Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Stocks Plunge Amid Oil Shock
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Penel Podcast. I'm Paul swing you.
- 0:05Speaker 1: Along with my co host Lisa Brahma Waits. Each day
- 0:07Speaker 1: we bring you the most noteworthy and useful interviews for
- 0:10Speaker 1: you and your money. Whether at the grocery store or
- 0:12Speaker 1: the trading floor. Find a Bloomberg Penl podcast on Apple
- 0:15Speaker 1: podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as
- 0:17Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot com. Oil prices in a free fall
- 0:21Speaker 1: today after over the weekend, negotiations between Russia and Saudi
- 0:27Speaker 1: Arabia as well as the rest of the OPEC allies
- 0:29Speaker 1: broke down completely, and to quote Julian Lee, who is
- 0:33Speaker 1: a Bloomberg opinion columnist and Bloomberg oil strategist, in a
- 0:37Speaker 1: column over the weekend, he wrote, this is developing into
- 0:41Speaker 1: a game wool blink first between two contestants who have
- 0:45Speaker 1: cut off their eyelids. The key question what can make
- 0:48Speaker 1: them come together and actually end this price war that
- 0:52Speaker 1: is ravaging oil prices. Ellen Wald is deeply familiar with
- 0:56Speaker 1: Mohammed bin Selman of Saudi Arabia as well as entire
- 1:00Speaker 1: oil complex, and she joins us Now ellen Wald, president
- 1:03Speaker 1: of Transversal Consulting, a Bloomberg Opinion contributor and friend of
- 1:06Speaker 1: the show, Ellen, so glad to have you here. Can
- 1:10Speaker 1: you give us a sense of what it will take
- 1:12Speaker 1: to bring Saudi Arabia and Russia back to the table
- 1:15Speaker 1: to come to some kind of agreement and stave off
- 1:17Speaker 1: some of these declines. I'm not sure that there is
- 1:21Speaker 1: a real possibility at this point to bring them back
- 1:23Speaker 1: to the table, because what you're looking at our two
- 1:27Speaker 1: powers to oil powers that have fundamentally different strategies and
- 1:31Speaker 1: different goals. Here, Russia's goal is Russia. Frankly, Russia is
- 1:36Speaker 1: looking out for number one. It's looking out for Russia.
- 1:39Speaker 1: And then you have Saudi Arabia, which, in addition to
- 1:42Speaker 1: having its own interests at heart, also cares about OPEQ
- 1:46Speaker 1: and it cares about its political power within OPEC. That's
- 1:49Speaker 1: not something that Russia really cares for. And so Saudi
- 1:52Speaker 1: Arabia is saying, look, we said basically at this OPEC meeting,
- 1:57Speaker 1: we see a crisis in demand, we need to cut
- 2:00Speaker 1: oil production. We're going to do our part, but we
- 2:02Speaker 1: need you to also do your part. We're not going
- 2:05Speaker 1: it alone anymore. Because back in December, we essentially saw
- 2:08Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia saying, let's all cut, but we're going to
- 2:11Speaker 1: cut so much more as an incentive. And Russia is
- 2:15Speaker 1: looking at this saying, why should we cut when we
- 2:18Speaker 1: can get the saudiast to do it, And the Saudias said, no,
- 2:22Speaker 1: we're not going to do that this time. And now
- 2:24Speaker 1: you've got a price war and a production war with
- 2:28Speaker 1: a variance or now come for Saudi Arabia said, Abybia
- 2:30Speaker 1: can win the production war, they've got more spare capacity.
- 2:34Speaker 1: But is there really a winner in a production war
- 2:37Speaker 1: where you can't find buyers for that oil? And that's
- 2:40Speaker 1: really the question. Yeah, And that's kind of where I
- 2:42Speaker 1: wanted to go. I mean, I get Russia may have
- 2:45Speaker 1: different agenda, may have a different agenda than Opeque in
- 2:48Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, but they don't benefit from this plunging oil price.
