Equities

A low multiplier effect of stimulus will reduce the magnitude of the rebound in China's business activities in 2024. The housing market downturn will likely persist, and the ongoing household deleveraging also poses a significant challenge to China’s economic recovery.

Despite the blah opening to the year, we do not think stocks have reached an inflection point. We expect that incoming data will continue to flatter the soft-landing narrative for another couple of months, helping the S&P 500 to establish a new all-time high before the rally runs out of steam.

The Santa Claus rally has been fueled by investors optimism about a soft landing which is the least likely macro outcome in 2024. A pullback in the market is imminent as the probability of "too hot" or "too cold" will get priced in. We are downgrading Software and Services on a tactical basis to take profits but maintaining a strategic overweight in the same trade.

Following today’s US jobs data release, the Joshi rule real-time US recession indicator inched up to 0.18 and is now just a whisker from its recession event-horizon of 0.20.

A soft landing can be achieved but not maintained. We are cutting our tactical recommendation on stocks from overweight to neutral and scaling back our long-duration stance.

The market is excited by the idea that the Fed will cut rates early this year, even without a recession. But is that likely, with inflation still set to be around 2.8% mid-year?