BCA Indicators/Model

Highlights 0 To 3 Months: Extended net short positioning and the recent moderation in economic data suggest that Treasury yields are ripe for a near-term pullback. Investors who are able should consider tactically buying bonds on a 0-3 month horizon, but with a tight stop loss. 6 to 12 Months: We recommend that investors maintain below-benchmark portfolio duration on a 6-12 month horizon, consistent with our Two Stage Bond Bear Market framework. While the credit cycle is in its late stages, it is still too soon to reduce exposure to corporate bonds. We will pare exposure to corporate bonds once our TIPS breakeven inflation targets are met. Total Return Forecasts: Our simple framework for estimating total bond returns reveals that risk/reward arguments clearly favor below-benchmark portfolio duration on a 12-month horizon. Feature Chart 1Two Milestones Two Milestones Two Milestones The U.S. bond market reached one noteworthy milestone last week and is quickly closing in on another. The first milestone is that the 10-year Treasury yield decisively broke through the 3% level that had defined its most recent peak (Chart 1). The second milestone is that the market is now close to fully pricing-in the likely near-term path for Fed rate hikes. We noted in a recent report that the Fed's "gradual" rate hike path is quite clearly defined as one 25 basis point rate hike per quarter.1 This equates to 100 bps on our 12-month Fed Funds Discounter, which currently sits at 91 bps, just below this key level (Chart 1, bottom panel). We continue to see upside in Treasury yields on a cyclical horizon. Though tactically, the likelihood of a near-term pullback in yields has increased greatly during the past few days. In this week's report we outline the case for a near-term (0-3 month) pullback in Treasury yields, but also look ahead by introducing a simple framework investors can use to make total return forecasts for all different U.S. bond sectors. The Case For A Near-Term Pullback In addition to the fact that the market is closer to fully discounting the likely near-term path of rate hikes than it has been for some time, there are two other reasons to expect a near-term, temporary pullback in yields. The first is that the below-benchmark duration trade has become the consensus position in the market (Chart 2). Net speculative short positions in 10-year Treasury futures have rarely been greater, and since the financial crisis large net short positions have correlated quite strongly with a decline in the 10-year yield during the subsequent three months. Similarly, positions reported in the JP Morgan Duration Survey are firmly in "net short" territory for both the "all clients" and "active clients" surveys. The Marketvane survey of bond sentiment has also turned bearish for only the fourth time since 2010. Each of the other three times has coincided with a near-term drop in yields. Chart 2Bond Market Looks Oversold Bond Market Looks Oversold Bond Market Looks Oversold But positioning alone would not be enough to convince us that yields might decline in the near-term. Investors also need a catalyst. An excuse to take profits on large net short positions that have been working well. That catalyst is typically a period of worse-than-expected economic data. To judge the trend in economic data relative to expectations we turn to the Economic Surprise Index. Chart 3Economic Surprise Index Economic Surprise Index Economic Surprise Index In a report from last year we demonstrated that if the Economic Surprise Index ends a month below (above) the zero line, it is very likely that Treasury yields fell (rose) during that month.2 Also, we know that the surprise index is mean reverting by its very nature. A long period of positive (negative) data surprises will certainly be followed an upward (downward) revision to investors' economic expectations. Eventually expectations become so elevated (depressed) that they become impossible to surpass (disappoint). The index will then start to mean revert. In that same report from last year we also introduced a simple auto-regressive model of the surprise index, designed to capture its average speed of mean reversion. Based on that model, which is purely a function of the index's own lags, we would expect the surprise index to dip slightly into negative territory in one month's time (Chart 3). Though given the large amount of uncertainty in the model, a fairer assessment would be that it is no longer a given that the surprise index will remain above the zero line in the near-term. Bottom Line: Extended net short positioning and the recent moderation in economic data suggest that Treasury yields are ripe for a near-term pullback. Investors who are able should consider tactically buying bonds on a 0-3 month horizon, but with a tight stop loss. Less nimble investors are better off riding out any potential near-term volatility and maintaining below-benchmark portfolio duration on a 6-12 month horizon. The Cyclical Picture Is Unchanged On a 6-12 month investment horizon, we are sticking with the playbook of our Two-Stage Bond Bear Market.3 The first stage is characterized by the re-anchoring of inflation expectations, and here, long-maturity TIPS breakeven inflation rates are still slightly below our target range of 2.3% to 2.5% (Chart 4). We also think bond investors should maintain an overweight allocation to spread product, though the time to trim exposure is approaching. Because the Fed's support for credit markets will weaken as inflation pressures mount, we will start reducing exposure to spread product once both the 10-year and 5-year/5-year forward TIPS breakeven inflation rates are within our target 2.3% to 2.5% band. The intuition that the credit cycle is long in the tooth is further supported by the fact that the 2/10 Treasury curve is close to 50 bps (Chart 4, bottom panel). In a recent report we showed that while corporate bond excess returns relative to Treasuries usually remain positive until the yield curve inverts, they decline dramatically once the slope dips below 50 bps.4 Valuation also remains tight in the corporate bond market. While investment grade corporate bond spreads have widened in recent months, the junk spread is still close to its post-crisis low, as is the differential between the junk and investment grade spread (Chart 5). Chart 4Inflation Compensation Inflation Compensation Inflation Compensation Chart 5Flirting With The Lows Flirting With The Lows Flirting With The Lows The recent widening of investment grade corporate spreads appears to simply reflect a reversion to more reasonable valuation levels, after they had been extremely expensive at the start of the year. Chart 6 shows the 12-month breakeven spread for each investment grade credit tier. We look at the breakeven spread - defined as the spread widening required to lose money versus Treasuries on a 12-month horizon - in order to adjust for the changing duration of the index over time. Chart 6 also shows the breakeven spread as a percentile rank relative to history. In other words, it shows the percentage of time that the breakeven spread has been lower in the past. Notice that earlier in the year investment grade corporate spreads had been approaching all-time expensive levels. They are now closer to the 25th percentile, much more in line with similar spreads for the High-Yield credit tiers (Chart 7). Chart 6Investment Grade Breakeven Spreads Investment Grade Breakeven Spreads Investment Grade Breakeven Spreads Chart 7High-Yield Breakeven Spreads High-Yield Breakeven Spreads High-Yield Breakeven Spreads There is no longer a risk-adjusted opportunity in high-yield corporate bonds relative to investment grade. Bottom Line: We recommend that investors maintain below-benchmark portfolio duration on a 6-12 month horizon, consistent with our Two Stage Bond Bear Market framework. While the credit cycle is in its late stages, it is still too soon to reduce exposure to corporate bonds. We will pare exposure to corporate bonds once our TIPS breakeven inflation targets are met. A Simple Framework For Forecasting Total Returns In a recent report we observed that, using a 12-month investment horizon, the difference between market expectations for the change in the federal funds rate and the actual change in the federal funds rate closely tracks the price return from the Bloomberg Barclays Treasury index.5 With that in mind, this week we extend that analysis to develop a simple framework for forecasting bond total returns. The framework relies on the fact that the "12-month rate hike surprise" described above is correlated with the 12-month change in Treasury yields. The Appendix to this report shows the historical correlation between the 12-month rate hike surprise and the 12-month change in several different par-coupon Treasury yields. Unsurprisingly, the correlation is very strong for short maturity yields, and gradually weakens as we move further out the curve. This is important because it means that the total return forecasts we generate from this exercise will be more accurate for bond sectors with low duration than for those with high duration. Table 1 shows the total return forecasts we generated for the Bloomberg Barclays Treasury Master Index and for several of its maturity buckets. The results are presented in such a way that readers can impose their own forecasts for the number of Fed rate hikes that will occur during the next 12 months, and then map that forecast to a reasonable expectation for Treasury total returns. Table 1Treasury Index Total Return Forecasts Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Pulling Back And Looking Ahead For example, in a scenario where the Fed lifts rates four times (100 bps) during the next year, given current market pricing the rate hike surprise will be modestly negative.6 Using the historical correlations shown in the Appendix, we map that rate hike surprise to changes in the par-coupon Treasury curve and then use the duration and convexity attributes of each individual index to determine how that shift in the Treasury curve will impact index returns. In the scenario described above we would expect the Treasury Master Index to return +2.13% during the next year. While this is a slightly positive number, it is close enough to zero that it does not provide much insulation from changes in long-dated yields that are unrelated to the near-term path for rate hikes. Further, in the four rate hike scenario, investors moving from the Treasury Master Index to the 1-3 year index need only sacrifice 12 bps of expected return to reduce their duration risk by a factor of three. Such a risk/reward trade-off clearly favors a below-benchmark duration stance on a 12-month investment horizon. Table 2 repeats the same exercise but for the major spread sectors of the U.S. bond market. To estimate spread sector total returns we need to forecast both the shift in the Treasury curve and whether spreads will widen, tighten or remain constant. Specifically, we assume that spreads either widen or tighten by the standard deviation of annual spread changes for each index, calculated using a post-crisis interval. Table 2Spread Product Total Return Forecasts Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Pulling Back And Looking Ahead The results show that, in a four rate hike scenario, we should expect 12-month investment grade corporate bond total returns of approximately 3.4%, assuming also that spreads stay flat. In a scenario where the average index spread widens by 42 bps, we should expect total returns of only 1%. Bottom Line: Our simple framework for estimating total bond returns reveals that risk/reward arguments clearly favor below-benchmark portfolio duration on a 12-month horizon. Spread product returns should continue to beat Treasuries for the time being, but the window for outperformance is starting to close. Ryan Swift, Vice President U.S. Bond Strategy rswift@bcaresearch.com Appendix Chart 8Change In 1-Year Yield Vs. 12-Month ##br## Fed Funds Rate Surprise Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Chart 9Change In 2-Year Yield Vs. 12-Month ##br## Fed Funds Rate Surprise Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Chart 10Change In 3-Year Yield Vs. 12-Month ##br##Fed Funds Rate Surprise Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Chart 11Change In 5-Year Yield Vs.12-Month ##br##Fed Funds Rate Surprise Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Chart 12Change In 7-Year Yield Vs. 12-Month ##br##Fed Funds Rate Surprise Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Chart 13Change In 10-Year Yield Vs. 12-Month ##br##Fed Funds Rate Surprise Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Chart 14Change In 30-Year Yield Vs. 12-Month ##br## Fed Funds Rate Surprise Pulling Back And Looking Ahead Pulling Back And Looking Ahead 1 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Portfolio Allocation Summary, "Coming To Grips With Gradualism", dated May 8, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 2 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, "How Much Higher For Yields?", dated October 31, 2017, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 3 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, "A Signal From Gold?", dated May 1, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 4 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, "As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt", dated April 24, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 5 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, "Back To Basics", dated April 17, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 6 The 12-month rate hike surprise is defined as the 12-month Fed Funds Discounter less the actual change in the fed funds rate during the following 12 months. Fixed Income Sector Performance Recommended Portfolio Specification

Highlights Uncovered Interest Rate Parity still works for currencies. However, it needs to be based on a combination of short- and long-term real rates. Currencies are also affected by global risk appetite, as approximated by corporate spreads and commodity prices. For the next six months, the euro has additional downside, while the dollar's rebound could run further. The CAD also looks attractive. Feature In July 2016, in a Special Report titled, "In Search Of A Lost Timing Model," we introduced a set of intermediate-term models to complement our long-term fair value models for various currencies.1 These groups of models provide additional discipline - a sanity check if you will - to our regular analysis. Additionally, these models can help global equity investors manage their currency exposure, having increased the Sharpe ratio of global equity portfolios vis-à-vis other hedging strategies, and also for a host of base-currencies.2 In this report, we review the logic underpinning these intermediate-term models and provide commentary on their most recent readings for the G10 currencies vis-à-vis the USD. UIP, Revisited The Uncovered Interest Rate Parity (UIP) relationship is at the core of this modeling exercise. This theory suggests that an equilibrium exchange rate is the one that will make an investor indifferent between holding the bonds of Country A or Country B. This means that as interest rates rise in Country A relative to Country B, the currency of Country B will fall today in order to appreciate in the future. These higher expected returns are what will drive investors to hold the lower-yielding bonds of Country B. Chart 1Interest Rate Parity: ##br##Generally Helpful, But... Interest Rate Parity: Generally Helpful, But... Interest Rate Parity: Generally Helpful, But... There has long been debate as to whether investors should focus on short rates or long rates when looking at exchange rates through the prism of UIP. This debate has regained vigor in the past six months as the dollar has greatly lagged the levels implied by 2-year rate differentials (Chart 1). Research by the Federal Reserve and the IMF suggests incorporating longer-term rates to UIP models increase their accuracy.3 This informational advantage works whether policy rates are or aren't close to their lower bound.4 Incorporating long-term rates as an explanatory variable increases the performance of UIP models because exchange rate movements do not only reflect current interest rate conditions, but currency market investors also try to anticipate the path of interest rates over many periods. By definition, long-term bonds do just that, as they are based on the expected path of short rates over their maturity - as well as a term premium, which compensates for the uncertain nature of future interest rates. There is another reason why long-term rate differential changes improve the power of UIP models. Since UIP models are based on the concept of indifference of investors between assets in two countries, changes in the spreads between 10-year bonds in these two countries will create more volatility in the currency pair than changes in the spreads between 3-month rates. This is because an equivalent delta in the 10-year spread will have much greater impact on the relative prices of the bonds than on the short-term paper, courtesy of their much more elevated duration. To compensate for these greater changes in prices, the currency does have to overshoot its long-term PPP to a much greater extent to entice investors trading the long end of the curve. Bottom Line: The interest rate parity relationship still constitutes the bedrock of any shorter-term currency fair value model. However, to increase its accuracy, both long-term and short-term rates should be used. Real Rates Really Count Another perennial question regarding exchange rate determination is whether to use nominal or real rate differentials. At a theoretical level, real rates are what matter. Investors can look through the loss of purchasing power created by inflation. Therefore, exchange rates overshoot around real rate differentials, not nominal ones. On a practical level, there are additional reasons to believe that real rates should matter, especially when trying to explain currency moves beyond a few weeks. Indeed, various surveys and studies on models used by forecasters and traders show that FX professionals use purchasing power parity as well as productivity differential concepts when setting their forex forecasts.5 Indeed, as Chart 2 illustrates, real rate differentials have withstood the test of time as an explanatory variable for exchange rate dynamics, albeit with periods where rate differentials and the currency can deviate from one another. It is true that very often, nominal rate differentials can be used as a shorthand for real rate differentials, as both interest rate gaps tend to move together. However, regularly enough, they do not. In countries with very depressed inflation expectations (Japan immediately comes to mind), nominal and real rate differentials can in fact look very different (Chart 3). With the informational cost of incorporating market-based inflation expectations being very low, we find the shorthand unnecessary when building UIP-based models. Chart 2Real Rates Work Better Over The Long Run Real Rates Work Better Over The Long Run Real Rates Work Better Over The Long Run Chart 3Real And Nominal Rate Spreads Can Differ Real And Nominal Rate Spreads Can Differ Real And Nominal Rate Spreads Can Differ Finally, it is important to remark that in environments of high inflation, inflation differentials dominate any other factor when it comes to exchange rate determination. However, the currencies discussed in this report currently are not like Zimbabwe or Latin America in the early 1980s. Bottom Line: When considering an intermediate-term fair value model for exchange rates, investors should focus on real, not nominal, long-term rate differentials. Global Risk Aversion And Commodity Prices Chart 4The Dollar Benefits From Global Stresses The Dollar Benefits From Global Stresses The Dollar Benefits From Global Stresses Global risk appetite is also a key factor in trying to model exchange rates. Risk-aversion shocks tend to lead to an appreciation in the U.S. dollar, which benefits from its status as the global reserve currency.6 Literature has often focused on the use of the VIX as a gauge for global risk appetite. Our exercise shows stronger explanatory power with options-adjusted spreads on junk bonds (Chart 4). Commodity prices, too, play a key role. Historically, commodity prices have displayed a very strong negative correlation with the dollar.7 This correlation is obviously at its strongest for commodity-producing nations, as rising natural resource prices constitute a terms-of-trade shock for them. However, this relationship holds up for the euro as well, something already documented by the European Central Bank.8 The Models The models for each cross rate are built to reflect the insight gleaned above. Each cross is modeled on three variables, with the model computed on a weekly timeframe. Real rates differentials: We use the average of 2-year and 10-year real rates. The rates are deflated using inflation expectations. Global risk appetite, approximated by junk OAS. Commodity prices: We use the Bloomberg Continuous Commodity Index. For all countries, the variables are statistically highly significant and of the expected signs. These models help us understand in which direction the fundamentals are pushing the currency. We refer to these as Fundamental Intermediate-Term Models (FITM). We created a second set of models, based on the variables above, which also include a 52-week moving average for each cross. The real rates differentials, junk spreads and commodity prices remain statistically very significant and of the correct sign. They are therefore trend- and risk-appetite adjusted UIP-deviation models. These models are more useful as timing indicators on a three- to nine-month basis, as their error terms revert to zero much faster. We refer to these as Intermediate-Term Timing Models (ITTM). Mathieu Savary, Vice President Foreign Exchange Strategy mathieu@bcaresearch.com The U.S. Dollar Chart 5Dollar Back In Line With Fundamentals Dollar Back In Line With Fundamentals Dollar Back In Line With Fundamentals Chart 6More Upside For Now More Upside For Now More Upside For Now To model the dollar index (DXY), we used two approaches. In the first one, we took all the deviation from fair value for the pairs constituting the index, based on their weights in the DXY. In the second approach, we ran the model specifically for the DXY, using the three variables described above. U.S. real rates were compared to an average of euro area, Japanese, Canadian, British, Swiss and Swedish real rates, weighted by their contribution to the DXY. We then averaged both approaches, which gave us very similar results to begin with. After a short period when it traded below its FITM, the dollar's recent strength has pushed the greenback back to its equilibrium, suggesting the easy gains are behind us. However, the rising risks in EM along with the continued widening in rate differentials between the U.S. and the rest of the world could put upward pressure on the dollar for a few more months (Chart 5). When the trend in the dollar is included, the greenback also trades in line with the ITTM (Chart 6). This confirms the idea that the dollar could experience some more upside for the remainder of 2018, as periods of undervaluation to the ITTM tend to be followed by overshoots. The return of inflation, along with the injection of large amounts of fiscal stimulus in the U.S., could be the narratives that push the greenback up by another 5%. Despite a positive outlook for 2018, we remain concerned about the dollar's longer-term performance. Not only is it still trading at a 16% premium on a PPP basis, European rates have room to increase substantially once euro area economic slack is fully absorbed. We are not there yet, but continued robust growth in the euro area will let the ECB increase rates more aggressively than the Fed beyond 2020. The Euro Chart 7The Euro Is Not A Bargain Anymore... The Euro Is Not A Bargain Anymore... The Euro Is Not A Bargain Anymore... Chart 8...And Has More Downside Before Year End ...And Has More Downside Before Year End ...And Has More Downside Before Year End The FITM for EUR/USD continues to point south, dragged down by widening interest rate differentials in favor of the greenback. However, unlike in early 2017, the euro is no longer trading at a big discount to its fair value (Chart 7). As a result, unlike last year, the euro is not able to avoid the downward gravitational pull of a falling FITM. More worrisome for the euro's performance over the coming six months, EUR/USD is still trading at a premium to its ITTM, which adjusts our FITM by taking account of the euro's trend (Chart 8). Currently, the fair value for EUR/USD stands at 1.15, but the euro tends to undershoot its equilibrium after large overshoots such as when EUR/USD traded around 1.25. Moreover, if China's economic slowdown deepens, commodity prices will suffer, which will drag down both the FITM and the ITTM for the euro. We are not yet willing buyers of the euro at current levels. While we espouse a bearish short-term view on the euro, we will be looking to purchase it once it moves to the 1.15-1.10 range. On longer-term metrics, EUR/USD still trades at a significant discount to its fair value. Moreover, long-term rates could rise in Europe relative to the U.S. once investors begin to lift their expectations for future euro area policy rates more aggressively. As such, we continue to closely monitor the slowdown in both euro area and global growth. Once we see signs of stabilization, the euro should again catch a durable bid. The Yen Chart 9A Dovish BoJ Is Pushing Down ##br##The Yen's Fundamentals A Dovish BoJ Is Pushing Down The Yen's Fundamentals A Dovish BoJ Is Pushing Down The Yen's Fundamentals Chart 10Tactically, The Yen Is At Risk, But Softening Global ##br##Growth Will Limit Its Downside This Year Tactically, The Yen Is At Risk, But Softening Global Growth Will Limit Its Downside This Year Tactically, The Yen Is At Risk, But Softening Global Growth Will Limit Its Downside This Year The FITM for the yen is falling fast, and as a result the JPY cannot rally anymore against the dollar (Chart 9). The ITTM provides a very similar message: the yen still trades at a premium to its short-term equilibrium, and is vulnerable to the dollar's strength (Chart 10). Softness in the yen has materialized despite growing stresses in emerging markets and budding signs of a slowdown in global growth - two normally yen-bullish developments - making it clear that the breakdown between USD/JPY and interest rate differentials could not withstand a period of generalized strength in the dollar. While the yen could weaken against the dollar, it is likely to rally further against the euro. Weakness in global growth is likely to limit the yen's downside to the equilibrium implied by its ITTM. Meanwhile, EUR/USD is likely to undershoot this same equilibrium. This contrast points to further weakness in EUR/JPY. The British Pound Chart 11The Pound Is ##br## At Equilibrium The Pound Is At Equilibrium The Pound Is At Equilibrium Chart 12GBP/USD May Be Dragged Lower By A Falling ##br## EUR/USD, But Cable Is Less At Risk Than The Euro GBP/USD May Be Dragged Lower By A Falling EUR/USD, But Cable Is Less At Risk Than The Euro GBP/USD May Be Dragged Lower By A Falling EUR/USD, But Cable Is Less At Risk Than The Euro GBP/USD is in a very different position than EUR/USD. While the pound's FITM points south, driven by interest rate differentials, cable trades below its equilibrium level (Chart 11). For the FITM to move up from this point onward, the U.K. economy needs to stabilize. We do think this will happen as British inflation slows, which will support household real incomes, and thus consumer spending. This message is also confirmed by the fact that unlike EUR/USD, GBP/USD does not trade at a premium to the ITTM, which incorporates the trend in the pair (Chart 12). While investors bid up the pound against the dollar as the greenback weakened in 2017 and early 2018, they are still embedding a risk premium in the GBP, a consequence of the murky political outlook that has shrouded the U.K. ever since the Brexit referendum. The models confirm our analysis of two weeks ago: that the pound could experience some downside against the dollar if the euro were to weaken, but that nonetheless cable will suffer less than EUR/USD.9 As a result, EUR/GBP is likely to experience downside as the correction in EUR/USD unfolds. On a longer-term basis, traditional valuation metrics such as PPP suggest that the GBP remains cheap. However, for this judgment to be true, much will depend on the evolution of the negotiations between the U.K. and the rest of the EU. A British exit from the common market will invalidate the message from PPP models, as the economic relationship