Global

Maintain an above-benchmark portfolio duration since, favoring markets with the highest real yields that stand out in a world where 65% of Developed Market government bonds trade with a negative yield.

It is highly unusual for equities to enter a bear market without the economy going into recession. Since we see the risk of recession as low, we recommend a neutral allocation between bonds and equities.

Last month, the model outperformed both global and U.S. equities in local-currency and U.S.-dollar terms. For February, the model is aggressively increasing its risk exposure and has included a bet on commodities for the first time since 2012. For equities, the largest overweight remains Europe, but EM and Canada enjoyed significant upgrades. For bonds, the model favors the European periphery.

While cyclical factors have contributed to the recent trade slowdown, there are many longer-term structural forces that will pose headwinds to globalization. A lack of aggregate demand will constrain growth and hurt trade in a global economy attempting to increase savings. Meanwhile, the bulk of economic dividends from free trade have already been reaped. The direct casualties from slowing global trade are economies with large export sectors: most commodity-producing countries and some south-east Asian nations.

We are introducing a quantitative equity country allocation for the MSCI World universe. Currently the model recommends overweight U.S. and eurozone while underweight Japan, U.K., Canada and Australia, broadly in line with our judgement except that we are more bullish on Japan than the model.

The U.S. corporate re-leveraging cycle is far more advanced than is widely believed. Corporate health looks only mildly better excluding the troubled energy and materials sectors. Mushrooming leverage ratios are not restricted to junk issuers either.

Corporate profits are more sensitive to selling prices than to volumes. Falling prices even amid mildly rising volumes could produce a meaningful profit contraction. Stay with deflation trades. In particular, maintain the short EM stocks / long U.S. 30-year Treasurys position. Indian stocks are still pricey and will deflate further in absolute terms.