Global Investing

Ok, it’s a big policy week and of course it could either way for markets. An awful lot of ECB and Fed easing expectations may well be in the price already, so some delivery would appear to be important especially now that ECB chief Mario Draghi has set everyone up for fireworks in Frankfurt.

But if it’s even possible to look beyond the meetings for a moment, it’s interesting to see how the other forces are stacked up.

Perhaps the least obvious market statistic as July draws to a close is that, with gains of more than 10 percent, Wall St equities have so far had their best year-to-date since 2003. Who would have thunk it in a summer of market doom and despair.  Now that could be a blessing or a curse for those trying to parse the remainder of the year. Gloomy chartists and uber-bears such as SocGen’s Albert Edwards warn variously of either hyper-negative chart signals on the S&P500, such as the “Ultimate Death Cross”, or claims that the U.S. has already entered recession in the third quarter.

On the other hand, the economic data isn’t playing ball with doomsters, as can be seen in Thursday’s latest U.S. consumer and business confidence readings as well as the latest house price data. What’s more, the closely watched Citigroup Economic Surprise index, though still in negative territory, is turning higher again as a result amid some hopes for at least a midyear fillip in manufacturing worldwide. Of course surprises are only relative to expectations. But then sufficiently lowered expectations are no bad thing in a marketplace attempting to discount all available information. It’s true too of the ongoing U.S. earnings season, where there had been a sharp downgrade of forecasts in the weeks leading up the corporate reports.  Thomson Reuters data shows that of the 303 firms in the S&P500 who have already reported Q2 earnings, some 66 percent are above analysts expectations — just shy of the average of of the past four quarters of 68 percent.

There is the hoary old argument that lukewarm economic signals will prevent the Fed from moving soon again on QE3, in part because the bar may be higher in an election year. But that just throws us back to the policy arena yet again and we promised to step aside from that for now!

European equities are getting some investor interest again.

As the ongoing debt crisis erodes consumer spending and corporate profits, the euro zone’s share  in investors’ equity portfolios has fallen in the past year –Reuters polls show holdings of euro zone stocks at 25 percent versus over 36 percent a year back.  Cash has fled instead to U.S. stocks, opening up a record valuation gap between the European and U.S. shares. (see graphics below from my colleague Scott Barber). In fact no other region has ever been considered as cheap as the euro zone is now,  a monthly survey by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch found in June.

That could offer investors a powerful incentive to return, especially as there are signs of serious efforts to tackle the crisis by deploying the euro zone’s rescue fund.

Pioneer Investments has moved to an overweight position on European stocks. While Pioneer’s head of global asset allocation research Monica Defend stresses the overweight is a small one compared to, say, its position in emerging markets, she says:

One of the very few positives for the world economy over the second quarter — or at least for the majority of the world that imports oil — has been an almost $40 per barrel plunge in the spot price of Brent crude. As the euro zone crisis, yet another soft patch stateside and a worryingly steep slowdown in the BRICs all combined to pull the demand rug from under the energy markets, the traditional stabilising effects of oil returned to the fray. So much so that by the last week in June, the annual drop in oil prices was a whopping 20%. Apart from putting more money in household and business purses by directly lowering fuel bills and eventually the cost of products with high energy inputs, the drop in oil prices should have a significant impact on headline consumer inflation rates that are already falling well below danger rates seen last year. And for central banks around the world desperate to ease monetary policy and print money again to offset the ravages of deleveraging banks, this is a major relief and will amount to a green light for many — not least the European Central Bank which is now widely expected to cut interest rates again this Thursday.

Of course, disinflation and not deflation is what everyone wants. The latter would disastrous for still highly indebted western economies and would further reinforce comparisons with Japan’s 20 year funk. But on the assumption “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke at the U.S. Federal Reserve and his G20 counterparts are still as committed to fighting deflation at all costs, we can assume more easing is the pipeline — certainly if oil prices continue to oblige.  Latest data for May from the OECD give a good aggregate view across major economies. Annual inflation in the OECD area slowed to 2.1% in the year to May 2012, compared with 2.5% in the year to April 2012 – the lowest rate since January 2011. While this was heavily influenced by oil and food price drops, core prices also dipped below 2% to 1.9% in May.

JP Morgan economists Joseph Lupton and David Hensley, meantime, say their measure of global inflation is set to move below their global central bank target of 2.6% (which they aggregate across 26 countries)  for the first time since September 2010.

