A mature business cycle is one where the prevailing conditions are such that any economic slack is largely used up and assets are richly priced after a period of expansion.
Arguably this is the position in which the economies of the developed countries, such as the USA, UK, EU and Japan now find themselves, where there is a stable population and slowing economic growth. In this context a growth rate of 2% is seen as acceptable.
Arguably, too, mature economies are at a pivotal moment, in that a market economy is never static and there have been signs for some time that the situation is somewhat volatile, as a selection of headlines in any period illustrates.
For example, on April 28 a new report on global trends published by KPMG Enterprise suggested that increased activity from venture capital investors had been pushing up deal prices in the North of England, and the billionaire investor Warren Buffett told the Financial Times that he is “ready to buy something in the UK tomorrow” regardless of Brexit.
A month later, a member of the Bank of England’s MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) was reported in The Times as saying that “levels of business investment in Britain could be stronger than they appear, because official measures underestimate spending on intangible assets”.
Within days of the collapse of British Steel in Scunthorpe into administration there were reportedly 80 potential buyers for the business.
All this seems positive but at the same time there are equal numbers of less positive headlines suggesting a global economic slowdown, rising prices and inflation in some countries and worries about an imminent recession being due at this point in the economic cycle.
According to a recent article in the Economist on the mature business cycle, markets are choppier, perhaps due to the latest developments in the on-going trade war between the US and China, and it would be wise, it says, for investors to watch what happens in the foreign-exchange market where, it argues, the dollar is “a thermostat for global risk appetite: it rises with a weak dollar and falls with a strong one”.
Clearly, for investors, especially those that are rent seekers or seeking quick returns on their money, the current volatile economic situation is hardly welcome. Questions arise about where it is safer to put money and it is hardly a surprise that commodities such as oil (see last month’s Key Indicator) are seeing significant price rises.