- 2:53Speaker 1: So what's kind of there? How much pain can they
- 2:55Speaker 1: really take? Do you think? Well? Right now they've said
- 2:58Speaker 1: that they can take Hayne for six to ten years,
- 3:01Speaker 1: that they're willing to accept prices between you and thirty
- 3:07Speaker 1: dollars a barrel, which, by the way, they're not really
- 3:09Speaker 1: making money at that price point, whereas Saudi Arabia can
- 3:13Speaker 1: make money, But they're saying, look, we've got a hundred
- 3:15Speaker 1: and fifty billion dollar UH Sovereign Wealth Fund, and we're
- 3:19Speaker 1: willing to sell those assets to fund our budget for
- 3:22Speaker 1: six to ten years. So whereas on Saudi Arabia side,
- 3:26Speaker 1: they can pump oil for two dollars and eighty cents,
- 3:28Speaker 1: so if they're selling it at twenty five dollars a barrel,
- 3:31Speaker 1: they're still making a profit, whereas Russian companies might not
- 3:34Speaker 1: necessarily be making a profit. But is Saudi Arabia really
- 3:37Speaker 1: willing to deploy other funds to stave off budgetary issues?
- 3:42Speaker 1: And that's a totally different question, and it's not clear
- 3:44Speaker 1: that Saudi Arabia is prepared with its sovereign Wealth fund
- 3:48Speaker 1: to do the same kind of thing that Russia is.
- 3:50Speaker 1: Ellen it doesn't sound like there's an easy resolution to this,
- 3:52Speaker 1: then yeah, I don't. I don't see an easy resolution.
- 3:56Speaker 1: I think that that if they got to other and
- 4:00Speaker 1: they started talking, that tensions would definitely calm down. And
- 4:03Speaker 1: I do think that there is um continued communication between
- 4:08Speaker 1: the two. You've got a Russian oil ministry, Russian energy
- 4:11Speaker 1: ministry that wants to still sell Saudi Arabia nuclear technology
- 4:14Speaker 1: and liquefied natural gas. So it's not like all communication
- 4:18Speaker 1: is suddenly cut. This isn't, you know, the Cold War
- 4:22Speaker 1: between Saudi Arabia and Russia. But um, it's not going
- 4:25Speaker 1: to be resolved tomorrow, well but for sure. But so
- 4:29Speaker 1: let's let's just sort of extrapolate out if this is
- 4:31Speaker 1: a prolonged issue tension locking of heads here over what
- 4:37Speaker 1: production ought to be, what is going to be the
- 4:41Speaker 1: consequence for the entire oil complex, in particular the shale
- 4:45Speaker 1: patch which we're seeing right now getting crushed in the
- 4:47Speaker 1: high old bond market. To also the oil majors, which
- 4:51Speaker 1: shares have actually been just absolutely devastated today. Yeah, they're
- 4:56Speaker 1: they're going to have a tough time. I don't think
- 4:58Speaker 1: that it's a death knell for the shale oil patch
- 5:01Speaker 1: because the assets are still there and they're still going
- 5:04Speaker 1: to be valuable, and so you are, you're going to
- 5:06Speaker 1: have people getting crushed. But you will see war consolidation,
- 5:09Speaker 1: You'll see you know, the players that can the oil
- 5:13Speaker 1: majors taking on, you know, buying up well producing good
- 5:17Speaker 1: producing assets. Um, it won't be fun there and the
- 5:21Speaker 1: area is definitely going to experience an economic contraction. But
- 5:26Speaker 1: you can't kill the assets. They're still there. However, places
- 5:30Speaker 1: like Venezuela and Iran that are really on the brink
- 5:34Speaker 1: are going to have a very hard time of it,
- 5:35Speaker 1: particularly because Russia has played such a big role in
- 5:38Speaker 1: kind of keeping Venezuela limping along. Ellen, Well, thank you
- 5:42Speaker 1: so much for joining us. Ellen wall is a president
- 5:44Speaker 1: of Transversal Consulting. She's also Bloomberg Opinion contributor, and we
- 5:47Speaker 1: always appreciate her commentary and thoughts on the global energy
- 5:51Speaker 1: markets with her great experience. Well, with markets in free
- 6:04Speaker 1: fall this morning, some might be tempted in the equity
- 6:07Speaker 1: markets maybe dip their toe, try to find some value.
