저자: BillAckman · 외국인
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인플레이션이 수주 내에도 높게 지속될 수 있으며, 구조적 인플레이션이 3% 이상일 것으로 봄. 미국 재정적자·국채 대량 발행으로 장기금리(30년물)가 5%를 넘어 더 오를 수 있다고 주장. 대신 가격결정력과 자산경량 구조를 가진 로열티형 기업(알파벳, 치폴레, 힐튼, 캐나디안퍼시픽 등)을 보유해 인플레이션 방어 가능하다는 입장.
다듬은 글
again, my view, or what you could call the house view, is that inflation is going to stay persistently higher. That can happen in the very short term, literally within weeks, and I think the structural forces have changed.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman just issued a warning about the future of inflation, but don't worry, it's not all bad news, and you'll see why in this video. For background, Ackman recently gave a rare, full-length sit-down interview. While it touched on a wide range of topics, it was Ackman's comments on inflation that really caught my attention, and you're going to want to hear what he had to say. In this video we'll explore Ackman's take on the economy, his reasons for believing inflation won't be going away anytime soon, and most importantly, how you can protect your money from the devastating impacts of high inflation. By the end, I'll also cover his practical strategy for making huge profits out of this situation. Let's dive in.
Are you still expecting rates at the long end, the 30-year for example, to go higher?
Yes. Even in the relatively short term there are a number of reasons rates can move a lot. We have a government shutdown, and we're going into what looks like a highly probable one. We're going to have a data shutdown too: all the little government agencies that publish the data the Federal Reserve relies on to decide whether to adjust interest rates are going to lose access to that data, so it's a kind of dark period. On top of that, we probably have the worst technical environment in our lifetimes for the supply of bonds versus buyers. China is selling, Russia is selling to the extent they still hold US securities, and Saudi Arabia is selling. And we have an economy that is still strong, with inflation persistently around three and a half to four percent.
My view is basically that you're not being paid enough to enter a 30-year contract with the US government at a fixed price, 4.7 percent or wherever it is now, in a world where we think structural inflation is north of 3 percent over the very long term. That doesn't make sense.
We went through a very unusual period of extremely low interest rates, where everything got cheaper. Since the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve's effort was to make sure we didn't have deflation, with the aspirational goal of 2 percent inflation. Then came the pandemic, trillions in fiscal stimulus, and the psychological boost of being free to go out again after being locked up. All of these factors hit at once and lit the fire of inflation. We still have massive deficit spending and infrastructure spending, and the government is selling literally hundreds of billions of dollars of securities. At some point they're going to have to sell more and more of the longer-term instruments.
If you look at the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, it's an imprudent one. If you think about the United States as if it were a business, you wouldn't have a third or more of your debt repricing within the next year. It hasn't been managed well. I think Steven Mnuchin actually did a good job as Treasury Secretary, but the one thing he missed is that he should have issued a lot of 30-year, 50-year, and 100-year paper at crazy low interest rates. That's going to be a burden.
I've been hearing a lot of this from investors lately. Ken Griffin was on our network within the last week or so, and I just had a conversation with Rick Rieder of BlackRock. People are talking about the possibility of much higher real rates for much longer than people think, for the very reasons you're describing: the issuance is so massive, and where are the buyers going to come from? The result is going to be higher rates.
Yes, real yields. I don't know about much higher real rates, but my view, or the house view, is that inflation is going to be persistently higher. Well, you are the house. I guess I control the door on the way in and out. But our view is that we're in a different world, and the world changes gradually. A generation of people is used to rates like four percent sounding like a high interest rate, when on a historical basis it's an extremely low rate. So I wouldn't be shocked to see 30-year rates well into the five percent range, and you could see the 10-year approach five and a half percent. That can happen in the very short term, literally within weeks. There was a huge move in the last few weeks, and a lot of that is investors rethinking things.
What's interesting about the 30-year Treasury is that people reflexively buy it because they've made money doing so ahead of a recession. But it's really not an instrument you should use to speculate on the short-term economy. It's a fixed-price contract with the US government for 30 years, and it reflects really structural forces. I think those structural forces have changed in the past few years. The rate at which prices have been climbing has hit a level we haven't seen in ages. To find a similar period, you'd have to look back to the early 1980s.
For a long time, the big worry was that inflation was too low, with some even fearing deflation, when prices fall instead of rise. That might sound good at first, but it's actually not so great for the economy.
Back in 2012, the Federal Reserve, the nation's money managers, set a goal of keeping inflation at a steady 2 percent per year. Hitting that target proved harder than expected, and it led some people to believe rising prices wouldn't be a big deal in the future.
