저자: Dylan·VI · 외국인
요약 보기
장단기 금리 역전(2y-10y)이 793일 지속 후 0.06%p로 정상화 전환. 과거 미국 침체 6회 중 5회가 20일 이상 역전 선행, 역전 해소 후 3~6개월 내 하락 전환 사례 언급. 다만 GDP 3%, 실업률 4.2% 하락, 구인/이직 지표 균형 회복 등 경기 연착륙 가능성도 제시. 결론적으로 침체 가능성을 경계하되 시점 예측은 어렵고, 타이밍 매매 대신 적립식 투자 유지를 권장. 방향성 단정 발언은 거의 없음.
다듬은 글
Hey, welcome back to Two Stupid Guys Trade Stocks. I'm Dylan and I'm Vi, and holy crap, we're finally seeing yield curve inversion end after the longest period of interest rate yield inversion in history. We're going to talk about what it means and what it can imply for the US economy.
All right, this is a lovely chart I pulled from an article. This is actually accurate, so you're displaying it now. We're going to get to the actual chart in a minute, but basically it shows the relationship between yield inversion and recessions, the gray areas. I have a quick question: did we hit this earlier? Did we just not close it? Is that the thing?
Yeah, we were teasing it all of August, basically. You know that thing you enjoy doing, what do you call it again? Edging. Edging, edging, edging. Yeah. So we're finally closing in positive territory on the federal database. This is from the Federal Reserve of the United States, and you're seeing it now as a positive number, 0.06. This is the 10-year and 2-year Treasury spread. Those are the ones people tend to watch most. There are a couple of others, but this is the big dog, if you will.
Why does this matter? This is a general representation of the cone of uncertainty. The further out into the future you go, the less predictable things get. It has the coolest name, the cone of uncertainty. Okay, I'm interested. Let's go. It's actually a nickname for someone's rectum too, an entirely different category of jokes.
The idea is that an investor should be paid more when there's less certainty about future investment performance. So logically, longer-dated instruments like 10-year bonds should carry a higher premium than shorter-dated ones. We've been living in Lotland, where that's been inverted for about two years, effectively. But we're now snapping back out of that and going back to reality, like that song.
I pulled some snippets from a few articles. Out of the last six recessions in the US since 1980, five were preceded by a yield inversion of at least 20 days. This one is well past 20 days. There's an actual record in here: 793 days. So we slightly made that 20-day threshold, and then the sixth one, which resulted from the COVID pandemic, had an inversion but it was shorter, only six days. That recession throws off so many of these statistics because it had nothing to do with macroeconomics. The world just shut down, so it was a really weird scenario.
One of the challenges with applying this to prior recessions is that this one is very unique, following another very unique episode. And we don't have a lot of data points. You're talking about six recessions since 1980. That's the majority of an investment lifetime, about 45 years, and we're looking at just six events. It's not a very good data set.
But this time the yield curve has been inverted for 793 days, about 26 months, and there still hasn't been a recession. Typically, a recession occurs between 6 and 24 months after the 2-year and 10-year inversion. And 6 to 24 months is kind of a useless time horizon, because you could always be within 6 to 24 months of almost anything. It's like a Harvey Hairy Dent statistic. So at some point in the future we'll have a recession. Cool, cool, someday.
A chart mapping the yields of the debt has inverted, and it's tempting to say things have malfunctioned in the bond world and we should just give the US economy a clean bill of health once 10-year yields finally end a trading day above the 2-year notes. But it's too soon to stop warning. That's the main point as far as timing goes. Even if the yield curve normalizes once and for all, it doesn't mean the economy won't stumble. So we're normalizing now, but we may be looking at economic uncertainty. I've got a couple of data points on that toward the end.
History has shown that the problems begin when prolonged periods of inversion end. So the end of these time periods is when the hits the fan, so to speak. Looking up at my ceiling fan as I say that. The four most recent recessions, in 1990, 2001, 2007, and 2020, started only after the curve turned positive, which is what has happened now. In each case, a downturn started between three and six months after the curve turned positive.
This would be a good segue. We did another video when I was looking at the labor market, and we took a tally of comments. It seemed like nobody was saying the market would be negative within the next year, that there would be no recession within 6 to 12 months. So we're in the minority here, but that's okay.
