Asset Allocation
This week has not been short of developments on Chinese policy. After unleashing a monetary policy blitz, the authorities held an unscheduled Politburo meeting resulting in a pledge to take actions towards stabilizing the housing market and to support fiscal…
US investment grade and high yield spreads have tightened 22 and 75 bps since their August highs. Risk assets have cheered the outsized Fed rate cut as the narrative in markets aligns with the Fed’s conviction it can deliver a soft landing. Our US Bond…
The PBoC announced further measures to stimulate the economy on Tuesday. It lowered the reserve requirement ratio from 10% to 9.5%, cut the 7-day reverse repo rate by 20 bps (following Monday’s 10 bps cut to the 14-day reverse repo rate), lowered borrowing…
German equities have outperformed their Euro Area peers on a year-to-date basis, with the gap widening since May. The MSCI Germany Index returned nearly 4.5 percentage points more than the MSCI Eurozone index over the latter period. Since the beginning of the…
According to BCA Research’s European Investment Strategy, the low rate of innovation in Europe is a major problem for the economy. Not only does it prevent Europe from standing at the technological frontier, but it also contributes to the low rate of…
The Norges Bank kept its policy rate unchanged at 4.5% at its September meeting and signaled low odds of policy easing before the first quarter of 2025. The inflation backdrop does not warrant easing policy. Although core CPI cooled to 3.2% y/y in August,…
The Bank of Japan’s policy normalization has been accompanied by exceptional outperformance by Japanese banks. Japanese banks have outperformed both the country’s broader market as well as the MSCI ACW Banks index by 10.3% and 2.6%, respectively, so far this…
According to BCA Research’s Emerging Markets Strategy service, investor sentiment in Vietnamese markets has soured significantly since 2022, when the authorities' sweeping crackdown on alleged corruption in the real estate sector expanded to political…
According to BCA Research’s Foreign Exchange Strategy and Global Investment Strategy services, most carry investors have covered their positions. Away from day-to-day noise, the longer-term trajectory of yen exchange rates will be driven by fundamentals. …
The Fed started its easing cycle with a bang, cutting the policy rate by 50 basis points in September, above consensus expectations but in line with odds embedded in the futures and OIS curves. Our US Bond strategists had highlighted it is unusual for the…