저자: 미상 · 외국인
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제이미 다이먼의 주주서한 기반으로 세 가지 위험 요인(이란 전쟁발 유가·스태그플레이션 위험, 미국 재정적자와 국채 금리 상승 위험, 고평가된 자산가격)이 동시에 수렴하는 상황을 설명. 쉴러 P/E 약 40(닷컴버블 다음 2위), 버핏지수 200% 이상으로 고평가 지적. 당장 폭락을 예측하지는 않으나 좋은 결과의 확률이 낮아진다고 강조. 투자자는 거시 예측보다 개별 기업의 본질 분석(보텀업)에 집중할 것을 권고.
다듬은 글
It's just we haven't had the will yet to actually deal with it. And it's unfortunate because you can end up with a real problem, worse than it would otherwise have been. According to Jamie Dimon's annual letter to shareholders, he sees three major risks to the US market that are all converging at once.
And what I took away from what the world's top banker has to say is he's not fear-mongering, he's not saying any of these problems are going to crash the market next week, but he is concerned that these three issues colliding at once will drastically pull down the probability of good market outcomes in the not-too-distant future.
So, in this video, let's talk through each of these warning signs, what Jamie has been saying recently, and how you as a long-term investor should be handling it all. And let's start with the issue that has been absolutely dominating all the headlines right now, and that is the situation in Iran. They have ballistic missiles that can go 3,000 mi, and they're clearly trying to develop nuclear capability.
You got to look at that risk as being an enormous risk for mankind. Let's be real. The war in Iran has certainly dragged out. The politics of it is insane. The oil price is sky-high, and people are suffering. And what's interesting about Jamie's take is he's not really talking about the politics of it.
He's just talking about the risk. And right off the bat, he's framing this as a really significant event for the global economy. As we've seen, it is really not just something localized in one region. The ripple effects have been felt all around the world and pretty instantly. Gas prices is the most obvious, but that has a flow-on effect in the transport, travel, agriculture, literally everything.
Products get more expensive, manufacturing, food gets more expensive, an oil spike causes everything to get more expensive. And when Jamie is asked about these economic consequences, this is where his words get a little bit more concerning. What are the economic risks, which is your area of expertise, of the potential destruction of this war?
Again, I'm separating morality from you separating economics. I think the morality may be more important, but economically, usually ends up in some form of recession. You know, recession is unemployment. It could be stagflation recession, which is the worst it could be. I think the best way to look at it so far is that, you know, people here are paying more for gas and might end up paying more for food.
But, I just think it increases the odds of bad economic outcomes. Now, there's a couple of keywords in that. Yes, recession, but particularly Jamie hints at stagflation. And Jamie is right. This would be the worst possible result for the US economy. Stagflation is a rare economic situation where you have an economy that is slowing, but inflation is still rising.
Now, normally it's the opposite, right? Growth stalls in the economy and inflation drops, or growth accelerates and inflation kicks up. But, stagflation is the worst of both worlds. Slowing growth, high inflation. So, how does it work? Well, as I was just saying, it comes down to how important a commodity oil is.
When oil spikes, this has a flow-on effect into everything. Transport costs rise, fertilizer costs rise, manufacturing costs rise, plastics rise. It affects every industry. But, as costs inflate, it takes more money out of people's pockets. So, they don't have as much to just leisurely spend. They're stuck paying more for gas, paying more for food.
They tighten the belt because of it, and this happening en masse causes the economy to slow down with inflation still running. But, that's a tricky situation for central banks. Normally, when the economy slows, they lower rates to stimulate it. But, lowering interest rates is inflationary. So, if inflation is still running hot on everyday essentials like groceries or gas, central banks can't really justify lowering interest rates, as doing so would only add to the inflationary pressure.
So, long story short, you get kind of stuck. And this is why so many people are against the war in Iran. It's not helping the average American's wallet, right? So, connecting the dots, the war in the Middle East pushes up oil prices, high oil prices flow through to fuel, transport, manufacturing, agriculture, and food, and that leads to higher inflation.
An economy that weakens while inflation rises, stagflation at its worst. But, it might not necessarily end this way. Interestingly, Jamie Dimon actually took the time to lay out both the best and worst-case scenarios that he with this conflict. I think the worst case is that somehow we don't get control of the Straits of Hormuz, that that we have to back out there oil and gas, that Iran doesn't give up and oil and gas price go even higher today.
