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We expect “safe” assets to continue to rally over the next couple of years, largely informed by our belief that investors are still underestimating how quickly and/or how far many central banks will cut interest rates over the next couple of years. And …
30th November 2023
In this Global Economics Update , we describe eight of the biggest risks to our economic forecasts for 2024. The unusual nature of this cycle and uncertainties surrounding the transmission of monetary policy mean that the biggest risks relate to central …
While we think both yields will fall next year, we expect a smaller drop in the yield of 10-year Bunds than in that of 10-year Treasuries. The 10-year Bund yield fell ~7bp so far today, after inflation data from Germany and Spain released today suggested …
29th November 2023
Given how far below “fair value” the Swedish krona appears to us, we suspect that its decade-long fall may be coming to an end. The Swedish krona has been the best performing G10 currency so far this month, having risen by nearly 6% against the US dollar. …
28th November 2023
We expect 10-year Treasuries to outperform 2-year Treasuries between now and the end of 2024, even though we forecast the 2-year Treasury yield to fall by more than the 10-year Treasury yield in that period. The Treasury yield curve went through a period …
Although pull-backs in credit spreads and in the yields of Treasuries have contributed to a strong performance from US corporate bonds in November, they have underperformed US equities regardless so far this month. We suspect that will generally stay the …
27th November 2023
We think that yield curves across Europe and the US will “disinvert” next year, as central banks shift towards easing monetary policy. Although Gilt yields have risen across the curve since the UK budget announcement , the shape of the sovereign bond …
24th November 2023
We think the yields of long-dated local-currency government bonds in Asia will generally fall further by the end of next year, and that most regional currencies will continue to make ground against the US dollar. But we suspect some of the intra-regional …
23rd November 2023
While the Freedom Party’s victory in the Dutch parliamentary election was a big surprise, there is in our view only a very small probability that it will have a substantial impact on financial markets. Instead, we suspect that the economic outlook will …
We think investor enthusiasm about AI could yet boost equity prices further. Boardroom drama at OpenAI – one of the most well-known AI research companies – has been in the news this week, after the CEO was unexpectedly removed from his role, only to …
22nd November 2023
US equities’ outperformance this year is due almost entirely to the few industries that include “Big Tech” firms, as the rest of the US stock market fared similarly to equities in the rest of the world. While we expect a broader stock market rally next …
The fall in US Treasury yields has driven rebounds in the yen and renminbi against the US dollar, and we expect this trend to continue through at least the next year or so. Amid the rally in “risky” assets over the past week, gains in FX markets against …
21st November 2023
Victory for maverick Javier Milei in Argentina’s presidential election means the country is about to embark on yet another economic experiment. While it is hard to say what that will bring for its financial markets, the promise of shock therapy has …
20th November 2023
‘Growth’ stocks have held up well vis-à-vis ‘value’ stocks this year despite the surge in real yields. But relatively optimistic earnings expectations for growth stocks may prevent them from steaming ahead even if, as we expect, real yields fall further. …
17th November 2023
With a lot of pessimism seemingly already priced in to China’s “risky” assets, we suspect a thawing in US/China relations could give them a boost. But we think their longer-term outlook is less rosy. Meanwhile, we don’t think US/China tensions will have …
A thawing in China/US tensions could, in our view, help “risky” assets in China for a while by reducing the “China risk premium” that seems to have emerged. But we doubt it would fully reverse the recent underperformance of China’s equity markets relative …
16th November 2023
During the past decade, the global economy has transitioned out of an era in which globalisation was the key driver of economic and financial relationships into one shaped by geopolitics. Previously, most governments had believed that closer economic …
Growing external and domestic headwinds suggest to us that Brazilian financial markets will come under pressure over the short term and are unlikely to resume their outperformance beyond that. Brazilian assets have fared relatively well amid the ongoing …
15th November 2023
Investors seem to be banking on a “Goldilocks” US economic environment which, if sustained, might lead to bull markets for most bonds, equities, and currencies. But we think this is a bit optimistic. Financial markets are having a great time since the …
Measures of cross-asset volatility and risk premia suggest that investors are increasingly discounting a fairly rosy market environment over the coming months. This leaves them at risk of disappointment if, as remains our central forecast, the US economy …
While past dips in the 10-year Treasury yield since inflation peaked proved to be short lived, we think that yield will continue to fall from here. Investors have taken the softer-than-expected US CPI data for October, published today, as confirmation …
14th November 2023
Moody’s decision to revise down its outlook for the US sovereign credit rating may add to the growing sense that market participants are becoming more worried about the fiscal outlook in the US. So, it is worth assessing to what extent such concerns are …
13th November 2023
Although yesterday’s poorly digested auction of 30Y Treasuries served as a reminder that the outlook for fiscal policy has the potential to undermine US long-dated government bonds, we still think their yields will end 2024 lower than they are now given …
10th November 2023
While the US dollar has bounced back a bit this week, its struggles over the past month or so are in some ways similar to the lead up to its sharp fall in Q4 of last year . But we think a comparable slide over the coming months looks unlikely . After …
9th November 2023
Following the release of our new analysis on real equilibrium interest rates (R*) last month, we held an online Drop-In last week and in-person Roundtable events with clients yesterday to discuss our findings. This Update answers several of the questions …