between the U.K. and its largest trading partner will change drastically, implying that the models are specified over a sample that is not relevant anymore. However, it remains far from clear what form Brexit will ultimately take. The Canadian Dollar Chart 13NAFTA Risk Premia Evident Here... NAFTA Risk Premia Evident Here... NAFTA Risk Premia Evident Here... Chart 14...And Here ...And Here ...And Here Not only is the loonie trading well below the levels implied by the FITM, but augmented interest rate differential models for the CAD still point north, suggesting its fundamental drivers are currently very supportive (Chart 13). The ITTM for the Canadian dollar confirms this message; even after adjusting for its trend the CAD still trades at a discount to equilibrium (Chart 14). Both formulations of the models highlight that a risk premium has been embedded into the Canadian dollar, reflecting still-possible hazards and setbacks surrounding NAFTA negotiations. However, BCA expects a benign outcome for Canada in the coming weeks, which should help the loonie down the road. Not only does the absence of a major overhaul to NAFTA imply that trade flows between the U.S. and Canada will avoid a major shock, it also means that the Bank of Canada can resume tightening monetary policy. The biggest risk for the Canadian dollar versus the greenback is global growth. So long as global growth has not stabilized, the CAD will find it hard to rally durably against the USD. As a result, we prefer to buy the CAD versus other currencies, the EUR and AUD in particular. The Swiss Franc Chart 15No Evident Deviation From ##br## Fundamentals In The Franc No Evident Deviation From Fundamentals In The Franc No Evident Deviation From Fundamentals In The Franc Chart 16Rising EM Stresses And Better Value Will ##br##Help The Swiss Franc Versus The Euro Rising EM Stresses And Better Value Will Help The Swiss Franc Versus The Euro Rising EM Stresses And Better Value Will Help The Swiss Franc Versus The Euro The FITM for the Swissie continues to move upward (Chart 15). In fact, the franc currently trades at a discount to its ITTM. This suggests that downside for the Swiss franc versus the dollar is limited for the remainder of the year (Chart 16). Since the Swiss franc already trades at a discount to the USD, but the euro does not, logically, the EUR/CHF is currently very pricey. Hence, it will be difficult for the euro to rally further against the franc this year. Moreover, the slowdown in global growth and the trouble facing EM assets and currencies are likely to further contribute to the current deceleration in European economic data. As a result, both short-term valuation metrics and economic considerations argue for selling EUR/CHF on a six-month basis. Longer term, the Swiss franc's strength in recent years has contributed to a sharp deterioration in Swiss competitiveness. Since the Swiss economy is very flexible, this has mostly been translated into strong deflationary pressures in the alpine state. As a result, the Swiss National Bank will continue to fight off any appreciation in the franc, maintaining very easy monetary conditions. Thus, long-term investors should not short EUR/CHF, but instead, they should use any weakness in this cross this year to accumulate larger bets on the long side. The Australian Dollar Chart 17AUD Fundamentals At Risk AUD Fundamentals At Risk AUD Fundamentals At Risk Chart 18AUD Not Cheap Enough To Flash A Buy Signal AUD Not Cheap Enough To Flash A Buy Signal AUD Not Cheap Enough To Flash A Buy Signal The FITM for the Aussie is currently in a holding pattern (Chart 17). Meanwhile, AUD/USD trades at a marginal discount to the trend-augmented version of the model, the ITTM (Chart 18). Do not get lulled into a sense of comfort by these observations. First, AUD/USD never stops a move at the ITTM; it tends to overshoot its equilibrium. In fact, undershoots tends to culminate at an 8% discount to the short-term fair value. Additionally, the global economic environment suggests that both the AUD's FITM and ITTM could experience downside in the coming months. Slowing global activity and budding EM stress weigh on commodity prices - key components of the models. They also weigh on Australian interest rate differentials vis-à-vis the U.S. - especially as the Australian economy is replete with slack - keeping wage pressures, inflationary pressures, and consequently the Reserves Bank of Australia at bay. This picture is in sharp contrast to Canada. Canadian labor market conditions are tight and the BoC is likely to resume its hiking campaign once uncertainty around NAFTA dissipates. Since the CAD trades at a much larger discount to both its FITM and ITTM, the relative economic juncture supports being short AUD/CAD. The New Zealand Dollar Chart 19NZD Weaker Than ##br##Fundamentals Imply NZD Weaker Than Fundamentals Imply NZD Weaker Than Fundamentals Imply Chart 20NZD Is Cheap Enough To Warrant ##br## A Buy Versus The AUD NZD Is Cheap Enough To Warrant A Buy Versus The AUD NZD Is Cheap Enough To Warrant A Buy Versus The AUD As was the case with the Aussie, the FITM for the kiwi has stabilized (Chart 19). However, unlike with the AUD, the NZD trades at a meaningful discount to the ITTM (Chart 20). The NZD has greatly suffered in response to a deceleration in New Zealand economic data and to investors' worries about the Adern government - a coalition of the left-leaning Labour and populist New Zealand First parties. Investors are especially concerned over limitation to immigration on long-term growth, as well as risks to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand's independence. These concerns are real, and warrant taking a cautious stance on the NZD. New Zealand growth has greatly benefited from decades of a large immigration influx and from a staunchly independent central bank. Moreover, slowing global growth and trade as well as rising EM stresses are also likely to exert downward pressure on the NZD's short-term fair-value estimates. We have been taking advantage of the NZD's discount to its FITM and ITTM by selling the Aussie/kiwi cross. AUD/NZD trades at a premium to its relative ITTM. Moreover, the deceleration in global growth and the stress in EM are likely to exact a greater toll on metals than agricultural prices. This represents a greater negative terms-of-trade shock for Australia than New Zealand. Since Australia displays greater labor market slack than New Zealand, this disinflationary shock will bit the larger of the two economies harder. Therefore, interest rate differentials should move against the AUD, pushing the relative ITTM and FITM down. The Norwegian Krone Chart 21NOK Still A Value Play Among ##br## Commodity Currencies... NOK Still A Value Play Among Commodity Currencies... NOK Still A Value Play Among Commodity Currencies... Chart 22...But It Could Experience Further Downside ##br##Against The Dollar This Year ...But It Could Experience Further Downside Against The Dollar This Year ...But It Could Experience Further Downside Against The Dollar This Year The fundamental model for the Norwegian krone remains in an uptrend, established since the beginning of 2016 (Chart 21). This reflects rallying oil prices, the key determinant of Norwegian terms-of-trade and growth. However, the NOK still trades slightly above its ITTM, its fundamentals adjusted for the trend in the currency pair (Chart 22). Over the next six months, the Norwegian krone could experience further downside versus the USD. Corrections in this pair tends to end when it trades 4% below its ITTM. Additionally, the rise in EM volatility and the great sensitivity of the Norwegian krone to USD fluctuations adds an economic impetus to this risk. Moreover, EUR/USD normally exerts a gravitational pull on the NOK/USD. Since we expects the euro to weaken further, this should drag the krone along for a ride. However, we continue to see downside in EUR/NOK as short-term valuations are not attractive, and as oil is likely to outperform the broad commodity complex. In the longer term, we are positive on the NOK. It is cheap based on long-term models that take into account Norway's stunning net international position of 220% of GDP. Moreover, the high inflation registered between 2015 and 2016 is now over as the pass-through from the weak trade-weighted krone between 2014 and 2015 is gone. This means that the NOK's PPP fair value has stopped deteriorating. The Swedish Krona Chart 23The SEK Has Been Clobbered ##br##Beyond Fundamentals... The SEK Has Been Clobbered Beyond Fundamentals... The SEK Has Been Clobbered Beyond Fundamentals... Chart 24...And Is Becoming Attractive,##br## But Beware The Riskbank ...And Is Becoming Attractive, But Beware The Riskbank ...And Is Becoming Attractive, But Beware The Riskbank The Swedish krona's short-term valuations are attractive. As was the case with the krona, the SEK's FITM remains in an uptrend (Chart 23), and the SEK trades at a sizeable discount to its ITTM (Chart 24). Despite this benign picture, we are reluctant to bet on the SEK. To begin with, the SEK displays the greatest sensitivity to the dollar of all the G-10 currencies; our dollar-bullish stance for the rest of the year thus bodes poorly for the krona, pointing to greater undervaluation ahead. Additionally, despite an economy running 2% above potential GDP, the Riksbank still runs an extremely accommodative monetary policy. In fact, recent communications by the Swedish central bank demonstrate a high degree of comfort with the SEK's weakness. It seems as though Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves wants to competitively devalue the krona. With global growth softening, the Riksbank is likely to encourage further SEK depreciation as the Swedish business cycle is tightly linked to EM growth. We were long NOK/SEK until two weeks ago, when our target level was hit. While we look to re-open this position, the NOK/SEK currently trades at a small premium to its relative ITTM, and thus the corrective episode could run a few more months. Meanwhile, the relative short-term valuation picture suggests that the recent bout of weakness in EUR/SEK could run a bit further. However, weakening global growth and the Riksbank's dovish proclivities suggest that visibility on this cross remains exceptionally low. 1 Please see Foreign Exchange Strategy / Global Investment Strategy Special Report titled, "Assessing Fair Value In FX Markets", dated February 26, 2018, available at fes.bcaresearch.com and gis.bcaresearch.com. 2 Please see Foreign Exchange Strategy / Global Asset Allocation Special Reports titled, "Currency Hedging: Dynamic Or Static? - A Practical Guide For Global Equity Investors", dated September 29, 2017, and "Currency Hedging: Dynamic Or Static? - A Practical Guide For Global Equity Investors (Part II)", dated October 13, 2017, available at fes.bcaresearch.com and gaa.bcaresearch.com. 3 Ravi Balakrishnan, Stefan Laseen, and Andrea Pescatori, "U.S. Dollar Dynamics: How Important Are Policy Divergence And FX Risk Premiums?" IMF Working Paper No.16/125 (July 2016); and Michael T. Kiley, "Exchange Rates, Monetary Policy Statements, And Uncovered Interest Parity: Before And After The Zero Lower Bound", Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2013-17, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (January 2013). 4 Michael T. Kiley (January 2013). 5 Please see Yin-Wong Cheung and Menzie David Chinn, "Currency Traders and Exchange Rate Dynamics: A Survey of the U.S. Market", CESifo Working Paper Series No. 251 (February 2000); and David Hauner, Jaewoo Lee, and Hajime Takizawa, "In which exchange rate models do forecasters trust?" IMF Working Paper No.11/116 (May 2010) for revealed preference approach based on published forecasts from Consensus Economics. 6 Ravi Balakrishnan, Stefan Laseen, and Andrea Pescatori (July 2016) 7 Ravi Balakrishnan, Stefan Laseen, and Andrea Pescatori (July 2016) 8 Francisco Maeso-Fernandez, Chiara Osbat, and Bernd Schnatz, "Determinants Of The Euro Real Effective Exchange Rate: A BEER/PEER Approach", Working Paper No.85, European Central Bank (November 2001). 9 Please see Foreign Exchange Strategy Special Report titled, "A Long, Strange Cycle", dated May 4, 2018, available at fes.bcaresearch.com. Trades & Forecasts Forecast Summary Core Portfolio Tactical Trades Closed Trades

Highlights An examination of the three pillars of China's economy provides an unambiguous signal that a slowdown is underway. This would normally warrant, at most, a neutral allocation to Chinese stocks, but several factors argue against cutting exposure for now. Stay overweight, but with a short leash. Recent changes in the BCA China Investable Sector Alpha Portfolio's recommended allocation have validated two of our recent investment recommendations. In addition, the model is providing a curiously bullish signal about the relative performance of Chinese vs global stocks that heightens our reluctance to reduce Chinese equity exposure. Our China Reform Monitor signals that investors do not view the current pace of structural reforms as being overly burdensome for the economy. In addition, while Chinese policymakers have made some significant gains in improving China's air quality over the past 18 months, these changes have mostly occurred from a near-hazardous starting point (suggesting that more progress will be needed). As such, we recommend that investors stick with our long ESG leaders / short investable benchmark trade over the coming year. Feature Global investor sentiment improved modestly on Monday, in response to statements from President Trump indicating a possible détente between the U.S. and China on the issue of trade. In particular, Mr. Trump signaled a willingness to assist ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications equipment maker, whose operations would have been enormously impacted by the U.S. Commerce Department's decision last month to ban American companies from selling to the firm. In the view of our Geopolitical Strategy Service, announcements like these should be viewed as marginally positive developments within the context of a serious downtrend in U.S./China relations. Investors appear to be eager to respond to positive news about waning U.S. protectionism, but the reality is that several important decisions related to the U.S.' section 301 probe have yet to be announced.1 As we noted in last week's Special Report,2 this underscores that the near-term risks to China from the external sector are clearly to the downside. Abstracting from the day-to-day assessment of the trade picture, we have emphasized that other core elements of the China outlook have deteriorated. As we present below, an aggregate view of the three pillars of China's economy continues to argue for a (contained) slowdown, with protectionism acting as a downside risk to an already sober economic outlook. Extremely cheap valuation and the high-beta nature of Chinese ex-tech stocks continue to justify an overweight stance versus global equities, but we recommend that investors keep Chinese stocks on downgrade watch for the remainder of Q2 as the risks to the Chinese economy warrant an ongoing assessment of what is currently a finely balanced equity allocation decision. Assessing The Three Pillars Chart 1 presents our stylized framework for analyzing China's economy. It highlights that China's business cycle is largely driven by three "pillars": industrial activity, the housing market, and trade. While the services sector, the Chinese consumer, and/or the technology sector are of interesting secular relevance, generally-speaking China's business cycle continues to be subject to its "old" growth model centered on investment and exports. Chart 1The Three Pillars Of China's Business Cycle The Three Pillars Of China's Economy The Three Pillars Of China's Economy Industrial Activity: We took an empirical approach to predicting China's industrial sector activity in our November 30 Special Report,3 and tested the ability of 40 different macro data series to lead the Li Keqiang index (LKI). While the LKI is closely followed and somewhat cliché, we have focused on it because of its strong correlation with ex-tech earnings and import growth. The results of our November report pointed to the success of monetary condition indexes, money supply, and credit measures to reliably predict the LKI since China's real GDP growth peaked in 2010. We constructed our BCA Li Keqiang Leading Indicator based on these measures, and we have frequently highlighted over the past few months that the indicator is pointing to a continued deceleration in China's industrial activity (Chart 2). Housing: We noted in our November report that housing market data also correlates with the LKI, albeit less well than the components of our Leading Indicator. One important observation about China's housing market that we highlighted in our February 8 Weekly Report is that residential floor space sold appears to have reliably led floor space started (a proxy for real residential investment) since 2010 (Chart 3). Over the past 6-8 months, however, floor space started appears to have diverged from the trend in floor space sold, which may have been caused by a non-trivial reduction in housing inventories over the past few years.4 Nonetheless, we also noted that the level of inventories remains quite elevated, suggesting that the uptrend in floor space started is unlikely to continue without a renewed uptrend in sales volume. In our view, this conclusion implies that the housing outlook over the coming 6-12 months is neutral, at best. Chart 2China's Industrial Sector ##br##Will Continue To Slow China's Industrial Sector Will Continue To Slow China's Industrial Sector Will Continue To Slow Chart 3Resi Sales Volume Does Not Point To ##br##A Sustained Pickup In Construction Resi Sales Volume Does Not Point To A Sustained Pickup In Construction Resi Sales Volume Does Not Point To A Sustained Pickup In Construction Trade: The third pillar of China's economy is the external sector, which remains important even though net exports have fallen quite significantly in terms of contribution to China's growth. We noted in our April 18 Weekly Report that there is a strongly positive relationship between the annual change in contribution to growth from China's net exports and subsequent gross capital formation, highlighting that external demand provides an important multiplier effect for Chinese activity. For now, nominal export growth (in CNY terms) remains at the high end of its 5-year range, reflecting the strength of the global economy. But three significant risks remain to the export outlook: 1) the clear and present danger of U.S. import tariffs, 2) the possibility that Chinese policymakers may accelerate their reform efforts to take advantage of the "window of opportunity" provided by robust global demand,4 and 3) the very substantial rise in the export-weighted RMB (Chart 4), which is fast approaching its 2015 high. As a final point on trade, Chart 5 highlights that the recent divergence between the LKI and nominal import growth is resolved when examining the latter in CNY terms. The chart suggests that while export growth has been buoyed by a strong global economy, China's contribution to the global growth impulse is diminishing. The very tight link demonstrated in Chart 5 also suggests that industrial activity is the most important pillar to watch among the three noted above, which means that Chart 2 argues for a negative export outlook for China's major trading partners. Chart 4A Non-Trivial Deterioration ##br##In Competitiveness A Non-Trivial Deterioration In Competitiveness A Non-Trivial Deterioration In Competitiveness Chart 5The Rise In CNYUSD Is Flattering ##br##Imports Measured In Dollars The Rise In CNYUSD Is Flattering Imports Measured In Dollars The Rise In CNYUSD Is Flattering Imports Measured In Dollars Our assessment of the three pillars of China's economy points to a conclusion that we have highlighted frequently in our recent reports: China's industrial sector is slowing, and there are downside risks to the export outlook. The character of the slowdown does not suggest that a major shock to the global economy is likely to emanate from China over the coming 6-12 months, but the outlook is more consistent with a reduction than an expansion in China's contribution to global growth. Under normal circumstances, at best this would warrant a neutral asset allocation outlook to China-related financial assets. Chart 6The Uptrend In Relative Chinese ##br##Ex-Tech Performance Is Intact The Uptrend In Relative Chinese Ex-Tech Performance Is Intact The Uptrend In Relative Chinese Ex-Tech Performance Is Intact However, we have also argued that the relatively attractive valuation and the technical profile of Chinese equities suggests that investors should have a high threshold for reducing their exposure to China within a global equity portfolio. Chart 6 highlights that Chinese ex-tech share prices continue to demonstrate resilient performance versus their global peers, despite the ongoing slowdown in China's economy. In addition, as we will note below, our BCA China Investable Sector Alpha Portfolio is providing a curiously bullish signal about the relative performance of Chinese stocks, which heightens our reluctance to cut exposure. Bottom Line: An examination of the three pillars of China's economy provides an unambiguous signal that a slowdown is underway. This would normally warrant, at most, a neutral allocation to Chinese stocks, but several factors argue against cutting exposure for now. Stay overweight, but with a short leash. Reading The Tea Leaves From Our Sector Alpha Portfolio We introduced our BCA China Investable Sector Alpha Portfolio in a January Special Report, in part to demonstrate that the concept of alpha persistence (i.e. alpha that is persistently positive or negative) has material implications for portfolio returns. In particular, we noted that the portfolio's strategy of allocating to China's investable equity sectors based on the significance of alpha has resulted in over 200bps of long-term outperformance versus the investable benchmark, without taking on any additional risk (Table 1). Table 1An Alpha-Based Sector Model Has Historically Outperformed China's Investable Stock Market The Three Pillars Of China's Economy The Three Pillars Of China's Economy Table 2 presents the portfolio's current allocation, relative to the current benchmark weights for each sector as well as the portfolio's sectoral allocation when we published our January report. Two observations are noteworthy: The model recommends an overweight allocation to resources; consumer staples; health care; utilities; and real estate, at the expense of industrials; consumer discretionary; financials; technology; and telecom services. These positions are largely in-line with the model's recommendations in January, except for a non-trivial increase in exposure to energy and financials, and a significant reduction in technology and consumer discretionary. The portfolio's reduced exposure to technology and consumer discretionary stocks validate two recent investment recommendations from BCA's China Investment Strategy team: we recommended a long consumer staples / short consumer discretionary trade on November 16,5 and we recommend that investors retain cyclical exposure to investable Chinese stocks while neutralizing exposure to the tech sector on February 15.6 Table 2Our Sector Alpha Portfolio Has Validated Two Of Our Recent Recommendations The Three Pillars Of China's Economy The Three Pillars Of China's Economy Chart 7 highlights another interesting insight from the model, by presenting the beta of the portfolio relative to the investable benchmark alongside the benchmark's performance versus global stocks. First, the chart underscores the limited systemic risk of the portfolio, as the portfolio's beta rarely deviates materially from 1. But more importantly, it appears that the portfolio's beta versus the investable benchmark is somewhat correlated with (and leads) China's performance versus global stocks: Chart 7A Curiously Bullish Signal From ##br##Our Sector Alpha Portfolio A Curiously Bullish Signal From Our Sector Alpha Portfolio A Curiously Bullish Signal From Our Sector Alpha Portfolio Prior to the global financial crisis, the portfolio's beta was above 1 and rising, until early-2007 (preceding the peak in relative performance by about a year). Following the crisis, the portfolio beta steadily declined until late-2014/early-2015, interrupted only by a brief rise back above 1 from 2009-2010. Chinese stock prices steadily underperformed global equities during this period. The portfolio beta rose back to 1 in mid-2015, and stayed flat until early last year. Chinese stocks technically underperformed global stocks during this period, but by a much more modest amount than what occurred on average from 2009 to 2014. In this case, the rise in the portfolio beta in 2015 appeared to correctly signal that a sharply underweight stance towards Chinese stocks was no longer warranted. Finally, the portfolio beta surged rapidly higher last year, in line with a material rise in the relative performance of Chinese stocks. It has fallen modestly since January, but remains at one of the highest levels seen over the past 15 years. Drawing pro-cyclical inferences from the beta characteristics of risk-adjusted performers is a novel approach for BCA's China Investment Strategy service, and for now we regard the results of Chart 7 as a curious signal that warrants further examination. Still, this bullish sign is consistent with the general resilience of Chinese stocks that we have observed over the past several months, which continues to argue in favor of a high threshold to cut exposure to China within a global equity portfolio. Bottom Line: Recent changes in the BCA China Investable Sector Alpha Portfolio's recommended allocation have validated two of our recent investment recommendations. In addition, the model is providing a curiously bullish signal about the relative performance of Chinese vs global stocks that heightens our reluctance to reduce Chinese equity exposure. An Update On The "Reform Trade" We noted in the aftermath of last November's Communist Party Congress that China was likely to step up its reform efforts in 2018, and make meaningful efforts to: Pare back heavy-polluting industry Hasten the transition of China's economy to "consumer-led" growth7 Halt leveraging in the corporate/financial sector Eliminate corruption and graft As a result of this outlook, we highlighted that the pace of renewed structural reforms would be a key theme to watch this year, in order to ensure that the pursuit of these policies would not unintentionally cause a repeat of the significant slowdown in the economy that occurred in 2014/2015. We presented our framework for monitoring this risk in our November 16 Weekly Report, which was to track an index that we called the BCA China Reform Monitor. The monitor is calculated as an equally-weighted average of four "winner" sectors that outperformed the investable benchmark in the month following the Party Congress relative to an equally-weighted average of the remaining seven sectors. We argued that significant underperformance of "loser" sectors could be a sign that reform intensity has become too burdensome for the economy (and thus a material headwind ex-tech equity performance), and highlighted that we would be watching for signs that our monitor was rising largely due to outright declines in the denominator. Using this framework, Chart 8 suggests that structural reform efforts are ongoing but that investors do not view the current pace of these reforms as overly burdensome for the economy. In particular, panel 2 highlights that recent movements in our Reform Monitor have been driven by fairly steady outperformance of the "winner" sectors, with "loser" sectors simply trending sideways. While it is possible that Chinese policymakers will intensify their efforts to reform the economy over the coming 6-12 months,4 for now our China Reform Monitor continues to support an overweight stance towards Chinese ex-tech stocks vs their global peers. However, given the message of our Reform Monitor, it is somewhat surprising that another of our reform-themed trades has fared so poorly over the past three months. Chart 9 presents the performance of our long investable environmental, social and governance (ESG) leaders / short investable benchmark trade, which was up approximately 4% since inception in late-January but is now down 1.4%. The basis of this trade was to overweight stocks that are best positioned to deliver "sustainable" growth, which we argued would fare well in a reform environment. Does the underperformance of this trade suggest that the reform theme is unlikely to be investment-relevant over the coming year? Chart 8Structural Reforms Not Viewed As ##br##Economically Restrictive By Investors Structural Reforms Not Viewed As Economically Restrictive By Investors Structural Reforms Not Viewed As Economically Restrictive By Investors Chart 9ESG Leaders Should Fare Quite ##br##Well In A Reform Environment ESG Leaders Should Fare Quite Well In A Reform Environment ESG Leaders Should Fare Quite Well In A Reform Environment In our view, the answer is no. First, while the MSCI ESG leaders index maintains roughly similar sector weights as the investable benchmark (which limits the beta risk of the trade), Table 3 highlights that differences do exist. These modest differences in sector allocation do appear to be impacting performance (Chart 10), in particular the underweight allocation to energy stocks (which are outperforming) and the overweight allocation to technology (which has sold off since mid-March). Table 3Sector Allocation Has Impacted The Recent Performance Of China's ESG Leaders The Three Pillars Of China's Economy The Three Pillars Of China's Economy Chart 10Sector Allocation Impacting Recent ##br##Performance Of ESG Leaders Sector Allocation Impacting Recent Performance Of ESG Leaders Sector Allocation Impacting Recent Performance Of ESG Leaders Second, while China made significant gains last year in improving air quality in several major population centers (such as Beijing and Shanghai), these improvements have mostly occurred from a near-hazardous starting point and have simply rendered China's air to be less unhealthy. Even in Beijing, Chart 11 highlights that PM2.5 readings have started to increase again, from a level that only briefly reached "good" quality. In addition, Chart 12 highlights that some of the improvement in air quality last year occurred, at least in part, because China shifted polluting activity from one province to another. This implies that Chinese policymakers will continue to wrestle with improving the country's air quality for some time to come, which in our view continues to favor ESG leaders over the coming year and beyond. Chart 11Some Significant Recent Gains In Air ##br##Quality, But Part Of An Ongoing Battle Some Significant Recent Gains In Air Quality, But Part Of An Ongoing Battle Some Significant Recent Gains In Air Quality, But Part Of An Ongoing Battle Chart 12Air Quality Gains In Some Provinces, At The Expense Of Others The Three Pillars Of China's Economy The Three Pillars Of China's Economy Bottom Line: Our China Reform Monitor signals that investors do not view the current pace of structural reforms as being overly burdensome for the economy. In addition, while Chinese policymakers have made some significant gains in improving China's air quality over the past 18 months, these changes have mostly occurred from a near-hazardous starting point (suggesting that more progress will be needed). As such, we recommend that investors stick with our long ESG leaders / short investable benchmark trade over the coming year. Jonathan LaBerge, CFA, Vice President Special Reports jonathanl@bcaresearch.com 1 Please see Geopolitical Strategy Weekly Report "Inside The Beltway," dated May 2, 2018, available on gps.bcaresearch.com 2 Please see Geopolitical Strategy and China Investment Strategy Special Report "China's "Red Line" In The Trade Talks," dated May 9, 2018, available on cis.bcaresearch.com 3 Please see China Investment Strategy Special Report "The Data Lab: Testing The Predictability Of China's Business Cycle," dated November 30, 2017, available on cis.bcaresearch.com 4 Please see China Investment Strategy Weekly Report "China: A Low-Conviction Overweight," dated May 2, 2018, available on cis.bcaresearch.com 5 Please see China Investment Strategy Weekly Report "Messages From The Market, Post-Party Congress," dated November 16, 2017, available on cis.bcaresearch.com 6 Please see China Investment Strategy Weekly Report "After The Selloff: A View From China," dated February 15, 2018, available on cis.bcaresearch.com 7 Investors should note that BCA's China Investment Strategy service has long been skeptical of calls to shift China's economy to a consumption-driven growth model, because it significantly raises the odds that the country will not be able to escape the middle income trap. For example, please see Please see China Investment Strategy Special Report, "On A Higher Note", dated October 5, 2017, available at cis.bcaresearch.com Cyclical Investment Stance Equity Sector Recommendations

