Equities
Despite the blah opening to the year, we do not think stocks have reached an inflection point. We expect that incoming data will continue to flatter the soft-landing narrative for another couple of months, helping the S&P 500 to establish a new all-time high before the rally runs out of steam.
The Santa Claus rally has been fueled by investors optimism about a soft landing which is the least likely macro outcome in 2024. A pullback in the market is imminent as the probability of "too hot" or "too cold" will get priced in. We are downgrading Software and Services on a tactical basis to take profits but maintaining a strategic overweight in the same trade.
Following today’s US jobs data release, the Joshi rule real-time US recession indicator inched up to 0.18 and is now just a whisker from its recession event-horizon of 0.20.
A soft landing can be achieved but not maintained. We are cutting our tactical recommendation on stocks from overweight to neutral and scaling back our long-duration stance.
The market is excited by the idea that the Fed will cut rates early this year, even without a recession. But is that likely, with inflation still set to be around 2.8% mid-year?
