The ideal goal of macroeconomic expression is to achieve the unity of economic growth, full employment and inflationary stability. Specifically, the residents of a country have jobs, wages are constantly rising, prices remain stable, and if you consider foreign exchange, it is the stability of the currency value.
But a country's macroeconomy does not always achieve such ideal goals, and sometimes economic growth suddenly slows down, the number of unemployed people suddenly increases, and properties begin to rise again. For the government, it can study the macro-economy and come up with corresponding measures (such as fiscal policy, monetary policy, etc.) to make the macro economy move towards the ideal goal.
It's like a sick person being prescribed by a doctor, but if you prescribe the wrong medicine list, the person's condition will become more serious.
For investors, the macro economy affects the trend of the investment market, such as the stock market, bond market, commodity market, etc., in order to make money in the investment market, you need to always pay attention to the macro-economy, see the future trend through some leading indicators, and complete the preservation and appreciation of assets through the allocation of large-scale assets.
First, the framework of macro research on commodities
The ultimate goal of macro research is to study the direct embodiment of supply and demand, that is, price.
The unit of price is yuan/ton, which reflects currency and supply and demand, respectively, where supply and demand determine the price, and currency will play a role in amplifying supply and demand.
1. Supply and demand
Macroeconomic analysis focuses on supply and demand. Macroeconomic analysis follows the basic economic law that when supply exceeds demand, prices fall; when supply is less than demand, prices rise.
Requirements can be divided into final requirements and intermediate requirements.
Final demand refers to the needs of residents and the government, and the needs of residents include retail consumption demand, real estate consumption demand, automobile consumption demand, etc.; the government's demand is infrastructure construction.
Intermediate demand refers to the investment and production needs of downstream enterprises: the needs of real estate enterprises, manufacturing enterprises, power generation enterprises, etc. Intermediate requirements depend on the final demand.
Final supply refers to the supply of such basic elements provided by upstream enterprises such as coal, oil, steel, and non-ferrous metals.
It can be simply understood that there are two markets, one is a production market composed of final supply and intermediate demand, and the other is a consumer market composed of intermediate supply and final demand.
Commodities belong to the final supply, the supply that belongs to the basic elements. Downstream links are intermediate demand markets, providing intermediate demand markets with raw materials for production, such as steel, cement, glass, plastics, refined oil, etc.
2. Credit market
In the process of economic operation, there needs to be a medium as a general equivalent, which is money.
In everyday life, the currency you can dispose of is divided into two parts: your own money and the money you can borrow, which is simply the number in the savings card and the amount in your credit card.
In the actual operation of the economy, money creation is divided into two parts, one part is self-owned funds, and the other part is credit funds. Credit can amplify demand and supply, and play an amplifier role in the economy, but if you don't let this amplifier create a bubble, the premise is that the debt cannot exceed a certain limit, otherwise it will go bankrupt and lose credit, from individuals to countries.
The state regulates the economy or industries through the adjustment of monetary policy and the tightening of credit. For example, the regulation of the real estate market since 2021 includes comprehensive means such as financing channels and credit policies, so that domestic real estate has always been under the policy of "housing and not speculation".
3. Time
For short-term supply, the government can regulate and control through administrative intervention, such as supply-side structural reform. For the long-term total, scientific and technological innovation is needed to improve production efficiency.
For short-term demand, the government can adjust through fiscal policy or monetary policy: for example, through fiscal policy tax cuts, encourage the majority of residents to consume, thereby boosting final demand; for example, through monetary policy to reduce interest rates, encourage enterprises to increase leverage to expand production, thereby boosting intermediate demand. For long-term demand, it is still necessary to rely on the supply of scientific and technological innovation to create corresponding demand.
For commodity research, whether it is government intervention or policy intervention, it is a slow variable, and it is precisely because of the change of the slow variable that the disturbance of the relationship between supply and demand is triggered, so that the price shows the characteristics of regular fluctuations, which shows a certain periodicity.
Macroeconomics is a vast system, made up of different market players. Because of the difference in cognition, there will always be different judgments about the future. This judgment is ultimately transmitted to behavior, which in turn produces different results, and thus exhibits significant complexity at the macroeconomic level.
In the small sample range, the study of the law of value is simple, but placed at the macro level, the price study shows a complex change due to the increase in participants.
Macro research and market research are fundamentally different.
The ultimate goal of market research is to provide accurate predictions about the future, but there are two difficulties in predicting the future, one is that the future is not a simple repetition of the past; and the other is that even if the future is a repetition of the past, accurate prediction requires a comprehensive and no important omission of reality and history.
Macro analysis gives reasons rather than results, market research needs to judge the economic trend in the next 6-12 months, macro analysis needs to focus on the data of the past few years, conduct a full range of analysis and grasp, and answer the three questions of economic trends, policy positions, and tight funds.