Highlights Butterfly Trades: Duration-neutral butterfly trades are the best way to gain pure exposure to changes in the slope of the yield curve while remaining insulated from parallel shocks. Yield Curve Models: In this report we present models for each different butterfly spread combination across the entire Treasury curve. The models allow us to pinpoint the most attractively valued parts of the yield curve at any given point in time. We also demonstrate how trading rules based on our valuation models have delivered excellent investment results. Current Curve Valuation: Our models show that the most attractively valued butterfly spread at the moment is a position long the 7-year bullet and short the 1/20 barbell. We recommend closing our current position long the 5-year bullet and short the 2/10 barbell, and shifting into the 7-year over 1/20. Feature Last summer we published a Special Report that explained why duration-neutral butterfly trades are the best way to gain exposure to changes in the slope of the yield curve.1 That report focused on the 2/5/10 butterfly spread, which is defined as the spread between the 5-year Treasury note and a barbell consisting of the 2-year and 10-year notes. For this method to work the 2-year and 10-year notes must be weighted so that the dollar duration (DV01) of the 2/10 barbell matches the DV01 of the 5-year bullet.2 Chart 1Butterfly Strategy Valuation More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies The report demonstrated how, when using the above weighting scheme, a long position in the 5-year bullet versus a short position in the 2/10 barbell allows investors to profit from a steepening of the 2/10 Treasury slope while remaining insulated from small parallel yield curve shocks. Similarly, we showed that investors who want to gain exposure to 2/10 curve flattening should go long the 2/10 barbell and short the 5-year bullet. The report also presented a fair value model for the 2/5/10 butterfly spread based on the 2/10 slope. The model allows us to incorporate initial valuation into our yield curve trading framework. For example, while the 5-year bullet will tend to outperform the 2/10 barbell when the 2/10 slope is steepening, it will require very little 2/10 steepening for it to outperform when the 5-year appears cheap on our model. More 2/10 steepening is required when the 5-year is initially expensive. In this follow-up Special Report we extend the above modeling framework to all different segments of the yield curve. The results of our analysis, shown in Chart 1, allow us to quickly scan the entire Treasury curve and identify which butterfly combinations are most attractively valued. We can then consider the message from our valuation models alongside our macro view of how the slope of the yield curve will evolve. These two factors together will suggest appropriate butterfly trades to implement. This Special Report proceeds in three sections. The first section provides a quick re-cap of the theory of butterfly trades with a focus on the importance of valuing butterfly spreads relative to the slope. The second section explains the process we followed to extend our 2/5/10 butterfly model to the rest of the yield curve. The final section presents the results of two trading rules based on the read-out from our yield curve models. Butterfly Theory Revisited: The Importance Of Valuation In our report from last year we showed that, because both the bullet and barbell have the same DV01, a position long one and short the other is immune from small parallel yield curve shifts. However, because the longest maturity bond contributes more DV01 to the barbell than the short maturity bond, the barbell will underperform (outperform) the bullet when the curve steepens (flattens). This dynamic also means that the butterfly spread - defined as the bullet yield over the barbell yield - is positively correlated with the slope of the curve (Chart 2). The logic of this relationship depends on the fact that the yield curve tends to mean revert over time. A steep yield curve implies that it is more likely to flatten in the future. This means that when the curve is steep investors will demand greater compensation to enter trades that profit from further steepening. The bullet yield will therefore be bid up relative to the barbell. This is the relationship we exploit to create our yield curve models. Chart 2The Butterfly Spread And Slope Are Positively Correlated The Butterfly Spread And Slope Are Positively Correlated The Butterfly Spread And Slope Are Positively Correlated Trade Performance When The Butterfly Spread Is At Fair Value For example, let's consider the 2/5/10 butterfly spread once more. Our analysis shows that the butterfly spread is fairly valued when it is 0.14 times the slope of the 2/10 curve. The "first scenario" in Table 1 shows hypothetical returns to a position that is long the 5-year bullet and short the 2/10 barbell in four different yield curve scenarios. All four scenarios assume that the 2/5/10 butterfly spread is always fairly valued relative to the 2/10 slope (i.e. it is equal to 0.14 multiplied by the 2/10 slope). Table 1Hypothetical Butterfly Trade Performance More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies Notice that the bullet outperforms the barbell in both scenarios where the 2/10 slope steepens and underperforms in both scenarios where the 2/10 slope flattens. It does not matter whether yields move higher or lower, only changes to the slope of the curve impact returns. Trade Performance When The Butterfly Spread Deviates From Fair Value Next, let's consider the "second scenario" shown in Table 1. Here we assume that the butterfly spread is initially different from its model-implied fair value and then reverts to fair value by the end of the investment horizon. Now, in the bear-steepening scenario the 5-year bullet actually underperforms the 2/10 barbell even though the yield curve steepens. This is because the 5-year bullet is initially expensive relative to the barbell. Notice that the 2/5/10 butterfly spread is initially only 4 bps. A fairly valued butterfly spread would have been 7 bps (0.14 * 50 bps). The point of this analysis is to demonstrate the importance of initial valuation. When the butterfly spread is initially below fair value, more curve steepening is necessary for the bullet to outperform the barbell. Similarly, the bottom half of Table 1 shows that when the butterfly spread is initially above fair value, more curve flattening is required for the barbell to outperform. Modeling The Entire Curve With that in mind, we decided to extend our simple modeling framework to every segment of the yield curve. Using par-coupon bond yields from the Federal Reserve we considered all possible butterfly combinations consisting of 1-year, 2-year, 3-year, 5-year, 7-year, 10-year, 20-year and 30-year Treasury securities. We then estimated models of each possible butterfly spread (bullet over barbell) versus the slope between the two maturities used in the barbell. Chart 3 shows that the effectiveness of these models varies considerably between the different butterfly combinations. Chart 31-Factor Model Adjusted R2 More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies To understand why some butterfly combinations are more easily modeled than others we need to rely on an alternative theory for the positive correlation between the butterfly spread and the slope. This theory relates to the fact that implied interest rate volatility is also highly correlated with the slope of the yield curve (Chart 4). The reasoning is fairly straightforward. Investors demand more compensation to bear duration risk when the economic outlook is more uncertain and interest rate volatility is higher. Greater volatility therefore causes investors to bid up the term premium embedded in long-maturity Treasury securities, leading to a steeper curve. The strong relationship between implied volatility and the slope of the yield curve is important because another property of DV01-matched butterfly trades is that the barbell always has greater convexity than the bullet. Elevated convexity is a desirable property when interest rate volatility is high, meaning that the side of the trade with lower convexity (the bullet) will need to offer a higher yield to entice investors when rate volatility is elevated and the yield curve is steep. The key point is that while the barbell has greater convexity than the bullet in every butterfly combination, some butterfly combinations have a greater difference in convexity between the bullet and barbell than others. Chart 5 shows that those butterfly combinations with a larger convexity difference between the bullet and barbell are more sensitive to changes in the slope of the curve, and are thus easier to model using our framework. Chart 4The Yield Curve ##br##And Volatility The Yield Curve And Volatility The Yield Curve And Volatility Chart 5Models Work Better When The ##br## Convexity Mismatch Is Large More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies Finally, because there are strong theoretical arguments for why the butterfly spread should be positively correlated with both the slope of the yield curve and interest rate volatility, we tried adding the MOVE index of implied rate volatility as a second independent variable in each of our yield curve models. We found that this second variable only materially improved the accuracy of the models for a handful of butterfly combinations: the 5/7/10, 5/7/30, 1/20/30, 2/20/30, 3/20/30, 5/20/30, 7/20/30 and 10/20/30. We will rely on two-factor models (using both the curve slope and the MOVE index) for those combinations, while using one-factor models (with the slope only) for the others. One advantage of using a model based only on the slope is that we can reverse the model to ask the question: What change in the slope is necessary in order for the butterfly spread to be considered "fairly valued" at its current level? By framing the valuation question in this context it is easier to link the message from our valuation models to our macro view on the yield curve. For example, our 2/5/10 butterfly spread model shows that the 5-year bullet is currently 6 bps cheap. Alternatively, we can also state that the 2/5/10 butterfly spread is priced for 32 bps of 2/10 flattening during the next six months (Chart 6).3 If we expect the 2/10 slope to flatten by more than what is discounted we should enter the barbell over the bullet. Conversely, if we think the slope will flatten by less than what is discounted we should favor the bullet. Chart 62/5/10 Butterfly Spread Fair Value Model 2/5/10 Butterfly Spread Fair Value Model 2/5/10 Butterfly Spread Fair Value Model Chart 7 shows the current valuation for every butterfly combination in this manner. Rather than showing whether the bullet is cheap/expensive relative to the barbell (as in shown in Chart 1), it shows what change in the slope between the two components of the barbell is currently being discounted by the butterfly spread. We omit the butterfly combinations that are modeled using both the slope and volatility from this exercise. Chart 7Discounted Slope Change During Next Six Months (BPs) More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies Performance Tests We performed two tests to see whether our suite of yield curve models adds value to the investment process. Test #1 First, we considered each butterfly combination individually and tested the following trading rule: When the bullet is more than 0.5 standard deviations cheap on our model, we go long the bullet and short the barbell. When the barbell is more than 0.5 standard deviations cheap on our model, we go long the barbell and short the bullet. If nether the bullet nor the barbell is more than 0.5 standard deviations cheap we take no position. The trades are re-balanced daily and tested on a horizon from 1988 to the present. The results of this first test are shown in Chart 8. Here we see the annualized excess returns earned from each butterfly combination over the course of the testing horizon. In Chart 9 we also show the average number of times per year that the above trading rule would have recommended switching between the bullet, barbell and taking no position. Chart 10 shows the average annualized excess return divided by the average number of annual position changes. Chart 8Trading Rule Annualized Excess Returns Since April 1988 (BPs) More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies Chart 9Average Number Of Trades Per Year More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies Chart 10Excess Return Per Trade (BPs) More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies While the test results are encouraging insofar as every combination delivers positive excess returns, we note that due to limits in the amount of historical data at our disposal, most of the back-test is performed in sample. Although our robustness checks suggest that the regression coefficients are fairly stable through time, so we expect the results to be replicable going forward. Chart 11Excess Returns Versus Model Fit More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies More Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies We also observe that the performance is not equally distributed amongst the different curve models. In fact, we notice that the models with the best fit - and hence largest convexity mismatches between the bullet and barbell - deliver better results than models with worse fit (Chart 11). This is not very surprising, but it does reinforce that we should put more weight on the message from the valuation models with greater convexity mismatches than on those with smaller mismatches. Test #2 In practice, we would not recommend trying to implement every butterfly trade that appears cheap according to our models. Rather, the real power of our modeling framework is that we can choose the most attractive segment of the yield curve and implement that trade only - assuming it synchs up with our macro view of the yield curve. In our second performance test we did just that. Each month we chose the most attractively valued yield curve trade based on our models and implemented only that trade. Chart 12 shows that not only does that method deliver excellent excess returns over time, it also outperforms a benchmark where we take the average of all yield curve trades recommended by our models. Chart 12Test #2 Results Test #2 Results Test #2 Results At present, the most attractive butterfly trade according to our models is the 7-year bullet over the 1/20 barbell. This trade is directionally similar to our currently recommended position long the 5-year bullet over the 2/10 barbell, in that both will benefit from curve steepening (or less curve flattening than is currently priced). Given the more attractive value in the 7-year over 1/20 combination, we recommended investors shift their yield curve allocation away from the 2/5/10 butterfly to favor the 7-year bullet over the 1/20 barbell. Alex Wang, CFA, Senior Analyst alexw@bcaresearch.com Ryan Swift, Vice President U.S. Bond Strategy rswift@bcaresearch.com 1 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Special Report, "Bullets, Barbells And Butterflies", dated July 25, 2017, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 2 The dollar duration (DV01) is the dollar value of a basis point. It measures the dollar change in the price of a given bond assuming a one basis point change in yield. It is calculated as the bond's duration times its price, divided by 104. 3 We assume an investment horizon of 6 months, a length of time that approximates the average length of time it takes for the butterfly spread to revert to our model's fair value.

Highlights At just under 3-in-10 odds, the probability Brent crude oil prices will exceed $80/bbl by year-end is now more than double what it was at the beginning of the year, following President Trump's announcement he would withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and re-impose all economic sanctions against Iran (Chart of the Week). Chart of the WeekProbability Brent Exceeds $90/bbl Is Understated By Markets Feedback Loop: Spec Positioning & Oil Price Volatility Feedback Loop: Spec Positioning & Oil Price Volatility We believe these odds are too low. Indeed, we think the odds of Brent prices ending above $90/bbl this year are higher than the 1-in-8 chance being priced in the markets presently, even though this is up from just under 4% at the beginning of the year. We also expect sharper down moves going forward, as news flows become noisier. Speculators have loaded the boat on the long side, and they will be exquisitely sensitive to any unexpected softening in fundamentals - e.g., a supply increase or the whiff of lower demand - given their positioning (Chart 2). Chart 2Specs Have Loaded the Boat##BR##Getting Long Brent and WTI Exposure Specs Have Loaded the Boat Getting Long Brent and WTI Exposure Specs Have Loaded the Boat Getting Long Brent and WTI Exposure Our research indicates that spec positioning in the underlying futures can, under some circumstances, dominate the evolution of oil options' implied volatility, the markets' key gauge of risk and the essential component of option pricing. As new risk factors arising from Trump's decision emerge, we expect option implied volatility to increase, as the frequency of spec re-positioning increases. Energy: Overweight. We are getting long Feb/19 $80/bbl Brent calls expiring in Dec/18 vs. short Feb/19 $85/bbl calls, given our assessment that the odds of ending the year above $90/bbl are higher than the market's expectation. We also recommend getting long Aug/19 $75 Brent calls vs. short Aug/19 $80/bbl calls. We already are long Dec/18 $65/bbl Brent calls vs. short $70/bbl calls expiring at the end of Oct/18, which are up 74.2% since they were recommended in Feb/18. Rising vol favors long options positions. The new positions will put on at tonight's close. Base Metals: Neutral. Refined copper imports in China grew 47% y/y in March. For the first four months of 2018 they are up 15% y/y. Imports of copper ores and concentrates were up 9.7% y/y in the January - April period. Precious Metals: Neutral. We remain strategically long gold and tactically long spot silver. A stronger USD continues to weigh on both. Ags/Softs: Underweight. The USDA's weekly Crop Progress report indicates farmers in the U.S. are catching up in their spring planting, converging toward averages for this time of year. Nevertheless, the condition of winter wheat remains a concern. Feature The wild swings in crude oil prices following President Trump's decision not to waive nuclear-related sanctions against Iran - down ~ 2% after Trump's announcement Tuesday, then up more than 2.5% the following morning - resolved one of the more important "known unknowns" ahead of schedule - to wit, would the U.S. re-impose nuclear-related sanctions against Iran, or continue to waive them.1 Ahead of Trump's announcement this week, speculators clearly were building long positions in Brent and WTI, as seen in Chart 2. Among other things, stout fundamentals, which we have been highlighting, and a possible tightening of supply on the back of the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions were obvious catalysts for building the bullish positions. We find specs do not Granger-cause oil prices, and typically these traders are reacting to fundamental news.2 This is consistent with other research into this topic.3 In other words, we find specs essentially follow the fundamentals, they don't lead them, and, as a result, the level of oil prices largely is explained by supply, demand and inventories. Based on the Granger-causality tests and our fundamental modeling, we believe oil markets are, to a very large extent, efficient in the sense that prices reflect most publicly available information.4 This is not to say, however, that the role of speculation can be dismissed as trivial to price formation. Spec Positioning Matters For Implied Volatility In Oil Our most recent research, building on earlier work on speculation in oil markets, finds that the concentration of speculators on the long side or the short side of the market actually does play a significant role in how volatility evolves (Chart 3, bottom panel).5 Other factors are important to the evolution of volatility, as well - i.e., U.S. financial conditions, particularly the stress in the system as measured by the St. Louis Fed's Financial Stress Index; EM equity volatility; and y/y percent changes in WTI oil prices themselves (Chart 3). But spec positioning clearly dominates: In periods of rising or elevated volatility, it explains most of the change in WTI option implied volatilities (Chart 4). This can push volatility higher when it occurs. However, on the downside, this does not hold - Working's T Index is not material to the evolution of implied volatility when uncertainty about future oil prices is low or decreasing. Chart 3Key Variables##BR##Explaining Volatility Key Variables Explaining Volatility Key Variables Explaining Volatility Chart 4Spec Positioning Dominates##BR##Evolution of WTI Implied Volatility Spec Positioning Dominates Evolution of WTI Implied Volatility Spec Positioning Dominates Evolution of WTI Implied Volatility Working's T Index and implied volatility are independent of price direction - they are directionless, therefore they cannot be used to forecast prices.6 These variables tend to increase when the quality of information available to the market deteriorates - i.e., when it becomes more difficult to form expectations about future oil prices. This is, we believe, an attractive time for informed speculators to enter the market and use their information to make profits. We find two-way Granger-causality between WTI implied volatility and Working's T, when the annual change in excess speculation is one-standard deviation above or below its mean. This means the more specs are concentrated on one side of the market in the underlying futures - long or short - the more influence their positioning has on volatility, and that the higher volatility is the more specs are drawn to the market. Given that specs' beliefs are different, this means there is a rising number of long or short spec contracts relative not only to specs on the other side of the market, but also to long and short hedgers. Why Speculation Is Important Prices do not suddenly manifest themselves in markets fully aligned with fundamentals. They are made efficient by hedgers off-loading risk based on their marginal costs, and speculators uncovering information that is material to the level at which prices clear markets. The goal of speculation is to buy low and sell high. Hedging and speculation are both done in the presence of noise, or pseudo-information that has no real connection with where markets clear.7 Information is to noise as substance is to a void. Noise can look like information, as Black (1986) notes, and people can trade on it, but they will lose money and eventually go out of business. Information, on the other hand, is costly, as Grossman and Stiglitz (1980) point out. To incentivize someone (a speculator) to gather it and feed it into prices via the market clearing - i.e., buying and selling based on information - they have to be able to make a profit. Speculators supply the liquidity necessary for trading - and, most importantly, hedging - to occur. Successful speculators make profits. Therefore, the information on which they trade is more often germane to the market-clearing process than not. To be successful they have to be willing to buy when prices are low, expecting them to go higher, and to sell when prices are high, expecting them to go lower. As Paul Samuelson wryly observed, "Is there any other kind of price than 'speculative' price? Uncertainty pervades real life and future prices are never knowable with precision. An investor is a speculator who has been successful; a speculator is merely an investor who last lost his money."8 Known Unknowns Will Keep Vol Elevated Chart 5BCA's Oil Price Forecast Unchanged,##BR##Following Trump's Iran Announcement BCA's Oil Price Forecast Unchanged, Following Trump's Iran Announcement BCA's Oil Price Forecast Unchanged, Following Trump's Iran Announcement In the wake of Trump's announcement, the fundamental and geopolitical landscape has been re-cast, creating additional "known unknowns", particularly re how the U.S. will implement the renewed sanctions and the timing of these moves. Among the new known unknowns, which can only be resolved with the passage of time, are: The precise timing and extent of the re-imposed sanctions on the part of the U.S., which will evolve over the next 90 to 180 days. Demand-side implications of higher prices, particularly in EM economies where policymakers used the low prices following OPEC's 2014 - 16 market-share war to eliminate fuel subsidies, which prevented high prices from being experienced by their citizens. The supply-side implications of higher prices on U.S. shale production - does production and investment, including pipeline take-away capacity, take another leg higher? The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's (KSA) ability to raise output, given the Kingdom said it would be raising output in the event Iranian volumes are lost to export markets. The fate of the Saudi Aramco IPO, and how the re-imposition of sanctions by the U.S. on Iran affects the royal family's decision on whether to float 5% of the company publicly. Will production in distressed states in- and outside of OPEC be negatively affected by increasing geopolitical risk?9 Among the "known unknowns," Iran's next moves rank high, as do responses to such moves by the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. and its Gulf allies clearly view Iran as a threat and, with the re-imposition of sanctions against Iran, are confronting it. Iran has a similar view vis-à-vis the U.S. and its Gulf allies. Left to be determined: Does Iran increase its level of direct action against KSA, upping the ante, so to speak, in its ongoing proxy wars with the Kingdom? Is Gulf production threatened? Are U.S. - European relations threatened by Trump's action? Thus far, European leaders have indicated they remain committed to the sanctions deal Trump walked away from. What would it take for OPEC 2.0 to restore actual production cuts we estimate at 1.1 to 1.2mm b/d to the market? What would it take to trigger a release of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), estimated at just under 664-million-barrel, which could be released to the market at a rate of 500k to 1mm b/d? These known unknowns are not causing us to change our price forecast for this year - $74/bbl for Brent and $70/bbl for WTI, based on our fundamental modeling (Chart 5). However, we do think price risk is to the upside in both markets, given the elevated geopolitical tensions in the market. We continue to expect more frequent prices excursions to and through $80/bbl for the balance of the year, particularly for Brent. Robert P. Ryan, Senior Vice President Commodity & Energy Strategy rryan@bcaresearch.com Hugo Bélanger, Senior Analyst Commodity & Energy Strategy HugoB@bcaresearch.com 1 We lay out some of these "known unknowns" in BCA Research's Commodity & Energy Strategy Weekly Report "Tighter Balances Make Oil Price Excursions To $80/bbl Likely," published April 19, 2018. In addition to the Iran issues, which have been resolved, Venezuela looms large. Oil production declined by 900k b/d between December 2015 and March 2018, with half of that occurring in the past six months. We are carrying Venezuela's current production at ~ 1.5mm b/d, although other estimates have it lower. With the country moving closer to collapsing as a functioning state, the risk to its oil output and exports is high. 2 Granger-causality refers to an econometric test developed by Clive Granger, the 2003 Nobel laureate in economics. It determines whether past values of one variable can be said to predict, or cause, the present value of another variable. 