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https://www.nationthailand.com/business/40002030

After the pandemic, a wave of spending by older consumers

The worlds emergence from the coronavirus pandemic is set to unleash a wave of spending by older consumers, with increasing opportunities for investors in aging-linked stocks.

That’s the view of money managers who see huge pent-up demand from wealthy seniors for medical services and luxury goods. They also expect that the forced adoption of the internet by older people during lockdown will open up this demographic permanently to e-commerce companies and social networks.

The number of people ages 65 and over is projected to double to more than 1.5 billion by 2050, greatly increasing their economic impact. The total spending power of the older population globally was about $8.4 trillion in 2020, according to World Data Lab. That’s expected to grow to $14 trillion over the next decade.

“The pandemic has accelerated many of the issues related to aging populations and has highlighted the urgency of resolving them,” said Christopher Rossbach, chief investment officer at J. Stern & Co. “We think they will be significant drivers for growth and investment.”

Underpinning the thesis are global fertility rates that are forecast to keep falling as life expectancy rises, even as the virus takes a staggering human toll. China’s decision last month to allow three-child families may have only limited impact on the aging trend in the most populous country.

Here are some key focuses of investors who argue that the aging theme will be even more important as economies move past the pandemic.

– Pent-Up Medical Demand

From cancer screening to hip replacements and cataract surgery, countless medical procedures have been postponed since the virus took hold. As this changes, global health-care spending is projected to bounce back in 2021, rising 5.8% to $8.8 trillion, according to IHS Markit.

Rossbach expects shares of medical device manufacturers to benefit and cited Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Medtronic Plc, Becton Dickinson & Co. and Alcon Inc.

Shares of all four companies have underperformed the global stock benchmark so far this year, with U.S.-listed Becton Dickinson down 3% versus the MSCI AC World Index’s 11% gain.

Mirabaud Asset Management Ltd. also likes Medtronic, as well as Edwards Lifesciences Corp. for exposure to the cardiovascular diseases sector, said global equities head Anu Narula.

Hearing aids are another market hurt by fewer in-person consultations, with Morgan Stanley estimating sales will normalize this year, following a 15% decline in the market in 2020. Among businesses in this field, it has an overweight recommendation on Copenhagen-listed GN Store Nord A/S and equal-weight on Demant A/S, which have both surged this year.

“The large contingent of developed countries that have universal health coverage is being joined by an increasing number of developing markets that are establishing and/or expanding universal health-care systems, especially in emerging Asian markets,” said Mirabaud’s Narula.

– Yearning for Luxury and Travel

As well as long-delayed holidays, the travel sector is poised to pick up with support from cashed-up seniors. “Older or richer people tend to want to visit relatives more,” said Sanjiv Bhatia, founder of Pembroke Emerging Markets.

Rossbach also has his eye on a rebound in luxury spending, with LVMH and liquor makers Pernod Ricard SA and Diageo Plc among his preferred reopening bets.

“A general point is that as people age their purchasing power increases and they become more concerned with quality, not quantity, of their consumption,” he said.

– Getting Online and Insured

Insurers stand to benefit too, as a surge in unplanned early retirements since the emergence of covid-19 raises awareness of unforeseen health and employment risks.

Strategists at Credit Suisse Group AG expect growth potential for insurers, particularly in markets with relatively low penetration such as China.

Juliana Hansveden, a fund manager at Nordea Asset Management, sees insurance, medical and the internet all coming together to create investment opportunities.

She is expressing confidence in the theme with a bet on loss-making Ping An Healthcare & Technology Co., which is helping patients in China avoid long waiting time at hospitals by providing online medical consultations. It is also working with parent company Ping An Insurance Group Co. to bundle its health-care offering with insurance policies, she said.

J. Stern’s Rossbach expects growth across the board for companies that can tap seniors and their newfound confidence online.

“Think of all the parents and grandparents who have used social networks or video conferencing apps for the first time to stay in touch with their loved ones, or have bought their first products through e-commerce or ordered their groceries or meals through delivery services,” he said.

Published : June 15, 2021

By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Ishika Mookerjee, Lisa Pham

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/business/40002021

Powell dashboard shows uneven recovery as Fed plots next steps

When Federal Reserve policymakers gather this week to discuss the U.S. economic recovery from the pandemic, theyll see a job market thats improving at a faster pace for some than for others.

The dashboard of indicators Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues have said they are watching to determine how far the country is from reaching their maximum employment mandate shows White and Asian Americans with college educations are faring better than everyone else.

The U.S. central bank’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee meets Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss where policy is headed next. Last year, Fed officials redefined their goal of full employment as an “inclusive and broad-based” one.