Given our pessimistic view of the economy in the US, we think that equities there will fare quite poorly in the near term. But the biggest components of the S&P 500 might hold up better. Equities have bounced back sharply over the past ten days, with the …
8th November 2023
One factor that may have contributed to higher Treasury term premia, as posited recently by the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee in connection with the Quarterly Refunding, is a shift in the correlation between US government bonds and equities. We …
7th November 2023
Despite some differences in the monetary policy outlooks for Australia and the US, we doubt 10-year yields in the two economies will diverge much. Earlier today the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) made what looks likely to be one of the last moves in the …
We think the risks to the “goldilocks” view being discounted in markets are skewed towards a bigger slowdown in the US than is currently discounted, driving credit spreads up over the coming months. The market reaction to data in the US last week, rounded …
6th November 2023
We think today’s big moves in markets in the wake of October’s US Employment Report are a sign of things to come over the next twelve months or so. More evidence that the labour market in the US is cooling and that wage growth there is moderating (see …
3rd November 2023
We expect Japan’s stock market to underperform that of the US in both local- and common-currency terms over the next couple of years. The effective abandonment of Yield Curve Control by the Bank of Japan has helped yields there continue to climb over this …
Our Long Run Returns Monitor provides our updated long-term projected returns for major asset classes. All projections in this publication are as of 1st November 2023. Our latest projections have been influenced by the recent body of work that we’ve done …
2nd November 2023
The yields of UK government bonds (Gilts) have dropped back in recent days, and we think that they will fall further over the next year or so, even if they settle far above their post-pandemic lows. UK government bond yields have fallen a bit further …
The Treasury’s Quarterly Refunding announcement (QRA) today may have eased some upward pressure on Treasury term premia, but we think these premia are unlikely to fall further over the coming years. Although the Treasury today increased the auction size …
1st November 2023
As is often the case, it is hard to know just what to make of the Bank of Japan’s latest policy announcement. Our sense is that the resulting rise in Japanese government bond yields is more likely to endure than the sharp fall in the yen. To recap, the …
31st October 2023
We expect the fortunes of safe assets to improve over the rest of this year, largely informed by our belief that investors are underestimating how quickly and/or how far central banks will cut interest rates over the next couple of years. And while we …
30th October 2023
A renewed surge in the spreads of private-label commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), at a time when the spreads of high-yield (HY) corporate bonds have remained fairly subdued (see Chart 1), has attracted little attention in US bond markets amid …
Today’s rebound in Amazon’s share price following news that its sales were better than expected in Q3 has shored up the performance of the ‘Magnificent 7’ in what has otherwise been a tough week for most of them amid a mixed bag of reports, lingering …
27th October 2023
Spreads in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have diverged in unusual directions this year, and we doubt that these trends will revert any time soon. As was universally anticipated, the ECB stood pat at its meeting today: policy rates were kept unchanged …
26th October 2023
Although US high-yield (HY) corporate bonds are more attractively valued than at any time since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), we doubt they will outperform US equities over the next couple of years. The yield of ICE BofA’s index of US HY corporate …
The war between Hamas and Israel – and the potential for escalation to the wider region – has increased the uncertainty around the economic and financial market outlook, but in most scenarios is unlikely to generate a sustained hit to major asset markets. …
We expect the US Treasury 10-year/2-year yield spread to turn positive before long, and subsequently rise further over the next year or so. The rapid move towards “disinversion” of the US Treasury yield curve seems to have regained steam today as yields …
25th October 2023
Long-term Treasury yields have risen to new cyclical highs despite a generally weak global economic backdrop. Short-term “technical” indicators also suggest to us the surge in yields may have run its course. PMI survey data released earlier today was …
24th October 2023
Concerns over supply -demand dynamics in the Treasury market seem to be a key factor pushing up Treasury term premia. But we think rising inflation uncertainty among investors has also played a part. The ACM estimate of the 10-year Treasury term premium …
23rd October 2023
US financ ial conditions may soon tighten further, as t he economy slows and credit spreads rise. But, by then, the 10-year Treasury yield may be falling. On Thursday, the 10-year Treasury yield briefly broke through 5% for the first time since 2007. That …
20th October 2023
Although we have revised up our forecasts for the 10-year Treasury yield between now and the end of 2025, we aren’t inclined to change our upbeat projection for the S&P 500 over this period . This is because the big increase in equity prices that we are …
We think both the recent outperformance of China’s sovereign bonds relative to those in the US and the underperformance of its equities will end – and may even reverse somewhat – in the near future. Chinese government bonds (CGBs) have largely been spared …
Big banks in the US have reported quite strong earnings in Q3 but, given our pessimistic view of the economy there, we doubt that their stocks will outperform much in the next couple of months. Earnings season started last week in the US, and most major …
19th October 2023
We think China’s improving economy may help stop the fall in the country’s stock markets, and see them outperform those of the US for a bit. China’s stronger-than-expected Q3 GDP data, released earlier today, seem to have given the Hang Seng Index a small …
18th October 2023
We think equilibrium real policy rates in advanced economies will continue to rise over the next decade or so. That has profound implications for government bond yields and risky asset valuations. Discussions of ‘higher for longer’ generally relate to the …
17th October 2023
