Why is Inflation so Low?

The Phillips curve tradeoff of inflation vs. unemployment is a triumph of narrative over data. Here's a graph annually from 1960. If the Phillips curve had any validity, this would be an upward sloping series of dots, more or less.

Well it obviously is not. In fact there is a very low statistical significance here, certainly not enough to make policy on. For those years with less than 6% unemployment, there's no relationship at all. So why does everyone believe it?
Because the narrative is compelling. Common sense tells you that if labor is tight, workers will be able to demand higher wages. The problem with this argument is typical of economics; there are a lot of confounding variables that interact in unknown ways. They screw up the relationship.
If an economist asked a data scientist to look at the above chart, he would roll his eyes. Data people are used to looking at relationships that have actual power. Now I know that it is possible to construct models using lags and intermediate relationships that have greater explanatory power.
I call this "theory mining." The space of possible models is essentially infinite. So if you try enough things, you will come up with a theory that explains the past. The future; not so much.
My view is that demographics and social factors are all in the mix. There's not enough variation in the history to tease this out of the data, but it's my narrative. It's no coincidence that the one episode we had of actual high inflation since WWII was in the 70s, when the boomers were starting families and jobs. Now it's the opposite. We are going to have a continually aging population for several decades. Now I love old people, but they don't buy much stuff. Either they already have it, they are on fixed incomes, or they have moved on to other facets of their lives. There's a reason advertisers go after the 18 to 44 age bracket.
Of course this is not just happening in the US. The whole developed world and much of the emerging markets are in the same situation. So I expect the world central banks are going to have keep interest rates lowish for longerish.
That doesn't mean commodities prices will stay low. The world economy is still expanding, and there's not enough investment going into basic materials. One of these days that is going to matter.

Westinghouse Air Brake

I bought some Westinghouse Air Brake yesterday (WAB). It's a stock I l have been trading for awhile. Here's a link to a post I wrote on Seeking Alpha on it. LINK Note: this may have a paywall to some of you.
I like the US railroad story, particularly the two eastern RRs, CSX and NSC. The key part of the story is that many highways in this region are at full capacity. No more highways will be built. So RRs, which have extra capacity, should benefit. This is already happening as RR intermodal booms from the port of New York and on Florida east coast. This same story is true to a lesser extent on the west coast.
Wabtec recently bought GE's locomotive business. Wabtec and Caterpillar now produce a large majority of the world's diesel-electric motive power.
That market has been down for some time (why GE sold it). But I think the long run is great, not just in the US, but in EM as well. So I like Wabtec.
Risks:
- Company is now highly levered.
- New CEO is from GE. GE was a terrible company for many years.
- Precision railroading may reduce the number of locomotives needed.

For now this is a trading long. There's still enough skepticism about the situation, particularly the GE connection, to prevent a runaway market.

Tesla Bonds

It shows what people want to talk about. I write maybe 20 posts on commodities and get x page views. I write a post on Tesla and get 10x....

One reader mentioned that if I believe the situation in yesterday's post I should be buying Tesla bonds. My thesis was that Tesla has a lot of intellectual capital that is not counted on its books. So even if Tesla has to issue more equity to survive, the bonds should be money good. In fact, if Tesla was to go Chapter 11, it might be great for the bonds. You would get control of an undervalued asset. Just think of what Germany Inc. or China would be willing to pay for Tesla.

The bonds are yielding about 8.5%. Normally I only buy junk bonds when there is a scare catalyst, like a default. But I may start a position here.

Tesla

As far as I'm concerned, the big news yesterday was Tesla's announcement that they have perfected self-driving enough to introduce it at the end of this year. If true, this is a revolutionary time frame. Many other observers are looking towards five to ten years.
I'm sceptical. A UBS analyst who went for a drive in it said that it required human intervention twice, even though the course was in good weather. So I'm not holding my breath.
One very big plus about Tesla that is mostly overlooked is that they design and build their own self driving chips. This is a major advantage. Their competitors buy NVDA gpu-based chips. These are slower and inherently less efficient. It's like the difference between mining bitcoin with an off-the-shelf chip vs. a custom made ASIC. I'm not sure how Tesla is going to monetize this, but there probably is a way.
That's why TSLA is such a complicated stock. Its intellectual capital is enormous; the ASIC chip is just the tip of the iceberg. OTOH, the company has had execution problems in its manufacturing operations. Maybe they should become a supplier to the rest of the industry. If they ever get to an oversold condition, maybe around $200, I'll buy it.

Long time no post...

So here goes...
The oil long is working great. I've booked about 40% of it. It was the biggest trade I've had for awhile, so it's still pretty big.
Thinking of selling bonds. The fundamentals are there, but I prefer to enter on overbought/sold situations, and that's not there.
Also sticking with the eastern US railroads. These may be a little ahead of themselves now, but the long term is still great. I noticed that Mercedes Benz, one of the largest big rig manufacturers in the world, is giving up on truck platooning. They claim it doesn't make economic sense. This undercuts a long-term risk to railroad intermodal.