Framework of macroeconomic indicators
Macroeconomic analysis is divided into two dimensions: fundamentals and policies, the fundamentals focus on the data of economic growth, price level, employment and balance of payments, and the policy aspects focus on four types of policies: monetary policy, fiscal policy, industrial policy and supervision policy.
Third, the macro trend judgment in 2021 based on the perspective of demand
The main drivers of economic growth come from the troika of exports, investment and consumption, and identifying the driving changes of economic growth requires comprehensive identification of micro changes in the economic cycle and data.
After the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in 2020, in the context of social distancing and suspension of work and production, the economic data has fallen sharply, and after two years of recovery, the economic data has basically returned to the pre-epidemic level, but there are imbalances and instabilities in the global economic recovery, especially when the temporary bailout policy faces the option of exit, the fragility of the economy will be exhausted.
Micro performance in macro data: The inflection point has emerged
From the perspective of the main process of economic growth, whether it is import and export, investment or consumption year-on-year growth rate has declined, indicating that the overall trend of the economy is good, but the second-order index has shown that the pressure for growth is gradually increasing. Excluding the base factor, the main economic indicators in 2021 have returned to pre-epidemic levels.
From the perspective of the production method, all the factors that disturb economic growth have shown a gradual weakening state, and the momentum of economic growth has shown a slowing trend. GDP growth fell back to about 4% in the fourth quarter, and the annual GDP growth was about 8.1%.
Exports: Imports and exports have accelerated growth, and the trade structure has been continuously optimized
According to customs statistics, the total import and export volume of goods in the whole year 391009 billion yuan, an increase of 21.4% over the previous year. Among them, exports 217348 billion yuan, an increase of 21.2%, and imports 173661 billion yuan, an increase of 21.5%. Imports and exports offset each other, with a trade surplus of 4,368.7 billion yuan. The import and export of general trade increased by 24.7%, accounting for 61.6% of the total import and export, an increase of 1.6 percentage points over the previous year. The import and export of private enterprises increased by 26.7%, accounting for 48.6% of the total import and export, an increase of 2 percentage points over the previous year.
From the perspective of export structure, the export and import of mechanical and electrical products have maintained a good growth trend. In 2021, the mainland exported mechanical and electrical products of 12.83 trillion yuan, an increase of 20.4%, accounting for 59% of the total export value, of which automatic data processing equipment and its parts, mobile phones, and automobiles increased by 12.9%, 9.3%, and 104.6% respectively. In the same period, imports of mechanical and electrical products amounted to 7.37 trillion yuan, an increase of 12.2%, accounting for 42.4% of the total import value, of which integrated circuits increased by 15.4%.
In 2021, the global epidemic control has not yet been fully contained, but the proportion of vaccination is rapidly increasing, which has a positive role in promoting the prevention and control of the epidemic. It is expected that the manufacturing capacity of major manufacturing countries will continue to recover in 2022, the dependence on Chinese goods will slow down, and the growth rate of China's exports may decline from the high.
Investment: Manufacturing investment continues to exert force, and investment in high-tech industries has a good growth momentum
The national fixed asset investment (excluding rural households) 544547 billion yuan, an increase of 4.9% over the previous year, an increase of 8.0% over 2019, and an average growth of 3.9% in two years. By sector, infrastructure investment (excluding electricity, heat, gas and water production and supply) increased by 0.4% over the previous year; manufacturing investment increased by 13.5% year-on-year, an average growth of 5.65% in two years; real estate development investment increased by 4.4% year-on-year, with an average growth rate of 5.7% in two years. The sales area of commercial housing in the country increased by 1.9% over the previous year, and the average growth rate in the two years was 4.5%. Overall, although the growth rate of fixed asset investment has slowed down due to the impact of the flood epidemic, it has continued to recover steadily, and the investment structure has continued to be optimized.
From the perspective of the structure of the manufacturing industry, the current real estate investment has a signal of marginal loosening, but the concept of "housing and not speculation" will continue, the trend of gradual tightening of real estate during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period will continue in 2022, and the growth rate of real estate investment will be difficult to rebound significantly; infrastructure or continue the trend of low rebound, investment in infrastructure in 2022 or maintain basic stability; manufacturing, due to the further improvement of cost pressure, the cost side of the pressure intensified, and the demand side showed a state of decline, Considering the base factor and the unsustainable export demand, the overall manufacturing investment will show a downward trend in 2022.
Consumption: The consumer market continues to recover unchanged
In 2021, the total retail sales of consumer goods 440823 billion yuan, an increase of 12.5% over the previous year, and an average growth rate of 3.9% in two years. Among them, the retail sales of consumer goods other than automobiles 397037 billion yuan, an increase of 12.9%. Excluding price factors, the total retail sales of consumer goods in 2021 increased by 10.7% over the previous year.
