Capex

We will only move to a fully defensive stance if the “whites of the recession’s eyes” appear. So far, they have not. We will be increasingly looking to our MacroQuant model for guidance on when the next turning point in markets may come.

We will abandon our recession call if US economic data show clear signs of stabilization over the summer months. For now, that has not happened. Maintain a modest underweight to stocks but look to get more defensive if MacroQuant’s equity z-score falls below -1.

Investors should modestly underweight equities in their portfolios and look to turn more aggressively defensive once the whites of the recession’s eyes are visible. We think that will happen within the next few months.

India's IT service exports have been booming and will continue to do so despite wider AI usage. Indian IT stocks, however, will not benefit from it as the expanding Global Capability Centers (GCCs) in India compete with the nation’s IT companies, driving the latter's profitability down.

Five questions, five answers from the road. We unpack what Europe’s biggest investors are worried about right now, from trade‑war whiplash to bund‑versus‑Treasury positioning; and where the real opportunities still lie.

It may take several months for the tariff shock and policy uncertainty to filter through the real economy, but survey-based data are already sending a warning. Equities have priced in a lot of good news, and investors are too sanguine about the risk of a US recession.

Hard aggregate macro data series remain solid, but surveys of businesses and consumers continue to worsen and the list of consumer-facing companies lowering earnings estimates gets longer by the week. We believe surging equities are ignoring the adverse effects of tariffs and reiterate our defensive asset allocation recommendations.