I am back from Buffett’s Omaha. Every year I come back feeling supercharged for the year ahead. This year was no different. From morning till night I had the pleasure of sharing and debating ideas with investors from all over the world. Though I did not plan it this way, the first day I had [...]
On January 18, 2011 I had a great pleasure to give a lecture on China and its impact on global economy at Johns Hopkings University Applied Physics Lab. You can watch it now on youtube, click on this link
I have to confess, I am tired of writing “structured” articles, the ones where I have to limit my thoughts to 800 words. So with this email I am taking a break. This is an unstructured stream of thought, in no particular sequence. Deadline to register for VALUEx Vail is May 1st. I am [...]
I wanted to share with you my interview with my friend Bob Huebscher who runs a terrific website Adviser Perspectives. I am very excited about this interview because in a very unconstrained format we had a chance to discuss Paul Krugman’s latest bearish article on China, the linkage between the European crisis and Chinese and [...]
Interview with Matt Nesto, segment 1: HP, Xerox, Vivendi (we own all of them) Segment 2: China
Party rulers in China are trapped in a position that chess players deeply fear — zugzwang — where any move made puts you at disadvantage. In China, the potential cost of both action and inaction is economic collapse. China is slowly starting to face the consequences of its actions — loans grew over 30% a [...]
I gave a presentation on China/Japan at the “Rethinking Seminar” at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. My presentation was videotaped; video (both streaming and download), audio, and even cliff notes may be found here (by the way, make sure to take a look at other presentations on their website). Also, I updated my slides [...]
I updated my presentation on China and Japan. – Enjoy China Japan Presentation – By Vitaliy Katsenelson – ContrarianEdge(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();
The Ups and Downs of Flying I am a very nervous flyer. Whenever there is a little bit of turbulence, I look out the window, see shaking wings, and start to wonder whether they’ll keep holding the plane up. Then my rational self kicks in, and I tell myself that statistically it is safer flying [...]
Earlier this week we saw reports that “Beijing authorities plan to build a “seven-star hotel” modelled after Dubai’s Burj Khalifa — the world’s tallest building — in a $1.3 billion joint project with Saudi Arabia.” Yes, the same building that symbolized Dubai’s $20-plus billion in malinvestments and required a bailout by Abu Dhabi. In Russian [...]
To paraphrase Nassim Taleb, “Giving interviews is the art of repeating oneself without anyone noticing.” With the new book out, I have the pleasure and the opportunity to perfect that art. My latest interview, with my friend Bob Huebscher of Adviser Perspectives, is below; and here are links to my interviews with John Mihalijevic of Manual of [...]
I had the pleasure of presenting my thesis on China and Japan at the Casey Research Summit in San Diego in early October. Here is a link to my updated presentation on China and Japan (Japan starts on slide 40).
Here is my latest article in the October issue of Institutional Investor Poststeroid Economics By Vitaliy N. Katsenelson During the ’80s and ’90s, ignorance was bliss. The global economy was growing nicely, and analyzing it (or even paying attention to market cycles) seemed like a waste of time, as the economy came in only three [...]
The summer is over in Denver. Of course, in Denver the summer was officially over Labor Day weekend, when the outdoor swimming pools were drained and locked for the winter. For most people summer ended a few weeks later, when the leaves turned bright yellow. But not me, I wanted to hang on to this [...]
I have not written articles in a few months, except for the one I wrote for the July issue of Institutional Investor magazine, on Japan (I’ll post a link once the magazine comes out).. I am sure Freud, after spending a few minutes in my subconscious, would provide some disturbing explanations. But as Freud said, [...]
China Roundtable with Robert Horrocks and Vitaliy Katsenelson
Christian Science Monitor approached me to write an article on China after they saw my presentation – China the Mother of All Black Swans. This article is a combination of this presentation and articles I’ve written in the past. It was published in the March 16th paper. China: the coming costs of a superbubble China may [...]
I had an interesting conversation last week with a potential investor. I described my thoughts on the US economy, explaining that in our (my firm’s) view the current strength of the US economy is significantly boosted by steroids graciously provided by the US government in the form of stimulus. (I’ve written about it in this [...]
I was interviewed on BusinessInsider about China. If you did not see it, this presentation covers a lot of points I discussed in this interview.
Chinese economy – it has tremendous overcapacity in the commercial and residential real estate and industrial sectors as you see from this presentation: China – The Mother of All Black Swans – By Vitaliy Katsenelson <
If I were a prosecutor I’d be thanking Al Gore for inventing the internet and email (I don’t know if Mr. Vice President claimed the email invention, but without the internet there is no email). Especially email, because now you can amass evidence of wrongdoing in a very searchable and easy-to-use format. TheStreet.com has dug [...]
The Chinese economy must be getting out of control, because the Chinese government is doing the unthinkable: It is desperately trying to put the brakes on the economy. When you pump a stimulus package that represents 14% of GDP through a fire hose into an economy, which was already on shaky bubble foundation, in a [...]
This paragraph, taken from a SocGen research report by Dylan Grice (one of the few sell-side folks worth reading, along with Albert Edwards, also at SocGen), sums up the dichotomy between how investors look at China and the rest of the world. Trading on a lowly 0.5x book value, Lloyds (LYG 5.1 ↓2.49%) is clearly [...]
Electricity was not the only economic statistic not controlled / calculated by the Chinese government that showed that the 6% plus GDP growth in the first six months of 2009 (at a time when the global economy was sliding off the cliff) was an accounting miracle. Guangshen Railway announced its results a few days ago [...]
I know, I may sound like I’m beating a dead horse how much printer cartridge can one spill over China? – but I have a very high burden of proof to overcome. Let me demonstrate it by this analogy: Let’s rewind 20 years. It is 1989 and I am writing that the Japanese economy is [...]
After I wrote the last note about China’s creative calculation of its GDP, a friend wrote: “So what? Who cares what is going on in China?” If the Chinese economy was the size of the Vietnamese economy, and it was not responsible for more than 2/3 of our trade deficit and didn’t hold $2.2 trillion [...]
I hope you are enjoying the last month of summer. I’ve gone fishing twice this month – caught absolutely nothing. Actually I don’t think I’ve caught a single fish over the last five years. But I’ve been mainly reading, listening to music and drinking beer while I was fishing. So the fish probably did not [...]
I am not writing this under duress, neither my family nor I were kidnapped by the Chinese government; I simply made a mistake in my last note about China called “Simple Math of Chinese ‘Staggering’ Growth” and would like to correct it. The Chinese non-export economy is not growing at a 23% rate. This figure [...]