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The S&P transports index’s recovery rally has stalled recently and is a cause for concern for the overall market. In more detail, the recent gulf between relative share prices and the SPX has widened and warns that the overall market will likely pullback. As a reminder, we first became tactically cautious on the overall market in the March 4thWeekly Report, and today we reiterate this short-term cautious stance, especially given FedEx’s recent warning. Thus, we are making two subsurface transport changes today, downgrading a subgroup to underweight that commands lofty valuations at a time when leading profit indicators are flashing red, and also downgrading to neutral a globally exposed transport subindex. Please see the following three Insights detailing our intra-transportation industry moves.
The Fed surprised investors yesterday with a material downgrade to their expected path of the federal funds rate over the next three years. The flatter profile for short-term interest rates came alongside lower expectations for growth, higher expectations for…
To judge the impact of antitrust cases on stock prices, our work zoomed in on three defining moments in each case: The Accusation The filing of a suit was generally negative for the stock price of the accused company. The stock price of every one of the…
A major antitrust suit could happen within the next couple of years, paradoxically ushering in a rewarding investment opportunity. A joint report between our geopolitical strategy and global asset allocation teams examined some of the biggest antitrust cases…
Highlights Investors should use the following dynamic for tactical asset allocation: 1. Sum the 10-year yields on the T-bond, German bund, and JGB. 2. When the sum is near 4 percent, it is prudent to de-risk portfolios and sit aside, at least for a while. It is a good level to buy a mixed portfolio of high-quality 10-year government bonds. 3. Just below this level, a sum in the 3-4 percent range defines a kind of ‘no man’s land’ in which equities drift sideways. 4. When the sum is near 3 percent, the seemingly rich valuations of equities versus bonds is fully justified. And it is appropriate to redeploy tactically from bonds to equities (Chart of the Week). 5. Use the 65-day fractal dimension to pinpoint the precise transition points between asset-classes: as for example, successfully achieved for the DAX versus German bunds. Right now, with the sum near 3 percent, it is still appropriate to be overweight equities versus bonds, and our preferred expression is overweight the DAX versus the German long bund. Feature Chart of the WeekThe Rule Of 4 Becomes The Rule Of 3 The global long bond yield recently hit a two-year low (Chart I-2). This is the direct result of central banks’ pivot to dovish – a commitment to keep policy rates at current levels, rather than to hike, for the foreseeable future. Chart I-2The Global Long Bond Yield Recently Hit A Two-Year Low One consequence is that high-quality bonds have become riskier. Consider a German bund or a JGB which is yielding zero percent. The short-term potential for capital appreciation – nominal or real – has almost vanished, while the potential for vicious losses has increased dramatically. The technical term for this negative asymmetry is negative skew. Years of research in a field of behavioural economics called Prospect Theory concludes that negative skew is the metric that best encapsulates investment risk. The Correct Way Of Thinking About Investment Risk A great misunderstanding of finance is to equate risk with volatility. Risky assets, such as equities, are risky not because they are volatile in the conventional sense. After all, who minds when their asset price goes up sharply? Risky assets are risky because they have the propensity to experience much larger short-term losses than short-term gains – captured in the saying: equities climb up the stairs on the way up, but they jump out of the window on the way down. High-quality bonds have become riskier. Another great misunderstanding of finance is the idea that bonds offer a diversification benefit and, therefore, that investors should accept a lower return from them. This argument is also flawed. The bond market is bigger than the equity market, and just as bonds are a diversifier for equity investments, equities are a diversifier for bond investments. Indeed, equities have protected bond investors during vicious sell-offs in the bond market such as after Trump’s shock victory in 2016. So we could equally argue that equities offer a diversification benefit. In fact, the correct way of thinking about investment risk is as follows: An investment’s risk depends on the negative asymmetry of its short-term returns. At very low bond yields, bond returns develop the same negative asymmetry as equity returns (Chart I-3). This means that equities lose their excess riskiness versus bonds, requiring equity valuations to experience a phase transition sharply higher (Chart I-4). But when bond yields normalize, equities regain their excess riskiness versus bonds – and their valuations must suffer a phase transition sharply lower. The phase transition in equity valuations is most pronounced when the global 10-year bond yield goes up or down through 2 percent (Chart I-5). This dynamic proved to be the biggest driver of asset allocation in 2018, and is likely to be a big driver in 2019 too. Essentially, higher bond yields can suddenly and viciously undermine the valuation support of equities, triggering a plunge in the stock market and other risk-assets which threatens a disinflationary impulse. The unsurprising response from central banks is to pivot back to dovish, pulling back bond yields to previous lows. These lower bond yields then push up equity (and other risk-asset) valuations back to previous highs. An investment’s risk depends on the negative asymmetry of its short-term returns. The good news is that record high valuations of risk-assets are fully justified if bond yields remain at current levels or decline further. But the longer-term danger is that these rich valuations are hyper-sensitive to rising bond yields. The Bubble In Everything The current episode of elevated risk-asset valuations is not unprecedented, but