All posts in category: United States (64)

Show Me the Damage

Thursday, May 16th, 2019

EM equity weakness may cause FX volatility to surge

So far, most of the damage inflicted by US/China trade tensions has been on EM Equities. Our models suggest they peaked over a month ago and there is no support until we get well into underweight territory. The danger is that equity weakness turns into FX volatility, affecting EMs and DMs. We know this is always dangerous for risk assets in general.

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The Calm Before the Storm

Thursday, March 7th, 2019

Concerns over US earnings, China slowdown, Euro banks

Before the ECB’s announcement today, nothing very important had happened in financial markets for several weeks. We get nervous when it’s this quiet, so we prepared a list of issues to worry about. They range from the benign, like a melt-up in risk assets caused by a sell-off in US Treasuries to the borderline catastrophic, like a Eurozone banking crisis. Our main point is that the current directionless environment is likely to end in the near future. Whether investors believe in any, or all, of the scenarios listed below is up to them.

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Simple Explanation

Thursday, November 15th, 2018

Industrials are weak in both equity and credit models

Weakness in US Industrials can often be a signal that we are close to a period of market disruption. That signal is flashing yellow, as are the signals from other equity regions such as the UK, the Eurozone and Japan. We have red flags on Industrials across all of our credit models. We don’t have a clear and obvious cause yet, but the simplest explanation could be that we are closer to a significant slowdown than consensus thinks.

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Alternatives to Santa

Thursday, November 8th, 2018

How not to chase the Christmas rally

Investors should feel free to trade a Christmas rally in equities, provided they can identify when to take profit. Our US sector model is firmly in de-risking mode, which means that an extended rally is unlikely. Investors can profit from this correction by adding exposure to EM Equities, buying either an index ETF or selecting from our list of preferred countries.

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How Low Do We Go?

Wednesday, October 24th, 2018

This is a correction, not a bear market

Our asset allocation model cannot get much more bearish. In our view the reason for the recent weakness has been the need for US equities to adjust to PE ratios in line with their long run average now that everything else – real interest rates, risk conditions and earnings growth – is also approaching its own average. We are less concerned about the prospect of a US recession, partly because we see no warning signs from the credit markets. Our model is unlikely to get more optimistic in the next six weeks, but this may happen just in time for Christmas.

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All Good Things Come to an End

Wednesday, October 17th, 2018

US Technology sector downgraded

The US Tech sector may bounce if Q3 earnings are good, but we think our downgrade is part of an important trend, not just a blip. In other regions, the sector has been downgraded to underweight within a few weeks of being downgraded to neutral. At the stock level, we have already cut most of our long positions between June and October and expect to cut some more in the near future.

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Top and Bottom Agree

Wednesday, September 19th, 2018

Stock-specific models show equities under pressure

Our new stock-specific models cover the US, UK and the Eurozone and they have an uncomfortable message regarding the outlook for global equities. We looked at eight companies in the US and the UK, whose profits are geared to global equity markets. Seven of them have a very low probability of beating their host index on a risk-adjusted basis, and their scores are lower than the Financials sector as a whole. Equity investors appear to believe that the outlook for equities is difficult and that agrees with our top-down models

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Midsummer Moderation

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2018

Time to reduce the beta of your equity portfolio

All four defensive sectors in the US have generated relative buy signals in the last three months and as a group they are starting to outperform the index. This may or may not be an indicator for the equity market as a whole; that is for the future to decide. Right now, investors should be reducing the beta of their equity portfolio, no matter what their macro-outlook. And the same applies to European portfolios as well

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The Endowment Effect

Wednesday, June 27th, 2018

Do US Tech companies over-value their own shares?

We are in the middle of the pre-announcement period when US companies suspend their buyback programmes, most notably the Tech sector. Our models suggest that they may have recently started to value their own prospects more highly than external investors

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Enjoy Your Long Weekend

Wednesday, March 28th, 2018

US buy-backs to the rescue

Risk conditions have deteriorated faster than we expected and the deterioration has been led by the US, which is unusual. The excess volatility of US Equities relative to Treasuries has experienced the sharpest three-month increase in the last 22 years, including the run-up to the GFC. The current correction could well be as bad as early 2016. To end it, we may need the Fed to take a time-out on the June rate-hike. We will certainly need US corporates to resume their buy-back programmes as soon as the earnings timetable allows. Apart from Emerging Markets, buying the dip in international equities, without doing the same in the US, is not an attractive strategy.

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