China: Otimismo continua.

A segunda-feira está sendo de feriado em grande parte dos principais centros financeiros mundiais. Na China, contudo, continuamos a observar uma melhora de humor em relação às perspectivas de crescimento do país, baseadas na premissa de que novas medidas de suporte ao crescimento serão colocadas em prática para evitar um “pouso forçado” do país. As bolsas do país subiram mais de 3% esta madrugada, o que deu suporte adicional ao mercado de commodities. O PBoC anunciou a expansão de um de seus programas de “relending” o que está sendo visto por muitos como uma espécie de “QE/LTRO chinês” (detalhes abaixo).

Ao que tudo indica, os ativos de risco ainda estão no meio de um período cíclico de recuperação, ajudados por um claro ajuste de posições e preços. Para que este cenário de perpetue, será necessário que os dados de crescimento, em especial na China, corroborem as expectativas de estabilização do crescimento da região. Caso isso aconteça, podemos inferir que os atuais movimentos podem continuar por mais tempo. Caso contrário, poderá ficar a impressão que o cenário econômico global não se alterou significativamente, o que pode trazer as tendências que prevaleceram no começo de ano de volta a tona.

Em relação a China, segundo a Goldman Sachs:

PBOC announced on 10th October that it would expand the pilot program on credit-asset pledged relending (relending refers to the central bank’s lending to financial institutions) to nine more provinces/cities (previously the pilot program was only implemented in Shandong and Guangdong). According to the press release, PBOC branches in these nine provinces and cities will assign internal credit ratings to corporates borrowing from local financial institutions, and credit assets that fulfil certain rating requirements will qualify as re-lending collateral. According to the PBOC, this can help channel more funding towards the agricultural sector and small to micro-sized enterprises and support the real economy by lowering financial costs. Some news reports are treating this as a RRR cut or LTRO/QE equivalent. However, allowing more assets to be used by certain financial institutions to borrow from the PBOC does not necessarily mean the central bank will provide meaningfully more overall relending to financial institutions. Public information on the impacts of the pilot programs in Shandong and Guangdong are limited but in 2014 the amount of such relending was only several billion RMB. While expanding these operations will likely lead to more such relending by local PBOC branches, the overall amount will be tightly regulated by the PBOC headquarters. The impacts of this move might be more similar to the targeted RRR cuts for small company lending and the agricultural sector that we have seen since 2014, which are small loosening measures aimed more at improving the structure of lending than meaningfully increasing the overall amount. Amid economic weakness, the move clearly reveals the loosening bias of monetary policy, but a relatively mild one. We continue to expect the PBOC to cut the RRR and benchmark rate further before the end of the year, and other loosening measures are likely to be rolled out as well to enable the economy to hit the growth target of “around” 7%.

A Merril Lynch resumiu bem a conclusão das reuniões do FMI em Lima que ocorreram no final de semana:

We held our Great Debates Conference in Lima, Peru over the weekend. Concerns on China prevailed although the mood was somewhat constructive with a perception that the probability of a severe crisis is very low. Russia is in a better situation than a few months ago after deleveraging. The mood on Brazil was grimmer as the fiscal adjustment has significant hurdles ahead. There was consensus that for the rest of EM to resume growth, structural reforms that increase total factor productivity are needed, particularly for commodity exporters which are exposed to China. On the monetary side, panelists expect dovish policies. There was consensus that FX has to be the main adjustment mechanism to lower terms of trade and tighter global liquidity, and that the vulnerability to FX weakness was low.