Labor Department reports for the months of April and May, published since the last FOMC meeting, have been disappointing relative to forecasters’ expectations. Fed policymakers have said the figures indicate the job market is still a long way off from the “substantial further progress” they’ve outlined as a condition to begin scaling back monetary support.

Here are some of the data that Powell has pointed to as a gauge of the economy’s strength.

– Unemployment Rates

As of May, despite some improvement across racial and ethnic groups, Black and Hispanic Americans continued to face lower employment rates than White and Asian Americans relative to pre-pandemic levels.

The employment-to-population ratio for White Americans was three percentage points below where it was in February 2020 and for Asian Americans it was down 2.8 percentage points. But for Black Americans, it was 3.9 percentage points lower and for Hispanic or Latino Americans it was 4.5 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels.

The employment disparities between racial and ethnic groups are largely concentrated among women.

– Employment-to-Population

For Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino women, employment-to-population ratios were still more than five percentage points below February 2020 levels — whereas for White American women, the ratio was down just three percentage points.

By comparison, employment-to-population ratios for White and Black American men have rebounded to a similar place — both 3.6 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels in May. The ratio for Hispanic or Latino American men was down 4.3 percentage points.

Women of color are more likely to be employed in customer-facing jobs, which have been hit hardest by the pandemic — and as a result, they’re also less likely to be able to work from home, adding to the child-care puzzle, according to Beth Ann Bovino, chief U.S. economist at S&P Global Ratings.

Employment among women should begin rebounding faster starting in September as schools reopen, Bovino said.

– Wage Growth

So far, wage growth has been holding up well relative to past downturns, especially for Americans in the bottom 25% of the earnings distribution. Wage growth for that group was 4.2% in the 12 months through May, versus 3.4% for the entire workforce, according to a measure compiled by the Atlanta Fed.

Many employers in low-paying industries have been reporting trouble finding workers as the economy reopens, which has fueled an intense political debate over the extent to which expanded unemployment insurance benefits have contributed to the shortage of labor.

But states across the country controlled by Republican governors are moving to discontinue the expanded benefits this month, while in the rest of the country, the expansion will expire in September.

– Education Gap

The recovery in labor-force participation has also been stratified by education levels, and gaps there have widened in recent months.

For those without high-school diplomas, participation in May was 4.9 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels, whereas for those with bachelor’s degrees or higher levels of college education, the participation shortfall was less than one percentage point.

“While the employment gains are solid, we have not seen the ‘string of strong jobs reports’ of more than 1 million job gains that Chair Powell was hoping for and they are not fully inclusive,” Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics, wrote Friday in a note.

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Published : June 15, 2021

By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Matthew Boesler, Olivia Rockeman

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https://www.nationthailand.com/business/40002020

Stocks stage late rally to set another record high

U.S. stocks turned higher in the last hour of trading to close at another record, while the rally in bond markets lost steam as investors prepared for a key Federal Reserve meeting later in the week. Oil touched the highest in more than two years.

The information technology and communication services sectors pushed the S&P 500 to an all-time high even as three stocks fell for every one that rose. Financials dropped as JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon suggested Wall Street’s pandemic-era trading boom could be drawing to a close. The Treasury 10-year yield rose to 1.50% after hitting three-month lows on Thursday amid the biggest weekly slide since December.

Investors are on the lookout for signals from the Fed about a timetable for scaling back emergency monetary stimulus. Expectations are that the central bank will reaffirm the pace of bond purchases this week, even if it delivers projections for interest-rate liftoff in 2023, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The decision is due Wednesday.

“We’re in a tug-of-war between the understanding that we’re having great economic growth and great earnings growth juxtaposed with the fact that we need to get our head wrapped around what inflation looks like and what it will mean both to profit margins and to the Fed,” said Art Hogan, chief strategist at National Securities.

With anxiety about an imminent taper fading, bond yields have fallen to the bottom of recent trading ranges, providing a green light for risk-on sentiment that may last until at least August, according to Mizuho International Plc strategists.

“The overarching theme should be of an environment for investors to put cash to work,” Mizuho’s head of multi-asset strategy Peter Chatwell and colleagues wrote in a note to clients. “With this backdrop most asset classes should be able to at least hold ground, if not rally. We doubt any major change in Fed rhetoric will materialize before” the Jackson Hole symposium in August.

Oil was little changed after three weekly gains on optimism that economic reopenings will boost summer demand in the U.S. and Europe. Hedge funds boosted net-bullish positions to a nearly three-year high, according to the latest Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.

French and German government bond peers also reversed course with yields turning higher. European equities closed mostly higher.

Bitcoin continued to whipsaw investors, climbing above $40,000 after Paul Tudor Jones reiterated his support, only to erase most of its gains later. It had rose over the weekend after Elon Musk said Tesla would resume transactions with the cryptocurrency when mining it is done with more clean energy. Barry Silbert said later that the majority of cryptocurrencies are overpriced. Not just the majority, but 99% of them. Silbert is the founder and chief executive officer of Digital Currency Group, the crypto powerhouse behind the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust among other things.