- 6:10Speaker 1: Some are going to say, I'm not getting anywhere near
- 6:12Speaker 1: this freight train right here. Let's get an informed opinion
- 6:15Speaker 1: from Gina Martin Adam. She's a senior equity strategist for
- 6:18Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence. She joins us here on our Bloomberg Interactive
- 6:21Speaker 1: Broker Studio. So, Gina, what do you make of not
- 6:25Speaker 1: just today, but maybe the last ten or you know,
- 6:27Speaker 1: days or two weeks? Uh, this market activity we've seen
- 6:30Speaker 1: in equities? Yeah, you know, I think the market started
- 6:34Speaker 1: off at an overbought condition. You have to consider that
- 6:36Speaker 1: as the starting point, we were overbought, we were likely overconfident.
- 6:40Speaker 1: Valuations were well above our modeled estimates for where fair
- 6:44Speaker 1: value was then. So we started to see that deflation
- 6:47Speaker 1: with the coronavirus concerns and as those spread around the world.
- 6:50Speaker 1: Obviously that created a tremendous amount of technical weakness in
- 6:52Speaker 1: the markets, but did start to create some fundamental value
- 6:56Speaker 1: at the very least. Now you've got the destabilizing effect
- 7:00Speaker 1: to oil prices adding onto the pressure, so it's almost
- 7:02Speaker 1: like this pile on effect that the equity market is experiencing.
- 7:06Speaker 1: You know, My sense is you don't normally get a
- 7:08Speaker 1: five to seven percent decline in a single day on stocks,
- 7:10Speaker 1: and usually those are representative of pretty significant panic lows.
- 7:14Speaker 1: But you can't eliminate the possibility that there's further downside
- 7:18Speaker 1: from here, because you're trying to predict human behavior and
- 7:20Speaker 1: risk tolerance, and that's just impossible to do. I think
- 7:23Speaker 1: a lot of this for investors is going to depend
- 7:25Speaker 1: upon your time horizon. If you're thinking, you know, I
- 7:27Speaker 1: gotta be up, and I've got to be up in
- 7:29Speaker 1: the next two weeks, your time horizon is probably too short.
- 7:32Speaker 1: To have a whole lot of confidence. If your time
- 7:34Speaker 1: horizon is the next fifteen years, I want to look
- 7:37Speaker 1: for some value for a fifteen year time horizon. Then
- 7:40Speaker 1: you've got to start thinking about sharpening your pencils and
- 7:42Speaker 1: finding some ideas in the equity market because true value
- 7:45Speaker 1: has been unlocked here. Um when we look at things
- 7:48Speaker 1: like the oil price impact, for instance, on fundamentals, the
- 7:52Speaker 1: energy sector is three percent of the market cap of
- 7:54Speaker 1: the SMP five hundred. Now, so a falling oil price
- 7:59Speaker 1: is not particularly detrimental detrimental to the earnings outlook, unless
- 8:03Speaker 1: it's accompanied by, you know, a snowball effect of serious
- 8:07Speaker 1: economic recession emerging, big declines in new orders, growth, employment
- 8:12Speaker 1: conditions deteriorating significantly. Those are the things that you want
- 8:14Speaker 1: to look at. And if that's the case, then you
- 8:17Speaker 1: want to start to price recession. I do say, to
- 8:19Speaker 1: price recession, We've probably got quite a bit of downside
- 8:21Speaker 1: risk still to come, you know, will we have recession
- 8:25Speaker 1: or not? As still a toss up? Well, that's that's
- 8:27Speaker 1: exactly where I wanted to go. What would it look
- 8:30Speaker 1: like for us to price in recession? How much worse
- 8:33Speaker 1: would it get? Yeah, So our view is to price recession,
- 8:36Speaker 1: we probably have to go to around sixty five. That's
- 8:39Speaker 1: taking an assumption of where the fair value multiple is
- 8:43Speaker 1: considering where interest rates are, and we all know that
- 8:45Speaker 1: interest rates are extremely accommodative for equity and valuations right now,
- 8:50Speaker 1: but also your average recessionary decline in EPs, which is
- 8:53Speaker 1: about on earnings. To get to combine those two models,
- 8:58Speaker 1: and you get a downside risk for the s P
- 9:00Speaker 1: five all the way down to which is a bit
- 9:04Speaker 1: more than your average recessionary decline. It's a more than
- 9:07Speaker 1: decline in stocks from peach trough. We're tritting with Gina
- 9:09Speaker 1: Martin Adams and Bloomberg Intelligence. We have the SMP down
- 9:12Speaker 1: one seventy, that's five point seven percent, the Dow off
- 9:15Speaker 1: about fifteen hundred points here. So Gina, let's talk technical levels.