That's probably the worst case scenario. And the best case is that they negotiate something where they don't build nuclear weapons, the Straits of Hormuz is opened up, and we go back to a more peaceful world. The trillion-dollar question though, which one are we going to get? Because I think if you asked most people, they'd probably tell you that we're certainly not getting the best-case scenario.
So, long story short, this is Jamie's first big market risk, which yes, we are facing now, but we will keep facing over the next few years. That's the thing with these oil shocks, they don't just resolve themselves overnight. A lot of the time they have ongoing consequences, and that's what Jamie warns of in his letter saying we additionally face the potential for significant ongoing oil and commodity price shocks along with the reshaping of global supply chains, which may lead to stickier inflation and ultimately higher interest rates than markets currently expect.
But, here's where this whole setup gets really interesting, because if inflation stays higher for longer, that means interest rates stay higher for longer as well, and that leads directly into the second risk he's been talking about, the US debt situation. Now, sure, on the surface, this doesn't feel as urgent as a war, it's a slower-building problem, it's harder to understand, and because of that most people just kind of ignore it, but Dimon's view is that long-term, this is probably the most dangerous risk and it will need to be addressed.
And then also deficit financing. You know, we have a lot of deficit financing and I think the world looks at that and you know, questions it. You know, our deficit actually happens to be the I think the largest in the world, like 6% of GDP and we're going to eventually have to deal with that. So, what does that actually mean?
Quite simply, the US government is spending more than it earns and it's doing that every single year and to cover that gap, it has to borrow money. And the more it borrows, the more bonds it has to issue and the more bonds it issues, the more supply there is in the market and if supply starts outweighing the demand of something, usually you have to offer a better price to attract buyers.
Now, in this case, that better price is a higher interest rate, a better yield for investors. That's not great for America, who has to pay out more in interest. And this is why Jamie says, I do know it will become a problem. And that's the thing. This is already a problem. It will be one of the biggest economic problems of the next decade, maybe even our lifetime.
The question is, can we save it or will there be a reckoning? And this is a particularly hot topic of debate leapfrogging off of what we're just talking about with the Iran war and this is why. As we discussed, this war is only adding inflationary forces, right? But if that keeps investors demanding higher rates on US Treasuries for longer, it means more and more of the $39 trillion debt pile gets refinanced at more punishing interest rates.
It means that new debt is financed at more punishing interest rates and ultimately, it means more of America's money, money that they don't have, goes towards paying interest, leaving even less for all the other more important and quite frankly necessary stuff. We have 60% of our our spending, I think our spending is like 6 trillion, it's almost almost $4 trillion is set in stone.
You know, it's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. And because that spending has to continue, it gets people worried that to finance additional interest payments, America might simply have to take on even more debt. Yes, take on debt to pay for interest. Increase the size of the pile, which makes the interest expense rise even more, which creates what is called a debt spiral.
And that is the worst-case scenario of how it blows up. And Jamie's point is that if nothing is done about it, that's the direction we're drifting, and there doesn't seem to be much urgency in Washington to do anything about it. It seems to me as a layman that people, when they're out of power, are concerned about deficits, and when they're in power, they cease to be concerned about deficits.
I think there's truth to that. I mean, this hasn't Neither Democrats or Republicans have really focused on this for a while. It comes up all the time when you talk when you walk the halls of Congress. I mean, almost everyone knows. It's just we haven't had the will yet to actually deal with it. And it's unfortunate because you can end up with a real problem, worse than it would otherwise have been.
So yes, Jamie thinks it's a real problem, and yes, it's true, we will have to do something about it at some point. It's just sad that the political will isn't quite there to take action before this thing blows up into something truly catastrophic. I think we should work on it, but I don't know, and again, I don't think anyone can predict, does it become a real problem in 6 months or 6 years?
And the way it would exhibit itself is volatile markets, rates going up, you know, the kind of the bond vigilantes, the people not wanting to buy United States Treasuries. It'll still be still be the best economy, but they'll be not wanting to own US Treasuries, so we should deal with it sooner than sooner than later.