Affected by the epidemic factors, residents' control over large expenditures is increasing significantly, which can be significantly answered from the growth rate of resident loans. Due to the rising cost of manufacturing, future costs will gradually affect the price of consumer goods, and it is difficult for residents to significantly increase consumption without stimulation. Since May 2020, the monthly production and sales of automobiles have begun to show negative growth, in addition to the factors of residents' enthusiasm for consumption, the rising cost caused by chip tension is also an important reason for the decline in residents' automobile consumption. It is expected that the growth rate of total domestic social retail sales will fall back to about 10% in 2022.
Three macroeconomic issues in 2022
About the economic cycle: The seventh inventory cycle of the new century was launched in the first quarter of 2020, and by the fourth quarter of 2021, it has entered the end of replenishment inventory, corresponding to the stage of the late recovery to the early recession of the economic cycle. In 2022, there is a high probability that it will enter the destocking cycle, during which the price will show an overall decline, corresponding to the peak of the PPI. At the same time, the Jugra cycle is still in the peak period of capacity release, the price increase masks the fact of increased production capacity, in the process of economic recession, the capacity problem will greatly affect the price of the commodity itself; the real estate cycle is still in a downward state, "housing and not speculation" is still the basic logic of restricting real estate in 2022.
Regarding economic trends: Affected by the base factor, the GDP growth rate in 2021 showed a high downward trend, and the final data recorded 8.1%, an increase of 5.8 percentage points over the growth rate in 2020. The world's major economic institutions expect China's GDP to fall further to less than 6% in 2022, returning to pre-epidemic levels; through the observation of high-frequency economic data, economic growth began to slow down in the third quarter, and real estate in the second half of 2021 and exports in the first half of 2022 will become the two main drivers of the recession.
Regarding credit and currency: Uncertainty from international markets, especially the MONETARY policy of the United States, will determine that China's monetary policy will be mainly stable in the coming year, and there will be more policy reserves to deal with the global liquidity disturbance represented by the US dollar index. Keep an eye on the pace of the Fed's Taper, which affects the pricing of global equity assets, especially U.S. stocks and Chinese commodities. According to the minutes of the Fed's interest rate meeting, the United States will end bond purchases in March 2022 and enter the rhythm of interest rate hikes. "Doing a good job in cross-cycle adjustment of macro policies, ensuring the continuity, stability and sustainability of macro policies, making overall plans for macro policy convergence this year and next year, and maintaining economic operation intervals" will be the main tone of domestic credit and monetary policy.
In addition to focusing on the three issues of economic trends, economic cycles, and policy positions, it is still impossible to avoid a core problem in recent years: the epidemic.
Regarding the development of the epidemic: the impact of the epidemic in 2020 has brought about a rapid clearance of consumption, investment and exports, and its growth rate has dropped to a historical low. From the perspective of the main driving forces, the first stage is the repair of necessary consumption; the second stage is the recovery of real estate sales and optional consumption; the third stage is the further improvement of exports and the overall rebound of the manufacturing industry. At present, the global epidemic is in the fourth wave of the epidemic. The global economy will continue to be affected by the pandemic in 2022, but with the advent of oral medicines, the expected impact of the pandemic has further weakened. Due to the imbalance in the recovery of global manufacturing capacity caused by the epidemic, it has been basically repaired, and global production capacity will return to pre-epidemic levels in 2022, or even increase. A new round of competition will affect the relations of major countries around the world, and the manufacturing landscape will also be reshaped. China will also face a more severe and complex external environment.
Overall, the current domestic economy is still continuing to recover, pay attention to policy choices under triple pressure. The policy space for steady growth in 2022 will be further opened. The pressure on the economy and local finances is being further transmitted by the decline in real estate sales; at present, exports are still at a high level, foreign trade orders are sufficient, the pressure on employment has not yet formed, and the slowdown in exports in 2022 will bring about an increase in employment pressure, and macro policies need to be laid out earlier in the layout of "six stability (stable employment, stable finance, stable foreign trade, stable foreign investment, stable investment, stable expectations) and six guarantees (to ensure resident employment, to ensure basic people's livelihood, to ensure market players, to ensure food and energy security, to ensure the stability of the industrial chain supply chain, and to ensure the operation of the grass-roots level). It is necessary to pay attention to the fiscal policy front, increase the investment guidance policy measures for rental housing, the relevant guidance measures for investment in carbon-neutral and related fields, and the systematic consumption promotion measures.
For commodities, the market environment will gradually change from a tailwind to a tailwind and a headwind from a tailwind and a headwind. It should be noted that there is no economic trend that has been rising and not adjusting, and there is no commodity that has been rising and not falling, and the possibility of a large adjustment in the price of high-valued commodities in 2022 is increasing, and it is necessary to guard against the arrival of the Minsky moment.