Monetary

Highlights Easier fiscal policy will cause U.S. inflation to rise or force the Fed to raise rates more aggressively than the market is discounting. Either outcome is likely to lead to a real appreciation in the dollar. Policy developments are starting to work in the greenback's favor. The Fed's leadership is turning somewhat more hawkish. Trade protectionism is also on the rise. Contrary to yesterday's market reaction, this will end up being dollar-bullish. The only plausible scenario where the dollar weakens in the face of bountiful fiscal stimulus is one where U.S. rates rise a lot but foreign rate expectations rise even more. Such an outcome is not particularly likely, considering that the U.S. is going from laggard to leader in the global growth horserace and most central banks are tightening monetary policy much more gingerly than the Fed. Nevertheless, it cannot be excluded, which is why investors should consider going long 30-year U.S. Treasurys versus German bunds in currency-unhedged terms. This position would pay off if EUR/USD weakens, while also providing downside protection in the case where the greenback comes under pressure due to a narrowing in the long-term interest rate spread between Germany and the U.S. Held to maturity, investors stand to gain 40% on this position. Feature Beware Of "Arguments By Accounting Identity" One of the biggest mistakes economic commentators make is that they engage in "arguments by accounting identity." These arguments almost always fall flat. This is because there are plenty of ways for accounting identities to hold true, only a small number of which are consistent with how people actually respond to economic incentives. Consider the often-cited identity which says that the difference between what a country saves and what it invests is equal to its current account balance or, in algebraic terms, S-I=CA. The U.S. is currently operating at close to full employment. It is sometimes asserted, using this formula, that a large dollop of fiscal stimulus will drain national savings, thereby increasing America's current account deficit. A bigger current account deficit is normally associated with a weaker currency. Ergo, fiscal stimulus must be dollar-bearish. It is a plausible sounding argument, but it makes no sense because it confuses cause and effect.1 It is analogous to saying that an increase in the number of apples coming to market means that the price of apples will fall even when it is apparent that farmers are planting more apple trees because the demand for apples is rising. If the government cuts taxes and boosts outlays, aggregate spending will increase. Should the value of the dollar simultaneously fall, the composition of that spending will shift towards domestically produced goods and services. Not only will people want to spend more, but they will also want to devote a larger share of their spending on U.S.-made goods. But how exactly is the economy supposed to generate all this additional output? It is already running at full capacity! The only story that makes sense is one where the value of the dollar rises. That would allow aggregate spending to go up, while ensuring that spending on American-made goods and services remains the same. Table 1 illustrates this point using a stylized example of a hypothetical economy. Table 1A Stronger Currency Can Be A Counterweight To Fiscal Stimulus U.S. imports account for about 15% of GDP (Chart 1). Assuming no change in the exchange rate, spending on domestically produced goods and services will rise by about 85 cents in response to every $1 increase in aggregate demand. If the economy cannot produce this additional output due to a lack of available workers, one of two things will happen: Either inflation will go up or the Fed will be forced to raise rates more aggressively than it otherwise would. Chart 1U.S. Trade As A Share Of The Economy Both outcomes imply a "real appreciation" in the dollar exchange rate, which can be thought of as the value of foreign goods and services that can be acquired by selling a basket of U.S. goods and services.2 In the former case, the real dollar exchange rate will appreciate because the U.S. price level will rise relative to prices abroad. In the latter case, the real dollar exchange rate will appreciate because higher interest rates will put upward pressure on the nominal value of the currency. Two Paths To A Real Dollar Appreciation The catch is that it is impossible to know how much of the real appreciation will occur through higher inflation and how much of it will occur through a stronger nominal dollar. In theory, one could envision a scenario where the real value of the dollar rises even as the nominal value declines. This would happen if the Fed fell so far behind the curve that inflation rocketed higher. Alternatively, one could contemplate a