News of the spread of the Omicron variant has put COVID-19 back at the top of many investors’ list of concerns. While on a far smaller scale, the impact on markets so far has been qualitatively similar to that during the first COVID-19 meltdown between …
30th November 2021
COVID-19 outbreaks have diverged across the region in the past month, with new cases and deaths falling recently in the hard-hit Eastern European countries of Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia, stabilising in Russia and Turkey but rising sharply in parts of …
The global spread of a more transmissible COVID variant is a particular challenge for a country trying to remain COVID-free. But after nearly two years of success suppressing infections domestically (see Chart 1), the bar to changing course before better …
29th November 2021
Amid all the uncertainty caused by the arrival of Omicron (for our initial thoughts see this Global Update ), one thing we can say with some conviction is that the new variant is further bad news for the region’s beleaguered tourism industry. Up until …
While the RBNZ has lifted interest rates by 50bp and signalled that as much as 200bp of tightening is still to come, the RBA’s central scenario remains that interest rates won’t be raised until 2024. While we have pencilled in the first RBA rate hike for …
Spillovers to other emerging markets (EMs) from Turkey’s ongoing currency crisis have been limited so far and we think this will remain the case even if Turkey’s financial markets remain under pressure . Turkey’s financial markets generally have taken a …
24th November 2021
Political developments in Latin America have generally turned in investors’ favour this month. Right-wing José Antonio Kast beat his left-wing rival, Gabriel Boric, in the first round of Chile’s presidential election which buoyed local markets. Elsewhere, …
The repeal this month of controversial reforms aimed at liberalising the agriculture sector is arguably the biggest political setback that the Modi government has faced since coming to power in 2014. And while the direct economic impact of abandoning …
The rebound in economic activity and robust investor demand paved the way for a continued improvement in Scandinavian and Swiss property markets in Q3. Office and industrial values rose further, as strong competition pushed down yields. (See Chart 1.) …
23rd November 2021
The sharp slowdown in the pace of hiring in the October Labour Force Survey caught the headlines, but the more important development was the sharp rise in fixed-weight average hourly earnings. Based on our seasonal adjustment, the fixed-weight index, …
CEE property values completed the final leg of their recovery in Q3, fully reversing the nearly 5.5% peak-to-trough drop in 2020. With rents barely moving on the quarter, falls in yields did all the heavy lifting in driving capital values higher. CEE …
22nd November 2021
US 10-year inflation compensation has risen by another 20bp or so over the past month and we think it will increase further as inflation in the US proves more persistent than most expect. This is one of the reasons why we forecast the yields of long-dated …
19th November 2021
The dollar has risen to its strongest level in more than a year and, though it is not our central forecast, we think the risk of a more sustained dollar bull market is increasing. The incoming economic data – in particular, continued well-above-target …
Inflation in the emerging world has generally surprised to the upside in recent months. But while inflation in most parts of Asia remains at levels which central banks are comfortable with, it has risen well above target in much of Emerging Europe and …
The end of the stamp duty holiday has had remarkably little impact on buyer demand. If anything, the imbalance between strong home purchase demand and limited supply is intensifying. Indeed, Rightmove reported that the average time to sell a home …
Whether Jerome Powell or Lael Brainard is given the nod over the coming days, the next 12-18 months are shaping up to be an unusually challenging period for the Fed Chair. The October data showed a renewed jump in CPI inflation to a 30-year high, with …
18th November 2021
Economic growth slowed in Q3, but we expect it to pick up again in Q4. And with earnings growth and inflation at high levels, we see the Fed Funds Rate and 10-year bond yields rising over the next few years, reflecting the upturn in economic activity. …
While October’s trade data showed good exports still depressed by the recent collapse in domestic car production (see Chart 1), there is growing anecdotal evidence that the auto sector is on the cusp of a rapid rebound. Toyota said that its global …
Germany and Austria are at the centre of the Covid storm in Europe, and the fact that vaccination coverage in Switzerland is even lower does not bode well. Vaccine take-up varies from about 60-80% in Switzerland, but is lowest in some of the …
16th November 2021
The recovery in euro-zone commercial property values picked up in Q3, supported by a small fall in yields and an improvement in the pace of rental growth. While retail rents held steady, the quarterly rise in both office and industrial rents was the …
Recent indicators confirm that the global recovery has continued, but also that it has entered a slower and more difficult phase. US GDP growth slowed sharply in Q3, and our China Activity Proxy suggests that there was a large contraction there. (See …
11th November 2021
The homeowner and rental markets are starting to swap places, with home sales and prices cooling as rental demand and rents take off. Rising mortgage rates have started to bring housing demand down, and we expect they will rise further over the next …
10th November 2021
We’ve been warning for a while that CPI inflation would rise further than most people expect and have recently pushed our own forecast even higher. We now think CPI inflation will rise from 3.1% in September to 4.0% in October and to almost 5.0% in April …
Economic growth has slowed sharply as output approaches its pre-pandemic level. We think that GDP will probably increase by only around 0.5% q/q in the final quarter, down from 2.2% in Q3. Manufacturing firms in Germany are struggling more than most and a …
8th November 2021
Trimmed mean inflation rose to 2.1% in Australia in Q3, the first time it has entered the RBA’s 2-3% target band since 2015. Even more strikingly, trimmed mean inflation in New Zealand rose to 4.4%, way above the top end of the RBNZ’s 1-3% target. One …
29th October 2021
