The shift towards defensive equity sectors has clearly accelerated in the last three weeks. It has happened in every region and is led by the Utilities sector. The detail is less important than the big picture. Investors are worried about rising rates, rising oil prices and rising tariffs. They are buying defensives because of what they are not, rather than what they are.

Our recommended underweights for Eurozone Financials and EM Equities are at the sort of levels we saw just before major crises such as 2008 and 2010-12. We think that both can be traced back to tightening financial conditions and restricted dollar liquidity. What concerns us is that neither the Fed and the ECB are prepared to admit there may be a problem or that these two themes could feed off each other. We also worry that further devaluation of the Chinese renminbi could put additional pressure on EM Equities and bring a potential flashpoint closer.

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

The risk-adjusted returns of all parts of the US Treasury curve are set to improve over the summer. Our models suggest that investors may be revising down their estimates of the size and scope of future rate hikes from the Fed as evidence mounts of a slowdown in Emerging Markets. This would be consistent with a further flattening of the yield curve and less pressure on spreads in Investment Grade. High Yield already offers the best risk-adjusted returns in US credit. The wild card remains EM Sovereigns; contagion is a real risk, and credit quality may not be an adequate defence.

There are very few sectors or countries which currently offer a better than 50% chance of beating the local risk-free, which is one of the reasons why we think that global equities will struggle over the summer. The UK has the highest concentration of winners. Healthcare and Utilities garner most mentions across all regions.

This week we look at which equity sectors have historically been rated underweight when their region is also rated underweight. Causation is much harder to establish than for overweight sectors in overweight regions. The main lesson is that sector selection may not compensate for being in the wrong region in a bull market or the wrong asset class in a bear market.

We can use our sector and regional equity models to work out which sectors tend to lead a region higher, and which tend to conflict with an overweight recommendation. Sectors with the best leadership record (across all developed markets from 1996 onwards) are Financials and Industrials, but surprisingly not Technology. Sectors most in conflict tend to come from the defensives and Energy.

10-year Treasury yields have moved decisively above 3% and there is much excitement about what this could mean for equities. We prefer to look a bond volatility as the basis for comparing the two asset classes. Based on its historic relationship with the slope of the US yield curve, bond volatility is still below its predicted value, while equity volatility is in line with it. The hurdle rate which US Equities have to beat in order to be risk-efficient is therefore too high and would fall if bonds experienced a bout of volatility.

We are concerned that oil may be entering a new trading range which could damage a conventional balanced portfolio. We look at two correlations: between equities and bonds and between oil futures and a balanced portfolio. In the Eurozone, investors don’t really need a hedge. In the US, it may be “nice to have”, but not essential. In the UK, equities and bonds are positively correlated at the highest level since 2001, which means that investors need some sort of hedge, even though we can’t yet be sure that oil is the right one.