scenario where the Fed raises rates too aggressively, driving the dollar up so much that the economy falters and inflation declines. Our baseline scenario lies somewhere between these two extremes. We expect U.S. fiscal stimulus to push up inflation, while also pushing up the nominal trade-weighted dollar. It rarely happens that real and nominal exchange rates move in opposite directions (Chart 2). Thus, if the real dollar exchange rate appreciates, the nominal exchange rate is bound to appreciate as well. Chart 2Nominal And Real Exchange Rates Tend To Move In The Same Direction Global Growth: Back To The USA So why, then, has the dollar been on the back foot over the past year? The answer is better economic prospects at home were more than matched by stronger growth abroad. Keep in mind that the discussion above does not need to be confined to fiscal stimulus. Anything that causes domestic demand to accelerate is apt to trigger a real appreciation of the currency. After a sluggish recovery following the sovereign debt crisis, euro area growth accelerated last year as credit markets thawed and pent-up demand was unleashed. Sensing better economic times ahead, investors bid up the euro. The global growth revival was assisted by a rebound in global manufacturing activity. The manufacturing sector tends to be highly procyclical; when global growth accelerates, manufacturing production usually accelerates even more. The U.S. manufacturing sector accounts for only 12% of GDP, compared to 18% in the euro area, 21% in Japan, and 30% in China (Chart 3). As such, an improving manufacturing outlook disproportionately helped the rest of the world. Meanwhile, a rebound in commodity prices aided emerging markets and other economies with large natural resource sectors. Looking out, the picture for global growth is murkier. Global manufacturing PMIs have likely peaked. Korean exports, a leading indicator for the global business cycle, have softened (Chart 4). China is decelerating, with this week's weaker-than-expected official PMI print being the latest example. This could weigh on metals prices (Chart 5). As we discussed last week, slower global growth tends to benefit the dollar.3 Meanwhile, the composition of global demand growth should shift back toward the U.S. thanks to the lagged effects from the relative easing in financial conditions that the U.S. enjoyed last year, as well as all the fiscal stimulus coming down the pike (Chart 6). Chart 3Global Manufacturing Revival ##br##Not Benefiting The U.S. Much Chart 4Global Growth Seems To Be Peaking Chart 5Chinese Slowdown Will Weigh On Metal Prices Chart 6Lagged Easing In Financial Conditions ##br##And Fiscal Stimulus Bode Well For Growth A More Dollar-Friendly Policy Backdrop Policy developments are starting to work in the dollar's favor. Jerome Powell tried not to rock the boat during his Humphrey-Hawkins testimony this week. However, he did stress that the economic outlook did improve since the Fed last met in December, seemingly opening the door to four rate hikes this year. That was enough to lift the DXY by 0.4%. Powell is not a doctrinaire hard-money type, but he is no Yellen clone either. Remember this was the guy who said back in 2012 that "We look like we are blowing a fixed-income duration bubble right across the credit spectrum that will result in big losses when rates come up down the road. You can almost say that is our strategy."4 Critically, there are still four vacancies on the Fed's Board of Governors. If the nomination of Martin Goodfriend - who is definitely no good friend of easy money - is part of a broader trend, the composition of the board will shift in a somewhat more hawkish direction. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has introduced tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. While we do not expect this decision to trigger an all-out trade war, it will almost certainly prompt retaliatory actions. There are three reasons why an escalation in trade protectionism would help the dollar. First, a decrease in global trade would likely reduce trade surpluses and deficits alike. This would shift demand back towards economies such as the U.S., which run trade deficits, at the expense of surplus economies such as Japan, China, and the euro area. Second, a slowdown in trade flows would curb global growth. As noted above, slower global growth tends to be dollar-bullish. Third, the specter of trade wars would exacerbate geopolitical risks. A more uncertain political landscape, even when instigated by the U.S., tends to prop up the dollar. It is true that foreign powers could retaliate against the U.S. by buying fewer Treasurys. But why would they? This would only drive down the dollar, giving U.S. exporters an even greater advantage. The smart strategic response would be to intervene in currency markets with