3 Please see BCA Research's Commodity & Energy Strategy Weekly Report, "Specs Back Up The Truck For Oil," published April 26, 2018, available at ces.bcaresearch.com. See also the International Energy Agency's "Oil: Medium-Term Market Report 2012;" and "The Role of Speculation in Oil Markets: What Have We Learned So Far?" by Bassam Fattouh, Lutz Kilian and Lavan Mahadeva, published by The Oxford Institute For Energy Studies. Also, see "Speculation, Fundamentals, and The Price of Crude Oil," by Kenneth B. Medlock III, published by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, August 2013. 4 This is the semi-strong form of market efficiency. For a discussion of how markets impound information in prices, please see Eugene Fama's Noble lecture, "Two Pillars of Asset Pricing," which was reprinted in the June 2014 issue of The American Economic Review (p. 1467). 5 Please see BCA Research's Commodity & Energy Strategy Weekly Report, "Specs Back Up The Truck For Oil," published April 26, 2018, in which we introduce Holbrook Working's "T Index," a measure of speculative concentration in futures and options markets. It is available at ces.bcaresearch.com. Briefly, Working's T Index shows how much speculative positioning exceeds the net demand for hedging from commercial participants in the market. Excessive speculation - spec positioning in excess of hedging demand by commercial interests - could be read into index values above 1.0. However, the U.S. CFTC notes values of Working's T at or below 1.15 do not provide sufficient liquidity to support hedging, even though "there is an excess of speculation, technically speaking." Formally, Working's T Index looks like this: Feedback Loop: Spec Positioning & Oil Price Volatility Feedback Loop: Spec Positioning & Oil Price Volatility 6 Please see Irwin, S. H. and D. R. Sanders (2010), "The Impact of Index and Swap Funds on Commodity Futures Markets: Preliminary Results", OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Working Papers, No. 27. 7 Please see Black, Fischer (1986), "Noise," in the Journal of Finance, 41:3; and Grossman, Sanford J., and Stiglitz, Joseph E. (1980), "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," in the June issue of the American Economic Review. 8 Please see Samuelson, Paul A. (1973), "Mathematics Of Speculative Price," in the January 1973 SIAM Review, 15:1. 9 Please see "Geopolitical Certainty: OPEC Production Risks Are Playing To Shale Producers' Advantage," published by BCA's Energy Sector Strategy on May 9, 2018, which discusses these production risks in depth. Investment Views and Themes Recommendations Strategic Recommendations Tactical Trades Commodity Prices and Plays Reference Table Feedback Loop: Spec Positioning & Oil Price Volatility Feedback Loop: Spec Positioning & Oil Price Volatility Trades Closed in 2018 Summary of Trades Closed in 2017 Feedback Loop: Spec Positioning & Oil Price Volatility Feedback Loop: Spec Positioning & Oil Price Volatility

There is scant evidence that the character of the equity market advance is changing and the fact that weak balance sheet stocks are no longer outperforming strong balance sheet stocks is giving us pause (Chart 1). Chart 1Time To Pause And Reflect Time To Pause And Reflect Time To Pause And Reflect Using the Goldman Sachs equity baskets - that utilize the 'Altman Z-score' framework to select stocks - via Bloomberg, we find that the weak balance sheet over strong balance sheet share price ratio leads the broad market at both peaks and is coincident at troughs. The most recent peak occurred in early 2017 and it is rather surprising that a proxy for this ratio using the fixed income market, i.e. the total return high yield bond index versus the total return investment grade bond index, is moving in the opposite direction and not confirming the equity market's message (Chart 2). This begs the question: Which market signal is right, stocks or fixed income, and what are the equity sector investment implications? But before trying to answer these questions, we first zoom out and look at the broad U.S. debt picture. How Will It All End? In our travels and conference calls one common question keeps coming up: What will end all this? The short answer is that rising interest rates will eventually deal a blow to the debt overhang and the expansion will give way to a fresh deleveraging cycle. In other words, a whiff of inflation will entice the Fed to keep on raising the fed funds rate to the point where the business cycle turns down. As demand falters, a decreasing cash flow backdrop will not be able to service the debt overload, as both coupon payments and principal repayments will become a big burden. This will ignite a jump in the default rate, a message the yield curve is already sending (Chart 3). Chart 2Which Market Is Right? Which Market Is Right? Which Market Is Right? Chart 3Has The Junk Default Rate Troughed? Has The Junk Default Rate Troughed? Has The Junk Default Rate Troughed? Peering back to the onset of the GFC, a U.S. financial sector debt crisis engulfed the world. Subsequently, this morphed into a government sector debt problem in the Eurozone and more recently into a non-financial corporate sector debt overhang mostly in the commodity complex and the emerging markets. Debt Supercycle Lives On The investment world is obsessed with China's excess debt uptake and that is a valid concern. However, investors should also be aware that U.S. debt has not been fully purged. Rather, it has moved around between different domestic sectors. The debt supercycle lives on.1 The implication is that an interest rate-induced debt bubble pricking would be deflationary, and thus identifying the U.S. domestic sector most exposed to such risk is important. Chart 4 breaks down U.S. total debt into the four largest sectors using flow of funds data. While households and the financial sector have significantly de-levered, the government and the non-financial business sector have been picking up the slack and aggressively re-levering. While the Trump Administration has embarked on a two-year fiscal policy easing period that will add to the government debt profile, the nonfinancial corporate debt overhang is more vulnerable and thus troublesome in our view (fed funds rate shown inverted, Chart 5). Worrisomely, since the GFC, nonfinancial corporates have been issuing debt and partially using this debt to retire equity and pay handsome dividends. According to the flow of funds data, the cumulative nonfinancial net equity retirement figure stands near $4tn over the past decade (middle panel, Chart 6). Undoubtedly, this has been a large contributor to equity market returns (top panel, Chart 6), and will likely gain further momentum this year on the back of the tax repatriation holiday. Some sell side equity retirement estimates for the S&P 500 hover around $800bn for calendar 2018 or roughly twice the past decade's annual average. AAPL's recent announcement of a $100 billion share repurchase program confirms that the buyback bonanza is persevering and will continue to boost equities. Clearly, such breakneck equity retirement pace is unsustainable and will converge down to a lower trend rate in 2019 and beyond, especially given the drying liquidity as the Fed continues to pursue a tighter monetary policy. Chart 4Debt Is Moving Around Debt Is Moving Around Debt Is Moving Around Chart 5Tight Monetary Policy Pricks Bubbles, And... Tight Monetary Policy Pricks Bubbles, And… Tight Monetary Policy Pricks Bubbles, And… Chart 6...Threatens To End The Equity Retirement Binge …Threatens To End The Equity Retirement Binge …Threatens To End The Equity Retirement Binge Introducing BCA's Sector Insolvency Risk Monitor (IRM) The purpose of this Special Report is to identify debt soft spots and outliers in the U.S. GICS1 equity sectors. What follows is a financials statement-heavy analysis of sector indebtedness. We introduce the 'Altman Z-score' sector analysis that gauges sector credit strength, with a rising score indicating improving health and a declining Z-score signifying deteriorating health.2 In absolute terms, a score below 1.8 warns of a possible credit event, whereas any reading above 3 signals that bankruptcy risk is very low (see appendix below). Our analysis includes our flagship Bank Credit Analyst's Corporate Health Monitor framework that breaks down corporate health in the different sectors3 (see appendix below). We also sift through a number of different stock market reported ratios/data to gauge each sector's health, with net debt-to-EBITDA and interest coverage at the forefront of our analysis, and try to identify outliers (see appendix below). Finally, with the invaluable help of BCA's Chief Quantitative Strategist, David Boucher, we created our new insolvency risk monitor (IRM) per U.S. equity sector incorporating the respective 'Altman Z-scores', BCA's corporate health monitor readings and net debt-to-EBITDA ratios. In more detail, we ranked each sector (ex-financials and real estate) on a monthly basis on each of these three measures. Then we used a simple average of the ranked measures per sector to come up with the final sector ranking. We also selected the median sector ranking per measure and used the average of the three metrics as a proxy for the broad market.4 This way we were able to compare each sector IRM to the overall market. Note that the IRMs are designed so that a higher IRM ranking means better solvency. Charts 7 & 8 summarize the results and showcase this new all-inclusive relative ranking alongside relative share price performance. Chart 7Unsustainable... Unsustainable… Unsustainable… Chart 8...Divergences ...Divergences ...Divergences Sector Outliers Consumer discretionary stocks are the clearest outliers and the message from the relative IRM is to expect a significant underperformance phase in the coming quarters (top panel, Chart 7). AMZN's juggernaut is blurring the discretionary landscape given its 20% index weight, and artificially boosting relative share prices. Ex-AMZN, this early cyclical sector is behaving similar to previous episodes when the Fed embarked on a tightening interest rate cycle. We reiterate our recent downgrade to a below benchmark allocation.5 Consumer staples equities are steeply deviating from their increasing relative IRM score, underscoring that investors are unduly punishing staples stocks (second panel, Chart 8). We maintain our overweight stance and treat this sector as a small portfolio hedge to our otherwise general dislike of defensives (as a reminder we are underweight both the S&P health care and the S&P telecom services sectors). Chart 9Cyclicals Have The Upper Hand Cyclicals Have The Upper Hand Cyclicals Have The Upper Hand The utilities share price ratio is also deviating from the IRM relative reading (fourth panel, Chart 8). The implication is that extreme bearishness toward the sector is overdone and we reiterate our mid-February upgrade to a neutral stance.6 Energy stocks have fallen behind the energy IRM rebound reading (top panel, Chart 8). We expect a catch up phase on the back of the global capex upcycle, still improving debt profile, favorable underlying commodity supply/demand dynamics and firming oil prices. The S&P energy sector remains a high-conviction overweight. The niche materials sector is also trailing the sector's slingshot IRM recovery. Keep in mind that, as expected, the materials IRM is one of the most volatile series (second panel, Chart 8). Materials manufacturers are capital intensive and high operating leverage businesses and despite the debt dynamic betterment since the recent global manufacturing recession, this sector is still saddled with a large amount of debt that makes it extremely sensitive to the ebbs and flows of global economic growth. We continue to recommend a benchmark allocation. The remaining sectors' (tech, health care, telecom services and industrials) relative share prices are moving in tandem with their respective IRM readings (Charts 7 & 8). In addition, we have complied all the cyclical and defensive IRMs in two distinct series and the relative IRM ratio is giving the all-clear sign to continue to prefer cyclicals over defensives on a 9-12 month time horizon (Chart 9). So What? In sum, the IRM is one new additional metric we are using to gauge the validity of our sector positioning and should not be used in isolation. To answer our original question, while the weak balance sheet versus strong balance sheet stock underperformance is alarming and we will continue to closely monitor this stock price ratio, it is premature to change our constructive overall equity market view on a 9-12 month horizon. We therefore continue to recommend a cyclical over defensive portfolio bent. Finally, for completion purposes, the appendix below shows a number of debt-related indicators we track, including the absolute 'Altman Z-score' and corporate health monitor readings, in two charts per sector along with the cyclicals over defensives compilation and the overall market (ex-financials). Anastasios Avgeriou, Vice President U.S. Equity Strategy anastasios@bcaresearch.com 1 For a primer on the debt super cycle please refer to Box 1 in the BCA Special Year End Issue: "Outlook 2013: Fewer Storms, More Sunny Breaks," dated December 19, 2012, available at bca.bcaresearch.com. 2 Altman Z-Score = 1.2A + 1.4B + 3.3C + 0.6D + 1.0E. Where: A = working capital / total assets, B = retained earnings / total assets, C = earnings before interest and tax / total assets, D = market value of equity / total liabilities and E = sales / total assets. Source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/altman.asp 3 Please see BCA The Bank Credit Analyst Report, "U.S. Corporate Health Gets A Failing Grade," dated January 28, 2016, available at bca.bcaresearch.com. 4 We refrained from using the top down computed S&P 500 'Altman Z-Score' and net debt-to-EBITDA as the financials sector really skewed the results and therefore opted to use the median sector 'Altman Z-score' and net debt-to-EBITDA as a proxy for the broad market because using the mean also skewed the results largely because of the tech sector. Staying consistent in our analysis, we also used the median sector BCA corporate health monitor to proxy the broad market. 5 Please see BCA U.S. Equity Strategy Weekly Report, "Reflective Or Restrictive?" dated March 12, 2018, available at uses.bcaresearch.com. 6 Please see BCA U.S. Equity Strategy Weekly Report, "Manic-Depressive?" dated February 12, 2018, available at uses.bcaresearch.com. Appendix U.S. Non-Financial Broad Market I U.S. Non-Financial Broad Market I U.S. Non-Financial Broad Market I U.S. Non-Financial Broad Market II U.S. Non-Financial Broad Market II U.S. Non-Financial Broad Market II U.S. S&P Industrials I U.S. S&P Industrials I U.S. S&P Industrials I U.S. S&P Industrials II U.S. S&P Industrials II U.S. S&P Industrials II U.S. S&P Energy I U.S. S&P Energy I U.S. S&P Energy I U.S. S&P Energy II U.S. S&P Energy II U.S. S&P Energy II U.S. S&P Consumer Staples I U.S. S&P Consumer Staples I U.S. S&P Consumer Staples I U.S. S&P Consumer Staples II U.S. S&P Consumer Staples II U.S. S&P Consumer Staples II U.S. S&P Tech I U.S. S&P Tech I U.S. S&P Tech I U.S. S&P Tech I U.S. S&P Tech I U.S. S&P Tech I U.S. S&P Utilities I U.S. S&P Utilities II U.S. S&P Utilities II U.S. S&P Utilities II U.S. S&P Utilities II U.S. S&P Utilities II U.S. S&P Materials I U.S. S&P Materials I U.S. S&P Materials I U.S. S&P Materials II U.S. S&P Materials II U.S. S&P Materials II U.S. S&P Consumer Discretionary I U.S. S&P Consumer Discretionary I U.S. S&P Consumer Discretionary I U.S. S&P Consumer Discretionary II U.S. S&P Consumer Discretionary II U.S. S&P Consumer Discretionary II U.S. S&P Telecom Services I U.S. S&P Telecom Services I U.S. S&P Telecom Services I U.S. S&P Telecom Services II U.S. S&P Telecom Services II U.S. S&P Telecom Services II U.S. S&P Health Care I U.S. S&P Health Care I U.S. S&P Health Care I U.S. S&P Health Care II U.S. S&P Health Care II U.S. S&P Health Care II U.S. S&P Cyclicals Vs. Defensives I U.S. S&P Cyclicals Vs. Defensives I U.S. S&P Cyclicals Vs. Defensives I U.S. S&P Cyclicals Vs. Defensives II U.S. S&P Cyclicals Vs. Defensives II U.S. S&P Cyclicals Vs. Defensives II

GAA DM Equity Country Allocation Model Update The GAA DM Equity Country Allocation model is updated as of April 30, 2018. There are no significant changes in the model's allocation this month, as shown in Table 1. Table 1Model Allocation Vs. Benchmark Weights GAA Quant Model Updates GAA Quant Model Updates Table 2Performance (Total Returns In USD, %) GAA Quant Model Updates GAA Quant Model Updates As shown in Table 2 and Charts 1, 2 and 3, the overall model outperformed its benchmark by 20 bps in April, largely driven by the Level 2 model which outperformed by 44 bps while the Level 1 model outperformed only by 2 bps. Since going live, the overall model outperformed the MSCI World by 156 bps, due to the 493 bps of outperformance from the Level 2 model which allocates funds among 11 non-U.S. countries. The Level 1 model (which allocates funds between U.S. and the non-U.S.) is on par with the MSCI world benchmark.Please see also the website http://gaa.bcaresearch.com/trades/allocation_performance. Chart 1GAA DM Model Vs. MSCI World GAA DM Model Vs. MSCI World GAA DM Model Vs. MSCI World Chart 2GAA U.S. Vs. Non U.S. Model (Level 1) GAA U.S. Vs. Non U.S. Model (Level1) GAA U.S. Vs. Non U.S. Model (Level1) Chart 3GAA Non U.S. Model (Level 2) GAA Non U.S. Model (Level 2) GAA Non U.S. Model (Level 2) Text below For more details on the models, please see Special Report, "Global Equity Allocation: Introducing The Developed Markets Country Allocation Model," dated January 29, 2016, available at https://gaa.bcaresearch.com. Please note that the overall country and sector recommendations published in our Monthly Portfolio Update and Quarterly Portfolio Outlook use the results of these quantitative models as one input, but do not stick slavishly to them. We believe that models are a useful check, but structural changes and unquantifiable factors need to be considered too in making overall recommendations. GAA Equity Sector Selection Model The GAA Equity Sector Selection Model (Chart 4) is updated as of April 30, 2018. For the third consecutive month, the model maintains a defensive positioning generating an alpha of 60 bps for the month of April. Following the end of trade threats (for now), the growth component of the model has stabilized. But, overall the model maintains the same weights from last month with an aggregate tilt of 1.3% towards defensive sectors. Energy remains the only cyclical sector with an overweight on the back of favorable valuations and improving momentum. Among defensive sectors, utilities maintains a large overweight of 5% on the back of better momentum. Chart 4Overall Model Performance Overall Model Performance Overall Model Performance Table 3Allocations GAA Quant Model Updates GAA Quant Model Updates Table 4Performance Since Going Live GAA Quant Model Updates GAA Quant Model Updates For more details on the model, please see the Special Report "Introducing The GAA Equity Sector Selection Model," dated July 27, 2016, available at https://gaa.bcaresearch.com. Xiaoli Tang, Associate Vice President xiaoliT@bcaresearch.com Aditya Kurian, Senior Analyst adityak@bcaresearch.com

Highlights Our base case outlook is unchanged. We do not see a recession in the U.S. before 2020, and the U.S. equity market could reward investors with high single-digit total returns this year and next. Nonetheless, the cycle is well advanced and, given current valuations, the long-term outlook for returns in the major asset classes is far less appealing. The risk/reward balance is unfavorable. Investors should therefore separate strategy from forecast. U.S. unemployment is very low and we are beginning to see hints of late-cycle inflation dynamics. Core inflation could soon be at the Fed's 2% target, which means that the FOMC will have to consider becoming outright restrictive in order to slow growth and raise the unemployment rate. The risks facing equities, EM assets and spread product will escalate at that point. The advanced stage in the cycle and our bias for capital preservation requires us to heed the recent warnings from our growth indicators and 'exit' timing checklist. The geopolitical calendar is also stacked with risk for markets over the next month at least. The implication is that we are tactically trimming risk asset exposure to benchmark. We expect to shift back to overweight once our indicators improve and/or the geopolitical tensions fade. This month we provide total return estimates for the major U.S. asset classes under our base case outlook and two alternative scenarios. We place the odds at 50% for the base case, 20% for the optimistic scenario and 30% for a recession in 2019. We also review the U.S. fiscal outlook, which is clearly unsustainable over the long-term. While we do not see a dollar crisis anytime soon, the prospect of large and sustained federal budget deficits supports the view that the dollar will continue on a long-term downtrend (although it is likely to buck the trend in the coming months). It also supports our view that the multi-decade Treasury bull market is over. U.S. consumers will not be particularly sensitive to rising borrowing rates, although there are pockets of excessive borrowing that will no doubt result in a spike in defaults in selected sectors when the next economic downturn arrives. Feature It was the summer of 2009. Risk assets were bombed out, investor sentiment was deeply depressed, business leaders were shell-shocked, the Fed was easing and some 'green shoots' of recovery were emerging. Plentiful economic slack also meant that there was a long potential runway for the economy and earnings to grow. Given that backdrop, it was appropriate to begin rebuilding risk portfolios and ride out any additional turbulence in the markets. Today's situation is almost the mirror image. The economic expansion is well advanced, there is little slack, the Fed is tightening, risk assets are expensive, and investor equity sentiment is frothy. The long-term outlook for returns in the major asset classes is underwhelming to say the least. Table I-1 updates the long-run return expectations we published in the 2018 BCA Outlook. Some technical adjustments make the numbers look a little better but, still, a balanced portfolio will deliver average returns over the long-term of only 3.8% and 1.8% in nominal and real terms, respectively. Table I-110-Year Asset Return Projections May 2018 May 2018 For stocks, the expected returns are poor by historical standards because we assume a mean-reversion in multiples and a decline in the profit share of total income. These assumptions may turn out to be too pessimistic if there is no redistribution of income shares from the corporate sector back to labor and/or P-E ratios remain at historically high levels. Equities obviously would do better than our estimates in this case, but the point is that it is very hard to see returns in risk assets anywhere close to their 1982-2017 average over the long haul. On a two-year horizon, our base case outlook still sees decent equity returns. Nonetheless, the risk/reward balance has become quite unfavorable because the cycle is so advanced. It is therefore prudent to focus on capital preservation and be quicker to trim risk exposure when the outlook becomes cloudier. Losing Sleep Investors have cheered some easing in the perceived risk of a trade war in recent weeks. Nonetheless, a number of items have made us more nervous about the near term. First, our Equity Scorecard has dropped to one, well below the critical value of three that is consistent with positive equity returns historically (Chart I-1). Table I-2 updates our Exit Checklist of items that we believe are important for the equity allocation call. Five of the nine are now giving a 'sell' signal, pointing to at least a technical correction. Chart I-1Our Equity Scorecard Turned Negative Our Equity Scorecard Turned Negative Our Equity Scorecard Turned Negative Table I-2Exit Checklist For Risk Assets May 2018 May 2018 Moreover, we highlighted last month that global growth appears to be peaking (Chart I-2). Our Global Leading Economic Indicator is still bullish, but its diffusion index has plunged below zero. The Global ZEW index and our Boom/Bust indicator have fallen sharply and the global PMI index ticked down (albeit, from a high level). Industrial production in the major economies has eased. Korean and Taiwanese exports, which are a barometer of global industrial activity, have decelerated as well. Chart I-2Economic Indicators Have Softened Economic Indicators Have Softened Economic Indicators Have Softened While we expect global growth to remain at an above-trend pace for at least the next year, the peaking in some coincident and leading indicators is worrying nonetheless. Other items to keep investors up at night include the following: Loss Of Fed Put: With inflation likely to reach the Fed's target in the next couple of months, and policymakers worried about froth in markets, the FOMC will be less predisposed to ease at the first hint of economic softness (see below). Inflation Surge: There is a lot of uncertainty around estimates of the level of the unemployment rate that is consistent with rising wage and price pressures. Inflation could suddenly jump if unemployment is far below this critical level, leading to a blood bath in the bond market that would reverberate through all other assets. The fact that long-term inflation breakevens have surged along with the 10-year Treasury yield in the past couple of weeks is an ominous sign for risk assets. Neutral Rate: We agree with the Fed that the neutral fed funds rate is rising, but nobody knows exactly where it is at the moment. If the neutral rate is lower than the Fed believes, then the economy could suddenly stall as actual rates rise above the neutral level. Trade War: President Trump's popularity among Republican voters is rising, which gives him the ability to weather turbulence in the stock market while he 'gets tough' on trade. The fact that U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin will visit China is a hopeful sign. Nonetheless, we do not believe that we have seen peak pessimism on trade because the President needs to placate his supporters in the mid-west that are in favor of protectionism. The summer months could be volatile as market confusion grows amidst a plethora of upcoming event risks.1 Iran: This year's premier geopolitical risk is the potential for renewed U.S.