- 9:19Speaker 1: As I know you like to look at charts as
- 9:21Speaker 1: well as the fundamentals here. Where are we kind of
- 9:23Speaker 1: broad market in terms of support levels and that that
- 9:26Speaker 1: kind of thing. Well, we busted through the retracement level,
- 9:30Speaker 1: which you know we had been watching that pretty carefully.
- 9:33Speaker 1: That's right around sixty on the SMP five hundred. That's
- 9:37Speaker 1: where we found stabilization to Fridays ago on that major
- 9:40Speaker 1: capitulation low. Um. We certainly didn't even test it last Friday,
- 9:46Speaker 1: even though our closing low on Friday was pretty weak.
- 9:49Speaker 1: So at this point, I think hundred is serving as
- 9:52Speaker 1: some sort of round number resistance. It happens to mark
- 9:55Speaker 1: a low from several low points over the course of
- 9:57Speaker 1: the last year as well. Then you've got to get
- 9:59Speaker 1: all the way back into the correction, and which really
- 10:02Speaker 1: is dicey technicals, right, I mean, there's just very few
- 10:06Speaker 1: consistent levels to lean on back in that correction I'm
- 10:11Speaker 1: looking at right now as the level to watch on
- 10:13Speaker 1: the index. How concerned are you about a panic among
- 10:17Speaker 1: retail investors as they start to see some of the
- 10:19Speaker 1: headlines and here some of the rhetoric out of Wall
- 10:22Speaker 1: Street today. Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. Our et
- 10:25Speaker 1: F team has actually done a lot of analysis on this,
- 10:27Speaker 1: and the retail investor is the sort of one solid
- 10:32Speaker 1: leg that's been in the equity market even in August.
- 10:35Speaker 1: Remember all the panic activity in the equity market that
- 10:38Speaker 1: we experienced in August. We had a couple of three
- 10:40Speaker 1: percent down days in the midst of only a five
- 10:42Speaker 1: percent correction. It was very odd very similarly this time around.
- 10:46Speaker 1: The retail investor does not appear to be managed manipulating
- 10:50Speaker 1: their portfolio. They're not really giving up the ghost on equity,
- 10:54Speaker 1: so they are inherently a source of support, while the
- 10:56Speaker 1: institutional investor has been significantly more volatile and more weak
- 11:01Speaker 1: over the last couple of corrections. So I am somewhat
- 11:05Speaker 1: concerned if we do get that kind of last bastition
- 11:08Speaker 1: of stability capitulating on the on the equity rally, it
- 11:11Speaker 1: could create a pretty big down draft. But so far
- 11:14Speaker 1: that investor seems to be sticking it out. Gina Martin Adams,
- 11:18Speaker 1: thank you so much for being with us, always illuminating.
- 11:20Speaker 1: Gina Martin Adams, chief equity strategist for us here at
- 11:24Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence, insightful to hear about the fact that we're
- 11:28Speaker 1: not even pricing in recession yet we have another five
- 11:31Speaker 1: percent more to go lower in the S and P
- 11:34Speaker 1: before we get to the levels that would price that in.
- 11:36Speaker 1: According to Gina Martin Adams, who has been absolutely stending
- 11:40Speaker 1: on this consistently throughout Boy On days like today, when
- 11:54Speaker 1: you've got risk assets across the board trading off substantially,
- 11:58Speaker 1: some say in a panic mode. It is always good
- 12:01Speaker 1: to have our good friend Christina Hooper join us give
- 12:03Speaker 1: us some perspective here. Christina Hooper's investcos chief Global Market Strategists.
- 12:08Speaker 1: She joins us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio.
