Latest from BCA Research

Despite the recent easing in financial conditions and hopes around Chinese stimulus, MacroQuant sees a heightened risk that the US will fall into a recession over the next 12 months. As such, it recommends an underweight to stocks, counterbalanced by an overweight to bonds.

Despite the recent easing in financial conditions and hopes around Chinese stimulus, MacroQuant sees a heightened risk that the US will fall into a recession over the next 12 months. As such, it recommends an underweight to stocks, counterbalanced by an overweight to bonds.

Special Report

Underweight Real Estate over a tactical investment horizon. We expect economic growth to downshift, and even lower interest rates won’t benefit the sector in such conditions. Further, delinquency rates are rising and broadening across subsectors, which does not bode well for sector performance. The risk to our view, is that Real Estate will rally if the Fed succeeds in orchestrating a soft landing.

Special Report

The Nifty Fifty bull market of the early seventies was a mania in which investors got carried away chasing after a subset of prized growth stocks. While we do not think the Magnificent Seven stocks are in a bubble, they do have some parallels with the growth stars of 50 years ago.

Bank Credit Analyst

US nuclear energy is in a state of decay. The industry lacks standardization, making it expensive and timely to deploy new nuclear energy projects. Policy support is also lacking compared to other energy sources. Public opinion on nuclear energy is warming but will do little for commercial uptake – investors still face massively high startup costs. Meanwhile, competition is heating up. China is fast approaching the global top spot with its grand nuclear energy strategy. For once, the US may not be the best investment case we have all come to know.

Back in 2022, when Jamie Dimon was predicting an economic hurricane, I was one of the few strategists reassuring clients that the US was not at imminent risk of a recession.

After resisting the consensus narrative in 2022 that a US recession was imminent, and then predicting an immaculate disinflation for 2023, the Global Investment Strategy team has joined the dark side and is now expecting a recession to start in the US within the next six months. Accordingly, we recommend that investors underweight stocks and overweight government bonds.

We consider the possibility that lower interest rates could lead to an increase in household borrowing, prolonging the economic recovery.

Our quant model shows Democrats winning the election at a 56% probability, with 303 electoral college votes. But swing state economies are slowing and Democrats’ odds in Michigan fell. Trump can win with Georgia, Michigan, plus one other state. Neither the Fed nor China’s stimulus should reduce one’s odds of a Republican upset.

Markets are rallying on Fed rate cuts and China stimulus but there will also be October surprises ahead of the US election, which Trump could still win. Russia’s conflict with the West is escalating and the Middle East is destabilizing further. Investors should favor US bonds but they should add some risk in emerging markets in response to China’s policy turn.