there is a crucial difference. Previous episodes of elevated risk-asset valuations tended to be localised, either by geography or sector: 1990 was focussed in Japan; 2000 was focussed in the dot com related sectors; 2008 was focussed in the U.S. mortgage and credit markets. Extraordinary monetary policy has boosted the valuations of all risk-assets across all geographies and all asset-classes. By comparison, the post-2008 global experiment with quantitative easing, and zero and negative interest rate policy has boosted the valuations of all risk-assets across all geographies and all asset-classes – equities (Chart I-6), credit (Chart I-7), and real estate (Chart I-8). This makes it considerably more dangerous, because we estimate that the total value of global risk-assets including real estate is $400 trillion, equal to about five times the size of the global economy.1 Chart I-6Equities Remain Richly Valued Chart I-7Credit Remains Richly Valued Chart I-8The EM Real Estate Boom Happened After 2008 Let’s say you had a risk-asset that was priced to generate 5 percent a year over the next decade. Now imagine that the valuation boost from ultra-accommodative monetary policy capitalises all of those future returns to today. For those future returns to drop to zero, today’s price must surge by 63 percent.2 If you were prudent, you might amortise today’s windfall to generate the original 5 percent a year over the next decade. But if you were imprudent, you might spend a large amount of the windfall today. The total value of global risk-assets equals five times the size of the global economy. Now let’s imagine a valuation derating moves the risk-asset’s returns back to the future. For those that had prudently amortised the original windfall, nothing has really changed and future spending patterns would not be impacted. But not everybody is prudent. For those that had imprudently spent the original windfall, future spending would inevitably suffer a nasty recession. The Rule Of 4 Becomes The Rule Of 3 How can we sense the crucial 2 percent level in the global 10-year bond yield? The answer is that it broadly equates to when the sum of the 10-year yields on the T-bond, German bund and JGB is at a 4 percent level (Chart I-9). This is the genesis of our very successful ‘Rule of 4’. In 2019, just as in 2018, investors should use the following dynamic for tactical asset allocation. The rule of 4 identifies when the global 10-year bond yield is at 2 percent. Chart I-9When The Sum Of 10-Year Yields On The T-Bond, Bund, And JGB Equals 4 Percent, The Global 10-Year Yield Equals 2 Percent Sum the 10-year yields on the T-bond, German bund, and JGB. When the sum is near 4 percent, it is prudent to de-risk portfolios and sit aside, at least for a while. It is a good level to buy a mixed portfolio of high-quality 10-year government bonds. Just below this level, a sum in the 3-4 percent range defines a kind of ‘no man’s land’ in which equities drift sideways. When the sum is near 3 percent, the seemingly rich valuations of equities versus bonds is fully justified. And it is appropriate to redeploy tactically from bonds to equities. Use the 65-day fractal dimension to pinpoint the precise transition points between asset-classes: as for example, successfully achieved for the DAX versus German bunds (Chart I-10). Overweight equities versus bonds. With the sum of the three 10-year yields now near 3 percent, the rule of 4 has, in a sense, become the rule of 3. It is still appropriate to be tactically overweight equities versus bonds, and our preferred expression is to overweight the DAX versus the German long bund. Chart I-10Use The 65-Day Fractal Dimension To Pinpoint The Precise Transition Points Between Asset-Classes Dhaval Joshi, Chief European Investment Strategist dhaval@bcaresearch.com Footnotes 1 Please see the European Investment Strategy Weekly Report “Trapped: Have Equities Trapped Bonds?”, September 13, 2018 available at eis.bcaresearch.com. 2 5 percent compounded over ten years.
The chart above shows that the trailing 12-month speculative grade default rate has been steadily falling since early 2017. However, it also shows that the fair value reading from our U.S. Bond Strategy team’s macro-driven default rate model has not fallen as…
At present, the average option-adjusted spread (OAS) on the Bloomberg Barclays High-Yield index is 388 bps. If we assume that defaults occur in line with the Moody’s baseline forecast during the next 12 months, then we would expect default losses of…
Underweight (High-Conviction) Shares in Facebook, a heavyweight component of the S&P interactive media & services index, have been falling recently as an exodus of executives, including the founders of the Instagram platform, have shaken investor confidence. This adds to our core concern over pending privacy regulation which may further dampen the company’s prospects, as highlighted in our initiation of the index last year.1 Facebook is not alone in facing regulatory struggles as anti-trust legislation against the other index heavyweight Alphabet seems ever more likely to gain traction; at least one presidential contender has made tech break-up part of her election platform. Beyond the headline risks faced by the S&P interactive media & services index, we remain concerned by the growth and valuation prospects. The sector’s forward earnings growth has collapsed to just above the zero line and fallen below the broad market (middle panel). Meanwhile, the slower-growing S&P interactive media & services index trades at an enormous premium to the S&P 500 (bottom panel). Bottom Line: We continue to think a mismatch exists between valuation, growth and regulatory headwinds and reiterate our high-conviction underweight in the S&P interactive media & services index. The ticker symbols in the stocks in this index are: S5INMS – GOOGL, GOOG, FB, TWTR and TRIP. 1 Please see BCA U.S. Equity Strategy Special Report, "Is The Stock Rally Long In The FAANG?," dated August 1, 2018, available at uses.bcaresearch.com.
Here’s a simple way to grasp this crucial point: a 1.5 percent growth rate would be a very pleasing outcome for Europe, it would be a very unpleasing outcome for the U.S., and it would be a catastrophic outcome for China. The reason is that if a population is…