- 12:10Speaker 1: So Christina, thanks so much for joining. I know it's
- 12:13Speaker 1: a busy day for you and dealing with clients. Just
- 12:16Speaker 1: help us put into perspective what we've seen, not just
- 12:19Speaker 1: in the last week or so, but particularly this morning,
- 12:21Speaker 1: with the news over the weekend about oil and the coronavirus. Well,
- 12:24Speaker 1: I think of it as a one to punch. UM
- 12:26Speaker 1: markets had come under significant pressure as a result of
- 12:29Speaker 1: the Corona virus outbreak that spread the concerns about the
- 12:33Speaker 1: impact on the economy. And then of course we had
- 12:36Speaker 1: events evolved in oil markets such that we now have
- 12:41Speaker 1: a supply shock, uh, that disagreement between Russia and the
- 12:45Speaker 1: rest of OPEC plus which then led to the Saudias
- 12:48Speaker 1: deciding to add to supply. And so this is a
- 12:52Speaker 1: scenario where now we're going to see HILD come under
- 12:56Speaker 1: We're already seeing high you'ld come under very significant pressure. Um,
- 12:59Speaker 1: the energy sector is coming under very significant pressure. And
- 13:03Speaker 1: so that is UM really impacting the environment. And I
- 13:08Speaker 1: think what in general we're seeing is a lack of
- 13:11Speaker 1: confidence in markets because UM, there is UH, there's not
- 13:17Speaker 1: a lot of certainty about whether or not we're going
- 13:18Speaker 1: to get an appropriate response from governments. To me, this
- 13:23Speaker 1: is what is at the heart of this issue, is
- 13:25Speaker 1: that what we've seen really since the global financial crisis
- 13:29Speaker 1: is strong monetary response and a lackluster fiscal response. And
- 13:34Speaker 1: now it's clear that we need a fiscal response. But
- 13:37Speaker 1: I think in the memory of the memories of many
- 13:40Speaker 1: investors is the fact that TARP narrowly passed UM that UM,
- 13:45Speaker 1: we didn't get much in the way a fiscal stimulus,
- 13:47Speaker 1: even though that's what we really need to help companies
- 13:51Speaker 1: get through UM the next few months. If we don't
- 13:54Speaker 1: get to use your words, an appropriate fiscal response within
- 13:58Speaker 1: the next few weeks, say even two months, what will
- 14:03Speaker 1: the fallout be like, Well, it will elongate UH, an
- 14:08Speaker 1: economic downturn. I mean really, at this we're at essentially
- 14:13Speaker 1: and decision point where we could go in a variety
- 14:15Speaker 1: of different directions, depending upon certainly the lifespan of the
- 14:21Speaker 1: outbreak UM, but more importantly the response to it, the
- 14:24Speaker 1: health care response, to it um, the fiscal response to it,
- 14:27Speaker 1: and the monetary policy response to it. And so my expectation,
- 14:31Speaker 1: my hope is that we get enough of a fiscal response,
- 14:34Speaker 1: But if we don't, it elongates the downturn um and
- 14:38Speaker 1: it in many ways it could worsen that downturn over time.
