저자: BillAckman · 외국인
요약 보기
인플레이션 우려와 금리 상승 리스크를 강조한 인터뷰. 백신 접종 속도와 대규모 재정 부양책으로 미국 경기 회복이 빠르게 나타나고 있다고 평가. 백신 접종이 빨랐던 미국·영국·이스라엘은 일상이 회복되는 중이며 선진국이 선도 수혜를 받을 것으로 봄. 재정 부양책(약 2조 달러)과 인프라 투자(약 3조 달러 규모 논의), 초저금리 기조가 맞물려 GDP 폭발적 회복과 인플레이션 가능성을 예상. 단기 인플레이션 급등이 아닌 지속적 인플레이션과 더 높은 금리가 기업 할인율을 높여 주식시장에 역풍이 될 수 있다고 경고. 그래서 단기 국채와 10년물 국채 쪽에 대규모 숏(하락 베팅) 포지션을 구축했다고 밝힘. 완전고용이 연말 무렵 빠르게 달성되면 연준이 정책을 바꿀 수 있고, 그 기대 변화가 몇 달 내 주식시장 요인이 될 수 있다고 봄. 임금 인상 압력이 커지고 있으며, 이는 장기적으로 긍정적이지만 업종에 따라 기업 실적에는 부정적일 수 있음. 기업 선별 측면에서는 가격 결정력(pricing power)을 가진 사업에 투자해야 한다는 입장. 투자자들은 인플레이션과 금리 리스크를 무시하지 말고 진지하게 고려해야 한다고 강조.
다듬은 글
Hello, today I have with me Bill Ackman, one of the world's best-known investors and the man behind the hedge fund Pershing Square Holdings, now an FTSE 100 company. Hello Bill, thanks for joining me.
Sure, thanks for having me. When we last spoke before Christmas, you talked about animal spirits being unleashed as societies emerged from lockdowns. We're now seeing that in the UK too, but is the route out of the pandemic and economic progress living up to your expectations?
Yes. I think the US is in a similar place, or about to be. I'm in New York City, and it's my first day in my office in quite some time. The streets are crowded, there's traffic, people are walking around, and people are eating outside. So I think you see the animal spirits coming out of their den, so to speak.
In terms of the start of 2021, has the investment outlook for the rest of this year changed following developments in Q1, particularly Joe Biden's first hundred days?
I think the most important factor this year is the pace of vaccination. If you look at it country by country, you see India in a very disastrous, horrible place, and hopefully they can recover from that. The UK, the US, and Israel are doing well. Israeli friends sent me some photos and videos of what's going on there, and life is back to normal. I think you're going to see that on a rolling basis throughout the world. The first movers are our big beneficiaries.
What are your thoughts on the stimulus package and some of Joe Biden's other initiatives during his first hundred days? Clearly they're positives, but are they enough?
I'd say people are generally very positive on progress: outperformance on vaccinations, a very significant stimulus package passed, checks being sent out, some important steps on the environment, the US rejoining the Paris Accords, and the US starting to take part in these important discussions. From a market perspective, the biggest fear relates to tax policy. There's a proposal to nearly double, or more than double, capital gains taxes, and a very large infrastructure plan approaching $3 trillion. There's clearly a bit of fear in the bond market about inflation and the impact of all this stimulus hitting the economy. If you think about it, you have a combination of vaccinations giving people more confidence, nearly $2 trillion of stimulus, infrastructure spending, incredibly low interest rates, and what I'd call a very benign policy from the US central bank. So it's really setting up for an explosive GDP recovery and probably inflation.
Right, I was going to ask: so you do buy into the inflation argument? We saw a spike in Treasury yields a while back, so that is a real concern for you?
It is. In fact, in December and January we put on a very large notional short position in the shorter-term part of the Treasury curve, as well as the 10-year Treasury. Part of my day job is finding the greatest businesses in the world that we can ideally own forever, and then hedging the black swan type risks. One of the black swan risks for markets is a real spike in inflation, not just a three-month spike but something more sustained, and also meaningfully higher interest rates. Those will affect the discount rates people use to value companies, and those could be countervailing stock market forces.
Are we talking a 2021 problem here, or are we spilling over into 2022 and 2023?
Look, I think we're going to be back to full employment much faster than people expect. If you look at the categories of employment where people have lost jobs, education is one of the big ones, and those jobs are going to come back pretty much immediately, by September. Then hospitality, the hotel and restaurant industry, and theatre, those are also going to come back very quickly, by the later part of the year. So by the turn of the calendar year, I think we'll be at something close to full employment and near all-time low unemployment rates. Those are the triggers for the Federal Reserve changing policy. So you could see expectations change, certainly within the next few months, about how accommodative the Federal Reserve will be. That could be a stock market factor, so it's not something private investors can dismiss. They have to take this issue seriously.
Yeah, and you want to own businesses with pricing power. I think inflation is going to be real. You're going to see wage inflation. Everywhere there are help-wanted signs, and it's very hard to hire people to fill jobs, particularly with a stimulus package that includes extra unemployment benefits. So there's a lot of pressure on wages, which I think is ultimately a good thing, but depending on the nature of the business, it could have a negative impact.
Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Holdings, thanks very much for joining me today.
Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
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