Wealth Rebounds in Q3... Is It Sustainable?

The Federal Reserve released their Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States report (yes, for a data hound such as myself, I am the kid in the candy store reading through it). Bloomberg reports on one aspect, the initial rebound from the larger wealth hole that we need to dig ourselves out of:

Household wealth in the U.S. increased by $2.67 trillion in the third quarter as stock prices and home values climbed, and revised data showed Americans have a larger hurdle to overcome.

Net worth for households and non-profit groups rose to $53.4 trillion from $50.8 trillion the prior quarter, a second consecutive gain, according to the Federal Reserve’s Flow of Funds report today in Washington. Revisions put the loss of wealth between the third quarter of 2007 and the first three months of this year at a record $17.5 trillion, compared with a previous estimate of $13 trillion.

Hey, what's $4.5 trillion amongst friends?

The chart below shows the rebound we have seen since year end 2008. Of interest (to me) is that liabilities have decreased slightly ($157 billion decline over the last 9 months), which may be the beginning signs of much needed deleveraging. More interesting (to me) is that all household assets haven't shared equally (or at all) in the rebound. The rebound has been largely concentrated in liquid financial risk assets (i.e. securities) vs. illiquid tangible risk assets (housing), which have actually continued to decline since the end of the year.



Why is this important? Because it brings up the question as to why these liquid risk assets have rebounded and whether that rebound is sustainable. I personally think it was due to a combination of fundamentals (sustainable) and technicals (questionable sustainability). Fundamentals in that risk assets dislocated in 2008 (i.e. got too cheap and had fundamental value), but a bigger share is due to the technical side of things, namely lots of buying as investors were forced (yes, forced) to take risk to earn anything besides 0%. This can be seen in the shift of personal sector assets below (from table L.10 - page 63).



Note that 2008 did not see a flood of money to savings or money markets (i.e. the flight to quality we have been told occurred), thus this decline is not a reversal of any dislocation. In addition, this ignores the hundreds of billions of dollars that has been poured by taxpayers (via the Fed and Treasury) into banks which also made its way into liquid risk assets during 2009.

In other words, what happens when the technical side of things is no longer a positive? Prices eventually revert back to their fundamental value, which I personally believe are much lower.

Source: Federal Reserve