Good evening, let's take a look at what happened this week~
We hope that our interpretation will enable you to gain useful and easy-to-understand financial knowledge and gradually cultivate economic sensitivity.
01
The April fiscal data came out, and everything is improving
Yesterday (18th), the Ministry of Finance announced the fiscal revenue and expenditure for April.
In the first four months, the revenue (8,317.1 billion yuan) and expenditure (8,641.8 billion yuan) of the national general public budget increased by 11.9% and 6.8% year-on-year.
The budget revenue (MOP1,460.1 billion, -16.9% year-on-year) and expenditure (MOP2,792.8 billion, -11.3% year-on-year) of the national government fund decreased by more than 10% year-on-year.
What does this mean?
Fiscal revenue and expenditure can be regarded as our country's "ledger", including general public budget revenue and expenditure data and national government fund budget revenue and expenditure data, the former is our "daily ledger", the latter is "real estate ledger".
Looking at the "daily ledgers", the national general public budget revenue (a year-on-year increase of about 70%) increased sharply in April, mainly due to the low base caused by last year's large-scale tax cuts and rebates, excluding the fact that the revenue growth rate in the first four months increased by 1% compared with the first quarter, and the economy was generally recovering steadily.
In terms of taxation, there was a great improvement in April, of which domestic value-added tax was the main driving item, personal income tax (8.6%) and consumption tax (3.0%) also improved a lot, but the growth rate of corporate income tax was still negative. Property tax revenues also showed some positive signs, recovering 0.3% more in April than in March.
In terms of spending, the pace slowed down a bit in April. It is still tilted towards social security employment, science and technology, health and other aspects, and the pace of infrastructure spending has slowed down.
Let's look at the "real estate ledger" -
Income growth turned positive in April, and income from land sales improved, indicating that real estate is still recovering, but the overall market is still relatively sluggish.
Spending also turned positive from negative, mainly because special bonds were issued early, and the overall pace of spending in the first four months was much faster than in the past five years.
What is the impact of this?
Everbright Securities believes that we can pay attention to two aspects in the follow-up -
The first is the support policy to promote consumption. Since the beginning of this year, the focus of fiscal efforts has mainly been on infrastructure, and there is still relatively much room for improvement in consumption, and this year's draft budget also clearly puts "expanding domestic demand" in the first place.
The second is the completion of special debts. The issuance of local bonds this year is much faster than last year, and all localities are planning investment ahead of time, and follow-up policies may focus more on supporting the landing of special bonds.
02
Gold is doing well, do you still want to get in the car now?
Since the beginning of this year, gold-themed funds can be said to be "soaring and rising". As of today (May 19), both gold-backed ETFs and Shanghai gold-backed ETFs have yielded more than 8%, making them "stand out" among all ETF categories.
What does this mean?
Behind the higher performance of gold-based ETF funds is the rising gold price. Recently, the international gold price has been rising, and in early May, the international gold spot price reached a record high of $2,080 an ounce.
As for why the price of gold has risen so much this year -
On the one hand, it is structural. In the past, many countries regarded the dollar as a pillar reserve asset, but now, de-dollarization and multipolarization of global trade are challenging the "hegemony" status of the dollar, the original reserve dollar has been exchanged for other assets, gold as a safe-haven asset, the rise in reserve demand has driven the price of gold.
On the other hand, it is cyclical. Although the Fed announced in early May that it would continue to raise interest rates by 25 basis points, many people predicted that this would be the last rate hike, and the future may enter a rate cut cycle, which led to the fact that U.S. bonds were not "fragrant", and gold was naturally welcomed.
What is the impact of this?
Short-term gold prices may be volatile. The recent release of the US CPI shows that US inflation is easing and the dark clouds on the US market have also dispelled some, and gold prices may fall in the future, but how it will change depends on the government debt ceiling that the United States will face in early June.
But in the long run, gold prices may rise again. De-dollarization has become "unstoppable", the trend of central banks increasing their holdings of gold reserves is becoming more and more obvious, and gold is likely to be in short supply in the future, pushing up gold prices.
If you don't want to bear the "roller coaster" of gold prices and want to invest in gold, you can choose to invest in gold ETFs.
However, it should be noted that some gold theme funds track the spot price of gold denominated in US dollars abroad, or allocate stocks of gold industry-related companies, and domestic gold ETFs are still different, we should look at it when investing~
03
O2O is making a comeback, this time with a different name?
In the past two years, the door-to-door economy has continued to emerge with new tricks, from door-to-door feeding cats and walking dogs, cooking to door-to-door massage, it seems that the O2O (online to offline) that exploded in previous years has made a comeback.
What does this mean?
With the development of the economy, high-quality and inexpensive goods and services have become readily available, and the development of the Internet has provided greater convenience, which has also made many young people who live alone "lose" some life skills, such as changing light bulbs, unclogging toilets, etc., and now tend to choose door-to-door services.
These changes have spawned many new professions, such as organizers, and from 21 years to the present, the number of post-95 customers has increased by 20%, and some have also become long-term customers, and these young customers spend an average of between 10,000 and 50,000 per year. Some people are not good at it themselves, some are unwilling to spend time and energy, and prefer to spend money on high-quality services.
In short, as a new generation of young people becomes the main consumption force, coupled with the rapid pace of life, more pursuit of life efficiency and quality of life, the growth soil of O2O seems to have reappeared. Many migrant workers go home after a tiring day of work and just want to enjoy life comfortably.
What is the impact of this?
At present, there are tens of thousands of enterprises related to door-to-door service in the mainland, including takeaway, housekeeping, massage, maintenance and other fields, which not only provide convenience for consumers, but also create more jobs.
The threshold for these positions is generally not high, as long as you can bear hardships and stand hard work, you can consider these jobs. Moreover, there is no need to invest a lot of costs in these jobs, and the realization depends on your own time and skills, and the high flexibility and freedom of time is also an attractive point.
However, due to irregular operations, it is also easy to have problems, and on the complaint platform, there are many complaints about door-to-door services, such as using Sanni products, collecting money and running away, etc., and after-sales and rights protection are very inconvenient.
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Data source: and slow 2023.5.18
Data source: Oriental Wealth Choice data 2023.5.18