Despite a flurry of media reports in September hinting at widespread disruption, the data suggest that China’s recent power shortages have not been too severe. Electricity output actually rose 0.6% in seasonally-adjusted m/m terms last month, the fastest …
COVID-19 vaccine coverage remains pitifully low across much of Sub-Saharan Africa, with less than 10% of populations having received at least a first dose in most countries. But there are signs that things may be slowly turning a corner. The rate of …
28th October 2021
The Gulf countries will be among the biggest winners globally from the recent rally in energy prices but most other parts of the Middle East and North Africa are net oil importers and are likely to be negatively affected. Higher energy prices will push up …
27th October 2021
The near-term outlook for South East Asia has improved dramatically over the past month or so. Daily cases of COVID-19 have collapsed and are now less than one-third of the level they were at in August. With vaccination rollouts also making good progress …
The growing likelihood that Brazil’s government will circumvent its spending cap adds to broader signs that austerity is becoming politically difficult to implement across the region. For instance, Ecuadorian President Lasso recently U-turned on a plan to …
26th October 2021
COVID-19 outbreaks have surged across the region in the past month. Record high daily cases have been reported in Russia, Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia and infections are rising sharply elsewhere. Governments have tightened containment measures, including …
Wage growth remained moderate over the summer but, with labour shortages intensifying, it seems likely to accelerate sharply soon. The Bank of Canada’s third-quarter Business Outlook Survey (BOS) added to the evidence of widespread labour shortages, which …
September was another good month for commercial property, with the first year-on-year rental growth recorded since the onset of COVID-19. But as clouds gather over the economic upturn, we suspect that the real estate recovery will also struggle to …
22nd October 2021
The extent of the shift in investors’ expectations of interest rates over the past month has been staggering. Investors are now pricing in an 80% chance of a hike to Bank Rate, from 0.10% to 0.25%, at the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting on 4 th …
We are confident in our new forecasts that GDP growth will be a disappointing 2.7% in 2022 and 2.0% in 2023, while core inflation remains elevated at close to 3%, but we are less confident in our predictions of how the Fed will react to that particular …
21st October 2021
The latest activity data suggest that India's recovery has entered a slower phase, with global supply shortages starting to weigh on the economy too. In addition, India’s vaccination coverage remains low, leaving the economy exposed to the threat of …
20th October 2021
While parts of Japan’s manufacturing sector remain under severe pressure from global supply chain shortages, domestic headwinds to the recovery have dissipated further in recent weeks. That supports our view that a strong rebound is brewing. Breaking …
19th October 2021
The supply shortages that have affected many DMs have also intensified in emerging economies over the past couple of months. The automotive sector has been hit hard by global semiconductor shortages, weighing on recoveries in Mexico, Czechia and Hungary …
18th October 2021
While the UK has seen house prices boom over the past year, central London has not joined in as increased remote working led buyers to shun the capital for more space in the suburbs and further afield. (See Chart 1.) But indicators of demand show that it …
Mortgage rates are on the rise and we expect they will see further gains to end the year at around 3.5%. That, alongside relatively tight credit conditions, will help cool rampant house price inflation. From close to 20% y/y in July, we expect a slowdown …
15th October 2021
The Norges Bank’s tightening cycle began at the end of last month and we suspect that investors are underestimating the pace of rate hikes to come. By contrast, the Riskbank looks set to leave interest rates unchanged for some time, instead adjusting its …
With shortages of goods and labour still dominating the news, and following our Focus research into global shortages, we have added a new page to the Global Economics Chart Book to monitor their evolution. While the global economy has continued to grow at …
14th October 2021
The US dollar has rallied to its strongest level since November 2020, and we think it will remain strong on the back of the Fed’s hawkish shift and ongoing uncertainty around the global recovery. While it has fallen back a little this week, on a …
11th October 2021
Supply shortages and rising energy prices are becoming stronger headwinds to the euro-zone recovery. The latest data from Germany showed sharp falls in industrial orders and production (see Chart 1), with manufacturers citing supply bottlenecks as a …
7th October 2021
Overview – Natural gas and coal prices soared in September. In turn, this has raised the output costs of industrial metals, most notably those which are especially energy intensive such as aluminium and steel. At the same time, reports suggest that some …
5th October 2021
We still don’t have enough data to judge the extent of the disruption to China’s factory output from power rationing with much certainty. But with supply chains already stretched, even a modest hit to output, which producers downstream might normally …
30th September 2021
The threat of messy outcomes to Sub-Saharan Africa’s debt problems seems to have diminished recently. In Zambia, the new administration vowed to tackle debt problems and press on with restructuring talks under the G20’s Common Framework. And Ethiopia, …
The RBA expects headline inflation to drop back from 3.8% in Q2 to 1.5% by mid-2022. By contrast, we now only expect it to fall to 2.5% over this period, reflecting the pass-through from soaring coal, gas and food prices. We also expect the recent …
Over the past month or so, the central banks of Korea, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have all raised interest rates, but we don’t think other countries will be in any rush to follow suit. There is certainly little to worry about on the inflation front. …
29th September 2021
Economies across Emerging Europe enjoyed a rapid rebound in Q2, but all the signs suggest that the recovery has come off the boil in Q3. Surveys of sentiment in services sectors have started to flatline and, in some cases, fall. What’s more, hard activity …
