Consumer Staples
Soft Drinks Have Gone Flat…
Key Portfolio Highlights The S&P 500 has started 2019 with a bang as dovish cooing from the Fed has proven a tonic for equities. While we have not entirely retraced the path to the early-autumn highs, our strategy of staying cyclically exposed, based on our view of an absence of a…
Overweight Procter & Gamble (PG), the heavyweight of the S&P household products sector, delivered excellent results this week and raised their guidance, despite a forecast of a nearly $1 billion after-tax currency headwind to earnings this fiscal year. The principal driver was…
Underweight The S&P soft drinks index popped in late October, driven by better than expected Q3 results, mostly at Coke. In truth, pricing power has been staging a fairly steady recovery since falling off a cliff in 2016, though it has recently rolled over (second panel). More important to…
Prices At The Pump Are Helping Households…
Overweight Household product stocks have typically performed well as retail gasoline prices have contracted; this iteration has proven no different (gasoline prices shown inverted, top panel). This boon to consumers has supported an uptick of the consumer’s wallet being deployed to…
Buying European Clothes…
Neutral U.S retailers have reported excellent sales numbers in the most recent quarter, most notably Walmart that delivered a surprising 3.4% same store sales growth number; the market has responded in kind and spared the S&P hypermarkets index that has held up well vs. the broad equity…
Highlights Chinese pro-consumption policy stimulus will likely stabilize Chinese household consumption growth at 8-10% over the next 12-15 months, with service consumption continuing to be the key driver. Our research shows that Chinese nominal retail sales of consumer goods are currently…
Highlights China's old economy continues to slow in the leadup to the negative effect of U.S. import tariffs on Chinese export growth. Weaker trade data over the coming few months is likely to weigh further on investor sentiment. Our Li Keqiang leading indicator has risen off of its low, but…