The dollar was steady in the wake of a Group-of-Seven leadership meeting that emphasized unity.

These are some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

– The S&P 500 rose 0.2% to a record high as of 4:03 p.m. EDT

– The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.9% to a record high

– The Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.2% to the lowest since May 26

– The MSCI World index rose 0.2% to a record high

Currencies

– The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.1% to the highest since June 3

– The euro was little changed at $1.2121

– The British pound was unchanged at $1.4107

– The Japanese yen slipped 0.4%, more than any closing loss since June 3

Bonds

– The yield on 10-year Treasurys advanced four basis points, more than any closing gain since May 12

– Germany’s 10-year yield advanced two basis points, more than any closing gain since May 27

– Britain’s 10-year yield advanced three basis points, more than any closing gain since June 3

Commodities

– West Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.2% to $71.08 a barrel

– Gold futures fell 0.6% to $1,867.60 an ounce

Published : June 15, 2021

By : Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Vildana Hajric, Claire Ballentine

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/business/40002018

Some 3,000 food businesses seek loans to tide them over

In a bid to boost the liquidity of small food businesses suffering from the Covid-19 fallout, five financial institutions are offering loans to operators that have registered with the Department of Business Development.

Atotal of 880 million baht has been allocated for loans, which agencies take no more than 14 days to approve or deny. Applications are being accepted until June 20.

Between June 7 and 13, 3,001 applicants filed for loans, with 2,520 submitted to the Government Savings Bank alone. Also, 146 restaurants have applied for loans with SME Bank, 98 with Krungthai Bank, 49 with the Bank for Agriculture and Agriculture Cooperatives and 188 with the Thai Credit Guarantee Corporation.

Published : June 15, 2021

By : The Nation

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https://www.nationthailand.com/business/40002014

SET sentiment dampened by hiccup in mass vaccination drive

The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index closed at 1,633.06 on Monday, down 3.50 points or 0.21 per cent. Transactions totalled THB85.11 billion with an index high of 1,642.80 and a low of 1,629.33.

In the morning session, Krungsri Securities had predicted that the SET Index would fluctuate between 1,630 and 1,650 amid hopes of a Thai economic recovery as a mass vaccination drive commenced nationwide.

The index also gained positive sentiment from expectations that the US Federal Reserve would maintain its interest rate and continue the quantitative easing policy.

However, news of many hospitals in Thailand postponing the vaccination drive and signs of overbought stocks could pressure the index, Krungsri Securities had said.

The 10 stocks with the highest trade value on Monday were: JAS, GUNKUL, KBANK, BANPU, AOT, RCL, OR, CPF, STA and PTTGC.

Other Asian indices were mixed:

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Japan’s Nikkei Index closed at 29,161.80, up 213.07 points or 0.74 per cent.

South Korea’s KOSPI closed at 3,252.13, up 2.81 points or 0.086 per cent.

The China, Hong Kong and Taiwan bourses were closed for the annual Dragon Boat Festival.

Published : June 14, 2021

By : The Nation

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https://www.nationthailand.com/business/40002005

Baht expected to move sideways amid pressure from dollar and foreign fund flow

The baht opened at 31.08 to the US dollar on Monday, unchanged from its closing rate on Friday. The Thai currency is likely to move between 31.05 and 31.15 during the day and between 30.90 and 31.30 this week, Krungthai Bank market strategist Poon Panichpibool said.

He predicted that the baht would tend to move sideways.

Poon said the two factors that could weaken the baht were the dollar’s direction and funds flow of foreign investors into Thailand.

The market strategist said the dollar could possibly fluctuate in keeping with the Fed’s viewpoint on quantitative easing.

In addition, he said that the dollar would be supported by the weakening of the pound due to the Covid-19 crisis in the UK.

Regarding foreign funds flow, Poon said that investment by foreign investors would depend on their confidence in Thailand, especially in the mass Covid-19 vaccination drive.

Published : June 14, 2021

By : The Nation

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https://www.nationthailand.com/business/40002004

Delays in vaccination drive due to shortages could dampen SET optimism

The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index rose by 1.22 points, or 0.07 per cent, to 1,637.78 on Monday morning. The volume of total transactions was THB16.73 billion with an index high of 1,642.80 and a low of 1,636.30.

The SET Index closed at 1,636.56 on Friday, up 11.29 points or 0.69 per cent. Transactions totalled THB106.11 billion with an index high of 1,636.92 and a low of 1,628.14.

Krungsri Securities predicted the SET Index would fluctuate between 1,630 and 1,650 amid hopes of a Thai economic recovery as a mass vaccination drive commenced nationwide.

