Filtered by Subscriptions: Asset Allocation Use setting Asset Allocation
We anticipate that US equities will outperform long-dated Treasuries over the next ten years, even though the valuation of the stock market is even higher now than it was at the beginning of the 1930s and approaching its level at the outset of the 2000s – …
16th February 2021
While we still expect US Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) overall to fare reasonably well over the next couple of years, we no longer anticipate that they will outperform the US stock market. US REITs have underperformed US equities as an asset class …
5th February 2021
Extreme speculative movements in the prices of a handful of stocks and of silver have generated a lot of headlines over the past month. But those surges have not been reflected in the performance of risky assets more generally, many of which have taken a …
2nd February 2021
The relative valuation of the US stock and corporate bond markets is another piece of evidence against the idea that equities in general are currently in a bubble. Their relative valuation today contrasts with the situation before collapses in the stock …
22nd January 2021
While we doubt that the US stock market’s current valuation will prevent it from making further gains, the fact that valuations are much lower in other parts of the world suggests to us that equities there could outperform over the coming years. Much …
15th January 2021
We don’t think that there is a bubble in the US stock market. Yet even if we are wrong, it may inflate further before bursting given the outlook for the economy and monetary policy. To re-cap, one widely watched gauge of the US stock market’s valuation is …
14th January 2021
Although the incoming economic data are likely to remain poor until around mid-2021, we forecast that “risky” assets will continue to outperform “safe” ones comfortably over the next couple of years as a whole. We also anticipate that this will be …
7th January 2021
We anticipate that UK mid- and large-cap equities will fare much better in 2021 than they have in 2020, provided vaccines prove effective in winning the battle against COVID-19. The MSCI World Index includes mid- and large-cap equities in 23 developed …
23rd December 2020
We disagree with the idea that the valuations of most “risky” assets have risen to unsustainably high levels. In fact, we think that the valuation of the US stock market could have scope to rise a little higher, and the spreads of US corporate bonds fall …
17th December 2020
Although the level of “Equity Q” for the US non-financial corporate sector has risen to a record high, we are wary of concluding that the stock market is in an unprecedented bubble that is bound to burst. To re-cap, Equity Q – which was popularised by the …
11th December 2020
Good news about progress on coronavirus vaccines in the past month has started, or fuelled, a number of trends which we broadly expect to last through 2021, as those vaccines help the global economy reopen and policy mostly remains supportive. The trends …
2nd December 2020
We think that the outperformance of equities in EM EMEA and Latin America relative to those in EM Asia in November is a sign of things to come, as the world recovers from COVID-19. The outperformance of the MSCI EM EMEA and Latin America indices relative …
30th November 2020
We anticipate that MSCI’s benchmark index of mid- and large-cap equities in the US will underperform its index of those in other developed markets, as investors continue to focus more on the roll-out of effective COVID-19 vaccines than on the current …
25th November 2020
US equity real estate investment trusts ( REITs) have underperformed ordinary US equities considerably in 2020 despite a plunge in US Treasury yields, which usually provides more of a boost to the former than the latter. However, we expect US REITs to …
20th November 2020
As investors have digested the prospect of an effective vaccine against COVID-19, many of the patterns in financial markets which have been a feature during the pandemic have started to unwind. One example is this year’s stark underperformance of MSCI’s …
16th November 2020
The relatively low valuations of US equity REITs influence our view that they will outperform ordinary US equities over the next two years or so, provided that COVID-19 is contained. While a few sectors of the commercial property market, such as …
11th November 2020
While there could still be more twists and turns to come after this week’s elections in the US, in general we expect equities there to outperform Treasuries between voting day and the end of 2022. The S&P 500 has risen significantly since voting day, even …
6th November 2020
While the final results are yet to be determined, whoever wins the US presidency probably faces continued gridlock in Congress. That may explain why the moves in markets overall so far have been limited. Admittedly, Treasury yields have fallen as the …
4th November 2020
We think that energy commodities will claw back a bit of the ground that they have lost relative to industrial metals over the next two years or so, as some cyclical factors linked to COVID-19 which have weighed more heavily on the former unwind. However, …
3rd November 2020
We expect TIPS to continue to perform quite well, and better than conventional Treasuries, in the next few years. But we see a risk of higher inflation thereafter. That would, however, probably only cause TIPS to perform poorly, even if not as badly as …
28th October 2020
We think that MSCI’s indices of emerging market (EM) equities in Latin America and EMEA will reverse some of their recent underperformance relative to the MSCI EM Asia index over the next few years, just as they did following their sharp falls during the …
26th October 2020
We forecast that the returns from equities will beat those from government bonds in the world after COVID-19. However, we expect the outperformance of large-cap equities in the US to end. We have written extensively on our macroeconomic services about the …
20th October 2020
A renewed rise in longer-dated Treasury yields in response to growing expectations of a large US post-election fiscal stimulus would test the Fed’s resolve to keep monetary conditions extremely loose. We suspect that it would want to keep those yields …
15th October 2020
Our current views of many assets and the US dollar are influenced by our forecast that the yields of conventional Treasuries will remain firmly anchored, even as expected inflation increases. We are sticking to that forecast for now, despite this week’s …
7th October 2020
The market movements of recent weeks are a timely reminder of the importance of the main near-term risks – coronavirus cases rising in major economies as winter approaches, and uncertainty about the forthcoming US election. Both could continue to weigh on …