It's funny, too. This chart represents exactly what Dylan's talking about, but from a corporate and government standpoint. It's a bullish rally in Treasury prices across the board, but you're seeing a more aggressive rally in the 10-year than in the 2-year. The short end has fallen faster. This often happens when investors are optimistic about future economic growth. In other words, it could signal a perfect soft landing. So that's another counterpoint: maybe they're just really happy about how good Powell has done so far. I do think he has done a good job.
This chart is the one that was in the background of the title slide. It shows the yield inversion and the recession timing period. This is the amount of time between the two, which gives you an idea of the range. Remember that three months or six months. The shortest is 84 days and the longest is 287 days, so less than a year, before you hit the recession period. In these episodes, 2021 didn't quite qualify under the traditional rule of 20 days of inversion or more. It was only six days. But if you give it credit, this is the time horizon you're looking at.
This is the S&P 500's performance during those periods. Three of them are positive, which is impressive. That one's throwing me a little. During the recession, is the S&P 500 positive from the start of the recession to the end? That's a good question. I don't know. That's really important to know, and I don't know it because I'm an idiot. It could be a 12-month window. I've shown this graph multiple times, and usually during these recessions the first three months of the 12 you lose everything. It's a huge drop. Then if you go 12 months from the start, you could actually be positive. Exactly, that was basically last week's point.
This is another one I wanted to highlight: the number of mentions of the word "recession" on earnings calls. You see where we are. Just as you were saying, not only are people in our YouTube comments saying it's not possible, but the actual CEOs on these earnings calls are also saying things like "recession, what recession?" We have no idea what you're talking about. And that's not a sarcastic thing. We don't know what we're doing.
It would seem okay, maybe not. How can you have a recession when they're revising GDP data up and you're getting 3% on an annual basis now? For the US economy, 2% is generally what we hope for. So you're getting upward revisions and big, sexy numbers like 3%, very, very solid. September 26 is going to be very important. If that one comes in low, and the one after that is lower than whatever September is, that would be the two GDP readings.
It's weird, because when you look at the definition of a recession, it's always just two negative GDP quarters. But you also have to have the labor market coincide with that. It's not as black and white as that, and there are a lot of different factors. You can't have two negative GDP quarters and record-low unemployment and everyone making more money. There's a US government department that has to officially declare the recession, and they can do it significantly after the recession. It's very common for them to declare that a recession started six months ago. We don't even know. We've been living in La La Land. It's like the Bruce Willis movie where he figures out he's actually a ghost. Spoilers, dude. Come on. Totally. It's only been out 30 years.
Oh, the other interesting data point we got this week was unemployment. I know you saw a slight tick down in the unemployment rate, down to about 4.3%.
고용 지표 헤드라인 숫자는 2%였다고 생각하는데, 신규 일자리 수는 전반적으로 여전히 하락 추세지만 예상보다는 좋았다. 그래서 그게 제가 가장 걱정하던 부분이었는데, 다음 몇 달이 아주 중요할 수 있다. 고용이 본격적으로 늘어나기 시작하면 보통 꽤 빠르게 올라가거든요. 그래서 그 부분은 다행히 괜찮게 나왔습니다.
파월 의장이 실업 데이터를 보는 방식은 이렇습니다. 구직자 한 명당 이용 가능한 일자리 수를 보는 거죠. 여기 아래를 보면 한동안 0.5 수준, 즉 시장에 있는 근로자 한 명당 일자리가 두 개씩 있는 상태였습니다. 지금은 다시 균형에 가까워져서 이 1 수준에 접근하고 있어요. 그러니까 구직자 한 명당 일자리가 대략 하나씩 있는 셈이고, 훨씬 균형 잡힌 노동시장이 된 거죠.