And what Jamie is referring to there with bond vigilantes, these are investors who basically say, "We don't like how much you're borrowing, so we're going to demand higher interest rates to buy US Treasuries." Or in some cases, they just stop buying altogether. And if that happens, interest rates don't just drift higher, they can spike, markets get very volatile, and things can adjust very, very quickly.
And that brings us to the third piece in Jamie's puzzle, because what's been so interesting about the markets in the last few years is that while we've got really big macro issues kind of looming overhead, we haven't seen weakness in the stock market. Stocks have been racing to new all-time highs. In fact, most asset prices are sitting up near historic highs.
And this is where Jamie Dimon's tone changes a little bit, because he's not calling but he's very clearly pointing out that valuations are elevated. There is a line in your letter that I want to try to decipher for someone like me. I think you're telling me that asset prices, things like stocks and real estate and so forth, are grossly overpriced.
The actual language is that they're more valuable relative to the economy than they were before the 2008 financial crisis. So, are what's happening? Yeah, there are a lot of ways to measure asset prices. So, you know, one is P/E ratio, price-earnings ratio. One is the total Warren Buffett's favorite one is the total value of stocks to the GDP.
I put something like that in my letter. What I said is they're at the They're They're not as high as they've ever been, but they're in that upper 15% or something like that. Here, Jamie talks through two core market valuation metrics, a market-wide P/E ratio and the Buffett indicator. Now, the P/E ratio I like to look at for the market is called the Shiller P/E, and what it does is it takes the cyclically adjusted average annual earnings for the S&P 500 for the last 10 years, and then it compares it to the S&P 500's price.
So, because it's got that set up, it's a very hard one to fake. Now, historically, investors are willing to pay around 18 to 20 times earnings to own the S&P 500, right? A P/E of 18 to 20. Well, today, the Shiller P/E sits at 40. That is the second highest point in history, behind the dot-com crash.
So, this metric is screaming at us that the market is priced for the best of times and only the best of times. But, what about the Buffett indicator? This is a different metric. It's a comparison of the US total market capitalization versus the GDP of the country. Now, normally anything over 120% is pretty hot, but today we are well over 200%.
AKA, the market cap of the US is more than double the GDP of the country. As you can see, it is the highest it's ever been, further indicating that stocks are really, really expensive. But, how does that fit into Jamie's three risk approach? Well, if you have stocks priced for absolute perfection, the market needs to deliver absolute perfection to keep them there.
Anything less than that is a disappointment, right? And share prices fall. So, what Jamie is saying is that with share prices bid up to the moon, if the Iran war continues, and if inflation spikes, and interest rates are higher for longer, we're going to see much tougher market conditions generally, in which case you would expect share prices to get re-rated pretty harshly.
Remember, interest rates are just like gravity on the stock market. The higher the interest rates, the harder it is for stocks to rise, and the easier it is for them to fall. So, Jamie is in a roundabout way saying, "Watch out if the economic landscape isn't rosy." And yeah, it's not really. So, with that said, what do we do about this as investors?
Well, this is where the Warren Buffett approach really comes in. The main thing to do at times like these is to make sure that whatever you buy, whatever you're looking at, just make sure you're looking at it based on a bottom-up analysis, not a top-down analysis. This means you judge every company on its merits, as opposed to making investments based on what you think might happen in the macro.
No doubt, that's a very tough gig at the moment, and it's why Berkshire Hathaway is sitting on an absolute mountain of cash, but it's important not to get super sucked into predicting the macro. Instead, Buffett always stays patient for those rare opportunities where you get a sector or an industry in your circle of competence and it comes under pressure.
And if he finds something that he can understand with a rock-solid moat, world-class management, and a nice margin of safety, then he jumps in. He doesn't wait and try and time the market. And with that said, also, if that is something you would like to learn about, the full four-pillared Warren Buffett approach, that is exactly what the New Money strategy is all about.
So you can pre-order this book now. It comes out on the 12th of May and once again, thank you so much to everybody who has supported the book so far. I really do appreciate it. So genuinely, thank you very, very much for pre-ordering. But with that said, I hope you enjoyed this video. Leave a thumbs up on it if you did.
If you're coming to Omaha for the Berkshire meeting this year, I will see you at 3:30 p.m. Friday, the 1st of May at the Diamond Room, Omaha. I would love to see you there. Come and catch up. But apart from that, that's all for this one. Thanks for watching, guys, and I'll see you all in the next video.
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