The index also gained positive sentiment from expectations that the US Federal Reserve would maintain its interest rate and continue the quantitative easing policy.

However, news of many hospitals in Thailand postponing the vaccination drive and signs of overbought stocks could pressure the index, Krungsri Securities said.

It recommended that investors buy:

▪︎ PTT, PTTEP, PTTGC, TOP, IVL, BANPU, PSL and TTA, which benefit from a global economic recovery.

▪︎ BCH, CHG, BDMS, MINT, CENTEL, ERW, AOT, CPALL, HMPRO, CPN, CRC, AAV, AMATA and WHA, which would benefit from the country’s reopening.

▪︎ KCE, IRPC, STA and STGT, expected to be listed on the SET50 Index in mid-June.

▪︎ AAV, BLA, ICHI, PSL, PTL, SINGER, STARK, STGT and SYNEX, expected to be listed on the SET100 Index in mid-June.

Published : June 14, 2021

By : The Nation

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/business/40002000

Gold continues last weeks downward trend

The price of gold in Thailand dropped by THB100 per baht weight in morning trade on Monday due to the strengthening dollar after the US showed strong improvement in its economic data.

Also, the price was pressured by mass sell-offs of the precious metal after its price had risen sharply.

The Gold Traders Association report at 9.25am showed the buying price of a gold bar at THB27,450 per baht weight and selling price at THB27,550, while gold ornaments were priced at THB26,954.48 and THB28,050, respectively.

At close on Saturday, the buying price of a gold bar was THB27,550 per baht weight and selling price THB27,650, while gold ornaments were THB27,060.60 and THB28,150, respectively.

The price had fallen by THB200 per baht weight last week.

Spot gold price on Monday fell further to US$1,866 (THB58,011) per ounce compared to Friday when it had dropped by $18.6 to $1,879.6 per ounce, the lowest in a week.

Published : June 14, 2021

By : The Nation

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/business/40001975

Thai Credit Retail Bank educates and finances micro SMEs

Thai Credit Retail Bank is pushing its Tang To Know-how programme to equip micro small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with equal and sustainable growth opportunities.

The economic situation and the Covid-19 pandemic are widely affecting all sectors and one of them is the small entrepreneur, or micro SME. Although it is a relatively large group, the individual size of the business is small, hence it is difficult to access financial services, the bank said.

“Illegal lenders” is a solution that small entrepreneurs often choose, paying high interest rates on loans, resulting in growing debt.

Thai Credit Retail Bank educates and finances micro SMEs

“We were able to see that a large portion of Thailand’s population fell outside the coverage of banking and financial institutions who focused more on targeting less risky customers,” said Roy Agustinus Gunara, managing director of the bank. “But we felt the pain of this segment and Thai Credit focused its efforts towards serving the underserved needs of a relatively large, ignored segment of Thai consumers, in order to help them gain equal access to financial services,”

Thai Credit Retail Bank launched Tang To Know-how, a financial literacy programme for small entrepreneurs, especially merchants’ group. Participants in the Tang To Know-how programme are able to be inspired about their potential and the possibilities for their businesses and actually take the pertinent steps towards making their dreams a reality, Gunara said.

“Thai Credit is working with the University of Thai Chamber of Commerce to ensure that the curriculum is rational, logical and methodical. Our partnership with UTCC also provides participants with peace of mind that the courses they are taking part in, are validated by a respected academic institution,” Gunara said.

In 2021, the programme curriculum has been upgraded to academic standards, accredited by the Faculty of Accountancy, the University of Thai Chamber of Commerce, to solve the problems of household debt and bad debt in businesses, which affect the country’s economic growth.

The content consists of fundamental marketing and management, digital banking, creating and driving sales channels, basics of financial management and record keeping, preparation for applying for a bank loan, working capital and profit management etc.

In the past, more than 98 per cent of over 30,000 participants who joined the programme stayed financially disciplined, enabling them to manage their debt effectively and build strong business credit, Gunara said.

The programme, which is free of charge, has conducted 1,161 sessions in all regions of the country.

Thai Credit Retail Bank educates and finances micro SMEs

When asked about the next step of the Tang To Know-how programme, apart from organising training sessions every year, Gunara said: “For Thai Credit Retail Bank, it’s not about breadth, it’s about depth. We will indeed grow the Tang To Know-how programme, but more important than simply scaling and trying to spread our reach, we want to do whatever we can to ensure that customers and non-customers alike who go through the programme, ultimately becoming more empowered. Rather than being a crutch, Thai Credit Retail Bank wants to be an enabler for our customers to grow their businesses.

“In the future, we want to be the centre of education and content provider for our customers, and we want to be able to promote their business.”

Published : June 14, 2021

By : The Nation