- 14:42Speaker 1: We can look to China as a model of how
- 14:45Speaker 1: to do it right. Um. China actually provided significant stimulus,
- 14:50Speaker 1: not just monetary but fiscal. We were hearing from US
- 14:53Speaker 1: companies that were saying they were getting subsidized loans from
- 14:56Speaker 1: China to continue to pay employees even though they weren't
- 15:00Speaker 1: coming to work. That's the kind of thing we need
- 15:03Speaker 1: in this environment to really get through because we know
- 15:06Speaker 1: that there are a lot of Americans that are very vulnerable,
- 15:09Speaker 1: that don't have any significant level of emergency savings. That's
- 15:13Speaker 1: not really a concern when things are going well, but
- 15:15Speaker 1: it is a concern when things are starting to go
- 15:18Speaker 1: poorly and they might actually see hourly wages cut because
- 15:22Speaker 1: of all the cancelations that we're seeing, all the change
- 15:25Speaker 1: in plans, all the disruption being caused by the outbreak. Essentially,
- 15:29Speaker 1: there's a story on the Bloomberg right now that President
- 15:31Speaker 1: Trump's aids are actually drafting economic steps to fight the
- 15:34Speaker 1: virus fall out, So maybe we'll even get some news
- 15:37Speaker 1: on that potentially uh today, So we'll have to see
- 15:39Speaker 1: how that plays in. So Christine, as you think about this,
- 15:43Speaker 1: what's the correct analysis to do? Is it to kind
- 15:45Speaker 1: of look at valuation, try to find names that you know,
- 15:49Speaker 1: the business models that you feel are strong, and if
- 15:51Speaker 1: you find that you know good valuation points, to maybe
- 15:53Speaker 1: put some money to work. Absolutely, I think this is
- 15:57Speaker 1: time to be really writing a list and referring to
- 16:01Speaker 1: that list as you watch the carnage in markets, because
- 16:05Speaker 1: there are a lot of great names that get beaten
- 16:07Speaker 1: down in the short run because, as we know, UM,
- 16:10Speaker 1: when there's blood in the water, UM, there's just insanity
- 16:14Speaker 1: in the minds of investors. And UM stocks might be
- 16:18Speaker 1: a voting machine in the short run, but over the
- 16:20Speaker 1: longer run they are a weighing machine. And so they're
- 16:23Speaker 1: definitely opportunities out there that are being created by a
- 16:27Speaker 1: miss pricing of asset classes. I think of this as
- 16:30Speaker 1: the real march madness, all right. One question that I
- 16:34Speaker 1: have is how easy is it to execute at those prices?
- 16:37Speaker 1: In other words, how fluid is a financial system. Right now,
- 16:40Speaker 1: we're hearing anecdotally of some difficulties with respect to executing trades. Well,
- 16:47Speaker 1: I think that for the most part, what I've heard
- 16:49Speaker 1: is that trades have gone through smoothly. I think it
- 16:52Speaker 1: depends on the volume, UM. But investors don't need to
- 16:56Speaker 1: pile on in all at once. UM. Have a clear
- 16:59Speaker 1: head about buying as well as selling. But have that
- 17:02Speaker 1: list UM, refer to it and and see the opportunities
- 17:06Speaker 1: created by carnage. It's very hard to call a bottom.
- 17:08Speaker 1: I know Mark Haines UH famously did that a while
- 17:12Speaker 1: back on on this advanced anniversary twelve years ago. UM,
- 17:16Speaker 1: but it's very hard to do that. UM. But you
- 17:18Speaker 1: know when things are getting oversold, and so you can
- 17:21Speaker 1: speak in UH to create entry points. Right now, a
- 17:25Speaker 1: lot of the selling action really has stemmed from institutional investors.
- 17:30Speaker 1: We haven't seen the mass flight when it comes to retailers.
- 17:34Speaker 1: Just real quickly, How concerned are you about that? I'm
- 17:38Speaker 1: not too concerned at this point because certainly for those
- 17:42Speaker 1: investors that do have that are advised UM, they're likely
- 17:47Speaker 1: to maintain exposure. I think that our industry has done
- 17:52Speaker 1: a better and better job of really stressing the importance
- 17:55Speaker 1: of taking a long term view that for so many,
- 18:00Speaker 1: for example, the fourth quarter of two thousand and eighteen
- 18:03Speaker 1: was a blip. Now was very disappointed to get those statements,
- 18:05Speaker 1: but at the end of the day it was quickly erased.
- 18:08Speaker 1: Christina Hooper, wonderful having you here with us. Thank you
- 18:11Speaker 1: so much, and fest of luck through this period of
- 18:14Speaker 1: Christina Hooper is Investco, Chief Global Market Strategist, joining us
- 18:18Speaker 1: here in our interactive broker's studios. Thanks for listening to
- 18:21Speaker 1: the Bloomberg P and L podcast. You can subscribe and
- 18:24Speaker 1: listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform
- 18:27Speaker 1: you prefer. Paul Sweeney, I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney.
- 18:30Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Abram Woods. I'm on Twitter at Lisa Abram
- 18:33Speaker 1: woyds one. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide.
- 18:36Speaker 1: I'm Bloomberg Radio.