the aim of bidding up the dollar. All this suggests that the dollar may be ripe for a rebound. Positioning has gotten fairly short the dollar (Chart 7). This raises the odds of a short-covering rally. Momentum measures have also improved over the past few weeks, an important consideration given that the dollar is one of the most momentum-driven currencies out there (Chart 8). Chart 7Speculative Positioning Has Gotten Increasingly Dollar-Bearish Chart 8Momentum Matters, And It May Be Starting To Move Back In The Dollar's Favor A Safer Way To Go Long The Dollar: Buy 30-Year Treasurys/Short 30-Year German Bunds, Currency-Unhedged The only scenario where the dollar weakens in the face of bountiful fiscal stimulus is one where U.S. rates rise a lot but foreign rate expectations rise even more. Sharply higher U.S. interest rates would offset the stimulative effects of a weaker dollar, thus preventing the economy from overheating. Such an outcome is not particularly likely, given that the U.S. is going from laggard to leader in the global growth horserace, and most central banks are tightening monetary policy much more gingerly than the Fed. Nevertheless, it cannot be excluded. As such, investors should consider going long 30-year U.S. Treasurys versus German bunds in currency-unhedged terms. This position would pay off if EUR/USD weakens, while also providing downside protection in the case where the greenback comes under pressure due to a narrowing in the long-term interest rate spread between Germany and the U.S. The trade is effectively a bet that the interest rate differential between bunds and Treasurys - which has widened sharply this year, even as the dollar has weakened - will revert to its former self (Chart 9). Over the long haul, it is hard to see how one could lose money on this trade. As we go to press, 30-year Treasurys are yielding 3.11% while 30-year bunds yield only 1.29%. The euro would have to strengthen to 2.10 against the dollar over the next 30 years to cancel out the 182 bps in additional carry that U.S. bonds are offering. Even if one assumes that the fair value for the euro climbs by 0.4% annually due to lower inflation in the common-currency bloc, this would still leave the euro 40% overvalued.5 To maintain consistency with our other trade recommendations, we are closing our short 30-year Treasury trade for a gain of 3.8% and opening a new trade going long 30-year TIPS breakevens. Chart 10 shows that long-term inflation expectations as gauged by 30-year breakevens are still 27 basis points below where they were on average between 2010 and 2013. Chart 9EUR/USD And Long-Term Spreads Will Recouple Chart 10More Upside To Long-Term TIPS Breakevens Investment Conclusions We expect the dollar to strengthen over the coming months. EUR/USD should ultimately bottom at around 1.15. EM currencies will also struggle on the back of slower Chinese growth and higher financing costs for dollar-denominated loans. Among commodity producers, we favor "oily" currencies such as the Canadian dollar and Norwegian krone over metal exporters such as the Australian dollar. Our commodity strategists expect Brent and WTI to average $74 and $70/bbl this year, above current market expectations of $66 and $62, respectively. They note that Saudi Arabia has a strong incentive to boost oil prices by curtailing production in the lead up to Aramco's initial public offering. The yen is better positioned to hold its ground, considering that it is still very cheap and positioning remains heavily short (Chart 11). My colleague, Mathieu Savary, discussed the yen's prospects two weeks ago.6 A rebound in the dollar and creeping protectionism will pose headwinds for global equities. Nevertheless, with corporate earnings continuing to surprise on the upside, this is unlikely to derail the cyclical bull market in stocks. However, investors should prepare for a lot more volatility, as we flagged in several reports earlier this year.7 At the regional level, U.S. equities have underperformed their global peers in common-currency terms since the start of 2017, but outperformed in local-currency terms (Chart 12). We could see a reversal of that pattern over the coming months as the dollar begins to firm. Chart 11The Yen Is Cheap And ##br##Positioning Is Short Chart 12A Stronger Dollar Could Reverse ##br##U.S. Equity Relative Performance Peter Berezin, Chief Global Strategist Global Investment Strategy peterb@bcaresearch.com 1 Paul Krugman made a similar point more than 20 years ago. 2 The real exchange rate between two currencies is the product of the nominal exchange rate and the ratio of prices between the countries. A real appreciation tends to make a country less competitive, either through a nominal increase in its currency or through an increase in prices in that country relative to those of its trading partners. 