Commodity import volumes were generally weak in June . We think some of this reflects the lingering impact of lockdowns on demand, but it also points to subdued activity in heavy industry and construction. June may prove to be a low point for commodity …
13th July 2022
The UN’s latest population projections highlight that demographic headwinds are set to mount in almost all economies outside Africa. The most significant downward revisions were to its forecasts for China, but we still think that the ultimate decline in …
The Bank of Korea today raised its main policy rate by 50bp (to 2.25%), and further hikes are likely in the near term given worries about inflation. But with economic growth set to slow and inflation concerns likely to ease later in the year, we think the …
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand hiked rates by 50bp in July but emerging worries about the health of the economy are consistent with our view that rates will peak around 3.5% rather than the 4% predicted by the Bank and financial markets. And we’re …
The euro hit parity against the US dollar today and we wouldn’t be surprised if it falls further. While we think it would take big moves in the trade-weighted exchange rate for the ECB to intervene in FX markets, at the margin the euro’s fall adds to the …
12th July 2022
The 200bp increase in the base rate (to 9.75%) by Hungary’s central bank (MNB) today has resulted in the most aggressive amount of monetary tightening in decades. With fiscal policy tightening too and the euro-zone on the verge of recession, all the signs …
The slowdown in the Swedish housing market has the potential to delay the recovery in the retail sector this year, as it weighs on retail sales and makes conversions to residential even less viable. This would add to what is already a weak outlook for the …
The resurgence in China’s stock market may already be over. We forecast that the MSCI China Index will struggle alongside major equity indices elsewhere over the next year or two, as China’s economic recovery underwhelms and many of the policies which …
The Saudi economy grew at its fastest pace in a decade in Q1 and we think this strength will carry through to the rest of 2022. Our GDP growth forecast of 10% for this year lies well above the consensus. After the final Q1 GDP figures confirmed the …
Capital outflows from EMs picked up over the past month and are likely to persist over the rest of the year. That’s a particular threat to those EMs whose current account deficits have widened or are widening sharply, including Turkey, Chile and parts of …
Although we expect a comparable rise in interest rates to that which preceded the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), we think the risk of a credit-driven bust in the commercial real estate market is low. That reflects the much more conservative lending …
11th July 2022
After a period of extreme volatility, we expect the price of US natural gas to edge higher in the remainder of this year. Together, a rise in LNG exports and a pick-up in US consumption this winter will keep stocks low by past standards and underpin a …
The impact of rising mortgage rates and the hit to real incomes from high inflation have given rise to fears of mortgage repayment difficulties when existing borrowers come to remortgage. But the widespread use of fixed-rate deals, higher levels of …
While the largest increases in corporate spreads in the US and the euro-zone may now be behind us, we suspect that a challenging economic backdrop will keep spreads elevated in both places for some time . The option-adjusted spreads (OAS) of ICE BofA ML’s …
8th July 2022
The rise in interest rates and bond yields has put property yields back under the microscope. Property valuations are now stretched and a traditional fair value analysis points toward a rise in property yields, which aligns with our view of a 40bps rise …
As forecasts for corporate earnings in the US finally start to come down amid worries about the outlook for the economy there, this Update considers the implications for equities and bonds. For most of this year, equity analysts have continued to paint a …
Policymakers are reportedly bringing forward some planned government bond issuance from next year to support infrastructure investment in the second half of 2022. This will help avert the slump in investment that was imminent without new funding and …
At the recent ECB’s annual forum, the world’s top central bankers argued that a return to a world of low inflation was unlikely. It is true that sustained undershoots of inflation targets are probably a thing of the past. However, policymakers’ renewed …
As recession fears grow in Europe, we think that weak employment growth, home-working and strong completions will weigh on office rents in Warsaw. This means rental prospects will provide little offset to office values as property yields climb. Having …
We forecast a further ~2% appreciation of the trade-weighted US dollar over the rest of this year. But we continue to think that the risks are skewed towards even greater dollar strength. This Update considers what factors might deliver a more significant …
7th July 2022
We suspect that the latest political turmoil in the UK adds to the reasons to expect a renewed rise in the 10-year Gilt yield, weakness in the pound, and continued trouble for the FTSE 100. The market reaction to the resignation of Boris Johnson as Prime …
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) today raised its main policy rate by 125bps (to 15.0%), and made clear that fighting inflation would remain its priority. Given that inflation looks set to rise further in the near term and remain well above target …
Very high inflation and low unemployment are driving German unions to seek big pay rises in this year’s collective negotiations. We think nominal pay growth will be in the region of 4-5% this year and 3-4% in 2023. Although this would result in …
Despite a rebound over the past day or so, 10-year developed market (DM) government bond yields have fallen substantially in recent weeks. This has coincided with investors lowering their expectations for peak policy rates and anticipating subsequent rate …
This Rapid Response was sent to clients immediately after the news early on 7 th July that the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, planned to resign. The news that Boris Johnson plans to resign as UK Prime Minister later today may lead to fiscal policy being a …