또 하나 그가 보는 지표는 퇴사율입니다. "이제 그만두고 더 나은 일자리를 찾겠다"는 사람들의 숫자요. 이게 상당히 내려와서 팬데믹 이전 수준 근처까지 돌아왔어요. 그러니까 노동시장은 확실히 균형을 되찾았지만, 정상적인 노동시장이나 팬데믹 이전 시장과 비교해서 큰 혼란은 보이지 않는다는 겁니다. 그래서 연준이 공격적으로 나설 필요는 없다고 보는 것 같아요. 다가오는 연준 회의에서 0.5%p 인하는 아마 없을 것 같고, 0.25%p가 될 것 같습니다.
거시 데이터와 그에 따른 여러 흐름, 걱정스러운 것과 긍정적인 것들을 이야기하는 건 저도 정말 좋아합니다. 하지만 제가 돈을 어디에 넣을지에 관해서는, 제가 직접 굴리는 돈 말고는 지금도 인덱스 펀드에 꾸준히 적립식으로 투자하고 있어요. 이 차트가 바로 그 이유를 보여주거든요. 이런 거시 경제 이벤트를 근거로 타이밍을 재려고 하면 안 됩니다. 듣기에도 재밌고 미래를 예측해 보는 것도 재밌지만, 그런 추측과 예상을 기준으로 행동을 바꾸기 시작하면 정말 스스로 발등을 찍게 될 수 있어요. 특정 기간 중 아주 좋은 날 몇 번만 놓쳐도 수익률이 꽤 극적으로 떨어집니다.
대체로 동의하지만 한 가지 짚고 싶어요. 예를 들어 저는 보유 주식을 전부 팔지는 않을 거예요. 현금에서 나오는 이자와 TLT에 일정 비율, 주식에 일정 비율을 두고 있고, 그게 괜찮다고 생각합니다. 이 차트는 "지금 전부 팔고 떨어지면 다시 사야지" 하는 사람들을 위한 것 같아요. 그건 나쁜 생각입니다. 하락이 언제 올지는 아무도 모르니까요. 앞으로 2년 동안 시장이 최고의 2년이 될 수도 있다고 생각하면 불가능해 보이겠지만, 그래도 제가 보유한 종목이 있으니 괜찮습니다.
다만 과거에 제가 해온 방식은 이겁니다. 포트폴리오의 1~2% 정도 작은 금액으로 숏 옵션 같은 걸 해보는 거예요. 틀리면 1~2%를 잃고, 시장이 올라서 주식에서 수익이 나면 여전히 플러스지만 최대치만큼은 아니죠. 맞으면 그때는 정말 크게 맞는 경우가 많아요. 일종의 보험인 셈이죠. 예를 들어 금리가 아주 낮고 TLT가 아주 높았을 때, 상식적으로 떨어질 수밖에 없다고 봐서 일정 비율로 수익을 낸 뒤 그걸 주식에 넣었어요. 월스트리트 베팅 스타일로 전 재산을 몰빵하는 건 엄청 위험합니다. 돈의 규모에 따라 다르겠지만, 그렇게 크게 걸지는 마세요. 그건 가치가 없어요. 통계를 보면 대부분의 경우 틀린다는 걸 알 수 있을 겁니다.
그래서 타이밍을 재려고 하지 마세요. 파도에 올라타서 버텨야 합니다. 직장 생활 전체를 놓고 보면 S&P 500은 인플레이션 조정 전 기준으로 평균 연 11% 안팎의 수익을 내왔어요. 그걸 믿고 끝까지 버텨야 합니다. 경제 데이터가 둔화되는 것처럼 보여도, 지금처럼 데이터가 무엇을 말하는지 아주 불투명하고 불확실한 시기에도 사이클을 견뎌내야 합니다.
또 하나, 개별 기업에 대해서는 타이밍을 재볼 수 있어요. 예를 들어 니콜라 공매도는 지난 3년 동안 언제든 돈을 벌 수 있었죠. 하지만 그건 시장 전체가 아니라 형편없는 회사 하나를 노린 거예요. 앞으로도 그런 형편없는 회사들은 점점 더 많아질 테고, 그런 기회도 계속 있을 겁니다. 그 부분이 단서 조항이에요. 니콜라를 공매도하기 좋은 때는 시장이 열려 있을 때죠. 그럼 됐습니다. 지금은 주가가 너무 낮아서 무섭기까지 하네요. 여러분, 다음 영상에서 또 만나요.
댓글 0