3 Please see Global Investment Strategy Weekly Report, "The Next Recession: Later But Deeper," dated February 23, 2018. 4 Please see FOMC Meeting Transcript, "Meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on October 23-24, 2012," Federal Reserve. 5 For this calculation, we assume that the fair value for EUR/USD is 1.32, which is close to the IMF's Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) estimate. The inflation differential of 0.4% is based on 30-year CPI swaps. This implies that the fair value for EUR/USD will rise to 1.49 after 30 years. If the euro needs to strengthen to 2.10 over 30 years to cover the cost of carry, this would leave it 41% (2.10/1.49) overvalued. Our assessment would not change much if we used Germany rather than the euro area as the basis for the analysis. We estimate that the fair value exchange rate for Germany is 1.45, which is higher than the fair value exchange rate for the euro area as a whole. However, the differential in 30-year CPI swaps between Germany and the U.S. is only 16 basis points. Thus, if the fair value German exchange rate evolves in line with inflation differentials, it would rise to only 1.52. This would still leave Germany 38% (2.10/1.52) overvalued against the U.S. after 30 years. 6 Please see Foreign Exchange Strategy, "The Yen's Mighty Rise Continues...For Now," dated February 16, 2018. 7 Please see Global Investment Strategy Special Report, "The Return Of Vol," dated February 6, 2018; and Weekly Report, "Take Out Some Insurance," dated February 2, 2018. Tactical Global Asset Allocation Recommendations Strategy & Market Trends Tactical Trades Strategic Recommendations Closed Trades

Fiscal Stimulus To Prolong The Expansion The market swoon in early February should not induce investors to lower risk. The stock market correction (the first for almost two years) was triggered by a couple of inflation and wage readings that came in slightly above expectations, and was exacerbated by some technical factors such as automated trading by volatility-target funds. But, significantly, it was not accompanied by the usual signals of rising risk aversion: for example, credit spreads barely widened and the gold price was stable (Chart 1). Volatility is likely to remain high but, as our U.S. Investment Strategy service recently found, the VIX has not been a useful indicator of recessions and bear markets: many times over the past 30 years it has spiked higher without risk assets producing negative returns over the subsequent 12 months (Chart 2).1 Recommended Allocation Chart 1Sell-Off Didn't Trigger Risk Signals Chart 2Spike In Vix Is Not A Sell Signal Fiscal policy moves in the U.S. make us believe, rather, that the current economic expansion will last longer than we previously forecast. A combination of tax cuts plus recent spending proposals (including $165 billion on the military and $45 billion on disaster relief) will boost GDP by about 0.8% of GDP this year and 1.3% next, compared to the IMF's earlier forecast of a fiscal contraction this year (Chart 3).2 Add to that the boost from the 8% trade-weighted depreciation of the U.S. dollar over the past 12 months (which should add 0.3% to growth over two years), and it is difficult to imagine U.S. GDP growth turning down any time soon. Accordingly, BCA has shifted its recession call from the second half of 2019 to sometime in 2020. Of course, this is not all good news. The U.S. budget deficit is likely to increase to 5½% of GDP in 2019, which will put upward pressure on interest rates. The fiscal impulse will hit an economy already at full capacity, and so will be inflationary. The scenario we envisage is boom-and-bust, leading to a nastier recession than we had previously expected. Nonetheless, the boost to growth should be positive for risk assets over the next 12 months. Our model of earnings growth now suggests that U.S. EPS should continue to grow at close to a 20% rate for the rest of this year (Chart 4). Chart 3Fiscal Boost To U.S. Growth Chart 4Earnings Growth Gets A Boost Too How quickly will the Fed push back against the potentially inflationary implications of this higher growth? We have found a remarkable turnaround in investors' perceptions of inflation over the past few weeks. Whereas last year most argued that structural forces (online shopping, the gig economy etc.) meant that inflation would stay depressed, now many worry that it will quickly shoot above 2% and force the Fed to tighten policy aggressively. This has caused them to over-react, for example, to the (rather obvious) statement from the last FOMC minutes that "participants noted that a stronger outlook for economic growth raised the likelihood that further gradual policy firming would be appropriate." Our view remains that core PCE inflation - the Fed's favorite measure - is likely to move back gradually to 2% (from 