is manifested through these relatively new 3-D printers.
What happened in the virtual world with software and operating systems over the last 15 or so years is now happening in the bricks and mortar world. Linux, a free open source software operating system, was designed in the early 1990s and initially registered its trademark in 1994. The no cost system takes advantage of charitable brainpower by using programming prowess from others around the globe.
The same phenomenon is happening in the real world, and critically acclaimed Wired writer Chris Anderson wrote about it this trend in a recent article, In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits. With the help of a laptop, free design software, and a few mouse clicks to a manufacturing plant in China, Anderson shows how a small fry entrepreneur with a good idea can become a successful micro-factory in weeks. This same process might have taken traditional manufacturers years in the past. Accelerating production from novel idea to output reality are new 3-D printers, robotic-like equipment that can build real time prototypes from molten plastic (see picture above). Sounds expensive, but these former six-figure devices can be purchased for less than $1,000 thereby allowing state of the art products to be made with relatively little capital and inventory. In other words, the small fry entrepreneur David now has the ability to become a fine tuned Goliath with the help of democratizing technologies. The high barriers to entry have been toppled down by creative, risk-taking entrepreneurs.
In describing this manufacturing marvel, Anderson highlights Local Motors, an open source car company that managed to produce a car in months what would have taken legacy automakers years to build. Rather than hire a host of expensive engineers (the company only had 10 employees), Local Motors relied on a global community of volunteers (also called “crowdsourcing”) to design the original “Rally Fighter” automobile. Utilizing a ratio of 500-to-1 volunteers to employees has allowed Local Motors to leverage the power of atoms to bits. What Anderson calls “garage tinkerers” are slowly taking over the world.
Building Your Dream
On the surface, the micro-factory concept sounds fairly straightforward, but how does one practically pursue this strategy? Anderson has five steps to building your dreams:
1) Invent: Come up with idea and check U.S. Patent and Trademark office to make sure idea has not been used before.
2) Design: Use 3-D design tools to model out your idea.
3) Prototype: Upload your design to a 3-D printer and watch prototype idea grow into reality.
4) Manufacture: Find manufacturing partner online through sites like Alibaba.com (1688.HK).
5) Sell: Market your product online to reach the masses.
If you look back in time, the industrialization of America squeezed out the little guys because small time citizens did not have the capital or expertise to keep up with the big boys. Thanks to the internet, the playing field has been leveled and the small-fry David can not only compete with Goliath, but can also defeat him.
Read Chris Anderson’s Famous The Long Tail Article from 2004
Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®
Plan. Invest. Prosper.
*DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and some of its clients own certain exchange traded funds, but at the time of publishing SCM had no direct positions in Alibaba.com or any security referenced in this article. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC “Contact” page.
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