Filtered by Subscriptions: Asset Allocation Use setting Asset Allocation
We don’t think that the recent strong gains in Japan’s equity market mark the start of a significant reversal of its decades-long underperformance; we expect it to lag other markets over the rest of this year in local-currency terms and to perform broadly …
1st June 2023
Aside from the US stock market – which is being propped up by a handful of big name stocks and a serious dose of AI fever – most risky assets have struggled over the past month or so . (See Chart 1.) We don’t think that owes much to the back-and-forth …
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this year’s rally in US equities is just how narrow it has been. We think history suggests that this bodes poorly for the S&P 500’s prospects over the rest of this year. While the S&P 500 has returned ~9% in the year …
24th May 2023
Emerging market equities have typically outperformed their developed market counterparts after US recessions. While we don’t foresee them replicating the sort of outperformance seen after the early-1990s or early-2000s recessions, we do think the MSCI …
19th May 2023
While banking sector strains have become less acute over recent weeks, core money markets remain tense as uncertainty grows around the potential fallout from even a temporary default on US Treasuries. Despite the recent failure of First Republic and …
18th May 2023
We think that investors are underestimating the scale of interest rate cuts in the UK next year. If we’re correct, that could propel Gilts to the top of the class for local-currency returns over the rest of 2023. Local-currency returns from ICE BofA’s …
12th May 2023
We don’t think long-dated Treasuries are bound to fare worse than the S&P 500 in the coming weeks, even as the risk of US sovereign default looms larger. Our US Economics Service is the place to look for detail on the evolving debt ceiling spat, which …
11th May 2023
With China’s economic rebound losing momentum and investors’ attention shifting back to concerns about the country’s political and economic model we think the near-term prospects for Chinese equities have become less bright. We now envisage the MSCI …
10th May 2023
The underperformance of the US stock market seen last year has generally paused so far in 2023, as returns have been propped up by mega-cap “growth” stocks. That may continue over the rest of the year, especially if advanced economies enter recessions. …
4th May 2023
The MSCI USA Index has not made much further headway on net in April so far. But it has at least held on to its strong gains from earlier in 2023, returning about 8% YTD. Part of that strength presumably reflects the global economy proving more …
28th April 2023
In our view, the role of UK pension funds in deterring firms from listing on the London Stock Exchange has been overstated of late. To the extent that higher valuations are the reason firms find a US listing more attractive, we think there is good reason …
Resilience in much of the global economic data of late has raised questions over whether the recessions we expect in most developed markets (DMs) will materialise later than we had initially thought. As such, we now forecast most “risky” assets will reach …
27th April 2023
We would not be surprised if US “growth” stocks outperformed their “value” peers by a bit more in the near term. But we still suspect that growth will underperform value substantially over the longer term. That is informed by our view that the valuation …
21st April 2023
While US equity REITs are a long way from discounting the “best of times” for US commercial real estate (CRE) over the coming quarters, listed real estate stocks in Europe appear braced for something not far off the “worst of times”. That is a difference …
17th April 2023
Financial market strains have eased over recent weeks, though some pockets of uncertainty remain and our sense is that the risk of further problems emerging in the coming months remains high. Since the forced takeover of Credit Suisse by rival UBS three …
14th April 2023
The UK stock market has been caught in the crossfire of recent sectoral trends in global equities, leading to a period of underperformance over the past month. Despite tentative signs of that going into reverse, we doubt that the MSCI UK Index will …
6th April 2023
We anticipate that the S&P 500 will fall back later in 2023, largely because analysts are far from pricing in a recession in the US that we think is even more likely after the recent banking turmoil. Our forecast is that the index will reach a trough of …
Despite only being three months old, 2023 has already seen several macro narratives play out in markets. “Soft landing” optimism in January was followed by a “no landing” narrative in February which has given way to concerns about a banking crisis in …
31st March 2023
With the dust settling on the recent turmoil in US and European banks, economists from across our financial markets coverage assessed the damage to the outlook for bonds, equities and FX. Chief Markets Economist John Higgins and the team held an online …
30th March 2023
Needless to say, economic downturns are usually bad news for US banks’ share prices. But banks haven’t always underperformed the overall stock market in a recession – even when there has been a banking crisis! That could conceivably be the case again this …
24th March 2023
Although recent strains in the banking sector mean that the economic outlook is especially uncertain, in our view equities are unlikely to perform particularly well, regardless of how things play out. It goes without saying that, over the past year or so, …
22nd March 2023
While the Credit Suisse rescue might draw a line under that particular institution’s problems, it is clear that confidence in the financial sector overall is still extremely fragile. So regardless of whether more financial institutions run into trouble, …
20th March 2023
While the backdrop has shifted dramatically, we still think there’s a strong case for our existing forecasts of a further rally in long-dated bonds by the end of the year, and some near-term strength in the US dollar and weakness in equities. The Swiss …
17th March 2023
The ghosts of 2008 have made a sudden reappearance. Many metrics of core market functioning have worsened worryingly fast, but the overall situation is still long way short of the type of strains seen during the worst parts of the Global Financial …
16th March 2023
The US may not have a monarchy, but cash has arguably become its proverbial king of investments. If history is a guide, it is a reign that is likely to feature equities underperforming bonds amid a recession. Last November, the yield of a 3-month Treasury …
9th March 2023
