Weakness in investment activity is likely to extend into the rest of the year. Even if a Brexit deal is secured, we think that higher interest rates and stretched valuations, along with bleak rental value prospects in the retail sector, will put a …
6th August 2019
While Japan’s government will almost certainly refrain from direct intervention on the foreign exchange markets to stem the recent appreciation of the yen, we can’t rule out that the government’s pension fund will buy more foreign assets. The key point …
The RBA adopted an easing bias when it left interest rates unchanged today. With the labour market set to loosen further, we expect the Bank to slash rates to 0.5% by early-2020. The RBA’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged at 1.0% was correctly …
The US decision to label China a currency manipulator is on shaky economic grounds since, if anything, the renminbi would be even weaker than it is now without policy support. But the move is another escalation in a deteriorating bilateral relationship …
The Fed’s Senior Loan Officer Survey suggests that the sharp fall in market interest rates over the past year is feeding through to a turnaround in loan demand. With global growth still slowing and trade tensions escalating, that won’t be enough to …
5th August 2019
The falls in EM currencies in this latest leg of the trade war have been large compared with previous episodes. If this turbulence continues, a few EM central banks (e.g. in Indonesia and Mexico) would probably postpone interest rate cuts and one or two …
Currencies from the rest of Asia have fallen back sharply following today’s drop in the renminbi to below 7.0 against the US dollar, and are likely to weaken further over the coming months. While weaker currencies are unlikely to stop central banks from …
The profits of Corporate America have shrunk during the past four years according to revised estimates recently published by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). By contrast, S&P 500 operating earnings per share (EPS) have grown by nearly 50%. …
The latest data for German offices suggest a better-than-expected start to 2019, as a result of solid employment growth and tightening supply. This has led us to revisit our office forecasts for the top cities, though we still expect a slowdown of …
Investment growth collapsed to a near four-year low in Q1. While a spectacular rebound will remain elusive, investment should recover gradually over the coming quarters as election-related uncertainty clears and funding costs drop following the RBI’s cuts …
The PBOC has allowed the renminbi to fall to its weakest level in a decade in response to trade tensions. It appears to have decided that, given the increasingly dim prospects of a trade deal with the US, the boost to China’s export sector from currency …
The number of mortgage applications for home purchase jumped earlier this year, but those buyers came up against the tightest market conditions for 40-years. Increased competition for homes crowded out cash buyers, which helps to explain the growing gap …
2nd August 2019
The trade war between the US and China has made barely any difference to the scale of their bilateral trade imbalance, which was President Trump’s original concern. But China is reaching the limits of its ability and willingness to restrict imports from …
Commodity prices plummeted yesterday in a knee-jerk reaction to the news of more US tariffs on Chinese goods. We have argued for some time that the US-China trade war was likely to escalate, and it has been a reason why we have been particularly bearish …
Japan’s decision to remove Korea from its list of trusted trading partners looks set to cause significant short-term disruption to Korea’s economy, and is likely to prompt the Bank of Korea (BoK) to cut interest rates sooner than we had previously …
The announcement by President Donald Trump of further tariffs on Chinese imports has rattled the markets, but we have long suspected that it was only a matter of time before the trade dispute escalated further. With those tariffs likely to have a more …
The further fall in Markit’s global manufacturing PMI in July adds to the evidence that industry remained in the doldrums at the start of the third quarter, with forward-looking components suggesting that a recovery is unlikely anytime soon . The global …
1st August 2019
Gold demand to plateau over the rest of 2019 Central bank buying and ETF inflows underpinned robust demand for gold in the first half of 2019. While we think that strong official sector buying will continue, ETFs may start to see outflows as investors …
The manufacturing sector drove half of May’s rise in GDP, but the latest business surveys suggest that this strength will not be sustained. May’s 1.2% m/m rise in manufacturing GDP explained half of the 0.2% rise in overall GDP. A bit more than half of …
The manufacturing PMIs for July suggests that growth in EM industry remained soft at the start of Q3, with activity in Emerging Europe weakening sharply. The surveys also provide further evidence that price pressures are easing, supporting our view that …
Commercial property investment activity looks likely to drop back slightly from the highs seen last year. But, rather than pointing to a downturn in pricing, we believe that this reflects investors re-evaluating the implications of the softer …
The communications following today’s meeting suggest that Czech policymakers are trying to temper the market’s view that interest rates will be cut in the coming months. Nonetheless, the Bank’s projections have moved closer to our view that rate cuts will …
Much like the Fed, the Monetary Policy Committee today blamed a lot of its more downbeat assessment of the outlook on the global economy. But unlike the Fed, the MPC still thinks it will probably need to raise interest rates (if there’s a Brexit deal). …
In this Update we are launching our coverage of the European TTF natural gas price. In short, we think that surging global supply of liquefied natural gas will keep EU markets amply supplied over the next few years. As such, we expect only a modest rise …
Data from the English Housing Survey suggest that rising tenant demand has come from newly formed households. That could reflect more young adults moving out of their parents’ homes, and supports our view that rental growth will rise to 3.5% y/y by 2021. …