2nd October 2020
The fallout from COVID-19 will probably keep inflation subdued in the near term . But there is a risk of significantly higher inflation further ahead if earlier policy stimulus starts to push prices up sharply and central banks either fail to nip it in …
28th September 2020
We are not convinced the Fed is sowing the seeds of the next crisis by pursuing very easy monetary policy, even if this contributes to higher asset prices. Instead, history suggests the main factors inflating bubbles that pose serious risks to the economy …
24th September 2020
The two asset classes that we track which have seen by far the most action since the last edition of the Asset Allocation Chart Book on 5 th August are US equities and energy commodities. Not only have they been the best and worst performers respectively …
10th September 2020
Although we think a further shift in real yields in the US vis-à-vis other major economies will keep the dollar under pressure, we expect the overall move to be far smaller than those of the 1980s which were accompanied by big swings in the greenback. So, …
4th September 2020
We suspect that some of the recent underperformance of energy stocks will unwind over the next few years if, as we forecast, the prices of energy commodities grind higher. Nevertheless, we think that the longer-term outlook for the sector is far from …
1st September 2020
We expect some sectors of the stock market that have underperformed in coronavirus to make up ground on those that have outperformed, assuming the virus is brought under control. A notable exception, however, is financials, which we expect to lag given …
26th August 2020
Political uncertainty often seems to have weighed on the performance of US equities, both in absolute terms and relative to Treasuries, before a presidential election. But another lesson from history is that the macroeconomic backdrop frequently had the …
20th August 2020
While Joe Biden has said that he would clamp down on the US companies, particularly in the technology, pharmaceutical and biotech industries, who book much of their earnings in tax havens, we think that there is a good chance his proposed tax reforms …
12th August 2020
The broad-based recovery in “risky” assets that got underway on 23 rd March has run out of steam since 8 th June. That is not because policy support has been dialled back. Instead, it appears to reflect renewed concerns about the spread of the coronavirus …
5th August 2020
It may seem surprising that the MSCI USA Index has broadly kept up with the MSCI Europe Index in common-currency terms since 8 th June, given the simultaneous surge in cases of COVID-19 in the US while the virus has remained under much greater control on …
20th July 2020
The recent underperformance of US equity REITs compared with ordinary US equities seems to reflect concerns that the coronavirus could change behaviour in a way that hits the demand for many types of commercial property hard. We think that most of this …
16th July 2020
We continue to expect the 10-year conventional Treasury yield to remain firmly anchored, even as the S&P 500 rises further. This would be a marked contrast to the increase in the yield towards the end of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), which gathered …
9th July 2020
So long as the revival in the global economy continues, even if only gradually, we forecast that “risky” assets will resume their comfortable outperformance of “safe” ones. We do not buy the argument that a retail-driven bubble has formed in equity …
2nd July 2020
It is by no means inevitable that the coronavirus crisis puts a big permanent hole in the supply capacity of economies (i.e. their ability to produce goods and services). With the right government policies, many economies should be able more or less to …
29th June 2020
We suspect that the real yields of US Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) will fall a bit further, fuelling renewed gains in risky assets and underpinning gold despite a reduction in safe-haven demand. To re-cap, the real yields of TIPS have …
24th June 2020
The sizes and sources of second waves of COVID-19 are likely to be key factors in determining how much ground, if any, equities cede to government bonds in coming months. While our forecasts allow for new small, localised outbreaks in advanced economies, …
17th June 2020
If we are right that the world faces a period of low inflation over the next few years investors are unlikely to begin anticipating tighter monetary policy and so undermine the returns from government bonds. We think it is much more likely that returns …
5th June 2020
“Risky” assets have comfortably outperformed “safe” ones over the past month, even as evidence of the scale of the economic damage caused by the coronavirus outbreak has continued to mount. We suspect that this will continue for a while yet . We argued …
4th June 2020
We anticipate that financial repression will bear down on the renewed low level of volatility of Treasuries, while facilitating a further decline in the level of volatility of US equities . Against this backdrop, we project that the returns from the …
29th May 2020
Although US equities still have a lot of lost ground to make up on long-dated Treasuries since the outbreak of coronavirus, we think that they will do so over time as the Fed engages in renewed financial repression. The underperformance of US equities …
22nd May 2020
The recent performance of different “factors” in the US stock market may seem surprising during the outbreak of coronavirus, given the adverse implications for the economy of the measures taken to control its spread. Like several other ongoing …
12th May 2020
We expect the returns from EM sovereign dollar bonds to be quite strong over the next few years, as the global economy gradually recovers. With some notable exceptions, we think that the dollar bonds of those countries and EM regions which have suffered …
5th May 2020
While the recent outperformance of “risky” assets has faltered in the past few days, we are sceptical of the idea that it has all been built on an overly-optimistic view of the economic outlook, for two reasons . First, there have been huge disparities in …
We suspect that the recent underperformance of MSCI’s UK Index relative to its USA Index will peter out when the world starts to get back to normal after coronavirus. The MSCI World Index includes mid- and large-cap equities in 23 developed countries, …
27th April 2020
While gold has rallied over the past month, we don’t think that it will continue to outperform most other asset classes in the way that it did in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). On the contrary, we think that the GSCI Precious Metals, …
22nd April 2020