The Narrative Giveth and The Narrative Taketh Away
April 10, 2018·0 comments
Markets have spent a decade running on narrative rather than reality. The inflation narrative is now shifting from dormant to dominant, and the data everyone trusts to prove inflation is contained contains a critical flaw. A statistical accident waiting to happen will expose what markets have been ignoring about wage growth.
- The inflation story changed without the underlying facts changing. Six months ago, inflation barely registered in market conversation. Now it's the gravitational center of what traders are watching. Bloomberg articles mentioning inflation jumped 75% year-over-year, and they're no longer tangential to other stories. Inflation is becoming what everyone believes everyone else believes is happening.
- The wage inflation numbers that calmed markets are mathematically wrong. Work-week hour estimations introduce random noise into average hourly earnings reports. The reported 2.7% wage inflation in March was likely north of 3.0% when you strip out the statistical quirk that made hours look shorter than they actually were. This isn't opinion. This is how the data is constructed.
- The randomness in the data guarantees a shocking number is coming. These work-week hour differences are completely arbitrary year-over-year. If the pattern had reversed just slightly in March, reported wage inflation would have clocked in at 3.3%. With five months of data still ahead before comparable numbers stabilize, one of those months will almost certainly show "hot" wage inflation that catches the market off guard.
- When that number hits, the collective behavior of markets will shift instantly. Right now most investors assume inflation is under control because that's the common knowledge. But private awareness and public belief are different things. The moment wage inflation prints significantly higher, everyone will know that everyone knows inflation never actually slowed. That's when trading shifts from hoping for containment to pricing in something much darker.
- Stagflation becomes possible if growth disappoints at the same time. Throw a trade war into an environment where inflation is finally being acknowledged, and you move from a manageable problem to the market equivalent of catastrophe. That's not the most likely scenario. But it's a scenario close enough to happen that investors should be taking it seriously right now.
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