CoreMacro
BCA’s flagship global macro and investment strategy platform, helping investors anticipate regime shifts, connect signals across regions and asset classes, and navigate the world’s most difficult macro questions.
Despite a couple of rate cuts in H2 2024, borrowing costs will remain elevated in real terms amid lower inflation in the US and Europe. This and tightening fiscal policy will hinder domestic demand in advanced economies. Domestic demand in China and EM ex-China will remain very tepid, with risks skewed to the downside.
Deflation remains prevalent in the Chinese economy. The longer authorities delay a big bang-type stimulus, the more entrenched deflation will become. Hence, a cyclical upswing in Chinese stocks is unlikely, although there might be short-term rebounds.
Turkey’s macro policy stance can hardly be called orthodox. And yet, corporate profit margins will contract meaningfully this year. The lira can also fall massively even if inflation eases from the extremely high levels – just as it did in the 1990s.
Improved consumer morale will not compensate for the fading tailwinds to consumption. Neither will the wealth effects from higher stocks and home prices.
The Joshi rule real-time US recession indicator remains at an elevated 0.154 versus its recession event horizon of 0.200, indicating weakening US labour demand. With the last mile of US disinflation requiring labour demand to ‘catch down’ with labour supply, investors should watch the Joshi rule very closely to pre-empt a potential tipping-point. Plus: tactically long Portugal versus Europe, and wheat versus cotton; and tactically short USD/CLP, Qualcomm (QCOM), and Salesforce (CRM).
The stimulus measures announced at last week's NPC were not a game changer. As in 2023, we expect aggregate government spending will fall short of the budgeted amount again this year.
We are pushing back the anticipated start date for a Eurozone recession and assessing how it affects our equity stance.
Presently, our four high-conviction themes are: (1) the US dollar will rally as US growth continues to outpace the rest of the world; (2) US equities will continue to outperform EM and European stocks until a major sell-off occurs; (3) a US profit margin squeeze is imminent; (4) EM domestic bonds and sovereign USD bonds are due for a setback.