How the World Turns

Friday, November 27th, 2020

The value trade won’t work everywhere

This report is a real-time survey of how the great rotation is progressing in different regions of the world. Our conclusions are (1) Many of the important sector infection points happened back in September; so talking about them now in terms of factors suggests that people missed them the first time round. (2) The UK has much the most aggressive sector rotation and China the least. (3) There are different winners and losers in each region and any attempt to apply one paradigm to all of them is likely to fail. (4) Many value-rich sectors in each region have hardly moved, suggesting that the value trade has already been differentiated into those sectors which have catalysts and those which don’t.

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Prices Move Before the News

Friday, September 4th, 2020

Investors need a process which highlights what they don’t know

One of the great virtues of our process is that it is sensitive enough to identify sudden changes in the relationship between risk and return, which have no apparent justification in real life – until the news story which prompted them finally breaks. We have just had a classic example of this with the resignation of Prime Minister Abe, which was announced in late August, eight weeks after our weighting in Japan was suddenly reduced. There is always an explanation, even if you don’t what it is, and this note highlights ten other recent moves at sector or country level, which we think are only partially explained.

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Lessons from a Fast Market

Friday, June 12th, 2020

China plays a different game and Healthcare suffers

Yesterday’s sell-off was so brutal that it probably marks the start of a different regime in equity markets. We are out of Phase 1 of the recovery and into a second more sceptical and nervous regime. Both the US and the UK broke of out the uptrends in our daily indicator that have been in place since March. The technical situation is better in the Eurozone and Japan, while the level of financial repression is China so severe, in our view, that the indicator has lost most of its signalling power.

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Asia: First In, First Out

Thursday, March 19th, 2020

Already producing better risk-adjusted returns

The recent volatility shock is as big as the one in the middle of the GFC and it isn’t over yet. It has also happened three times faster, in three weeks rather than nine. Fear is inevitable, but the are some interesting opportunities, especially in Asia. Countries like Taiwan and South Korea have managed the corona virus better than the US or Europe, while China is already recovering. If you wait for the bounce in the West, you may miss it in the East.
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The Forgotten Country

Thursday, December 5th, 2019

Why does nobody like Japan? - continued

Behind the US, Japanese equities have the second-highest, risk-adjusted returns over the last 1, 3, 5 and 10 years. Over the last five years, they have generated the fastest EBIT and dividend growth. They have the lowest pay-out ratio of the major regions (therefore most potential for growth). They have been our preferred equity region since early October and, as of this week, are ranked #1 in our combined asset allocation model.

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Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Thursday, November 21st, 2019

And why does nobody like Japan?

Two weeks ago, we had the lowest number of net buying opportunities for individual countries since May 2000. It’s hard to be bullish about global equities as an asset class when there are so few leaders. Japan is one of just three countries which look attractive on our system, but nobody seems to care.

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Six Sector Ideas

Thursday, September 26th, 2019

Where to look in advance of the Q3 results season

The macro picture is confused. Our last note argued that we are in the late late-cycle for equities, but we could go on like this for months and there are no new developments to prove or disprove this view. So, our focus shifts to sector selection. We highlight six sector ideas – one from each region we cover – where we think there is potential for a major upgrade or downgrade in the near future.

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Catch-22 and Japan’s response

Thursday, August 29th, 2019

US Equities are vulnerable almost whatever happens

If investors want to prevent the negative effects that a trade war between the US and China could have on US Equities, they may be forced to sell US Equities. This may be one of the few ways they have of getting President Trump’s attention. Our models are at – or very close to – maximum underweight in equities. If there is a storm coming, Japan may have an important policy tool to mitigate some of the damage.

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