Inflation is really about how much stuff is available versus how many people want it. If a lot of people want something that isn't available in large quantities, prices go up. For example, during 2020 and 2021 the government made it easier for people to have money through direct payments and low borrowing costs. More people had the means to buy things like used cars. At the same time, car manufacturers were struggling to get the parts they needed, so fewer new cars were being made. With fewer new cars, people kept their older ones longer, and the number of used cars for sale went down. That mismatch drove up used car prices.
Ackman, who has made billions, has a hunch that the price increases all around us aren't just temporary. He's looking at the big picture and seeing a bunch of changes that point to this. For one, the whole world is in a bit of a shuffle, politically and economically, and things are moving in ways we haven't seen before. It's also getting pricier to make stuff overseas, which used to be a bargain. At the same time, people who work for a living are pushing for bigger paychecks, and that's changing the game too. Then there's the big shift toward green energy, which isn't coming cheap. And have you seen gas prices lately? They're so high that everyone is starting to think that digging deeper into our wallets might just be the way things will be from now on.
The Federal Reserve, the folks trying to keep our money worth something, might keep pushing up the cost of borrowing. They hope this will cool prices down. They've managed to get a grip on inflation for now, pulling it down from sky-high levels. But if Ackman is right and prices stay stubbornly high, we might see interest rates climb even higher. That usually makes investors nervous and can send the stock market on a roller coaster ride.
Ackman doesn't seem to be sweating it. He seems to think that, like everything else, we'll adapt to this new money landscape. Take a listen:
"You must be negative on the equity market. How could you have a positive view of stocks if you think that's the outcome for bond yields?"
Because if you own high-quality businesses, the key is owning businesses that have pricing power, businesses that can do well in a world of, and by the way, many businesses can do well in a world of 3 percent inflation. The key is that it's hard to manage a business when inflation is volatile, or when it's 8 percent, or some other crazy number. But many, many businesses can do very well with 3 percent inflation. The kinds of companies we own are very much like royalties. We own Universal Music, which is a royalty on listening to music: if there's music playing out there, Universal gets a fraction of a penny for every song streamed. Google is a royalty, if you will, on people advertising on the web or on YouTube. Restaurant Brands is a royalty on people eating at Burger King or any of their other concepts. Hilton is a royalty on people staying in hotels, eating, drinking, and going to events. The beauty of these businesses is that inflation is ultimately their friend, as long as their costs don't inflate as quickly as their revenues. So I feel comfortable owning those kinds of businesses even if inflation remains high.
Also, if you think about what a business is worth, it's the present value of the cash you can take out of it over its life, discounted back at an appropriate interest rate. We were not discounting businesses at 2 percent, which was an appropriate rate in the old world. Historically, our discount rate has been more like 9 to 10 percent, which accounts for the uncertainty inherent in investing in equities.
Let's look at the stocks Ackman holds to understand, practically, what his strategy for making big profits from this situation looks like. Surprisingly, his roughly $1 billion fund is spread across only seven companies. It appears as eight stocks because he holds two share classes of Alphabet. His picks include a mix of eateries such as Chipotle and Restaurant Brands International, the parent of Burger King, Tim Hortons, Popeyes, and Firehouse Subs. He's also invested in the hospitality giant Hilton, the home improvement retailer Lowe's, the real estate firm Howard Hughes, the railway operator Canadian Pacific Kansas City, and Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube.
After analyzing his portfolio, two key characteristics stand out that let these companies not just withstand inflation but potentially benefit from it. In fact, some of Ackman's picks might even perform better if inflation rises.
The first is pricing power: the ability of a business to raise prices without losing customers. Take Canadian Pacific Kansas City, a railway company Ackman has invested in. Given its essential service of transporting goods over long distances, it's often the go-to option over costlier truck deliveries, which gives it leverage to charge more if necessary. Chipotle is another of Ackman's picks that has shown strong pricing power. The chain has built a dedicated customer base that didn't flinch even when menu prices went up during peak inflation. Warren Buffett famously said that if you can raise prices without losing customers, you're on to a winner, but if you agonize over even the smallest price increase, that's a business with problems.
The second feature to look for is what's known as an asset-light approach: companies that don't need a lot of expensive physical assets to function. To put it in perspective, consider the airline industry, which is at the opposite end of the spectrum. It's very asset-heavy. American Airlines, for instance, had around $40 billion in aircraft, a value that dwarfed the company's total market value at the time. Now look at Restaurant Brands International, another of Ackman's picks. RBI runs a franchise model, so it doesn't have to own the physical restaurants; local franchisees do. RBI simply collects a fee, often a portion of sales, without the heavy costs of property and equipment. That setup makes RBI largely resistant to inflation. As prices and sales rise, RBI's franchise fee income can grow without additional costs.
Ackman's strategy is to focus on businesses that act as royalties in their industries, benefiting as the industry grows and navigating inflation efficiently. Whether his insights on inflation and interest rates will hold true is yet to be seen. But with billions in investment success behind him, Ackman's moves are worth watching for any investor looking to sharpen their strategy.
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