This week financial market participants were delivered a cogent explanation for the weakness in EM stocks, bonds and currencies by India’s central bank governor, Mr. Urjit Patel.
As investors, it does feel like we are in limbo, stuck between the push of higher growth and employment and the pull of higher inflation, higher rates, and policy risk. And and the end of the day, despite quite a lot of directional volatility so far this year, the S&P 500 trades at the same level as it did back on January 4th.
Energy stock fundamentals remain appealing. Global developed market energy stocks are still trading at recessionary valuation levels with the median dividend yield of 2.5% being near the highest recorded over the last two decades.
Rising oil prices, food prices and interest rates are likely to soon start taking a toll on the US consumer. Over the last year, gasoline prices are up 28%, the price of cornerstone crops like corn, soy and wheat are up between 5-16%, credit card interest rates have moved to an eight year high of 13.6% and the all important mortgage rate has risen to nearly 5%.
Among yesterday’s data releases was the widely followed ‘flash’ PMI report produced by Markit, which showed that the Manufacturing PMI increased to the highest level since the 4th quarter of 2014. Unlike the final report, which gets published on the first day of the month, the advanced report lacks details on specific components.
After spending the last four months consolidating gains, crude oil is breaking higher again, and it’s taking inflation expectations with it. The break higher in crude isn’t surprising given that oil fundamentals haven’t been this good in years.
Another month and another new high in equity valuations, at least relative to sales. Indeed, the median company in our developed world index (which covers the top 85% of companies in each country) just achieved a price to sales ratio that eclipsed the 2000 peak.
As political risk continues to escalate, we are, as always, keenly focused on risk management and the mitigation of potential losses. To those ends, we are monitoring indicators of market breadth for evidence that the worst of the shakeout is behind us.
As our readers ponder the implications of trade wars and the possibility for moderately higher inflation – a circular loop if we ever did see one – we thought we’d evaluate the market’s behavior to see what kind of clues it’s giving us about its health.
Today the Fed hiked the Fed Funds rate by .25% and also updated their policy statement and the so called dot plot, which is a compilation of the FOMC members projections’ for GDP growth, unemployment and prices.
Several weeks ago three professors from the Columbia and Dartmouth business schools recapped some of their work on accounting for intangible investment in a Harvard Business Review article. Their key finding, which builds on Professor Baruch Lev’s analysis in The End of Accounting, is that, “accounting earnings are practically irrelevant for digital companies”.
Today’s unemployment that featured above trend employment growth, a tick up in the participation rate, a flat unemployment rate and a little less wage growth compared to last month is being met with applause from the equity market.
Counter cyclical stocks, those in the consumer staples, health care, real estate, telecom and utilities sectors, continue to have a tough go at things. In fact, as of two days ago this group of bond proxies made a new low compared to all developed market stocks, thereby continuing and reinforcing a trend that has been in place since the middle of 2016. Why is that?
As we navigate a period of market turmoil, its important to remember that non-bear corrective phases typically last six weeks to two months and almost always include several several substantial large rallies followed by selloffs back to the range of the initial low.
There are many different ways in which we can measure the severity of a market correction. The absolute peak-to-trough decline is one way. Duration of the drawdown is another. But we can also measure corrections by taking note of the performance of individual stocks, in what is akin to looking under the hood.
This selloff is demonstrably different than other corrections the market has endured this cycle in one important aspect: it has inflationary rather than deflationary notes to it. This is an extremely important point of context because it tells us something about market participants’ anxieties.
With a hint of volatility returning to the stock market this week, we though it good timing to review some of the market-based indicators we follow that help us judge the sturdiness of the market. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but rather a few items to consider when evaluating whether pullbacks are for buying or selling.
By now it’s common knowledge that the stock market is extremely overbought by nearly any measure one chooses to use. This has led many investors to infer a weaker forward return profile than usual on the logic that the normalization in the overboughtness of the market will cause a steep and lasting pullback in stocks.
It’s no secrete that fluctuations in oil prices can lead to dramatic swings in headline price inflation, as chart 1 below shows. After all, not only does oil fuel the vast majority of transportation needs, it’s also a critical raw material used in consumer products far and wide, and much of the price swings in oil are passed on to consumers.
2018 has so far brought in the highest price of crude oil since late 2014 (chart 1), but we shouldn’t be surprised by the price action. Indeed, ignoring geopolitics for a moment, the fundamental picture for the crude markets haven’t been this favorable in years.
Investors were finally treated yesterday to some of the most important compromise provisions to come out of the House-Senate conference on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
The drop in the VIX to ultra-low levels in 2017 has been a point of consternation for market participants and largely misunderstood. Some market participants view the low level of the VIX as an indication of excessively positive sentiment among investors and thus a contrary indicator for the general direction of stock prices.
Bitcoin has garnered much mainstream media coverage in recent months which is the natural reaction to its meteoric ten-fold rise this year. The digital currency’s rise to about $11,000 today was met with awe, and then it quickly fell by 20% in a matter of hours, as has been widely reported.
We’ve been arguing for the last year that US-based investors would be well served to overweight foreign versus domestic equities. In this post we’ll dig into that topic a little deeper to try to convey a few of the company specific fundamental drivers of our foreign vs domestic call, especially as they relate to one of our favorite markets: Japan.