-Iran tensions. Ahead of the all-important May 12 deadline - when the White House will decide whether to end the current waiver of economic sanctions against Iran - President Trump has staffed his cabinet with two hawks (Bolton and Pompeo). Meanwhile, tensions in Syria are building with the potential for U.S. and Iranian forces to be directly implicated in a skirmish. Russia: Tensions between the West and Russia are also building again. Stroke Of Pen Risk: There is a rising probability that the current administration decides to up the regulatory pressure on Amazon. Other technology companies like Facebook and Google also face "stroke of pen" risks. On a positive note, first quarter earnings season is off to a good start in the U.S. Earnings have surprised to the upside by a wide margin, which is impressive given that analysts bumped up their Q1 assessments in 10 of 11 sectors between the start of 2018 and the beginning of the Q1 reporting season. Analysts' estimates typically move lower as a quarter unfolds, which has the effect of lowering the bar for results to beat expectations. That said, a lot of good news is already discounted in the U.S. market. Chart I-3 highlights that bottom-up analysts' expected annual average EPS growth for the S&P 500 over the next five years has shot up to more than 15%, a level not seen since 1998! This is excessive even considering that the estimates include the impact of the tax cuts. History teaches that investors should be wary during periods of earnings euphoria. Chart I-3Five-Year Bottom-Up EPS Growth Estimates Are Impossibly High Five-Year Bottom-Up EPS Growth Estimates Are Impossibly High Five-Year Bottom-Up EPS Growth Estimates Are Impossibly High Given these risks, market pricing and our checklist, we adjusted the tactical (3-month) House View recommendation on risk assets to benchmark in April. We see this shift as tactical, and expect to move back to overweight once our growth indicators bottom and the geopolitical situation calms down a little. Our base case outlook remains constructive for risk assets on a cyclical (6-12 month) view. Three Scenarios This month we consider two alternative scenarios to our base case outlook and provide estimates of how several key asset classes would perform between now and the end of 2019: Base Case: U.S. real GDP growth accelerates to 3.3% year-over-year by the end of 2018 on the back of fiscal stimulus and improving animal spirits in the corporate sector. Growth is expected to decelerate in 2019, but remain above trend. Profit margins are squeezed marginally by rising wage pressure. The recession we expect to occur in 2020 is beyond the horizon of this exercise. Optimistic Case: The multiplier effects of the fiscal stimulus could be larger than we are assuming if consumers decide to spend most of the tax windfall, and the corporate sector cranks up capital spending due to accelerated depreciation, the tax savings and repatriated overseas funds. We assume that real GDP growth is about a half percentage point higher than the base case in both 2018 and 2019. This is only modestly stronger than the base case because, given that the economy is already at full employment, the supply side of the economy will constrain growth. Even more margin pressure partially offsets stronger top line growth for corporations. Pessimistic Case: The fiscal multiplier effects turn out to be smaller than expected, compounded by the growth-sapping impact of a tariff war and a spike in oil prices due to tensions in the Middle East. The corporate and consumer sectors are more sensitive to rising interest rates than we thought (see below for more discussion of U.S. consumer vulnerabilities). Growth begins to slow toward the end of 2018, culminating in a recession in the second half of 2019. Margins are squeezed initially, but then rise as labor market slack opens up next year. This is more than offset, however, by declining corporate revenues. Chart I-4 presents the implications for S&P 500 EPS growth in the three scenarios, according to our top-down model. Four-quarter trailing profit growth comes in at a respectable 15% and 8½%, respectively, in 2018 and 2019 in our base case. The optimistic scenario would see impressive profit growth of 20% and 13%. Trailing EPS expands by 9% this year in the pessimistic case, but contracts by about the same amount next year. Chart I-4Three Scenarios For S&P 500 EPS Growth Three Scenarios For S&P 500 EPS Growth Three Scenarios For S&P 500 EPS Growth In order to use these EPS forecasts to estimate expected S&P 500 returns, we made assumptions regarding an appropriate 12-month forward P/E ratio (Table I-3). We also translated our trailing EPS forecasts into 12-month forward estimates based on historical cyclical patterns. The 12-month forward P/E ratio is 17 as we go to press (based on Standard and Poors figures). We assume the ratio is flat this year in the base case, before edging lower in 2019 due to rising interest rates. The forward P/E is assumed to edge up in the optimistic case in 2019, but then falls back in 2019 as rates rise. In the recession scenario, we conservatively assume that this ratio falls to 15 by the end of this year, and to 13 by the end of 2019. We incorporate a 2% dividend yield in all scenarios. Over the next two years, the S&P 500 delivers an 8% annual average return in our baseline, and 13% in the optimistic case. As would be expected, investors suffer painful losses of 13% this year and roughly 20% next year in the case of recession, as the drop in multiples magnifies the earnings contraction. Table I-4 presents total return estimates for the 10-year Treasury under the three scenarios. The bond will provide an average return of close to zero in our base case. It suffers heavy losses in 2018 if growth turns out to be stronger than we expect, because a faster acceleration in inflation would spark a sharp upward revision to the path of short-term rates. Long-term inflation expectations would rise as well. The 10-year yield finishes 2019 at 3.5% in the base case, and at 3.75% in the optimistic growth scenario. In contrast, total returns are hefty in the recession case as the 10-year yield drops back below 2%. Table I-3S&P 500 Return Scenarios May 2018 May 2018 Table I-410-year Treasury Return Scenarios May 2018 May 2018 We believe the risk/reward profile is less attractive for corporate bonds than it is for equities (Table I-5). Strong profit growth in the base and optimistic cases is positive for corporates, but this is offset by deteriorating financial ratios as interest rates rise in the context of high leverage ratios. We expect investment-grade (IG) spreads to widen modestly even in the base case, providing a small negative excess return. We see spreads moving sideways at best in our optimistic scenario, giving investors a small positive excess return of about 100 basis points. In the case of a recession, we could see the option-adjusted spread of the Barclay's IG index surging from 105 basis points today to 250 basis points. Excess returns would obviously be quite negative. Table I-5U.S. Investment Grade Corporate Bonds May 2018 May 2018 All of these projected returns are only meant to be suggestive because they depend importantly on several key assumptions. Still, we wanted to provide readers with a sense of the risks for returns around our base case outlook. We place the odds at 50% for the base case, 20% for the optimistic scenario and 30% for a recession. U.S. Fiscal Policy: Good And Bad News The probabilities attached to the baseline and optimistic scenarios are supported by the U.S. fiscal stimulus that is in the pipeline. The IMF estimates that the tax cuts and spending increases will provide a fiscal thrust of 0.8% in 2018 and 0.9% in 2019, not far from the estimates we presented last month (Chart I-5).2 This represents a powerful tailwind for growth for the next two years. We must turn to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections to gauge the longer-term implications. On a positive note, the CBO revised up its estimate of the economy's long-run potential growth rate on account of the supply-side benefits of lower taxes and the immediate expensing of capital outlays. Faster growth over the long run, on its own, reduces the projected cumulative budget deficit over the 2018-2027 period by $1 trillion. However, this positive impact is swamped by the direct effect on the budget of the tax breaks and increased spending. The CBO estimates that the net effect of the fiscal adjustments will be a $1.7 trillion increase in the cumulative budget deficit over the next decade, relative to the previous baseline (Chart I-6). The annual deficit is projected to surpass $1 trillion in 2020, and peak as a share of GDP at 5.4% in 2022. Federal government debt held by the private sector will rise from 76% this year to 96% in 2028 in this scenario. Chart I-5U.S. Fiscal Stimulus Will Support Growth May 2018 May 2018 Chart I-6U.S. Federal Budget: A Lot More Red Ink U.S. Federal Budget: A Lot More Red Ink U.S. Federal Budget: A Lot More Red Ink The deficit situation begins to look better after 2020 because a raft of "temporary provisions" are assumed to sunset as per current law, including some of the personal tax cuts and deductions included in the 2017 tax package. As is usually the case, the vast majority of these provisions are likely to be extended. The CBO performed an alternative scenario in which they extend the temporary provisions and grow the spending caps at the rate of inflation after 2020. In this more realistic scenario, the deficit reaches 6% of GDP by 2022 and the federal debt-to-GDP ratio hits almost 110% of GDP in 2028. This is not a pretty picture and investors are wondering what it means for government bond yields and the dollar. We noted in the March 2018 Bank Credit Analyst that academic studies published before 2007 suggested that every percentage point rise in the government's debt-to-GDP ratio added roughly three basis points to the equilibrium level of bond yields. If this is correct, then a rise in the U.S. ratio of 25 percentage points over the next decade would lift the equilibrium long-term bond yields by 75 basis points. This estimated impact on yields should not be thought of as a default risk premium because there is no reason to default when the Fed can simply print money in the event of a funding crisis. Rather, a worsening fiscal situation could show up in higher long-term inflation expectations if investors were to lose confidence in the Fed's inflation target. Higher real yields could also come about through the 'crowding out' effect; since growth is limited in the long run by the supply side of the economy, a larger government sector means that some private sector demand needs to be crowded out via higher real interest rates. Deficits And The Dollar We discussed the potential debt fallout for the U.S. dollar from an economic perspective in the April 2018 Special Report. While the fiscal stimulus means that the U.S. twin deficits are set to worsen, the situation is not so dire that the U.S. dollar is about to fall off a cliff because of sudden concerns regarding U.S. debt sustainability among international investors. The U.S. is not close to the point where investors will begin to seriously question America's ability to service its debt. Nonetheless, with President Donald Trump's overt calls for American geopolitical retrenchment from global commitments, investors have asked whether the end of the dollar as the global reserve currency is nigh. This month's Special Report beginning on page 22 examines this issue. There is no evidence at the moment that the U.S. dollar is losing any market share and we do not foresee any sudden shifts away from the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. However, cracks are beginning to form, especially with regard to the RMB. We also believe that the euro is likely to benefit from a structural tailwind as global reserve managers increase the share of the euro in their reserves. A trade war would accelerate the diversification away from the dollar. Chart I-7Economic Slack: U.S./Eurozone Comparison Economic Slack: U.S./Eurozone Comparison Economic Slack: U.S./Eurozone Comparison The conclusions of this month's Special Report support those of last month's analysis; the dollar will continue on its long-term downtrend, although there is still room for a counter-trend rally this year. We do not see much upside against the yen in the near term, but we expect some of the euro's recent strength to be unwound. A debate is raging within the halls of the European Central Bank regarding the amount of Europe's economic slack. On this we side with President Draghi, who believes that there is still plenty of excess capacity in the labor market. The Eurozone's unemployment rate has reached the level of full employment as estimated by the OECD. However, Chart I-7 shows various measures of hidden unemployment, including discouraged workers and those that have been out of work for more than a year. In all cases, the Eurozone appears to be behind the U.S. in terms of getting back to full employment. This, along with the recent softening in some of the Eurozone's economic data, will keep the ECB wedded to low interest rates even as it terminates the asset purchase program this autumn. Long-dated forward rate differentials are beginning to move back in favor of the dollar relative to the Euro. Dollar strength will also be at the expense of most of the EM currencies. The Long-Term Consequences Of Government Debt While it is somewhat comforting that the U.S. twin-deficits are unlikely to spark financial panic in the short- to medium term, the U.S. and global debt situations are not without consequences. The latest IMF Fiscal Monitor again sounded the alarm over global debt levels, especially government paper. The Fund argues that debt sustainability becomes increasingly questionable once the general government debt/GDP ratio breaches 85%. The IMF points out that more than one-third of advanced economies had debt above 85% in 2017, three times more countries than in 2000. And this does not include the implicit liabilities linked to pension and health care spending. The good news is that the IMF expects that most of the major economies will see a reduction in their general government debt/GDP ratios between 2017 and 2023. The big exception is the U.S., where the average deficit is expected to far exceed the other major countries (Charts I-8A and I-8B). The U.S. cyclically-adjusted budget deficit is projected to be almost 7% of GDP in 2019! Including all levels of government, the IMF estimates that the U.S. debt/GDP ratio will rise by about nine percentage points, to almost 117%, between 2017 and 2023. Chart I-8AIMF Projections (I) May 2018 May 2018 Chart I-8BIMF Projections (II) May 2018 May 2018 U.S. fiscal trends are clearly unsustainable in the long-term. Taxes will have to rise or entitlement programs will have to be slashed at some point. The question is whether Congress administers the required medicine willingly, or is forced to do so by rioting markets. We do not believe that the dollar's 'day of reckoning' will happen anytime soon, but growing angst over the U.S. fiscal outlook supports our view that the multi-decade Treasury bull market is over. In the near term, the main threat to the global bond market is a mini 'inflation scare' in the U.S. Fed Will Soon Reach 2% Goal Chart I-9Inflation May Soon Reach The Fed's Target Inflation May Soon Reach The Fed's Target Inflation May Soon Reach The Fed's Target The 10-year Treasury yield is testing the 3% support level as we go to press. In part, upward pressure on yields likely reflects some calming of tensions regarding global trade and the news that the U.S. will hold face-to-face discussions with North Korea. Moreover, long-term inflation expectations have been rising in most of the major countries. Investors appear to be waking up to how strong U.S. inflation has been in recent months, driven in part by an unwinding of base effects that temporarily depressed the annual inflation rate. U.S. core CPI inflation has already quickened from 1.8% in February to 2.1% in March (Chart I-9). This acceleration will also play out in the core PCE deflator, the Fed's preferred inflation metric. Even if the core PCE deflator rises only 0.1% month-over-month in March, year-over-year core PCE inflation will increase to 1.85%. This would be above Bloomberg and Fed estimates for the end of the year. If the core PCE deflator rises 0.2% m/m in March - a reading more consistent with recent trends - then year-over-year core PCE inflation will almost reach the Fed's 2% target. The FOMC will not be alarmed even if inflation appears set to overshoot the 2% target. Nonetheless, Fed officials will be forced to adjust the communication language because they can no longer argue that "accommodative" monetary policy is still appropriate. In other words, policymakers will have to openly admit that policy will have to become outright restrictive. The Fed's "dot plot" could then be revised higher. The policy risks facing equities, EM assets and spread product will escalate once it becomes clear that the FOMC is actively targeting slower economic growth and a higher unemployment rate. As for Treasurys, the surge in the 10-year yield to 3% has been quick and we would not be surprised to see another consolidation period. Eventually, however, we expect the yield to reach 3.5% before the bear phase is over. How Vulnerable Are U.S. Households? The ultimate peak in U.S. yields will depend importantly on the economy's sensitivity to rising borrowing costs. Our research on excessive borrowing in recent months has focussed on the U.S. corporate sector. Next month we will review corporate vulnerabilities in the Eurozone. But what about U.S. consumers? Overall debt as a ratio to GDP or personal income has fallen back to pre-housing bubble levels, underscoring that the household sector has deleveraged impressively (Chart I-10). Household net worth has surpassed the pre-Lehman peak and our "wealth effect" proxy suggests that the rise in asset prices and recovery in home values provide a strong tailwind for spending (Chart I-11). The proxy likely overstates the size of the tailwind due to the lack of cash-out refinancing. Chart I-10U.S. Consumers Have Deleveraged U.S. Consumers Have Deleveraged U.S. Consumers Have Deleveraged Chart I-11'Wealth Effect' Is A Tailwind ''Wealth Effect''' Is A Tailwind ''Wealth Effect''' Is A Tailwind The financial obligation ratio (FOR) - a measure of the debt service burden for the average household - is rising but is still close to the lowest levels in three decades (Chart I-12). Chart I-13 shows a broader measure of the burden that households face when paying for essentials; interest payments, food, medical care and energy. These are all expenses that are difficult to trim. Spending on essentials has increased over the past couple of years to a little under 42% of disposable income due to rising interest rates and a continuing uptrend in out-of-pocket medical care costs. However, the ratio is below the post-1980 average level and has only risen back to levels that existed in 2011/12. From this perspective, it is difficult to believe that rising gasoline prices will dominate the benefits of the tax cuts on household spending. Chart I-12Past The Peak Of U.S. Consumer Credit Quality Past The Peak Of U.S. Consumer Credit Quality Past The Peak Of U.S. Consumer Credit Quality Chart I-13Spending On Essentials Is Not Onerous Spending On Essentials Is Not Onerous Spending On Essentials Is Not Onerous The labor market is clearly supportive for consumer spending. Wage growth has been disappointing so far in this recover, and real personal disposable income has slowed over the past year. Nonetheless, the economy continues to produce new jobs at an impressive pace, unemployment claims are close to all-time lows, and households are feeling confident about their future income and job prospects. Some market pundits have pointed to the falling household savings rate as a warning sign that consumers are 'tapped out' (Chart I-14). We are less concerned. The savings rate tends to decline during economic expansions and rises almost exclusively during recessions. All else equal, one could make the case that U.S. households should save more over their lifetimes. Nonetheless, a falling savings rate is consistent with strong, not weak, economic activity. That said, some signs have emerged that not all consumer lending in recent years has been prudent. Bank and finance company loan delinquency rates are rising, especially for credit cards and autos (Chart I-15). While the FOR is still low, it is rising and it tends to lead bank loan delinquency rates (Chart I-12). These trends usually occur just prior to a recession. Chart I-14Savings Rate Falls During Expansions Saving Rate Falls During Expansions Saving Rate Falls During Expansions Chart I-15Some Signs Of Excessive Lending Some Signs Of Excessive Lending Some Signs Of Excessive Lending There has also been an alarming surge in credit card charge-off rates, which have reached recession levels among banks that are outside of the top 100 (Chart I-15, top panel). Anecdotal evidence suggests that large banks offered lush cash rewards and points to attract higher-quality customers. Smaller banks could not compete on cash rewards, and instead had to loosen credit requirements for card issuance. The deterioration in the credit-quality composition of these banks' loan portfolios helps to explain why delinquencies have increased despite a robust labor market. The Fed's senior loan officer survey shows that expected delinquencies and charge-offs are rising even among large banks. One risk is that, while overall credit growth has been weak in this expansion, it has been concentrated in lower-income households. However, the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances does not flag a huge problem. Various measures of credit quality have not deteriorated for lower income households since 2007 (latest year available; Chart I-16). Chart I-16Credit Quality For Lower ##br##Income U.S. Households Credit Quality For Lower Income U.S. Households Credit Quality For Lower Income U.S. Households The bottom line is that there are pockets of excessive borrowing that will no doubt result in a spike in defaults in selected sectors when the next economic downturn arrives. Nonetheless, the backdrop for consumer health has not deteriorated to the point where the U.S. household sector will be ultra-sensitive to higher interest rates on a broad scale. Investment Conclusions Our base case outlook is unchanged this month. We do not see a recession in the U.S. before 2020, and the U.S. equity market could reward investors with high single-digit total returns this year and next. Nonetheless, one must separate strategy from forecast at this point in the cycle. U.S. unemployment is very low and we are beginning to see hints of late-cycle inflation dynamics. Core inflation could soon be at the Fed's 2% target, while rising energy and base metal prices add to the broader inflationary backdrop. Strong global oil demand growth and the OPEC/Russia production cuts are draining global oil inventories and supporting prices. Sanctions against Iran and/or Venezuela that further restrict supply could easily send oil prices to more than US$80/bbl this year. Investors should remain overweight energy plays. The implication is that the Fed may have to tighten into outright restrictive territory. The advanced stage in the cycle and our bias for capital preservation requires us to heed the warnings from our indicators and timing checklist. The geopolitical calendar is also stacked with risk for markets over the next month at least. Thus, we are tactically trimming risk asset exposure to benchmark until our indicators improve and/or geopolitical tensions fade. Investors should also be more cautious in their equity sector allocation for the very near term. We continue to favor Eurozone stocks over the U.S. (currency hedged), since the threat from monetary tightening is greater in the latter market and we expect the dollar to appreciate. We are neutral on the Nikkei because the risk of a rising yen offsets currently-strong EPS growth momentum. Stay short duration within global bond portfolios, and remain underweight the U.S., Canada and core Europe (currency hedged). Overweight Australia and the U.K. The Aussie economy will continue to underperform, and the U.K. economy will not allow the Bank of England to hike rates as much as is currently discounted. Mark McClellan Senior Vice President The Bank Credit Analyst April 26, 2018 Next Report: May 31, 2018 1 For a list of these events, see Table 2 in the BCA Geopolitical Strategy Weekly Report "Expect Volatility... Of Volatility," dated April 11, 2018, available at gps.bcaresearch.com. 2 The fiscal thrust is the change in the cyclically-adjusted budget balance as a share of GDP. It is a measure of the initial impetus to real GDP growth, but the actual impact on growth depends on fiscal "multipliers". II. Is King Dollar Facing Regicide? This month's Special Report is a joint effort by BCA's Geopolitical and Foreign Exchange strategists, along with contributing editors Mehul Daya and Neels Heyneke (Strategists at Nedbank CIB Research). It is a companion piece to last month's Special Report, in which I discussed the short- and long-term outlook for the U.S. dollar from a purely economic perspective. This month's analysis takes a geopolitical perspective, focusing on the possibility that the U.S. dollar will lose its reserve currency status and weaken over the long term. I trust that you will find the Report as insightful as I did. Mark McClellan Reserve currencies are built on a geopolitical and macroeconomic foundation. For the U.S. Dollar, these foundations remain in place, but cracks are emerging. Relative decline in American power, combined with a loss of confidence in the "Washington Consensus" at home, are eroding the geopolitical foundations. Meanwhile, threats to globalization, a slower pace of petrodollar recycling, and stresses in the Eurodollar system are eroding the macroeconomic foundations. The Renminbi is not an alternative to King Dollar, but the euro remains a potential challenger in the coming interregnum years that will see the world transition from American hegemony... to something else. In the long run, we envision a multipolar currency regime to emerge alongside a multipolar geopolitical world order. In this report, BCA's Geopolitical and Foreign Exchange strategies join efforts with contributing editors Mehul Daya and Neels Heyneke (Strategists at Nedbank CIB Research) to examine the conditions necessary for the decline of a reserve currency. Specifically, we seek to answer the question of whether the U.S. dollar is at the precipice of such a decline. With President Donald Trump's overt calls for American geopolitical retrenchment from global commitments, investors have asked whether the end of the dollar as the global reserve currency is nigh. After all, King Dollar has fallen by 9.7% since President Trump's inauguration on January 20, while alternatives of dubious value, such as a slew of cryptocurrencies, have seen a rally of epic proportions (Chart II-1). Professor Barry Eichengreen, a world-renowned international economics historian,1 has recently penned an insightful paper proposing a link between the robustness of military alliances and currency reserve status.2 According to the analysis, reserve currency status reflects both economic fundamentals - safety, liquidity, network effects, and economic conditions - and geopolitical fundamentals. In the case of close U.S. military allies, such as South Korea and Japan, the choice of the dollar as store of value is explained far more by the geopolitical links to the U.S., rather than the