亚洲宏观策略笔记：定量脉搏检查

Weare bringing together our three key macro-quantitative(quantamental)monitors that trackgrowth, inflation, and BoPacross various economies in Asiainto a single publication so as to provide a more holistic view for the region. These Growth divergence. Three trends are apparent in the data. (1) Growth isproving resilient in Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan – helped by the nInflation's uneven return. Price pressures are returning, but not uniformly.(1) The most important theme for 2026 could well be China's "anti-involution" drive pushing both CPI and PPI significantly higher, a criticalshift for global fixed income. (2) Meanwhile, core pressures from paststronger wage growth should show up in Malaysia & Taiwan in the comingmonths; Singapore is already exhibiting this. (3) In contrast, base-effect nBoP & currency tug-of-war. Again, an interesting contrast in the regionalFX landscape in terms of capital flows and sentiment. (1) Foreign andresident outflows have continued to put pressure on INR and KRW, meetingstrong defense from the respective central banks. Sentiment is arguablymore key a factor weighing on the rupiah and peso. (2) RMB stands out incontrastfor it's policy-induced/accepted appreciation,with rising Methodology Growth nConcurrent growth trackingusing monthly real economy indicators (e.g.,retail/car sales, IP, export volumes). We have selected our indicators notonly for their goodness of fit, but also for timely availability.nFor China, India and Korea we also have daily trackers. Forward-looking monetary indicatorsthat estimate the money available nto sustain growth across; (1) consumer demand (wages, loans, wealth,transfers); (2) public spending (government cash disbursement); and (3)private investments (corporate loans & FDI). Having said that, availability ofmonetary fuel is only a necessary condition and not a sufficient one. If Inflation Short-term diffusion-based modelutilizing the insight that once priceincreases (or decreases) start to spread out across multiple products/services, this process embeds itself – or, in other words, auto-correlates.We use diffusion of sequential changes (mom sa) to get a more immediate nMedium-term model using wages & commodity pricesbased on Balassa-Samuelson principles, where stronger tradables sector performance feedsthrough to non-tradables inflation via the wages channel. Scenario analysisby forecasting month-over-month seasonally adjustedreadings for CPI components at the historical 25th, 50th, and 75thpercentiles ahead (equivalent to a fan chart). BoP & Flows nMinimum customs trade balance needed for Basic BoP to be POSITIVE.We estimate this breakeven value to allow us to quickly assess the impactof a customs trade balance figure as it gets released. nNet BoP inflows that impact FX. We compute "observable/measured" BoPnet inflows that we know directly impact FX (= basic BoP + portfolio flows+ reserve asset changes). This figure is also useful in estimating the beta ofinflows for each currency over time. The insight we use is that positioningis mean-reverting but BoP flows can and usually do have sustained nFX flows other than those in BoP. We estimate the flows that do not showup in the BoP, which we consider to be a quasi positioning proxy. Uponcomparing this estimate against ourDB EPIC+estimates – which uses flowdata from actual trades executed/captured on several key platforms – wefind the two match well. Again, this exercise is meant to augment, and notreplace, our official positioning exercise. The benefit of this effort is that it nShareof BoP flows intermediated by the public sector.Who isintermediating the BoP flows – central bank or the banking sector – is animportant question. (1) A more interventionist central bank is likely to resultin a "gappy" currency. (2) In contrast, if banks are more active in facilitatingflows the currency is likely to have a higher beta. This estimate pullstogether all the BoP components where the government or the central bank China nGrowth. Chinese economy slowed sharply into the year-end. However, ourhigh-frequency indicator suggests, a recovery has already set in, helped bywealth effects and as the tailwinds from government spending become nInflation. With China’s anti-involution drive set to continue, prices shouldcontinue to respond upwards. (1) CPI looks set to rise well past 1% in thecoming couple of months; with (2) PPI indicating a similar move above -1%and back to inflation. This shift, as it evolves, would be a critical change for nBoP & Flows. That China has been posting a large basic BoP is not reallynews – instead, what is interesting is that USDs are again being convertedto RMB. Indeed, the 3M avg of the onshore bank clients' sell-USD ratio isback to its pre-Covid levels. Meanwhile, our quantitative tracking of China'sgrowth as priced by China-exposed assets is suggesting; (1) additional DXY (charts below) India nGrowth. The Indian economy is showing some strengthening followi