Developed Countries
US homebuilder stocks have been steadily outperforming in recent months, up 29% since the S&P 500’s October 12 bottom – 18 percentage points above the benchmark index. The nearly 100bp decline in the 30-year mortgage rate since early November,…
BCA Research’s US Investment Strategy service concludes that the biggest banks’ earnings commentary supports the team’s sanguine near-term view. Despite some fraying at the lowest end of the income and wealth distributions, consumers continue to hold deposit…
Our latest edition of the Big Bank Beige Book suggests that households, businesses and banks are in unusually good shape ahead of a recession.
European assets have enjoyed a stunning outperformance since October 2022. Can these strong returns last in 2023?
The volume of retail sales in the UK unexpectedly declined by 1.0% m/m (5.8% y/y) in December, disappointing expectations it would rebound following November’s 0.5% m/m contraction. Lower sales of cosmetics, sports equipment, toys, watches & jewelry, and…
Following the dismal performance of the S&P 500 Information Technology index last year, the sector has been participating in the recent equity rally. Does the 9.3% gain since the October 12 bottom mark the beginning of a sustainable rally in tech stocks? …
In <b><i>Part I</b></i> of a long-term series on currency valuations, we show that a simple PPP model has a good track record of predicting long-term currency returns (over 3-to-5 years).
Last week, 190 thousand initial unemployment claims (IUC) were filed in the US, below expectations they would increase from the prior week’s 205 thousand. On a 4-week moving average basis, initial unemployment claims have now reached an 8-month low,…
The tone of the minutes from the ECB’s December meeting was decidedly hawkish. The release emphasized that Governing Council members agree that the tightening cycle is far from over given their view that risks to the inflation outlook are skewed to the…
The signal from commodity markets warns against the durability of the outperformance of US cyclical equities relative to defensives. In particular, while most commodities have benefitted from a weakening dollar in recent months, the CRB Raw Industrials…