importance of the dollar for their economies. The authors warn that if the U.S. "withdraws from the world," the impact could be as large as an 80 basis points rise in the U.S. long-term interest rate. Intriguingly, some of what Professor Eichengreen posits could happen has already happened. For example, the share of foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries by military allies has already declined by a whopping 25% (Chart II-2). And yet the demand for King Dollar assets was immediately picked up by non-military allies, proving the resiliency of greenback's status as the reserve currency. Chart II-1Is Trump Guilty Of Regicide? Is Trump Guilty Of Regicide? Is Trump Guilty Of Regicide? Chart II-2Geopolitics Is Not Driving ##br##Demand For Treasuries Geopolitics Is Not Driving Demand For Treasuries Geopolitics Is Not Driving Demand For Treasuries When it comes to global currency reserves, the U.S. dollar continues to command 63%, roughly the same level it has commanded since 2000 (Chart II-3). Interestingly, alternatives remain roughly the same as in the past, with little real movement (Chart II-4). The Chinese renminbi remains largely ignored as a global reserve currency and its use across markets and geographies appears to have declined since the imposition of full capital controls in October 2015 (Chart II-5). Chart II-3Dollar Remains King Dollar Remains King Dollar Remains King Chart II-4The Euro Is The Only Serious Competitor To King Dollar... May 2018 May 2018 Chart II-5...The Renminbi Is Not May 2018 May 2018 However, some cracks in the foundation are emerging. A recent IMF paper, penned by Camilo E. Tovar and Tania Mohd Nor,3 uses currency co-movements to determine which national currencies belong to a particular reserve currency bloc.4 Their work shows that the international monetary system has already transitioned from a bi-polar system - consisting of the greenback and the euro - to a multipolar one that includes the CNY (Chart II-6). However, the CNY's influence does not extend beyond the BRICS and is scant in East Asia, the geographical region that China already dominates in trade (Chart II-7), albeit not yet geopolitically (Map II-1). Chart II-6Renminbi Does Command A Large Currency 'Bloc'... Renminbi Does Command A Large Currency '''Bloc'''... Renminbi Does Command A Large Currency '''Bloc'''... Chart II-7...But Despite China's Dominance Of East Asia... ...But Despite China's Dominance Of East Asia... ...But Despite China's Dominance Of East Asia... Map II-1...Renminbi's 'Bloc' Is Not In Asia! May 2018 May 2018 Our conclusion is that the geopolitical and economic tailwinds behind the greenback's status as a global reserve currency are shifting into headwinds. This process, as we describe below, could increase the risk of a global dollar liquidity shortage, buoying the greenback in the short term. In the long term, however, a transition into a multipolar currency arrangement could rebalance some of the imbalances created by the collapse of the Bretton Woods System and is not necessarily to be feared. The Geopolitical Fundamentals Of A Reserve Currency Nothing lasts forever and the U.S. dollar will one day join a long list of former reserve currencies that includes the Ancient Greek drachma, the Roman aureus, the Byzantium solidus, the Florentine florin, the Dutch gulden, the Spanish dollar, and the pound sterling. All of the political entities that produced these reserve currencies have several factors in common. They were the geopolitical hegemons of their era, capable of controlling the most important trade routes, projecting both hard and soft power outside of their borders, and maintaining a stable economy that underpinned the purchasing power of their currency. Table II-1 illustrates several factors that we believe encapsulate the necessary conditions for a dominant international currency. Table II-1Insights From History: What Makes A Reserve Currency? May 2018 May 2018 Geopolitical Power As Eichengreen posits, geopolitical fundamentals are essential for reserve currency status. Military power is necessary in order to defend one's national and commercial interests abroad, compel foreign powers to yield to those interests, and protect allies in exchange for their acquiescence to the hegemonic status quo. An important modern world example of such "gunboat diplomacy" was the 1974 agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.5 In exchange for dumping their petro-dollars into U.S. debt, Riyadh received an American commitment to keep the Saudi Kingdom safe from all threats, both regional (Iran) and global (the Soviet Union). It also received special permission to keep its purchases of U.S. Treasuries secret. Chart II-8The Exorbitant Privilege In One Chart May 2018 May 2018 As with all the empires surveyed in Table II-1, allies and vassal states were forced to use the hegemon's currency in their trade and investment transactions as a way of paying for the security blanket. To this day, there is no better way to explain the "exorbitant privilege" that the dollar commands. Chart II-8 illustrates that the U.S. enjoys positive net income despite a massively negative net international investment position. It is true that the U.S.'s foreign assets are skewed toward foreign direct investment and equities, investments that have higher rates of returns than the fixed-income liabilities the U.S. owes to the rest of the world. But the U.S.'s positive net income balance has been exacerbated by the willingness of foreigners to invest their assets into the U.S. for little compensation, something illustrated by the fact that between 1971 and 2007, the ex-post U.S. term premium has been toward the lower end of the G10. Additionally, as foreigners are also willing holders of U.S. physical cash, the U.S. government has been able to finance part of its budget deficit with instruments carrying no interest payments. This is what economists refer to as seigniorage, a subsidy to the U.S. government equivalent to around 0.2% of GDP per annum (or roughly $39.5 bn in 2017). In essence, American allies are paying for American hegemony through their investments in U.S. dollar assets, and this lets the U.S. live above its means. But ultimately, the quid pro quo is perhaps as much geopolitical as economic. There is one, non-negligible, cost for U.S. policymakers. The greenback tends to appreciate during periods of global economic stress due to its reserve currency status.6 This means that each time the U.S. needs a weak dollar to reflate its economy, the dollar moves in the opposite direction, adding deflationary pressures to an already weak domestic economy. Compared to the benefits, which offer the U.S. a steady-stream of seigniorage income and low-cost financing, the cost of reserve currency status is acceptable. Chart II-9U.S. Naval Strength Still Supreme... U.S. Naval Strength Still Supreme... U.S. Naval Strength Still Supreme... Economic Power Aside from brute force, an empire is built on commercial and trade links. There are two reasons for this. First, trade allows the empire to acquire raw materials to fuel its economy and technological advancement. Second, it also gives the "periphery" a role to play in the empire, a stake in the world system underpinned by the hegemonic core. This creates an entire layer of society in the periphery - the elites enriched by and entrenched in the Empire - with existential interest in the status quo. For the past five centuries, commercial dominance has been underpinned by naval dominance. As the Ottoman Empire and the Ming Dynasty closed off the overland routes in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Europeans used technological innovation to avoid the off-limits Eurasian landmass and establish alternative - and exclusively naval - routes to commodities and new markets. This has propelled a succession of largely naval empires: Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, British, and finally American. Several land-based powers tried to break through the nautical noose - Ottoman Turks, Sweden, Hapsburg Austria, Germany, and the Soviet Union - but were defeated by the superiority of naval-based power. Dominance of the seas allows the hegemonic core to unite disparate and far-flung regions through commerce and to call upon vast resources in case of a global conflict. Meanwhile, the hegemon can deny that commerce and those resources to land-locked challengers. This is how the British defeated Napoleon and how the U.S. and its allies won World War I and II. The U.S. remains the supreme naval power (Chart II-9). While China is building up its ability to push back against the U.S. navy in its regional seas (East and South China Seas), it will be decades before it is close to being able to project power across the world's oceans. While the former is necessary for becoming a regional hegemon, the latter is necessary for China to offer non-contiguous allies an alternative to American hegemony. Bottom Line: The foundation of a global reserve currency status is geopolitical fundamentals. The U.S. remains well-endowed in both. American Hegemony - From Tailwinds To Headwinds Chart II-10...But Overall Hegemony Is In Decline ...But Overall Hegemony Is In Decline ...But Overall Hegemony Is In Decline The U.S. is already facing a relative geopolitical decline due to the rise of major emerging markets like China (Chart II-10). This theme underpins BCA Geopolitical Strategy's view that the world has already transitioned from American hegemony to a multipolar arrangement.7 In absolute terms, the U.S. still retains the hard and soft power variables that have supported the USD's global reserve status and will continue to do so for the next decade (which is the maximum investment horizon of the vast majority of our clients). However, there are three imminent threats to the status quo that may accentuate global multipolarity: Populism: The global hegemon could decide to withdraw from distant entanglements and institutional arrangements. In the U.S., an isolationist narrative has emerged suggesting that America's status as the consumer and mercenary of last resort is unsustainable (Chart II-11). President Obama was elected on the promise of withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan; his administration also struck a major deal with Iran to reduce American exposure to the Middle East. Donald Trump won the presidency on an even more isolationist platform and he and several of his advisors have voiced such a view over the past 15 months. The appeal of isolationism could resurface as it is a potent political elixir based on a much deeper rejection of globalization among the American public than the policy establishment realized (Chart II-12). Chart II-11Trump Is Rebelling Against The Post-Cold War System May 2018 May 2018 Chart II-12Americans Are Rebelling Against The 'Washington Consensus' May 2018 May 2018 Return of the land-based empire: While the U.S. remains the preeminent naval power, its leadership in military prowess could be wasted through a suboptimal grand strategy. The U.S. has two geopolitical imperatives: dominate the world's oceans and ensure the disunity of the Eurasian landmass.8 Eurasia has sufficient natural resources (Russia), population (China), wealth (Europe), and geographical buffer from naval powers (the seas surrounding it) to become self-sufficient. Hence any great power that managed to dominate Eurasia would have no need for a navy as it would become a superpower by default. Why would America's European allies abandon their U.S. security blanket for an alliance with Russia and China? First, stranger shifts in alliance structure have occurred in the past.9 Second, because a mix of U.S. mercantilism and isolationism could push Europe into making independent geopolitical arrangements with its Eurasian peers, even if these arrangements were informal. The advent of the cyber realm: Finally, the advent of the Internet as a new realm of great power competition reduces the relative utility of hard power, such as a navy. Great empires of the past struggled when confronted with new arenas of conflict such as air and submarine. New technologies and new arenas can yield advantages in traditional battlefields. Today, the U.S. must compete for hegemony in space and cyber-space with China, Russia, and other rivals. In these mediums, the U.S. does not have as great of a head start as it has in naval competition. Bottom Line: The U.S. remains the preeminent global power. However, its status as a hegemon is in relative decline. Domestic populism, suboptimal grand strategy, and the advent of cyber and outer-space warfare could all accelerate this decline on the margin. The Economic Fundamentals Of U.S. Dollar Reserve Status One unique aspect of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency is that it is a fiat currency, i.e. paper money limited in supply only by policy. Throughout human history, most dominant currency reserves were based on commodities that were rare or difficult to acquire, like silver or gold.10 When the U.S. dollar was decoupled from gold prices in 1971, it became the only recent example of a global reserve currency backed by nothing but faith (the pound was for most of its period of dominance backed by gold). Money serves three functions in the economy. It is a means of payment, a unit of account, and a store of value. The last comes into jeopardy when the reserve currency has to supply the world with more and more liquidity, also known as the "Triffin dilemma". By definition, as the global reserve currency, the USD has to be plentiful enough for the global economy and financial system to function adequately. The U.S. government must constantly supply dollars to this end. Chart II-13 illustrates the timeline of global dollar liquidity, which we define as the total U.S. monetary base in circulation (U.S. monetary base plus holdings of U.S. Treasury securities held in custody for foreign officials and international accounts). The world has seen an ever-expanding U.S. dollar monetary base since 1988. Only during periods where the price of money (i.e. the Federal funds rate) has increased, has the money creation process slowed. Now that the expansion of the global USD monetary base is slowing, overall dollar liquidity is as important as the price, if not more (Chart II-14). Chart II-13Global Dollar Liquidity... May 2018 May 2018 Chart II-14...Drives Global Asset Prices ...Drives Global Asset Prices ...Drives Global Asset Prices The constant increase of dollar liquidity has made the greenback the "lubricant" of today's global financial system. There are three major forces at work beneath this condition: Recycling of petrodollars into the global financial system; Globalization and the build-up of - mainly USD-denominated - FX reserves; Deregulation of the Eurodollar system.11 Petrodollars Commodity exporters, mainly oil producers, sell their products in exchange for U.S. dollars. In addition, most Middle Eastern producers recycle their profits into U.S. dollars due to the liquidity and depth of U.S. capital markets. By 1980, the majority of oil producers were trading in U.S. dollars and were similarly investing their surpluses into the U.S. financial system in the form of U.S. government debt securities. The growth in petrodollars has allowed the world's dollar monetary base to grow substantially. This was both enabled by direct issuance of U.S. debt securities funded by petrodollar purchases and also through the Eurodollar system whereby banks outside the U.S. held large deposits of surplus dollar earnings from Middle East oil producers. Globalization The contemporary wave of globalization began in the mid-1980s, when it became evident that the Soviet Union was in midst of a deep economic malaise. This prompted the new Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to launch perestroika ("restructuring") in 1985, throwing in the proverbial towel in the contest between a statist planned economy and a free market one. Alongside the rise in global trade, financial globalization rose at a very rapid pace as cross-border capital flows more than doubled as a percentage of global GDP from 1990 onward. In the U.S., the economic boom of the 1990s was the longest expansion in history, with growth averaging 4% during the period. The U.S. trade deficit ballooned, providing the world with large amounts of dollar liquidity in the process. The flipside of the massive current account deficit was the accumulation of FX reserves in Europe and Asia, largely denominated in U.S. dollars. These insensitive buyers of U.S. debt indirectly financed the U.S. trade deficit, and also indirectly fuelled the debt super cycle and asset inflation as the "savings glut" compressed the world's risk-free rate and term premium. In other words, financial globalization combined with excess international savings morphed into a global quid pro quo. The world economy needed liquidity to finance growth and capital investment. In a system where the greenback stood at the base of any liquidity build up, this meant that the world needed dollars to finance its development. The world was thus willing to finance the U.S. current account deficit at little cost. The Eurodollar System The Eurodollar system was originally a payment system introduced after World War II as a result of the Marshal Plan. Because global trade was dominated by the U.S. - the only country that retained the capacity to produce industrial goods - foreigners had to be able to access U.S. dollars where they were domiciled in order to buy capital goods. The U.S. current account deficit played a role in growing that Eurodollar market. While a lot of the dollars supplied to the rest of the world through the U.S. current account deficit ended up going back to the U.S. via its large capital account surplus, a significant portion remained in offshore jurisdictions, providing an important fuel for the Eurodollar markets. In fact, more than two-thirds of U.S.-dollar claims in the Eurodollar market can be traced back to U.S. entities. After this original impetus, the Eurodollar market grew by leaps and bounds amid a number of regulatory advantages introduced in the 1980s. These changes in regulations not only deepened the participation of European and Japanese banks in the offshore markets, it also allowed U.S. banks to shift capital to Europe, harvesting a lower cost of capital in the process.12 The next growth phase in the Eurodollar system came with the evolution of shadow banking, in which credit was created off balance sheet by lending out collateral more than once, thus enabling banks to obtain higher gearing. This process is known as "re-hypothecation." In the U.S. there was a limit to which banks were allowed to gear collateral, which was not the case in Europe. Hence, to take advantage of this regulatory leniency, global banks grew further through the offshore market, causing an additional expansion in the Eurodollar market.13 Ultimately, this implies that over the past 30 years, the growth of the Eurodollar system has mainly been a consequence of the architecture of the international financial system. Headwinds To Dollar Liquidity The forces contributing to the extraordinary growth in dollar liquidity have begun to fade. In brief: Protectionism and populism: A slowdown in global trade has occurred for a number of structural, non-geopolitical reasons, especially if one controls for the recovery of energy prices (Chart II-15).14 This slowdown implies a slower accumulation of international FX reserves and a reduction of the "savings glut." If protectionism were to compound the effects - by shrinking the U.S. trade deficit - the result for global dollar liquidity would be negative. The consequence would be a certain degree of "quantitative tightening" of global dollar liquidity. Energy prices: Despite the recovery in energy prices, oil producers continue to struggle to rein in their budget deficits. Deficits blew out during the high-spending era buoyed by high oil prices (Chart II-16). Today, oil producing countries have less oil revenues to spend on the Treasury market, as their cash is needed at home. Meanwhile, the U.S. is slowly moving towards partial energy independence, further shrinking its trade deficit. Chart II-15Global Trade Growth Has Moderated Global Trade Growth Has Moderated Global Trade Growth Has Moderated Chart II-16Petrodollars Are Scarce Petrodollars Are Scarce Petrodollars Are Scarce Eurodollar system: The monetary "plumbing" has become clogged since 2014 after the Fed stopped growing its balance sheet and sweeping Basel III bank regulations took effect. The cost of acquiring U.S. dollars in Eurodollar markets currently stands at a premium. This extra cost cannot be arbitraged away due to the restrictive capital rules imposed under Basel III, which have raised the cost of capital for banks. This can be seen in the persistent widening of USD cross-currency basis-swap spreads and more recently, in the rise of the Libor-OIS spread (Chart II-17). The introduction of interest on excess reserves by the Federal Reserve is further draining dollars from the Eurodollar system. The velocity of dollar usage in international markets is unlikely to return to the pace experienced from 1995 to 2008, when the shadow banking system grew rapidly. To complicate matters, dollar-denominated debt issued outside of the U.S. by non-U.S. entities such as banks, governments, and non-financial corporations has grown substantially. This could exacerbate the scramble for dollars in case of a global shortage. For example, the stock of outstanding dollar debt issued by foreign nonfinancial corporations currently stands at US$10 trillion (Chart II-18). Chart II-17Mounting Stress In The Eurodollar System Mounting Stress In The Eurodollar System Mounting Stress In The Eurodollar System Chart II-18Foreign Dollar Debt Is At $10 Trillion May 2018 May 2018 Why is the Eurodollar system so important? Today is the first time in the world's history that this much debt has been accumulated in the global reserve currency outside of the country that issues that currency. The Eurodollar system is thus a key source of liquidity for global borrowers. It is also necessary to ensure that these borrowers can access U.S. dollars when the time comes to repay their USD-denominated obligations. The U.S. trade deficit is effectively the source of the growth of the monetary base in the Eurodollar system, and the stock of dollar-denominated debt issued by non-U.S. entities is the world's broad money supply. With the money multiplier in the offshore USD markets having fallen in response to the regulatory tightening that followed the Great Financial Crisis, broad USD money supply in the Eurodollar system will be hyper sensitive to any decline in the U.S. current account deficit. Less global imbalances would therefore result in a further increase in USD funding costs in the international system, and potentially into a stronger U.S. dollar as well, making this dollar debt very expensive to repay. This raises the likelihood of a massive short-squeeze in favour of the U.S. dollar, challenging the current downward trajectory in the U.S. dollar, at least in the short term. Another consequence of a higher cost of sourcing U.S. dollars in the Eurodollar market tends to be rising FX volatility (Chart II-19). An increase in FX volatility should represent a potent headwinds for carry trades. This, in turn, will hurt liquidity conditions in EM economies. Hence, EM growth may be another casualty of problems in the Eurodollar system. Chart II-19Eurodollar Stress Produces FX Volatility Eurodollar Stress Produces FX Volatility Eurodollar Stress Produces FX Volatility Thus, the risks associated with U.S. protectionism go well beyond the risks to global trade. If severe enough, protectionism can threaten the plumbing system of the global economy. Bottom Line: The global economy has been supplied with dollar-based liquidity through the Eurodollar market. At the base of this edifice stands the U.S. trade-deficit, which was then magnified by the issuance of U.S. dollar-denominated debt by non-U.S. entities. This system is becoming increasingly tenuous as Basel III regulations have increased the cost of capital for global money-center banks, resulting in a downward force on the money multiplier in the offshore dollar funding system. In this environment, the risk to the system created by protectionism rises. If Trump and his administration can indeed scale back the size of the U.S. trade deficit, not only will the growth of the U.S. dollar monetary base be broken, but since the monetary multiplier of the Eurodollar system is also impaired, the capacity of the system to provide the dollars needed to fund all the liabilities it has created will decline. This could result in a serious rise in dollar funding costs as well as a tightening of global liquidity that will hurt global growth and result in a dollar short squeeze. This implied precarious situation raises one obvious question: Could we see the emergence of another reserve asset to complement the dollar, alleviating global liquidity risk? If Something Cannot Go On Forever, It Will Stop A global shortage of dollars is not imminent but could result from the forces described above. Even so, it is unlikely that the U.S. dollar faces any sudden end to its role as the leading global reserve currency. However, the world is unlikely to abide by a system that limits its growth potential either. The demise of the Bretton Woods system is important to keep in mind. The Bretton Woods system tied the supply of global liquidity to the supply of U.S. dollars. Initially this was not a problem as the U.S. ran a trade surplus. But it became a significant issue when the rest of the world began to question the U.S. commitment to honouring the $35/oz price commitment amidst domestic profligacy and money printing. Ultimately, the system broke down for this very reason. The strength of the global economy, along with the size of the U.S. current account deficit, was creating too many offshore dollars. Either the global money supply had to shrink, or gold had to be revalued against the dollar. The unpegging of the dollar from gold effectively resulted in the latter. However, the 1971 Smithsonian Agreement that replaced the gold standard with a dollar standard retained the dollar's hegemony. There was simply no alternative at the time. Today, it is unlikely that the global economy will stand idle in the face of a potentially sharp tightening of global liquidity conditions. We posit that this rising dollar funding costs will be the most important factor to decrease the importance of the dollar in the global financial system. Since the demand for the USD as a reserve currency is linked to its use as a liability by banks and financial systems outside of the U.S., if the USD gets downgraded as a source of financing by global banks, the demand for the greenback in global reserves will decline.15 As the share of dollars in foreign reserve coffers decreases, the dollar will likely depreciate over time as it will stop benefiting from the return-inelastic demand from reserve managers. Profit-motivated private investors will demand higher expected returns on dollar assets in order to finance the U.S. current account deficit. Despite this important negative, the dollar will still be the most important reserve asset in the world for many decades. After all, the decline of the pound as the global reserve asset in the interwar period was a gradual affair. Nonetheless, the share of reserves concentrated in USD assets as well as the share of international liabilities issued in USD will decrease, potentially a lot quicker than is thought possible. Chart II-20Reserve Currency Status ##br##Can Diminish Quickly May 2018 May 2018 For example, Eichengreen has shown that the pound sterling's share of non-gold global currency reserves fell from 63% in 1899 to 48% in 1913, just 14 years later (Chart II-20). It is instructive that this pre-World War I era coincides with today's multipolar geopolitical context. It similarly featured the decline of a status quo power (the U.K.) and the emergence of a rising challenger (the German Empire). What are the alternatives to the dollar? Obviously, the euro will have a role in this play. The euro today only represents 20% of global reserve assets, and considering the size of the Euro Area economy as well as the depth of its capital markets, the euro's place in global reserves has room to increase. In fact, the share of euros in global reserves is 15% smaller than that of the combined continental European national currencies in 1990 (see Chart II-4 on page 25). The CNY can also expect to see its share of international reserves increase. While China does not have the same capital-market depth as the Euro Area, it is gaining wider currency. The One Belt One Road project is causing many international projects to be financed in CNY and China's economic and military heft is still growing fairly rapidly. Nevertheless, China's closed capital account continues to weigh against the CNY's position. As Chart II-21 illustrates, there is a relationship between a country's share of international global payments and inward foreign investment. Essentially, investors want to know that they can do something (buy and sell goods and services) with the currency that they use to settle their payments. In particular, they want to know that they can use the currency in the economy that issues it. As long as it keeps its capital account closed, China will fail to transform the CNY into a reserve currency. Chart II-21A Reserve Currency With A Closed Capital Account? Forget About It! May 2018 May 2018 This means that for at least the next five years, the renminbi's internationalization will be limited. If U.S. protectionism is severe enough, China's economic transition is less likely to be orderly and capital account liberalization could be delayed further. In terms of investment implications, this suggests that for the coming decade, the euro is likely to benefit from a structural tailwind as global reserve managers increase their share of euro reserves. The key metric that investors should follow to gauge whether or not the euro is becoming a more important source of global liquidity is not just the share of euros in global reserves, but also the amount of foreign-currency debt issued in euros by non-euro area entities in the international markets. In all likelihood, before the world transitions toward a unit of account other than the USD, tensions will grow severe, as they did in the late 1960s. It is hard to know when these tensions will become evident. This past winter, the USD basis-swap spread began to widen along with the Libor-OIS spread, but while the Libor-OIS spread remains wide, basis-swap spreads have normalized. Nonetheless, by the end of this cycle, we would expect a liquidity event to cause stress in global carry trades and EM assets. It is important that investors keep a close eye on basis-swap and Libor-OIS spreads to gauge this risk (Chart II-22). Chart II-22Are We Nearing A Global Liquidity Event? Are We Nearing A Global Liquidity Event? Are We Nearing A Global Liquidity Event? Additionally, the more protectionist the U.S. becomes, the larger the diversification away from the dollar by both global reserve managers and international bond issuers could become. This is because of two reasons: First, if the U.S. actually manages to pare down its trade deficit, this will accentuate the decline in the supply of base money in the international system. Second, rising trade protectionism out of the White House gives the world the impression that economic mismanagement is taking hold of the U.S., raising the spectre of stagflation. Finally, the next global reserve asset does not have to be a currency. After all, for millennia, that role was fulfilled by commodities such as gold, silver, or copper. Thus, another asset may emerge to fill this gap. At this point in time it is not clear which asset this may be. Bottom Line: A severe liquidity-tightening caused by a scarcity of U.S. dollars would create market tumult around the world. We worry that such a risk is growing. However, it is hard to envision the global economy falling to its knees. Instead, the global system will likely do what it has done many times before: evolve. This evolution will most likely result in new tools being used to increase the global monetary base. At the current juncture, our best bet is that it will be the euro, which will hurt the USD's exchange rate at the margin on a secular basis. This brings up the very important question of whether the euro is politically viable. We have turned to this question many times over the past seven years. Our high conviction view is still that the euro will survive over the foreseeable time horizon.16 Marko Papic, Senior Vice President Chief Geopolitical Strategist Mathieu Savary, Vice President Foreign Exchange Strategy Mehul Daya Consulting Editor Neels Heyneke Consulting Editor 1 And an erstwhile member of BCA's Research Advisory Board. 