From time to time we illustrate our analysis of highly innovative companies in a Knowledge Leader spotlight. Today we look at Microchip Technology Inc. (MCHP), a highly innovative semiconductor manufacturer that produces programmable microcontroller products used in autos, computing and lighting, among many other applications.
Over the last decade US stocks have outperformed the global equity benchmark by about 35% and have outperformed in eight of the last ten years prior to 2017. But that may all be coming to an end.
As the famous Yogi Berre once said, “You can learn a lot just by watching”. At the moment we are watching the price of oil break out of a trading range to the highest level in about 2.5 years.
The Consumer Staples sector is often viewed as a safe haven; a sector that, because of its inherent cash flow stability, market participants can turn to as a place of refuge when things get shaky. Yet, persistent fundamental decline among North American Staples companies may well be throwing a wrench in these companies’ abilities to weather a broad market downturn.
Several months ago we wrote that looser financial conditions should support economic data and stocks through year end. So far so good. Since then economic indicators such as the Markit manufacturing PMI have continued to chug higher and US stocks are up about 6%.
Today’s preliminary Q3 GDP number of 3% growth at a QoQ annualized rate has been met with a mix of relief and hope. Relief that one of the most destructive hurricane seasons ever didn’t completely sap growth and hope that two consecutive quarters of 3%+ growth is evidence that trend growth has, finally in the 9th year of this recovery, accelerated above 2%.
The rise in home prices from the trough in 2009 has added $8tn to home values, pushing the value of homes to a level surpassing the 2006 peak.
Indicators of market breadth are often useful in confirming or telegraphing important trend changes in equity markets. In simple terms, indicators of market breadth measure the level of participation of individual stocks in the general trend of the market.
Since the middle of August the S&P 500 energy sector is up 11.5% compared to just 3% for the index as a whole. Many observers have chalked this outperformance up as a reaction to a deep oversold condition or a short covering bounce, but a growing amount of evidence suggests it may be more than that.
The Federal Reserve is likely to decide next week to begin letting assets roll of its balance sheet as bonds mature, instead of reinvesting the proceeds. This means that the balance sheet will begin to shrink in size and other market participants will be forced to absorb the supply of new issuance of treasury and mortgage backed securities.
The upturn in global PMIs over the last year has been substantial and for the first time in years the world’s developed economies appear to be expanding in unison. As we can see in the table below, the color of the board has moved from red to green, indicating that nearly every major DM country is seeing improving PMIs.
We’ve been talking at length recently about the attractiveness of foreign, cyclical stocks. While foreign developed markets are attractive, emerging markets are especially attractive from a valuation perspective and are also benefiting from what we think is just the beginning of a persistently weak US dollar environment.
We’ve been arguing since the end of 2016 that markets could be in for a sustained period of USD weakness and so far in 2017 they delivered just that.
It may be an overlooked fact that the global materials sector is the best performing sector over the last three months (up 8.6%), the second best performer over the last month (up 2.7%) and the third best performer over the last week (up 1.3%).
The last week has witnessed the return of multi-directional volatility in the equity markets for the first time since just before the election in the United States last November. At this point we have little reason to suspect the 2% mini correction in the S&P 500 will turn into a major downside swoon.
Proxy metrics for financial conditions from the US dollar, to interest rates to corporate bond spreads have been loosening since June and suggest continued moderate economic growth in the second half of 2017 and a firm equity market.
By most accounts the Q2 earnings reporting season has been a good one, with most companies surprising to the upside and some offering improved guidance for future numbers. In fact, according to FactSet, more companies have posted a positive sales surprise in Q2 than any quarter going back at least five years.
As our regular readers are aware, we’ve been pounding the table all year arguing that foreign stocks are in a position to structurally outperform domestic stocks. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we thought we would – in one post – review the setup that makes foreign equities relatively attractive at this juncture.
It’s news to no one that energy has been the worst performing sector year to date with plenty of hatred of the sector to go around. Yet, as we write the price of WTI crude oil is up about 2% on news of capex cuts and OPEC’s apparent moves to reign in production and exports.
The financial sector has been getting a lot of attention recently with earnings announcements so we thought we’d weigh in on one aspect of financial stock relative performance that is making it difficult for financials to truly lead this market higher: the flattening yield curve.
The USD is weak again today and plunging lows not seen for 15 months. The “obvious” reasons for the USD weakness include converging foreign economic activity, more hawkish foreign monetary policies, and a general overvaluation of USD.
It’s been awhile since we’ve weighed in on the active/passive debate so we thought we’d toss our hat in the ring yet again and try to explain the asset migration that is taking the fund management industry by storm.
Highlighting the deteriorating trend in Chinese corporate financials has been an annual feature our of this blog.
Today’s payroll beat of 222,000 nonfarm jobs being added to the economy in June should be viewed in a larger context of overall slowing employment statistics that all point to the US economy remaining in its relatively weak and slowing trend.
With the euro up another 50bps today against the USD, we thought it timely to review some fundamental factors that should act to support the longer-term trend higher in the euro.
The US dollar is having another tough go today after it spent the first part of June working off an oversold condition and rallying modestly.