Fed Chair Powell’s testimony to Congress has prompted a material revision to our forecast for the path of the fed funds rate and suggests the near-term risks to that forecast are skewed to the upside. This Update sets out some of the likely implications …
8th March 2023
Although recent economic data have surprised to the upside, we still think that economic growth in the US will falter later this year. In our view, indicators of the equity risk premium in the US point to some complacency regarding the economic outlook, …
3rd March 2023
With much of the global economy holding up surprisingly well and inflation not coming down as quickly as expected, investors are weighing up the risk that policy rates remain elevated for much longer than previously thought. This Update discusses what …
While the ~0.3% return from US dollar cash between 31 st January and 24 th February was hardly impressive, cash nonetheless outperformed all of the other eighteen headline indices that we track. As data pointing to a still-hot US economy and stubborn …
28th February 2023
We think the recent outperformance of the US “big-tech” “super-sector” could continue, but not because of the “bargain hunting” that we think has caused it to occur despite higher real Treasury yields . The rise of more than 30bp in the 10-year TIPS yield …
23rd February 2023
The war in Ukraine. Ageing populations. Rising temperatures. Investors are having to grapple with a formidable range of uncertainties around the long-term outlook for the global economy and markets. Their challenge is compounded by the fracturing of the …
22nd February 2023
The big sell-off in both equities and bonds that was a feature of 2022 has arguably created scope for them to fare a bit better in the coming years by reducing their valuations. Nonetheless, we don’t think they will provide spectacular returns over the …
21st February 2023
While more disinflation may yet benefit the US stock market by, for example, facilitating a renewed decline in TIPS yields and boosting profits from the rest of the world if accompanied by a weaker dollar, we don’t think it will prevent equities from …
17th February 2023
A plunge in credit spreads in recent months suggests to us that there is now limited scope for corporate bonds to outperform government bonds over the next couple of years, even if the global economy holds up relatively well. And if we are right about …
10th February 2023
We doubt the recent renewed outperformance of the “big-tech” sectors of the US stock market will continue in the coming months given the prospect of a mild recession, even if TIPS yields fall again. Despite some disappointing news on the earnings front, …
9th February 2023
The Adani saga hasn’t done much to reduce the comparatively stretched valuation of India’s stock market. In our view, that means there is still scope for it to underperform over the long run. India’s stock market generally avoided the sell-offs seen in …
Despite some better news recently, we still think that advanced economies face a tough couple of quarters, an outturn which does not seem to be fully discounted in financial markets. With this in mind, our view remains that risky assets in general will …
3rd February 2023
Our view that the stock market in China will continue to recover in the coming months even as its counterpart in the US falters ahead of a mild recession there raises the question of how equities elsewhere would fare. This Update attempts to shed some …
2nd February 2023
The broad-based rally in “risky” assets that got underway in Q4 of last year has continued in 2023 so far, with global equities, developed market (DM) REITs, corporate bonds and industrial metals all off to a strong start to the year. Those gains have …
31st January 2023
While a “risk-off” period in markets may prompt it to pause in the near term, we expect the recent pattern of the US dollar retreating as non-US equities outperform to set the tone for the next couple of years. One major recent theme in global markets has …
27th January 2023
Although we think there is still a decent case for UK equities to continue outperforming those in the US over the next few years, we don’t expect the UK’s stock market to perform significantly better than stock markets in the euro-zone over that period, …
26th January 2023
The powerful re-opening rally in China’s stock market has eroded a large part of the valuation gap that led us to judge that equities there were relatively appealing a couple of months ago. That said, we think there’s still some scope for it to continue …
18th January 2023
We think that the prevailing yields of high-grade 10-year government bonds in other major developed markets (DMs) support the idea that the 10-year Japanese government bond (JGB) yield would rise a bit further, were the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to end its …
17th January 2023
This Update makes four key points about corporate earnings in the US as the Q4 results season gets into swing. They all feed into our view that the S&P 500 will remain under pressure until the spring and underperform Treasuries as a recession there begins …
13th January 2023
While euro-zone equities face some meaningful short-term headwinds which threaten their recent run of outperformance, we still expect them to fare better than US equities over the next couple of years. Euro-zone equities broke a long run of …
Although valuation premia in certain parts of the US stock market shrank significantly last year, we think there is still some room for this to continue in the coming decade and weigh on their relative performance. To re-cap, there was a marked reversal …
6th January 2023
A renewed pullback in global equity markets and rise in bond yields in December is set to cap off a historically poor year for returns from both “risky” and “safe” asset classes. In fact, once the surge in inflation in 2022 is accounted for, returns …
22nd December 2022
The surge in government bond yields around the world in response to today’s decision by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to tweak its policy of Yield Curve Control (YCC) highlights the risks to international markets posed by the country’s huge investment overseas. …
20th December 2022
This is part of a series of reports outlining our key macro and market calls for 2023. Click here to view the full series. Our latest Asset Allocation Outlook can be found here . Two of the three topics we expect to dominate the global macroeconomic …
15th December 2022
The real returns from both US equities and 10-year Treasuries have often been quite good in the couple of years after past peaks in core inflation in the US, but the period following peak inflation in the early 1980s was an exception. We think that this …
12th December 2022
