How This Ends

We are in the middle of one of the great asset bubbles of modern times. It has been brought on by the easy money policies of central banks around the world aimed at weathering the global Covid 19 pandemic. Interest rates are near zero or negative in most developed economies and asset prices have gone way up as a result.

When interest rates are zero or negative, the value of future cash flows is huge and that is how you get PE and EBITDA ratios of over 100 and price/revenue multiples approaching 100.

The big question is how does this end?

I believe it ends when the Covid 19 pandemic is over and the global economy recovers. Those two things won’t necessarily happen at the same time. There is a wide range of recovery scenarios and nobody really knows how long it will take the global economy to recover from the pandemic.

But at some point, economies will recover, central banks will tighten the money supply, and interest rates will rise. We may see price inflation of consumer goods and labor too, although that is less clear.

When economies recover and interest rates rise, the air will come out of the asset price bubbles that have built up and the go go markets will hit the brakes.

When will that happen? Your guess is as good as mine. It could be later this year. It could be in a few years. It could take longer. A lot of damage has been done to the global economy and it is unclear how quickly it can recover.

A good chart to watch is the one year treasury bill.

When the one year treasury yield gets back above 2%, we are leaving the easy money era. We aren’t close to that right now.