China’s official and unofficial PMIs both rose in July, but they remain consistent with a renewed slowdown in economic activity, which will be a key factor weighing on commodity prices later this year . The official manufacturing PMI ticked up to 49.7 …
The Brazilian central bank’s larger-than-expected 50bp reduction in the Selic rate last night to 6.00%, and hints of more stimulus, have prompted us to pencil in an additional two 25bp rate cuts this year. We now expect the Selic rate to end this year and …
The Fed reduced the fed funds rate by 25bp — to between 2.00% and 2.25% — at today’s FOMC meeting, but it was arguably a “hawkish” rather than “dovish” cut, which supports our view that the next reduction won’t arrive until much later this year. According …
31st July 2019
Government debt-to-GDP ratios across the Gulf have risen significantly over the past five years but only in Bahrain and Oman do we hold serious concerns over the health of the public finances. Financial support from their neighbours should prevent …
There has been mounting speculation that the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will join the global loosening cycle by cutting interest rates. We think it will if there is a no deal Brexit. But if there’s a Brexit deal or many more delays, the UK could buck …
The rebound in the three-month annualised rate of core PCE inflation to a seven-year high of 2.5% in June, together with evidence that unit labour costs have been rising more rapidly than thought, suggests that core inflation could surprise on the upside …
30th July 2019
Our estimates suggest that if a no deal Brexit was fully priced into the market the pound would fall from $1.22 (€1.09) now to about $1.15 (€1.05) or a little lower. Over the past few days the pound has weakened to two-year lows of $1.22 and €1.09 in …
Our GDP Tracker suggests that the slowdown in Saudi Arabia’s economy at the start of this year extended into Q2 and it looks set to intensify over the rest of 2019. Our forecast for GDP growth of just 0.3% over this year as a whole lies well below …
Gold prices have hit a record high in rupee terms in recent weeks, surpassing the previous peak in 2012 when India was on the brink of a balance of payments crisis. But a drop in underlying demand for gold, and lower prices for other major imports, …
The Bank of Japan projected a dovish tone today, promising further easing if needed. But unlike other major central banks the BoJ still seems a long way from following that up with action. We think it will refrain from lowering interest rates for the …
The decline in Swedish GDP in Q2 will make it harder for the Riksbank to sit on the fence. With the economy unlikely to find much support in H2, the rising prospect of a recession lends further support to our forecast that the krona will fall sharply by …
The ending of the Central Bank Gold Agreement signals that worries about central bank gold sales are firmly behind us. In fact, central bank buying is now a significant prop rather than a headwind to the gold market. Indeed, with significant European …
With valuations looking stretched and the rental value outlook weak, regardless of how the pound moves in response to Brexit, we do not expect a rebound in overseas demand for property. Our three Brexit scenarios, as outlined in the latest UK Economics …
The grounding of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft delivered a hit to business equipment investment and net exports in the second quarter, reducing annualised GDP growth by 0.25% points. A similar hit to third quarter GDP is likely if production is cut further …
29th July 2019
The Bank of Canada’s forecasts for residential investment do not seem to account for the shift away from single-family to multi-family construction. That shift means it will take longer for construction to respond to the Bank’s previous interest rate …
Spending on cars has fallen sharply since the EU referendum, and unless a Brexit deal is agreed we suspect that it will remain a drag on consumer spending growth for a few years yet. Since the EU referendum in June 2016, real spending on cars has declined …
We have upgraded our forecasts for Portugal’s economy and now expect growth to be above trend in 2019 and 2020. Along with a halving in the size of the Lisbon office development pipeline in the next few years, this has led us to upgrade our rental growth …
A steady decline in home sales last year pushed the homeownership rate to a 1½-year low in the second quarter, and we doubt it will recover over the next couple of years. A slowing economy will prevent the recent drop in mortgage rates from boosting …
26th July 2019
The relatively dovish statement accompanying the Russian central bank’s decision to cut the policy rate today supports our view that the easing cycle has a lot further to go. We expect an additional 75bp of cuts over the next 9-12 months, whereas the …
The Swiss franc has been the best performing G10 currency over the past three months, despite falling back a bit after the ECB meeting on Thursday. We think that monetary policy as well as safe-haven flows will continue to support it against the euro …
A raft of survey data suggests that last month’s fall in Hungarian core inflation is unlikely to mark the start of a downward trend – as the central bank anticipates. We expect that underlying price pressures will build over the coming quarters, prompting …
A number of major central banks in Latin America are on the cusp of joining the global easing cycle but, in contrast to the prevailing view, we don’t think that Colombia will be one of them. We expect a weaker Colombian peso to push inflation up in the …
25th July 2019
Growth in China is slowing, but fears of a big drag on Africa are overdone. While the Asian giant’s demand for some commodities will soften, it will remain a key trade and investment partner. Indeed, in a slower-growing but more consumer-focused China may …
The apparent confirmation this afternoon that the ECB is inching towards loosening policy lends further support to our view that more rate cuts are on the cards in Denmark and Switzerland too. As we had expected, the ECB left its policy settings unchanged …
