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Equities

Preliminary PMI estimates suggest that service sector activity is expanding across DM economies in February. Most notably, services PMIs are back at or above 50 in Australia and the Eurozone from previously contracting levels. Meanwhile, the services sectors…
Nvidia’s blowout Q4 2023 earnings results and bullish guidance catalyzed a rally in global stocks that pushed the S&P 500, Europe’s Stoxx 600, and Japanese Nikkei to record highs on Thursday. The S&P 500 is already expensive. It is true that Big…
Chinese equities are extending their gains following the end of the Lunar New Year holiday. Onshore stocks have gained 9.0% since February 5, outperforming the global benchmark by 7.5 percentage points over this period. Similarly, the MSCI Investable index –…
The Health Care sector is among the best performing US equity sectors so far this year. Its 6.2% year-to-date price gain exceeds the S&P 500’s 4.3% increase and is second only to Communication Services. This marks a shift in dynamics from the earlier part…
The S&P 500 forged a new all-time high last Thursday and ended the week with a 4.9% year-to-date gain, extending the rally that started in late-October. Interestingly, the recent increase comes even though investors have priced out a Fed rate cut in March…
Japanese equities have outperformed their global peers since September 2022 in common currency terms. Over this period, the Nikkei 225 and the TOPIX posted gains of close to 50%. A weak yen has boosted Japanese multinationals’ foreign revenues and prompted…
According to BCA Research’s European Investment Strategy service, European tech stocks could outperform their US counterparts in the last leg of the rally. The tech sector is in a bubble in advanced economies. While it is logical to expect a pronounced…

Households have ramped up their cash holdings since the end of 2019, but the absence of an empirical link between cash and consumption leads us to believe that we’ve modestly overestimated the risk of consumer-driven overheating.

Signs that we are entering the last phase of a bubble are building up. Can European equities benefit from a new tech mania?

Reported earnings for Q4-2023 were rather underwhelming and prone to issues that we have identified over the past few months: Growth is concentrated in just a few sectors and companies, while the profitability of a broad swath of the equity market is under pressure from disinflation and sticky wages. Consumers are still spending, but less enthusiastically than before, while a switch from spending on services to spending on goods is in its very early innings. Downgrade Consumer Staples to neutral.