Spending on high-tech “new infrastructure” should result in higher returns than adding more highways and railway lines. But it is not as effective a channel for cyclical policy stimulus. And a state-led push into these new, complex sectors won’t deliver …
Our updated yield model points to a quicker rise in property yields than our forecast suggests. While we still expect the correction to be mild, not least because of the lower share of property debt this cycle, this poses a downside risk to capital values …
The central bank in Sri Lanka (CBSL) today raised its benchmark lending facility rate by a further 100bp (to 15.5%), and with inflation running at over 50%, more tightening seems likely. However, rate hikes on their own will not be enough to restore …
Tightening cycles in Latin America and Emerging Europe are already at an advanced stage. Some 70-80% of the likely rate hikes in their cycles have already been delivered and policymakers will bring these to an end before the end of the year. But inflation …
6th July 2022
The decision by Ghana’s government to turn to the IMF will help to restore some calm among investors over the country’s poor public finances. But a very large fiscal squeeze is needed to restore debt sustainability and recent protests highlight the …
Surging global commodity prices have hit Central and Eastern European economies like a tsunami in recent months, causing a severe terms of trade shock and current account deficits to blow out. These deficits are likely to widen to 7% of GDP in Hungary and …
The sharp slowdown in money growth is set to continue as the Fed’s monetary tightening ramps up, but the resilience of bank lending suggests the impact on the economy will be limited. (See Chart 1.) The Fed’s asset holdings fell by only $22bn in June, …
Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) today raised its main policy rate by 25bps to 2.25% and reiterated that further tightening would be gradual. With the economy on the mend but inflation still low, we are sticking with our view that the policy rate will be raised …
It seems most likely that Italy will be able to put its public debt ratio on a gradual downward trajectory, even as interest rates rise, by running primary budget surpluses. But if 10-year government bond yields rise above 5% and stay there, the necessary …
5th July 2022
Having defied gravity in 2021, this year is shaping up to be much tougher for Chile’s economy and we think that the economy will contract in both Q3 and Q4. Despite the weakening growth outlook, high inflation and a worryingly large current account …
Even though workers are accepting cuts in their real pay, nominal wage growth is still above “acceptable” rates for central banks in DMs of 3% to 4%. This underlines why interest rates need to head into restrictive territory to weaken economic activity …
The RBA sounded a little more cautious about the outlook for the economy when it hiked rates by 50bp today, but we suspect that further upside surprises to inflation will encourage it to eventually lift the cash rate to around 3.5%. However, we expect the …
The Bank of Israel (BoI) stepped up the pace of tightening today with a 50bp interest rate hike, to 1.25%, as it dropped its commitment to “gradual” interest rate hikes. This suggests that similar moves may be in the pipeline and supports our hawkish view …
4th July 2022
If Russia decided to end all exports of natural gas to Japan, we suspect that Japan’s GDP would fall by around 0.5%. However, the hit could be larger as there is now less scope to reduce energy usage than after the Great East Japan Earthquake and a bigger …
The news that Argentine economy minister, Martín Guzmán, resigned over the weekend points to growing influence of the Kirchner faction of the government. From an economic perspective, this is likely to lead to a looser fiscal stance that is accompanied by …
Policymakers will have breathed a small sigh of relief at the latest manufacturing PMI surveys because they contained lots of signals that global goods price inflation will ease later this year. Demand softened, backlogs cleared, delivery times improved, …
1st July 2022
The S&P Global EM manufacturing PMI hit its highest level in over a year last month, but that was almost entirely driven by a recovery in China. The surveys softened across most of the rest of the emerging world, with external demand a key area of …
We think that the recovery in China’s PMIs in June was driven by the lifting of virus-related restrictions rather than an improvement in underlying economic conditions. Accordingly, we think that softer growth in China’s activity will continue to weigh on …
After a solid start to the year, investment activity showed signs of cooling during the second quarter. We think that stretched valuations, an increasingly negative financing gap and economic uncertainty are set to weigh on investment activity over the …
30th June 2022
If past experience is anything to go by, deepening electricity supply cuts in South Africa are likely to deal a heavy blow to activity in energy-intensive sectors such as mining and manufacturing. Even if loadshedding is scaled back in the coming weeks, …
We expect that the prices of agricultural commodities will fall back gradually over this year and next, but remain historically high. However, the volatility of prices in recent months and the uncertainty of the current environment mean there are major …
The consumer recovery in advanced economies has been characterised by particularly strong spending on goods and a weaker pick-up in services demand. There are signs that goods spending is now flattening off as households are able to buy more services. But …
Ukrainian refugees have boosted labour forces and consumer spending across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) since the outbreak of the war, but this could prove short-lived if the conflict remains concentrated in Eastern Ukraine and more refugees return …
Reports that the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) has injected liquidity into the banking sector appears to be a consequence of a lack of FX intervention (despite high oil prices), tight fiscal policy and strong credit growth. SAMA appears keen to sustain robust …