2 Please see Eichengreen, Barry et al, "Mars or Mercury? The Geopolitics of International Currency Choice," dated December 2017, available at nber.org. 3 Please see Tovar, Camillo and Tania Mohd Nor, 2018 "Reserve Currency Blocks: A Changing International Monetary System?," IMF Working Paper WP/18/20, Washington D.C. 4 The authors are essentially examining the extent to which national currencies are anchored to a particular reserve currency. 5 Please see David Shapiro, The Hidden Hand Of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling And International Markets, New York: Columbia University Press. Also, Andrea Wong, "The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia's 41-Year Secret Debt," The Independent, dated June 1, 2016, available at independent.co.uk. 6 Please see The Bank Credit Analyst Special Report, "Stairway To (Safe) Haven: Investing In Times Of Crisis," dated August 25, 2016, available at bca.bcaresearch.com. 7 Please see BCA Geopolitical Strategy Monthly Report, "Multipolarity And Investing," dated April 9, 2014, and Geopolitical Strategy Strategic Outlook, "We Are All Geopolitical Strategists Now," dated December 2016, available at gps.bcaresearch.com. 8 Please see BCA Geopolitical Strategy Weekly Report, "The Trump Doctrine," February 1, 2017, available at gps.bcaresearch.com. 9 Entente cordiale being particularly shocking at the time it was formalized in 1904. Other examples of ideologically heterodox alliances include the USSR's alliance first with Nazi Germany and then with Democratic America during World War II; the notorious alliance of Catholic France with Muslim Turks against its Christian neighbors throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; or Greek alliances with the Carthaginians against Rome in the third century BC. 10 Another exception to this rule was the Yuan Dynasty, established by Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, which issued fiat money made from mulberry bark. In fact, the mulberry trees in the courtyard at the Bank of England serve as a reminder of the origins of fiat money. 11 Eurodollar system simply refers to U.S. dollars that are outside the U.S. 12 Firstly, the absence of Regulation Q in offshore markets meant that regulatory arbitrage was possible, i.e. there was no ceiling imposed on interest rates on deposits at non-U.S. banks. Then, in the late 1990s, the Eurodollar system had another jump start with the amendment to Regulation D, which meant that non-U.S. banks were exempted from reserve requirements. 13 European banks specifically, but also U.S. banks with European branches, were aggressive buyers/funders of exotic derivatives products, such as CDO, MBS, SIVS. Most of these activities were off-balance sheet and took place in the Eurodollar system because a number of regulatory arbitrages existed. This is one of the main reasons that the Federal Reserve's bailout programs were largely focused towards foreign banks. The Fed's swap lines were heavily used by foreign central banks in order to clean up the operations of their own financial institutions. 14 Please see BCA Global Investment Strategy Special Report, "Why Has Global Trade Slowed?," dated January 29, 2016, available at gis.bcaresearch.com 15 Shah, Nihar, "Foreign Dollar Reserves and Financial Stability," December 2015, Harvard University. 16 Please see BCA Geopolitical Strategy Special Report, "Europe's Geopolitical Gambit: Relevance Through Integration," dated November 2011; "No Apocalypse Now?," dated October 31, 2011; "The Draghi 'Bait And Switch," dated January 9, 2013; "Europe: The Euro And (Geo)politics," dated February 11, 2015; "Greece After The Euro: A Land Of Milk And Honey?," dated January 20, 2016; "After BREXIT, N-EXIT?," dated July 13, 2016; "Europe's Divine Comedy Part II: Italy In Purgatorio," dated June 21, 2017. III. Indicators And Reference Charts A key divergence has emerged between the U.S. corporate earnings data and our equity-related indicators. The divergence supports our tactical cautiousness on risk assets. Forward earnings have soared on the back of the U.S. tax cuts and upgrades to the growth outlook. Earnings are beating expectations by a wide margin so far in the Q1 earnings season, which is reflected in very elevated levels for the net revisions ratio and net earnings surprises. However, the S&P 500 has failed to gain any altitude on the back of the positive earnings news, in part because bond yields have jumped. Our Monetary Indicator moved further into bearish territory, and our Equity Technical indicator is below its 9-month moving average and is threatening to break below the zero line (which would be another negative signal). Valuation has improved marginally, but is still stretched, according to our Composite Valuation Indicator. Our Speculation Indicator does not suggest that market frothiness has waned at all, although sentiment has fallen back to neutral level. It is also worrying that our U.S. Willingness-to-Pay indicator took a sharp turn for the worse in April. The WTP indicators track flows, and thus provide information on what investors are actually doing, as opposed to sentiment indexes that track how investors are feeling. U.S. flows have clearly turned negative for equities, although flows into European and Japanese markets are holding up for now. Finally, our Revealed Preference Indicator (RPI) for stocks flashed a 'sell' signal in April. The RPI combines the idea of market momentum with valuation and policy measures. It provides a powerful bullish signal if positive market momentum lines up with constructive signals from the policy and valuation measures. Conversely, if constructive market momentum is not supported by valuation and policy, investors should lean against the market trend. These indicators are not aligned at the moment, further supporting the view that caution is warranted. As for bonds, oversold conditions have emerged but valuation has not yet reached one standard deviation, the threshold for undervaluation. This suggests that there is more upside potential for Treasury yields. The U.S. dollar broke out of its recent tight trading range to the upside in April, although this has only resulted in an unwinding of oversold conditions according to our Composite Technical Indicator. The dollar is expensive on a PPP basis, but we still expect the dollar to rally near term. EQUITIES: Chart III-1U.S. Equity Indicators U.S. Equity Indicators U.S. Equity Indicators Chart III-2Willingness To Pay For Risk Willingness To Pay For Risk Willingness To Pay For Risk Chart III-3U.S. Equity Sentiment Indicators U.S. Equity Sentiment Indicators U.S. Equity Sentiment Indicators Chart III-4Revealed Preference Indicator Revealed Preference Indicator Revealed Preference Indicator Chart III-5U.S. Stock Market Valuation U.S. Stock Market Valuation U.S. Stock Market Valuation Chart III-6U.S. Earnings U.S. Earnings U.S. Earnings Chart III-7Global Stock Market And Earnings: ##br##Relative Performance Global Stock Market And Earnings: Relative Performance Global Stock Market And Earnings: Relative Performance Chart III-8Global Stock Market And Earnings: ##br##Relative Performance Global Stock Market And Earnings: Relative Performance Global Stock Market And Earnings: Relative Performance FIXED INCOME: Chart III-9U.S. Treasurys And Valuations U.S. Treasurys and Valuations U.S. Treasurys and Valuations Chart III-10U.S. Treasury Indicators U.S. Treasury Indicators U.S. Treasury Indicators Chart III-11Selected U.S. Bond Yields Selected U.S. Bond Yields Selected U.S. Bond Yields Chart III-1210-Year Treasury Yield Components 10-Year Treasury Yield Components 10-Year Treasury Yield Components Chart III-13U.S. Corporate Bonds And Health Monitor U.S. Corporate Bonds And Health Monitor U.S. Corporate Bonds And Health Monitor Chart III-14Global Bonds: Developed Markets Global Bonds: Developed Markets Global Bonds: Developed Markets Chart III-15Global Bonds: Emerging Markets Global Bonds: Emerging Markets Global Bonds: Emerging Markets CURRENCIES: Chart III-16U.S. Dollar And PPP U.S. Dollar And PPP U.S. Dollar And PPP Chart III-17U.S. Dollar And Indicator U.S. Dollar And Indicator U.S. Dollar And Indicator Chart III-18U.S. Dollar Fundamentals U.S. Dollar Fundamentals U.S. Dollar Fundamentals Chart III-19Japanese Yen Technicals Japanese Yen Technicals Japanese Yen Technicals Chart III-20Euro Technicals Euro Technicals Euro Technicals Chart III-21Euro/Yen Technicals Euro/Yen Technicals Euro/Yen Technicals Chart III-22Euro/Pound Technicals Euro/Pound Technicals Euro/Pound Technicals COMMODITIES: Chart III-23Broad Commodity Indicators Broad Commodity Indicators Broad Commodity Indicators Chart III-24Commodity Prices Commodity Prices Commodity Prices Chart III-25Commodity Prices Commodity Prices Commodity Prices Chart III-26Commodity Sentiment Commodity Sentiment Commodity Sentiment Chart III-27Speculative Positioning Speculative Positioning Speculative Positioning ECONOMY: Chart III-28U.S. And Global Macro Backdrop U.S. And Global Macro Backdrop U.S. And Global Macro Backdrop Chart III-29U.S. Macro Snapshot U.S. Macro Snapshot U.S. Macro Snapshot Chart III-30U.S. Growth Outlook U.S. Growth Outlook U.S. Growth Outlook Chart III-31U.S. Cyclical Spending U.S. Cyclical Spending U.S. Cyclical Spending Chart III-32U.S. Labor Market U.S. Labor Market U.S. Labor Market Chart III-33U.S. Consumption U.S. Consumption U.S. Consumption Chart III-34U.S. Housing U.S. Housing U.S. Housing Chart III-35U.S. Debt And Deleveraging U.S. Debt And Deleveraging U.S. Debt And Deleveraging Chart III-36U.S. Financial Conditions U.S. Financial Conditions U.S. Financial Conditions Chart III-37Global Economic Snapshot: Europe Global Economic Snapshot: Europe Global Economic Snapshot: Europe Chart III-38Global Economic Snapshot: China Global Economic Snapshot: China Global Economic Snapshot: China Mark McClellan Senior Vice President The Bank Credit Analyst

Highlights Corporate Bonds & The Yield Curve: Corporate bond excess returns fall sharply once the yield curve flattens to below 50 basis points, though they typically remain positive until the yield curve inverts. Interestingly, excess returns for equities relative to Treasuries exhibit the opposite pattern. Corporate Bonds & Leverage: The outlook for top-line corporate revenue growth is strong, but employee compensation costs will also rise this year. We are doubtful that corporate profit growth will keep pace with debt growth for the remainder of year, meaning that leverage is likely to rise. Rising leverage will be a signal to reduce exposure to corporate bonds. Bond Map: We perform a back-test to assess the effectiveness of the Bond Map framework for sector allocation that was introduced in last week's report. Feature It's been a while, but last week's bond market performance was reminiscent of an old fashioned risk-on phase. The 10-year Treasury yield reached its highest level since early 2014, causing a temporary halt in the yield curve's flattening trend. Spread product also responded to investor optimism, and returns from the investment grade corporate bond index now lag the duration-equivalent Treasury index by only 52 basis points year-to-date, up from a mid-March trough of -94 bps (Chart 1). High-Yield index returns also rebounded, and that index is now outpacing Treasuries by +150 bps so far this year. Chart 1Corporate Credit: Annual Excess Returns Corporate Credit: Annual Excess Returns Corporate Credit: Annual Excess Returns But for corporate bond investors, now is not the time for complacency. Out of the criteria we use to signal turns in the credit cycle, we are progressively checking more and more off our list.1 Spreads are already tight relative to history and corporate debt levels are already high. That much has been true for some time. Next up, we await a more restrictive monetary policy and a more severe slow-down in corporate profit growth to below the pace of corporate debt growth. Both of those conditions also need to be met before corporate defaults start to occur and spreads start to widen materially. In this week's report we consider each of those two conditions in turn, noting the triggers that will need to be hit for us to downgrade our current overweight allocation to corporate bonds. Condition 1: Restrictive Monetary Policy Chart 2Monetary Policy Not Yet Restrictive Monetary Policy Not Yet Restrictive Monetary Policy Not Yet Restrictive On the monetary policy front, we expect that monetary conditions will turn restrictive in the not-to-distant future (Chart 2). For the time being, long-maturity TIPS breakeven inflation rates are still below levels that are consistent with the Fed achieving its 2% inflation target. The 10-year TIPS breakeven inflation rate is currently 2.17% and the 5-year/5-year forward TIPS breakeven inflation rate is 2.24%. But once both of those rates reach a range between 2.3% and 2.5%, they will be consistent with well-anchored inflation expectations and the Fed will have one less reason to stay cautious. We will start paring exposure to corporate bonds once both the 10-year TIPS breakeven inflation rate and the 5-year/5-year forward TIPS breakeven inflation rate cross above the 2.3% threshold. The re-anchoring of inflation expectations will also impart further upside to nominal Treasury yields, and we therefore maintain our below-benchmark duration stance and continue to follow the road-map laid out in our February report detailing the two-stage Treasury bear market.2 Another traditional signal of restrictive monetary policy is a flat or inverted yield curve (Chart 2, panel 2). Intuitively, a very flat yield curve tells us that the market expects very few (if any) Fed rate hikes in the future. An inverted yield curve tells us that the market actually anticipates rate cuts. While the yield curve is not yet close to inverting, it is approaching levels that are consistent with much lower (and often negative) excess returns for both investment grade and high-yield corporate bonds, as is discussed below. A third indicator of the stance of monetary policy is simply the spread between the real federal funds rate and an estimate of its equilibrium level - the level consistent with neither an accommodative nor a restrictive policy stance (Chart 2, bottom panel). While the fact that the real fed funds rate is currently quite close to the popular Laubach-Williams estimate of its equilibrium level certainly reinforces our view that policy is almost restrictive, the large degree of uncertainty inherent in this sort of estimate leads us to prefer the market signals from the slope of the yield curve and TIPS breakeven inflation rates when forming an investment strategy. The Yield Curve And Corporate Bond Returns To assess the importance of the yield curve as a predictor of turns in the credit cycle, we split each cycle going back to the mid-1970s into regimes based on the yield curve slope. We then calculate excess returns during each phase for both investment grade and high-yield corporate bonds, as well as the stock-to-bond total return ratio. We use the 3/10 yield curve slope instead of the more often quoted 2/10 slope because it allows for the inclusion of more historical data. This decision did not materially impact the results of our analysis. Chart 3 shows how we divided each cycle into three phases: Chart 3Corporate Bond Performance And The Yield Curve Corporate Bond Performance And The Yield Curve Corporate Bond Performance And The Yield Curve Phase 1 runs from the end of the previous NBER-defined recession until the slope crosses below 50 bps. Phase 2 runs from the time that the slope crosses below 50 bps until it crosses below zero. Phase 3 runs from the time that the yield curve first inverts to the start of the next recession. Notice that we do not include recessionary periods in our analysis, usually the periods with the worst excess corporate bond returns. The results of our analysis are shown in Table 1, and the first obvious result is that corporate bond excess returns are much higher in Phase 1 than in Phase 2, although Phase 2 returns are usually still positive.3 Negative excess returns occur more often than not in Phase 3, after the yield curve has inverted. Table 1Risk Asset Performance In Different Yield Curve Regimes As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt The biggest exception to the above observations is that Phase 2 High-Yield returns actually exceeded Phase 1 High-Yield returns in the 2001-07 cycle. In our view, this exception results from the fact that corporate profit growth was well above corporate debt growth in 2005, and did not really decline until 2007, shortly after the yield curve inverted. In contrast, Phase 2 returns were exceptionally weak in the prolonged period between 1994 and 2000. In this instance, corporate profit growth actually fell below corporate debt growth in 1998, well before the yield curve inverted in 2000. This reinforces that both the stance of monetary policy and the trend in corporate leverage matter for corporate bond returns. The latter is discussed in the next section of this report. Another interesting result shown in Table 1 is that the pattern of stock market excess returns over Treasuries is the mirror image of the pattern in corporate bond excess returns. The stock market tends to perform better in Phase 2 than in Phase 1, and often even performs well in Phase 3 after the yield curve has inverted. This means that multi-asset investors should consider paring exposure to corporate bonds relative to Treasuries before they think of reducing exposure to the stock market. Bottom Line: Restrictive monetary policy is one condition that must be met before we reduce exposure to corporate bonds in our recommended portfolio. The first indication of this will likely be the re-anchoring of long-maturity TIPS breakeven inflation rates in a range between 2.3% and 2.5%. We will start paring exposure to corporate bonds when that occurs. The slope of the yield curve is already at levels that are consistent with very low excess returns. Though we demonstrate that an inverted yield curve is historically linked to even lower returns. Conviction that the yield curve is about to invert will be another trigger to further reduce corporate bond exposure in the future. Condition 2: Rising Leverage The second condition that will cause us to take even more credit risk off the table is when gross leverage for the nonfinancial corporate sector - calculated as total debt over pre-tax profits - enters an uptrend. Chart 4 shows that periods of spread widening almost always coincide with rising gross leverage, or put differently, periods when the rate of debt growth exceeds the rate of profit growth. Profit growth has kept pace with debt growth during the past few quarters, causing leverage to flatten-off and allowing corporate spreads to narrow. Going forward, the outlook for top-line corporate revenue growth (a.k.a. net value added) remains favorable, owing to an ISM index that is well above the 50 boom/bust line and still climbing (Chart 5). But on the expense side of the ledger, employee compensation - the largest expense for the corporate sector - is also poised to increase in the months ahead. Unit labor costs jumped sharply in the fourth quarter of 2017 (Chart 5, panel 2), and with the unemployment rate at 4.1% and the economy still adding jobs at a robust pace - nonfarm payrolls have increased by an average of +211k during the past six months - a further acceleration in employee compensation is likely this year. Chart 4Corporate Leverage Has Flattened Off Corporate Leverage Has Flattened Off Corporate Leverage Has Flattened Off Chart 5Wage Growth Will Hamper Profits Wage Growth Will Hamper Profits Wage Growth Will Hamper Profits The key question then becomes whether corporations will be able to offset rising compensation costs by lifting prices. This remains uncertain, but early indications are not favorable. Our Profit Margin Proxy - the growth in the corporate sector's implicit selling price deflator relative to the growth in unit labor costs - does an excellent job tracking pre-tax profits (Chart 5, bottom panel). At the moment, this indicator signals that profit growth will moderate in the coming quarters. Bottom Line: The outlook for top-line corporate revenue growth is strong, but employee compensation costs will also rise this year. We are doubtful that corporate profit growth will keep pace with debt growth for the remainder of year. A decline in the rate of profit growth to below the rate of corporate debt growth will be another signal to reduce exposure to corporate bonds. The Bond Map Back-Test Last week we introduced the BCA Bond Map, a graphical depiction of the current risk/reward trade-off on offer from the different sectors of the U.S. bond market.4 To summarize, in our excess return Bond Map we plot the number of days of average spread tightening required for each sector to earn 100 bps of excess return on the vertical axis, and the number of days of average spread widening required for each sector to lose 100 bps versus Treasuries on the horizontal axis (Chart 6). The diagram is then split into four quadrants based on the location of the Bloomberg Barclays Aggregate index, which we have modified to also include junk bonds. The upper-left quadrant, which we label "Best Bets", contains those sectors that offer less risk and greater excess return potential than the benchmark. The upper-right quadrant, which we label "Exciting", contains those sectors that offer higher risk than the benchmark but also higher potential returns. The bottom-left ("Boring") quadrant contains those sectors with low risk of losses but also low probability of gains, and the bottom-right ("Avoid") quadrant contains those sectors with higher risk than the benchmark and lower expected returns. As can be seen in Chart 6, the current excess return Bond Map shows that Local Authorities, Foreign Agencies and investment grade corporate bonds offer the best combination of risk and expected return. No sectors currently plot in the "Avoid" quadrant. Chart 6Excess Return Bond Map (As Of April 20, 2018) As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt This week, we publish the results of a back-test of the real time performance of our Bond Map. To do this we produced the Bond Map at the beginning of each calendar year starting in 2006 and then calculated average excess returns for each quadrant. For example, if three sectors were in the "Best Bets" quadrant at the beginning of the year, we calculated 12-month excess returns for each sector and then averaged them together to get an excess return for "Best Bets" sectors that year.5 Table 2 shows the average and standard deviation of calendar year excess returns for each quadrant, using a sample that spans from 2006-2017. As would be expected, the "Exciting" quadrant displays the highest average excess return, but also the highest standard deviation. Conversely, the "Boring" quadrant delivers the lowest average return and the lowest risk. The performance of the "Best Bets" quadrant is somewhere in between, delivering a greater average return than the "Boring" quadrant with less risk than the "Exciting" quadrant. Although the Sharpe Ratio for the "Best Bets" quadrant turns out to be worse than the Sharpe ratio for both the "Exciting" and "Boring" quadrants. This provides some support for the investment strategy of favoring either the "Exciting" or "Boring" quadrants depending on your assessment of the macro environment. The "Avoid" quadrant actually delivered negative excess returns on average, with elevated risk. Table 2Excess Return Bond Map Track Record (2006-2017) As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt For comparison we also show the average and standard deviation of excess returns for the Bloomberg Barclays Aggregate index, augmented with High-Yield. The benchmark delivered excess returns only slightly greater than the "Boring" quadrant, with significantly more risk. The total return version of the Bond Map is shown in Chart 7. This is identical to the excess return Bond Map, except it shows the number of days of average increase/decrease in yields for each sector to lose/earn 5% total return. We perform the identical back-test as with the excess return map, and display the results in Table 3. Chart 7Total Return Bond Map (As Of April 20, 2018) As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt Table 3Total Return Bond Map Track Record (2006-2017) As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt As Good As It Gets For Corporate Debt Here we see the interesting result that the average total returns are higher in the "Best Bets" quadrant than in the "Exciting" quadrant, but strangely the "Best Bets" quadrant also delivered greater volatility. The "Boring" quadrant delivered the best Sharpe Ratio, while the "Avoid" sector delivered both lower average returns and greater volatility than the "Boring" quadrant. For comparison, the average total returns for the Aggregate index (plus High-Yield) were lower than the total returns from any of the four quadrants, but also with less volatility. Ryan Swift, Vice President U.S. Bond Strategy rswift@bcaresearch.com 1 We define the "turn" in the credit cycle as when corporate defaults start to occur and corporate spreads enter a sustained widening phase. 2 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, "The Two-Stage Bear Market In Bonds", dated February 20, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 3 For the Phase 1 period in Cycle 2 we use an interval of June 1983 to July 1988 because High-Yield excess returns are only available starting in June 1983. In reality, the Phase 1 period should have started when the prior recession ended in December 1982. Using the correct interval (starting in December 1982) investment grade corporate bond excess returns are +131 bps and the stock-to-bond ratio returns are +5.19%, both annualized. 4 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, "Back To Basics", dated April 17, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 5 We started our back-test sample in 2006 even though our sector data goes back to 2000. Because our bond map relies on historical estimates of spread/yield volatility, we wanted a sample of at least five years of data before starting the test. With each passing year more back-data is incorporated into our spread/yield volatility estimates, which should improve the Bond Map's accuracy over time. Fixed Income Sector Performance Recommended Portfolio Specification