1.5% currently), but not accelerate dramatically. Unit labor costs remain subdued (Chart 5), the continued rise in the participation rate means there is more slack in the labor market than implied by headline unemployment (Chart 6), and inflation expectations remain low. This should allow new Fed chair Jerome Powell to continue to withdraw accommodation at a measured pace. The market has already priced in that the Fed will tighten this year at least in line with its dots (Chart 7). We expect four, rather than the Fed's projected three, hikes this year, but this should not be too hard for the market to absorb. Chart 5Unit Labor Costs Don't Point To Jump In Inflation Chart 6 Still Some Slack In Labor Market Chart 7Market Has Caught Up To The Fed We have for some months now advised long-term, more risk-averse investors to consider dialing back risk, and the volatility in February was a good example of why. We would expect further such bouts of volatility. However, with a recession still probably two years away, and a combination of stronger-than-expected growth and a Fed reluctant to accelerate tightening, the next 12 months should remain positive for equities and other risk assets. Fixed Income: We now expect the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield to rise to 3.3-3.5%. This will come from a further 40 BP increase in inflation expectations (taking them back to a level compatible with the Fed achieving its inflation target) plus a rise in the real yield, as markets start to price in the end of secular stagnation (Chart 8). The rise in global yields will be exacerbated by increasing net supply, as fiscal deficits rise and central banks wind down QE (Chart 9). We are, accordingly, underweight duration, and prefer inflation-linked bonds to nominal ones. We will likely reduce our exposure to credit before we turn defensive on equities. But, for now, strong economic growth and higher oil prices mean spread product is likely to outperform government bonds. Chart 8Inflation Expectations And Real Yields To Rise Chart 9Net Government Bond Supply To Increase Currencies: Rising interest rate differentials have failed to cause the dollar to rally (Chart 10). FX markets are trading, rather, on valuations (the euro and yen are, indeed, undervalued), on current account positions (the euro zone and Japan have large surpluses), and on the narrative that U.S. twin deficits historically caused the dollar to weaken. Our FX strategists find this is true only when, as in 2001-3, U.S. real rates were falling; after the Reagan tax cuts in 1981, real rates rose, pushing up the dollar (Chart 11). The key, therefore, is how quickly the Fed reacts this time. The dollar currently has strong downward momentum (especially against the yen) and this could continue. But as global growth slows relative to the U.S., relative interest rates are likely to reassert themselves as a factor, causing the dollar to strengthen again. Chart 10Rising Rate Differentials Fails To Boost Dollar Chart 11Do Twin Deficits Matter For Dollar? Equities: Given the macro environment, we continue to recommend pro-cyclical equity tilts, with overweights in higher beta markets such as the euro zone and Japan, and cyclical sectors such as financials, energy, and industrials. Our underweight on EM equities is based on the risk of a slowdown in China (where tighter financial conditions point to a slowing of the industrial sector, Chart 12), the possibility of a U.S. dollar rebound, and the vulnerability of highly leveraged foreign-currency EM borrowers to a rise in U.S. interest rates. Commodities: Our energy team has further revised up their oil price forecast, on expectations that the OPEC agreement will be extended, which will cause a greater draw-down in oil inventories (Chart 13).3 They see Brent crude averaging $74 a barrel this year, with spikes above $80. However, the response of the U.S. shale industry will begin to kick in, pushing the price down to below $60 by end-2019. We are neutral on industrial commodities, which will benefit from stronger global growth but are at risk in the event of dollar appreciation and slowdown in China. Chart 12Tighter Monetary Conditions In China Chart 13Oil Inventories To Draw Down Further Please note that, due to the Easter holidays in some countries, the GAA Quarterly Portfolio will be published one day later than usual, on April 3. Garry Evans, Senior Vice President Global Asset Allocation garry@bcaresearch.com 1 Please see U.S. Investment Strategy Weekly Report, "Late Innings," dated 26 February 2018, available at usis.bcaresearch.com 2 For details, please see The Bank Credit Analyst, "March 2018," available at bca.bcaresearch.com 3 Please see Commodity & Energy Strategy Weekly Report, "OPEC 2.0: Getting Comfortable With Higher Prices," dated 22 February 2018, available at ces.bcaresearch.com GAA Asset Allocation

