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.
Contrary to the prevalent belief in the global investment community, goods/merchandise inventories in the US and East Asia are rather elevated. Financial markets respond to final demand fluctuations, not inventory restocking. Global manufacturing/trade will continue contracting, even though the pace of contraction might moderate in the near run. We recommend that investors fade the current rally.
Poland’s inflation will stay elevated. And yet, its return to the European mainstream has improved its financial market outlook. Accordingly, we are recommending new trades on Polish equity, fixed income, and currency.
The Chilean economy is in a unique position worldwide: as it is the first to enter a recession, it will be the first to recover. Together with historically cheap valuations, this will lead to a sustained outperformance of Chilean stocks relative to their EM peers.
The soft-landing narrative has gotten nowhere at BCA but appears to be making some headway with broker-dealers and investors. We are preparing to lean against it once it pushes equity prices a little higher.
The US has the Magnificent Seven, Europe has the Magic Eight. What drives the performance of those eight stocks crucial to the European market?
The latest ‘nowcast’ for world economic growth in the fourth quarter has plunged to just 1.2 percent, marking the cusp of another world recession. One important implication is that expectations for oil demand growth and industrial metal demand growth are way too optimistic.
Many commentators have attributed the latest increase in Chinese interest rates to an improving economy, the large issuance of government bonds, the tax payments season, and other technical factors. Yet, these explanations are missing the key point: the PBoC has steered interbank rates higher to defend the currency. Higher borrowing costs are the last thing the mainland economy now needs.
European markets have room to rebound in the coming weeks, however, a recession looms. What are the lessons from history that investors can use to position themselves under these conditions?
Labor markets are softening in most developed economies, as is usually the case in the lead-up to recessions. Our base case is that the global recession will begin in the second half of 2024, but we will be monitoring our MacroQuant model on a daily basis for confirmation.