The basic argument in favour of European Equities is that three of the largest sectors in the index, Financials, Industrials and Consumer are ranked in the top three in our models - unlike the situation in the US, where Technology is in the bottom three. All three have forces driving their outperformance which should last most of this year (respectively rising interest rates, re-opening of global supply chains and rearmament, and post-pandemic recovery). The region, its currencies and its equity markets were priced in October for a catastrophe which simply hasn’t happened, and which is now very unlikely. There may be some short-term profit-taking, but the excessive valuation discount and the currency misalignment will take longer than a few weeks to unwind.

Our models don’t like US Equities or US Treasuries and they don’t like the dollar either. This is an unusual set of circumstances, but one which we think we can explain. The key is to understand the relationship between tighter US monetary policy, lower valuations for mega-cap tech and the unravelling narrative of US exceptionalism. US Bond yields may be rising, but yields in other currencies are rising faster. We strongly recommend that investors reduce their exposure to US Equities and increase their exposure first to Europe and then later to Emerging Markets.

We agree with the idea that US equities are going to suffer in the New Year, but disagree with many of the assumptions surrounding this view. We think US Treasuries are behaving like a risk-asset and cite their current elevated volatility as evidence. We highlight the positive correlation between equities and bonds, which means that there we may well repeat the bear market of everything we saw in H1 2022. On this basis, the dollar strengthens temporarily and the trough in equities is delayed till Q3. When the recovery comes, sectoral and geographic leadership in equities in likely to change and China will be a much bigger part of the story than Western investors currently imagine. The outlook for oil is anyone’s guess, but it will influence inflation expectations and generate bursts of volatility in all markets, contrary to its current benign behaviour.

Recent strength is US and global equities is entirely consistent with normal seasonality, particularly the outperformance of the Eurozone. If normal seasonal patterns prevail, we would expect many of the recent trends to reverse in the New Year as follows: US equities will give up recent gains, Eurozone equities will underperform, US Technology will suffer further declines and the US dollar will strengthen once again. All of this would be consistent with normal seasonality, as is our new call that the bottom of the bear market will not come until Q3 2023 at the earliest.

Our models are slightly conflicted at the moment. The multi-asset models, which mimic sophisticated institutional portfolios, are significantly more bearish than our simple equity vs government bond models, which are more retail-orientated. Before we dismiss the latter is just being wrong, we should at least try to explain the difference. Retail investors may be trying to hedge against the possibility of unexpected good news: a shallow US recession; a peace deal in Ukraine; or an end to zero-Covid in China. Any one of these could result in significant upside for global equities and the joint probability that none of them will happen is lower than you think.

It easy to be overwhelmed by the speed and quantity of information in a bear market. Investors need a clear focus on what matters and what doesn’t. In any bear market, there are about 10 sector pairs (out of 45) which really drive the performance of a regional equity portfolio and the rest don’t matter very much. These pairs vary from one bear market to the next but are relatively easy to identify. There is also another set of pairs, which may be significant in market cap terms, whose relative performance cannot be easily integrated with the rest of the portfolio. US sectors which feature heavily in this list in this bear market include Financials, Healthcare and Industrials. In Europe, they are Materials, Utilities and Financials.

At the bottom of every bear market, there is a moment when equities turn, but most long-only managers are too risk-averse to believe it. Our approach does not try to anticipate this, but there are techniques we can use to spot the opportunity sooner. The trick is to think like a hedge fund manager with a short position in equities. In every bear market since 2000, the window for a risk-efficient short position in equities has opened weeks or months after our long-only models have got to an underweight position. This window also closes well before our long-only model rebuilds its position in equities. At the bottom of the cycle, the marginal buyer is the person with a short position.

The strength of the US dollar has hugely overstated the attractiveness of US equities to both US and international investors. The currency effect against developed markets is more powerful than it has been in all but 3% of weekly observations, going back to 1995. This is fine while it lasts, but one day it will go into reverse. Meanwhile, the dollar index is approaching generational highs. After the last tech-bust and peak dollar, US equities underperformed the rest of the world, in dollar terms, for the next five years (2003-08).

There is a big mismatch in US inflation expectations, with 10-year breakeven rates anchored around 2 percent, survey data at 5 percent and core CPI at over 6 percent. We think the latter figures are far more realistic, which means that the US fixed income and equity markets could be in for a nasty shock. We also think that global currency markets are becoming disorderly and that the yen, euro and sterling will all test historic lows against the dollar. It’s not a “sell-everything” strategy, but it is closely related. There may soon be an interesting opportunity in EM Equities and EM Bonds. The last bull market in EM Equities started about three months before the dollar index hit its last high in late 2001 and we see other historical parallels which spark our attention,