QE, some version of it or even the thought of it, seems to have raised all boats yet again — for a bit at least. You’d not really guess it from all the brinkmanship, crisis management and apocalyptic debates of the past month, but June has so far turned out to be a fairly upbeat month – weirdly. World equities are up more than 6 percent since June, lead by a 20 percent jump in European bank stocks and even a 20 percent jump in depressed Greek stocks. The Spanish may found themselves at the centre of the euro debt storm now, but even 10-year Spanish debt yields have returned to June 1 levels after briefly toying with record highs above 7%  in and around its own bank bailout and the Greek election. And the likes of Italian and Irish borrowing rates are actually down this month.  Ok, all that’s after a lousy May that blew up most of the LTRO-inspired first-quarter market gains. But, on a broad global level at least, stocks are still in the black for the year so far. It was certainly “sell in May” yet again this year, but it’s open question whether you stay away til St Ledgers day in September, as the hoary old adage would have it.

On the euro story, the Greeks didn’t go for the nuclear option last weekend at least and it looks like there are some serious proposals on the EU summit table for next week – talk of banking union, EFSF/ESM bond buying programmes, euro bills if not bonds, EIB infrastructure/project bonds to try and catalyse some growth,  and reasonable flexibility from Berlin and others on bailout austerity demands. The Fed has announced that it will twist again like it did last summer, by extending the Treasury yield curve programme by more than a quarter of a trillion dollars, and there are still hopes of it at least raising the prospect of more direct QE. The BoE is already chomping at that bit, as well as lending direct to SMEs, and most investors expect some further easing from the ECB in the weeks and months ahead.

Of course all that could disappoint once more and expectations are getting pumped up again as per June market performance numbers. The EU summit won’t deliver on everything, but there is some realization at least that they need to talk turkey on ways to prevent repeated rolling creditor strikes locking out governments out of the most basic of financing — only then have those very same creditors shun countries again when they agree to punishing fiscal adjustments. A credible growth plan helps a little but some pooling of debt looks unavoidable unless they seriously want to remain in perma-crisis for the rest of the year and probably many years to come. It may be a step too far before next year’s German elections, but surely even Berlin can now see that the bill gets ever higher the longer they wait.

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.

Is the National Bank of Poland (NBP) the last inflation-targeting central bank still standing?

The bank shocked many today with a quarter point rate rise, naming stubbornly high inflation as the reason, and signalling that more tightening is on its way. The NBP has sounded hawkish in recent weeks but few had actually expected it to carry through its threat to raise rates. Economic indicators of late have been far from cheerful – just hours after the rate rise, data showed Polish car production slumped 30 percent in April from year-ago levels. PMI numbers last week pointed to further deterioration ahead for manufacturing. And sitting as it does on the euro zone’s doorstep, Poland will be far more vulnerable than Brazil or Russia to any new setback in Greece. Its action therefore deserves praise, says Benoit Anne, head of emerging markets strategy at Societe Generale.

(Poland’s central bank) is one of the last orthodox inflation-targeting central banks in the global emerging market central bank universe. They are taking action because they are seeing inflation creeping up and have decided to be proactive.

The European Central Bank kept interest rates on hold on Thursday.  President Mario Draghi urged euro zone governments to agree a growth strategy to go hand in hand with fiscal discipline, but as thousands of Spaniards protested in the streets he gave no sign the bank would do more to address people’s fears about the economy

The divergence between Euro zone countries is starting to impact analyst estimates for earnings. As this chart shows earnings forecasts for Spain and Portugal are seeing more downgrades than Germany or France.

The inflation rate in Turkey rose to 11.1% in April, putting pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates:

Just as global markets nurse a hangover from their Q1 binge on cheap ECB lending — a circa 1 trillion euro flood of 1%, 3-year loans to euro zone banks in December and February (anodynely dubbed a Long-Term Refinancing Operation) — there’s every chance they may get, or at least need, a proverbial hair of the dog.

At least that’s what Citi chief economist Willem Buiter and team think despite regular insistence from ECB top brass that the recent two-legged LTRO was likely a one off.

Even though Citi late Wednesday nudged up its world growth forecast for a third month running, in keeping with Tuesday’s IMF’s upgrade , it remains significantly more bearish on headline numbers and sees PPP-weighted global growth this  year and next at 3.1% and 3.5% compared with the Fund’s call of 3.5% and 4.1%.

Spanish 10-year bond yields hit 6%, around the levels seen in Ireland/Portugal and Italy/Spain at the start and resumption of ECB bond purchases.

U.S. retail sales rose more than expected in March as Americans shrugged off high gasoline prices.

Currency speculators boosted their bets against the euro in the latest week. Figures from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released on Friday showed a jump in euro net shorts of 101,364 contracts this week from 79,480 previously.

Markets starting to worry about an end to QE/LTRO liquidity?

Forward looking PMI data is starting to show a divergence between the UK and the euro zone:

German factory orders, which tend to lead GDP growth, fell 6.1% in February from the previous year.