Highlights Global corporate bond markets have seen both ups and downs so far in 2018. Credit spreads in the developed markets and emerging markets, both for investment grade (IG) and lower quality credit tiers, tightened in January. This was followed by a sharp widening of spreads in the two months after the "VIX spike" in early February. Spreads have begun narrowing again in April, but remain above levels that began the year in all major countries with one notable exception - U.S. high-yield. Feature The volatility in corporate credit is a reflection of the growing list of investor worries, coming at a time when yields and spreads still remain near historically low levels in almost all markets. Topping that list is the fear that low unemployment and rising inflation rates will force the major central banks to maintain a more hawkish (or, at least, less dovish) policy bias in the medium term, even with the global economy losing some upside momentum so far this year after a robust 2017. Add in other concerns over U.S. trade policy (i.e. tariffs), U.S. fiscal policy (i.e. wider deficits, more U.S. Treasury issuance) and even signs of potential stresses in global funding markets (i.e. wider LIBOR-OIS spreads), and it is no surprise that more uncertain investors have become less comfortable with the risks stemming from credit exposure. This can be seen in the volatility of mutual fund and ETF flows into riskier bond categories like U.S. high-yield (HY), which saw a whopping -$19.8bn in outflows in Q1/2018, but has already seen +$3.8bn in inflows in April - possibly in response to the surprisingly strong results seen in Q1 U.S. corporate earnings reports.1 Against this backdrop of more uncertainty in credit markets, we are presenting our latest update of the BCA Corporate Health Monitor (CHM) Chartbook. The CHMs are composite indicators of balance sheet and income statement ratios (using both top-down and bottom-up data) that are designed to assess the financial well-being of the overall non-financial corporate sectors in the major developed economies. A brief overview of the methodology is presented in Appendix 1 on page 16. In this CHM Chartbook, we introduce new country coverage to our CHM universe, adding a bottom-up measure for Japan and both top-down and bottom-up CHMs for Canada. After these new additions, we now have CHMs covering 92% of the Barclays Bloomberg Global Corporate Bond Index universe, based on country market capitalization weightings. The broad conclusion from the latest readings on our CHMs is that global credit quality has enjoyed a cyclical improvement in response to the coordinated growth seen in 2017, but with important geographical differences (Chart 1): Chart 1Global Corporates: Now Supported##BR##By Growth, Not Central Banks Global Corporates: Now Supported By Growth, Not Central Banks Global Corporates: Now Supported By Growth, Not Central Banks Credit quality in the U.S. has improved on the back of the solid performance of U.S. profits over the past year, but high leverage and low interest coverage suggest corporates are highly vulnerable to any slowing in economic growth Underlying credit quality in euro area corporates remains supported by low interest rates and the easy money policies of the European Central Bank (ECB), but the CHMs are trending in the wrong direction due to poor profitability metrics - most notably, a very depressed return on capital - and rising leverage among core European issuers U.K. corporate health continues to benefit from a very robust short-term liquidity position, although sluggish profitability and weak interest coverage suggest potential medium-term problems beneath the surface Japanese corporates are in good shape, enjoying strong interest coverage and low leverage, although absolute levels of profitability remain much lower than the other countries in our CHM universe Canadian corporate health has enjoyed some modest cyclical improvement, but low absolute levels on profitability and interest coverage, combined with high leverage, point to underlying risks. Looking ahead, the tailwinds that have supported corporate health and the performance of global corporate debt in the past couple of years - a coordinated cyclical upturn driving solid earnings growth, with low inflation allowing monetary policies to stay accommodative - are becoming headwinds. Inflation expectations are moving higher in most countries, fueled by low unemployment rates and rising oil prices. This is most evident in the U.S., where the additional boost to growth from fiscal stimulus will keep the Fed on its rate hiking path over the next year. A mild inflation upturn is also visible in the euro area and Japan, where the ECB and Bank of Japan (BoJ) are already contributing to a less favorable liquidity backdrop for corporates by reducing the pace of their asset purchases. That trend is projected to continue over the next year, to the detriment of credit market returns that have been boosted by those unusual monetary policies (see the bottom panel of Chart 1). At some point within the 6-12 months, more hawkish central banks will act to slow global economic growth, triggering a more fundamental underperformance of corporates versus government bonds. For now, the backdrop remains supportive, but the clock is ticking as the end of this credit cycle draws closer. U.S. Corporate Health Monitors: A Cyclical Improvement, But Underlying Problems Persist Our top-down CHM for the U.S. has been flashing "deteriorating health" for fourteen consecutive quarters dating back to the middle of 2014 (Chart 2). Yet there has been a modest cyclical improvement seen in many of the individual CHM ratios over the past couple of years - most importantly, return on capital and profit margins - helping push the top-down level to close to the zero line. It is important to note that, due to delays in the reporting of the data used in the top-down U.S. CHM, the latest reading is only from the 4th quarter of 2017.2 A move into "improving health" territory in the 1st quarter of 2018 would require additional increases in cyclical profitability measures. This will be difficult to achieve with U.S. economic growth cooling off a bit in the first three months of 2018 (although the enactment of the Trump corporate tax cuts will likely help support the after-tax measure of margins used in the top-down CHM as 2018 progresses). From a longer-term perspective, the fact that the top-down CHM return on capital metric is well off the post-crisis peak is a disturbing development, given that non-financial corporate profit margins have been stable over the same period. This suggests a more fundamental problem with weak U.S. productivity growth and lower internal rates of return on marginal investments for companies, which is a longer-term concern for U.S. corporate health when the economic growth backdrop becomes less friendly. The bottom-up versions of the U.S. CHMs for IG corporates (Chart 3) and HY companies (Chart 4) have also both improved, with the HY indicator sitting right at the zero line. This confirms that the signal from our top-down CHM is being reflected in both higher-rated and lower quality companies. Yet the longer-term problems of high leverage and low returns on capital are not going away. In particular, HY interest and debt coverage remains near multi-decade lows. Chart 2Top-Down U.S. CHM:##BR##A Cyclical Pause Of A Structural Deterioration Top-Down U.S. CHM: A Cyclical Pause Of A Structural Deterioration Top-Down U.S. CHM: A Cyclical Pause Of A Structural Deterioration Chart 3Bottom-Up U.S. Investment Grade CHM:##BR##A Bit Better, But Still Deteriorating Bottom-Up U.S. Investment Grade CHM: A Bit Better, But Still Deteriorating Bottom-Up U.S. Investment Grade CHM: A Bit Better, But Still Deteriorating What is rather worrying is the fact that IG interest coverage has fallen in recent years, despite high profit margins and historically low corporate borrowing rates. This indicates that the stock of debt has now expanded to a point where the interest expense required to service that debt is eating up a greater share of corporate earnings, even at a time when profit growth is still quite strong. This will raise downgrade risk if corporate borrowing rates were to increase significantly or the U.S. experiences a major economic downturn. Interest costs would rise while earnings deteriorate, which would push interest coverage to historic lows, as was discussed in a recent report from our flagship Bank Credit Analyst service.3 For now, we are still recommending playing the growth phase of the business cycle by staying overweight U.S. corporate debt within global fixed income portfolios (Chart 5). The time to scale back positions will come after U.S. inflation expectations rise to levels consistent with the Fed's inflation target (i.e. when both the 5-year/5-year forward U.S. TIPS breakeven and the outright 10-year TIPS breakevens reach 2.4-2.5%). This will give the Fed confidence to follow through on its rate hike projections, pushing the funds rate to restrictive levels. In turn, that will dampen future corporate profit expectations and raise risk premiums on U.S. corporate bonds. With those breakevens now sitting at the highest point in four years (2.19%), that tipping point for credit markets is drawing nearer. Chart 4Bottom-Up U.S. High-Yield CHM:##BR##A Strong Cyclical Improvement Bottom-Up U.S. High-Yield CHM: A Strong Cyclical Improvement Bottom-Up U.S. High-Yield CHM: A Strong Cyclical Improvement Chart 5The Beginning Of The End Of##BR##The U.S. Credit Cycle The Beginning Of The End Of The U.S. Credit Cycle The Beginning Of The End Of The U.S. Credit Cycle Euro Corporate Health Monitors: Getting Better Thanks To The Economy & The ECB Our top-down Euro Area CHM remains in "improving health" territory, as it has for the entire period since the 2008 crisis. The trend in the indicator has been steadily worsening since 2015, however, and the top-down CHM now sits just below the zero line (Chart 6). The steady deterioration of the top-down CHM is due to declines in profit margins, return on capital and debt coverage. This is offsetting the high and rising levels of short-term liquidity and interest coverage, which are being supported by the easy money policies of the ECB (negative short-term interest rates, liquidity programs designed to prompt low-cost bank lending, and asset purchase programs that include buying of corporate bonds). Compared to the top-down CHMs we have constructed for other countries, there is an even longer lag on data availability from euro area government statisticians. Our top-down euro area CHM is only available to the 3rd quarter of 2017 and, therefore, does not reflect the strong performance of the euro area economy at the end of last year. Our bottom-up versions of the euro area CHMs for IG (Chart 7) and HY (Chart 8), which are based on individual earnings data that is more timely, both show that corporate health continued to improve at the end of 2017. Return on capital for euro area IG issuers (both domestic issuers and foreign issuers in the European bond market) is between 8-10%, similar to the level in the bottom-up U.S. IG CHM but higher than the equivalent measures in our U.K., Japan and Canada CHMs. Both interest coverage and liquidity ratios for euro area IG are also close to U.S. IG levels. The euro area HY CHM is also showing improvement though declining leverage, although these results should be interpreted with caution as the sample size is relatively small. Chart 6Top-Down Euro Area CHM:##BR##Health Improving At A Diminishing Rate Top-Down Euro Area CHM: Health Improving At A Diminishing Rate Top-Down Euro Area CHM: Health Improving At A Diminishing Rate Chart 7Bottom-Up Euro Area##BR##Investment Grade CHMs: Steady Improvement Bottom-Up Euro Area Investment Grade CHMs: Steady Improvement Bottom-Up Euro Area Investment Grade CHMs: Steady Improvement Within the Euro Area, our bottom-up CHMs show that the gap has closed between issuers from the core countries versus those in the periphery, but all still remain in the "improving health" zone. (Chart 9). Return on capital, interest coverage and debt coverage are higher in the core, while liquidity is better in the periphery despite more highly levered balance sheets. Chart 8Bottom-Up Euro Area High-Yield CHMs:##BR##Steady Improvement As Leverage Declines Bottom-Up Euro Area High-Yield CHMs: Steady Improvement As Leverage Declines Bottom-Up Euro Area High-Yield CHMs: Steady Improvement As Leverage Declines Chart 9Bottom-Up Euro Area IG CHMs:##BR##Core Vs. Periphery Bottom-Up Euro Area IG CHMs: Core Vs. Periphery Bottom-Up Euro Area IG CHMs: Core Vs. Periphery While all of our euro area CHMs are indicating healthier balance sheets, that fact is already discounted in the low yields and tight spreads for both IG and HY issuers (Chart 10). Euro area corporates are also benefitting from the supportive bid of the ECB, which buys credit as part of its asset purchase program. We expect the ECB to fully taper its government bond purchases by the end of 2018, while continuing to reinvest the proceeds of maturing debt in 2019 and beyond. It is less clear what the ECB will do with its corporate bond buying program, and there has been some speculation that the ECB could leave its corporate program untouched while tapering the government purchases. That would be a scenario that could be keep euro area credit spreads tight, although the momentum in the euro area economy will likely be the more important driver of credit valuations. If the soft patch in growth seen in the first few months of 2018 continues in the coming months, euro area credit spreads would likely widen, although by less than if the ECB was not buying corporates. We have preferred to own U.S. corporates over Euro Area equivalents for much of the past year. The gap between our top-down CHMs for the U.S. and Europe has proven to be an excellent directional indicator for the relative performance of U.S. credit vs. Europe (Chart 11). That CHM gap continues to favor U.S. credit, although that has not yet flowed through into any meaningful outperformance of U.S. IG and HY corporates. Chart 10European Credit:##BR##Spreads & Yields Have Bottomed Out European Credit: Spreads & Yields Have Bottomed Out European Credit: Spreads & Yields Have Bottomed Out Chart 11Relative Top-Down CHMs##BR##Still Favor The U.S. Over Europe Relative Top-Down CHMs Still Favor The U.S. Over Europe Relative Top-Down CHMs Still Favor The U.S. Over Europe U.K. Corporate Health Monitor: Still No Major Causes For Concern The top-down U.K. CHM remains firmly in the "improving health" zone, led by cyclical improvements in profit margins and interest coverage, combined with very strong short-term liquidity (Chart 12). Return on capital remains near 20-year lows around 6%, however, mirroring levels seen in this ratio in the CHMs for other countries. Profit margins remain at 20%, near the middle of the historical range. U.K. credit has benefitted from highly stimulative monetary policy settings by the Bank of England (BoE) - especially after the 2016 Brexit shock when the central bank not only lowered policy rates, but announced bond buying programs for both Gilts and U.K. corporates. The BoE has begun to take back some of that monetary easing by raising rates 50bps since last November. However, we remain skeptical that the central bank will be able to deliver much additional tightening over the rest of 2018 given sluggish growth, falling realized inflation and lingering Brexit uncertainties weighing on business confidence. An environment of mushy domestic growth and a stand-pat central bank would typically be good for risk assets like corporate credit. Yet both yields and spreads have been drifting higher in recent months, mirroring the trends seen in other global corporate bond markets (Chart 13). It is difficult to paint a scenario of renewed outperformance of U.K. credit versus Gilts without a fresh catalyst like accelerating growth or monetary easing. Yet the combination of accommodative monetary policy with a solid credit backdrop leads us to maintain a neutral recommendation on U.K. corporate debt. Chart 12U.K. Top-Down CHM:##BR##Steady Improvement U.K. Top-Down CHM: Steady Improvement U.K. Top-Down CHM: Steady Improvement Chart 13U.K. Credit: Yields & Spreads##BR##Are Drifting Higher U.K. Credit: Yields & Spreads Are Drifting Higher U.K. Credit: Yields & Spreads Are Drifting Higher Japan Corporate Health Monitor: A Small, But Very Healthy, Market We introduced our Japan CHM in a recent Weekly Report.4 We only have a bottom-up version of the indicator at the moment, as there is not the same consistency of top-down data sources as are available in other countries. Furthermore, the Japanese corporate bond market is small, as companies have historically chosen to borrow money (when needed) through bank loans and not bond issuance. This means that we have a much more limited amount of data available with which to build a Japan CHM, which covers only 43 companies and only goes back to 2006. The Japan CHM has been in "improving health" territory for the past decade, driven by very healthy liquidity levels and rising return on capital and interest coverage (Chart 14). While the trend in the latter two ratios differs from what is shown in all CHMs for other countries, it is noteworthy that Japan's return on capital has risen to a "high" level (6%) that is similar to the current historically low levels in the U.S. and Europe. The comparison is even less flattering when looking at profit margins, which have been steadily improving over the past five years but are only around 6% - less than half the levels seen in the bottom-up IG CHMs for the U.S. and Europe. Turning to the corporate spread, it has slightly widened in 2018, but by a far smaller amount than seen in other corporate bond markets (Chart 15). We have shown that Japanese corporate spreads are highly correlated to the level of the yen. The direct effect is obvious, as a stronger yen will hurt the competitiveness and profitability of the exporter-heavy Japanese non-financial corporate sector. Yet a strong yen is also a reflection of the market's belief in the next move by the BoJ with regards to Japanese monetary policy. On the front, we continue to expect the BoJ to maintain a very dovish policy stance, with no change in the central bank's interest rate targets (both for short-term interest rates and the 10yr JGB yield). The bigger issue will be if the current softness in the Japanese economic data turns into a broader trend, which would damage corporate profits and likely result in some widening of Japanese credit spreads.  Chart 14Japan Bottom-Up CHM:##BR##Very Healthy Japan Bottom-Up CHM: Very Healthy Japan Bottom-Up CHM: Very Healthy Chart 15Japanese Corporates##BR##Will Continue To Outperform JGBs Japanese Corporates Will Continue To Outperform JGBs Japanese Corporates Will Continue To Outperform JGBs Canada Corporate Health Monitor: In Good Shape On A Cyclical Basis In this CHM Chartbook, we are introducing new CHMs for Canada. Like Japan, this is another relatively small market. Canadian corporates represent a slightly larger share of the Bloomberg Barclays Global Investment Grade Corporate Bond Index (5%) than Japan (3%). The average credit rating of the Canadian corporate bond index is A2/A3, which is higher quality than that of the U.S. IG index with but with similar credit spreads over their respective government bonds. However, due to the lack of liquidity and market accessibility, Canadian corporates are considered a niche market that has not gained much attention from global investors. We created both a top-down and bottom-up version of the Canada CHM. For the bottom-up CHM, we gathered data on 85 companies from both the Bloomberg Canadian dollar-denominated IG and HY indices. We combined IG and HY bonds into one set of data given the small sample sizes of each category, which also allows us to compare it to the top-down Canadian CHM that does not distinguish by credit quality. Both Canadian CHMs are firmly in the "improving health" territory (Chart 16). Unsurprisingly, these CHMs have shown a reasonably strong correlation to oil prices, which are a key driver of the Canadian economy through the energy sector. This can be seen in the deterioration in the CHMs after global oil prices collapsed in 2014/15, and the subsequent improvement as oil prices have recovered over the past couple of years. Going through the individual CHM components, leverage has been steadily rising and currently sits around 100%. While Canada's problems with high household debt levels are well known, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) noted in its March 2018 Quarterly Review that high Canadian corporate leverage could also pose a future problem for the Canadian economy.5 Among the other CHM ratios, return on capital and profit margin have fallen for nearly a decade, although there has been some moderate improvement of late thanks to higher oil prices. Debt coverage and interest coverage are also showing some very moderate recovery due to low interest rates - a trend also observed in other countries where central banks have maintained easy monetary policy. Canadian corporate bond valuations are not cheap at the moment, with the index spread around decade-lows of 100bps (Chart 17). BCA's commodity strategists expect global oil prices to continue climbing over the next year, which should support Canadian corporate valuations versus government bonds given past correlations. We also expect the Bank of Canada to continue to slowly raise interest rates over the next year, as well, mimicking moves we also anticipate from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Given the cyclical signs of improving corporate health from our Canadian CHMs, and our bearish views on Canadian government bonds, we are upgrading our recommended allocation on Canadian corporates to overweight while downgrading governments. This is strictly a carry trade, however, as we do not anticipate spreads narrowing much from current levels. Chart 16Canada CHMs:##BR##Cyclical Improvements, Structural Problems Canada CHMs: Cyclical Improvements, Structural Problems Canada CHMs: Cyclical Improvements, Structural Problems Chart 17Canadian Corporates:##BR##No Cyclical Case For Spread Widening Yet Canadian Corporates: No Cyclical Case For Spread Widening Yet Canadian Corporates: No Cyclical Case For Spread Widening Yet Robert Robis, Senior Vice President Global Fixed Income Strategy rrobis@bcaresearch.com Ray Park, Research Analyst ray@bcaresearch.com Appendix 1: An Overview Of The BCA Corporate Health Monitors The BCA Corporate Health Monitor (CHM) is a composite indicator designed to assess the underlying financial strength of the corporate sector for a country. The Monitor is an average of six financial ratios inspired by those used by credit rating agencies to evaluate individual companies. However, we calculate our ratios using top-down (national accounts) data for profits, interest expense, debt levels, etc. The idea is to treat the entire corporate sector as if it were one big company, and then look at the credit metrics that would be used to assign a credit rating to it. Importantly, only data for the non-financial corporate sector is used in the CHM, as the measures that would be used to measure the underlying health of banks and other financial firms are different than those for the typical company. The six ratios used in the CHM are shown in Table 1 below. To construct the CHM, the individual ratios are standardized, added together, and then shown as a deviation from the medium-term trend. That last part is important, as it introduces more cyclicality into the CHM and allows it to better capture major turning points in corporate well-being. Largely because of this construction, the CHM has a very good track record at heralding trend changes in corporate credit spreads (both for Investment Grade and High-Yield) over many cycles. Top-down CHMs are now available for the U.S., euro area, the U.K. and Canada. The CHM methodology was extended in 2016 to look at corporate health by industry and by credit quality.6 The financial data of a broad set of individual U.S. and euro area companies was used to construct individual "bottom-up" CHMs using the same procedure as the more familiar top-down CHM. Some of the ratios differ from those used in the top-down CHM (see Table 1), largely due to definitional differences in data presented in national income accounts versus those from actual individual company financial statements. The bottom-up CHMs analyze the health of individual sectors, and can be aggregated up into broad CHMs for Investment Grade and High-Yield groupings to compare with credit spreads. In 2018, we introduced bottom-up CHMs for Japan and Canada. With the country expansion of our CHM universe, we now have coverage for 92% of the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Corporate Bond Index (Appendix Chart 1). Table 1Definitions Of Ratios##BR##That Go Into The CHMs BCA Corporate Health Monitor Chartbook Update: Growth Is Papering Over The Cracks BCA Corporate Health Monitor Chartbook Update: Growth Is Papering Over The Cracks Appendix Chart 1We Now Have CHM Coverage For 92% Of##BR##The Developed Market Corporate Bond Universe BCA Corporate Health Monitor Chartbook Update: Growth Is Papering Over The Cracks BCA Corporate Health Monitor Chartbook Update: Growth Is Papering Over The Cracks 1 http://lipperalpha.financial.thomsonreuters.com/2018/04/high-yield-bond-funds-attract-investor-attention/ 2 The majority of data used in the top-down U.S. CHM comes from the Federal Reserve's quarterly Financial Accounts Of The United States Z1 release (formerly known as the Flow of Funds), which is typically published in the third month following the end of a quarter. Thus, those data inputs for Q1/2018 will not be available until June. 3 Please see Section II of the March 2018 edition of The Bank Credit Analyst, available at bca.bcaresearch.com. 4 Please see BCA Global Fixed Income Strategy Weekly Report, "Sticking With The Plan", dated March 13th 2018, available at gfis.bcaresearch.com. 5 https://www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt1803.htm 6 Please see Section II of The Bank Credit Analyst, "U.S. Corporate Health Gets A Failing Grade", dated February 2016, available at bca.bcaresearch.com. Appendix 2: U.S. Bottom-Up CHMs For Selected Sectors APPENDIX 2: ENERGY SECTOR APPENDIX 2: ENERGY SECTOR APPENDIX 2: MATERIALS SECTOR APPENDIX 2: MATERIALS SECTOR APPENDIX 2: COMMUNICATIONS SECTOR APPENDIX 2: COMMUNICATIONS SECTOR APPENDIX 2: CONSUMER DISCRETIONARY SECTOR APPENDIX 2: CONSUMER DISCRETIONARY SECTOR APPENDIX 2: CONSUMER STAPLES SECTOR APPENDIX 2: CONSUMER STAPLES SECTOR APPENDIX 2: HEALTH CARE SECTOR APPENDIX 2: HEALTH CARE SECTOR APPENDIX 2: INDUSTRIALS SECTOR APPENDIX 2: INDUSTRIALS SECTOR APPENDIX 2: TECHNOLOGY SECTOR APPENDIX 2: TECHNOLOGY SECTOR APPENDIX 2: UTILITIES SECTOR APPENDIX 2: UTILITIES SECTOR The GFIS Recommended Portfolio Vs. The Custom Benchmark Index BCA Corporate Health Monitor Chartbook Update: Growth Is Papering Over The Cracks BCA Corporate Health Monitor Chartbook Update: Growth Is Papering Over The Cracks Recommendations Duration Regional Allocation Spread Product Tactical Trades Yields & Returns Global Bond Yields Historical Returns