Global Investing

In normal times, an aggressive central bank campaign to cut interest rates would provide fodder for stock market bulls. That’s not happening in Brazil. Its interest rate, the Selic, has fallen 350 basis points since last August and is likely to fall further at this week’s meeting to a record low of 8.5 percent. Yet the Sao Paulo stock market is among the world’s worst performers this year, with losses of around 4 percent. That’s better than fellow BRIC Russia but far worse than India and China.

Brazil’s central bank and government are understandably worried about a Chinese growth slowdown that would eat into Brazilian commodity exports. They are therefore hoping that rate cuts will prepare the domestic economy to take up the slack.

But the haste to cut interest rates appears to have spooked some foreign investors, with many seeing the moves as evidence of political pressure on the central bank. A closely-watched survey from Bank of America/Merill Lynch showed that fund managers had swung into a net 14 percent underweight on Brazil in May from a net overweight of over 20 percent in April (See graphic). This is the first time investors have turned negative on Brazil since February 2011, BofA/ML said.

Brazil is the least favoured BRIC play forNick Timberlake, who oversees more than $10 billion in BRIC equities at  HSBC Global Asset Management. It accounts for just 17 percent of the portfolio (India is 22 percent, China 29 percent and Russia 31 percent). That’s because:

Valuation signals in Brazil and companies’ profitability are not as strong as the other BRICs…and it’s fair to say there are question marks over the independence of the central bank.

(This May 25 post has been updated to reflect AGMs which took place on Friday and to include graphics)

We’ve just witnessed a stirring spectacle of shareholder empowerment during the British AGM season. Haven’t we?

Well…. I’ve pulled together some numbers on remuneration resolutions from the 63 FTSE100 AGMs we’ve seen so far this year which shows that the average protest vote against pay did indeed go up from 2011 to 2012….

On Friday 283 companies in the S&P 500 had a dividend yield higher than the 10-year Treasury yield, at yesterday’s close this had fallen to 266 but remains very high compared to the last 5-years.

Italian consumer morale plunged to its lowest level on record in May as Italians’ pessimism over the state of the economy plumbed new depths.

Germany set a zero coupon on its new Schatz, the first time it has done so on debt of such maturity. The bid to cover ratio for the new bond at the auction was 1.7, compared with 1.8 at a sale of two-year debt on April 18.

As gloomy first paragraphs go, you’d have to go some to top Schroders’ Jonathan Smith’s introduction to a report touting his firm’s momentum investing offering.

“As the global economy continues to de-leverage, the next decade looks likely to be a period of weak growth and low interest rates, punctuated by bouts of heightened instability and crisis.”

Oh but hang on!, here’s Legal & General Investment Management having a go.

As credit default swaps (CDS) for many euro zone sovereigns have zoomed to ever new record highs this year, Chinese CDS too have been quietly creeping higher. Five-year CDS are around 135 bps today, meaning it costs $135,000 a year to insure exposure to $10 million of Chinese risk over a five-year period. According to this graphic from data provider Markit, they are up almost 45 basis points in the past six weeks.  In fact they are double the levels seen a year ago.

That looks modest given some of the numbers in Europe. But worries over China, while not in

the same league as for the euro zone, are clearly growing, as many fear that the real scale of indebtedness and bad loans in the economy could be higher than anyone knows.  Above all, investors have been fretting about a possible hard landing for the economy, with the government unable to control  a growth slowdown.

Fears that Athens is on the brink of crashing out of the euro zone and igniting a renewed financial crisis have rattled global markets and alarmed world leaders, with Greece set to figure high on the agenda at a G8 summit later this week. This chart shows the impact on assets since the Greek election:

Euro zone banks now account for only 8% of total euro zone market value – they were over over 20% of the market in 2007:

Japan’s economy rebounded in January-March from a lull in the previous quarter, shaking off the pain of a strong yen and Europe’s debt crisis on solid consumer spending and rebuilding from last year’s earthquake.

The Indian rupee’s plunge this week to record lows will have surprised no one. After all, the currency has been inching towards this for weeks, propelled by the government’s paralysis on vital reforms and tax wrangles with big foreign investors. These are leading to a drying up of FDI and accelerating the exodus from stock markets. Industrial production and exports have been falling.  High oil prices have added a nasty twist to that cocktail. If the euro zone noise gets louder, a balance of payments crisis may loom. The rupee could fall further to 56 per dollar, most analysts predict.

True, the rupee is not the only emerging currency that is taking a hit. But the Reserve Bank of India looks especially powerless to stem the decline. (See here for an article by my colleagues in Mumbai) .  One reason  the RBI’s hands are  effectively tied is that  India is one of the few emerging economies that has failed to build up its hard currency reserves since the 2008 crisis and so is unable to spend in the currency’s defence. Usable FX reserves stand now around $260 bilion, down from $300 billion just before the 2008 crisis.  See the following graphic from UBS which shows that relative to GDP, India’s reserve loss has been the greatest in emerging markets.

But there is worse. The relative decline in reserves since 2008 coincides with a ballooning in India’s external debt, both private and public. Comprising mostly of corporate borrowing and trade credit, the debt stands at $350  billion, up from $225 billion four years back.

The euro zone just avoided recession in the first quarter of 2012 but the region’s debt crisis sapped the life out of the French and Italian economies and widened a split with paymaster Germany.

Click here for an interactive map showing which European Union countries are in recession.

The technology sector has been leading the way in the S&P 500 in performance terms so far this year with energy stocks at the bottom of the list. Since the start of this quarter financials have seen the largest reverse in performance.

The yield on 10-year  U.S. Treasuries, fell to their lowest levels since early October today, breaking decisively below 1.80 percent. That compares to the dividend yield on the S&P 500 of 2.28%.

The European Central Bank kept its government bond-buy programme in hibernation for the ninth week in a row last week. The ECB may come under pressure to act as  yields on Spanish 10-year government bonds rose further above 6% today.

Output at factories in the euro zone unexpectedly fell in March, the latest in a series of disappointing numbers signalling that the bloc’s recession may not be as mild as policymakers hope. On an annual basis, factory output dived 2.2 percent in March, the fourth consecutive monthly slide, Eurostat said, and only Germany, Slovenia and Slovakia were able to post growth in the month.

Greek gloom dominates the start of the week as new elections there look inevitable and talk of Greek euro exit, or a Grexit” as common market parlance now has it, mounts. All risk assets and securities hinged on global growth have been hit, with China’s weekend reserve ratio easing doing little to offset gloomy data from world’s second biggest economy at the end of last week. World stocks are down heavily and emerging markets are underperforming; the euro has fallen to near 4-month lows below $1.29; safe haven core government debt is bid as euro peripheral debt yields in Italy and Spain push higher; and global growth bellwethers such as crude oil and the Australian dollar are down – the latter below parity against the US dollar for the first time in 5 months.

Financial research reports on Monday and over the weekend were just as gloomy, but plenty of interesting takes:

Bank of New York Mellon’s Simon Derrick’s view of the Greek political impasse concluded “there is at least an evens chance that the latter part of this summer will see what had officially been seen up until last November as an impossibility: a nation leaving the EUR.”