Highlights Federal Reserve: Is the U.S. neutral rate now higher? ECB: How much has the euro rally damaged European growth? Bank of Japan: Will a stronger yen tip Japan back into deflation? Bank of England: Will higher real wages offset Brexit uncertainties? Bank of Canada & Reserve Bank Of Australia: How much spare capacity truly exists? Feature We have not published a regular Weekly Report in Global Fixed Income Strategy since February 6th. We instead published necessary Special Reports on two countries of immediate relevance: Japan, because of the recent surprising strength in the yen, and Italy, because of the upcoming election. The pause in our regular commentary on the state of the markets, however, was useful. It has given us more time to reflect on the potential for a continuation of the global bond bear market after the volatility spike earlier in the month. What we find interesting is that, despite the common narrative that the back-up in global bond yields seen in 2018 has been about rising inflation fears, market pricing suggests the big shift has instead been in real bond yields and central bank policy expectations. In Table 1, we present the year-to-date change in the 10-year government bond yield for the major developed markets. We also show the changes in various other interest rate measures, including: Table 12018 Year-To-Date Changes In Government Bond Yield Components Our 12-month Policy Rate Discounters, which show the change in short-term interest rates priced into money market curves Our proxy measure of the market pricing of the real neutral ("terminal") interest rate - the 5-year Overnight Index Swap (OIS) rate, 5-years forward minus the 5-year CPI swap rate, 5-years forward Our estimate of the term premium on the 10-year government bond yield. What stands out in the table is that markets have moved to price in both a higher amount of expected rate hikes over the next year (Chart 1) and a higher neutral real interest rate, even with very little change in expected inflation. This can also been seen by looking at recent declines in the correlations between inflation expectations and nominal bond yields in the major economies, which are off from the peaks seen late in 2017 (Chart 2). Chart 1Rising Rate Expectations Have##BR##Been Pushing Yields Higher Of Late... Chart 2...Rather Than Higher##BR##Inflation Expectations The obvious conclusion is that the bulk of the rise in global bond yields seen year-to-date has been driven by increases in the real yield component, which itself has been heavily influenced by expected changes to central bank policy rates. Keeping that in mind, in this Weekly Report, we take a look at the most important question faced by each major central bank, and what that means for future decisions on policy interest rates - and by extension, for government bond yields. The Federal Reserve: "Is The U.S. Neutral Rate Now Higher?" With the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield having taken several runs at the critical 3% level in recent weeks, the debate has raged among investors as to whether that should be considered a breakout point or a buying opportunity. Comparing the U.S. economy now to what it looked like the last time the 10-year yield was at 3% at the end of 2013 suggests that yields could have more upside: Real GDP growth: 1.7% then, 2.3% now1 The unemployment rate: 6.7% then, 4.1% now Headline CPI inflation: 1.4% then, 2.1% now Core CPI inflation: 1.7% then, 1.8% now Average Hourly Earnings growth: 1.9% then, 2.9% now Growth is faster, there is less spare capacity, and inflation is higher now than it was just over four years ago. Yet when looking at the decomposition of the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield into its real and inflation expectations component (Chart 3, 2nd panel), we find that the mix is only slightly more skewed to real yields today: Chart 3Treasury Yields Still Have More Upside,##BR##Based On 2013 Comparisons Nominal 10-year Treasury yield: 3.03% then (December 31st, 2013), 2.87% now (February 26th, 2018) Inflation expectations (10-year CPI swap): 2.54% then, 2.30% now Real yields (nominal 10-year yield minus 10-year CPI swap): 0.49% then, 0.57% now In other words, the real yield today is 20% of the total nominal 10-year yield compared to 16% back at the end of 2013. Not a major difference. Yet there are much bigger discrepancies between the elements that go into our real neutral rate proxy for the U.S. (bottom two panels): 5-year OIS rate, 5-years forward: 4.1% then, 2.6% now 5-year CPI swap rate, 5-years forward: 2.9% then, 2.3% now Real neutral rate proxy: 1.2% then, 0.3% now The market is now pricing in a real neutral funds rate that is nearly one full percentage point below the level that prevailed the last time the 10-year Treasury yield reached 3% prior to 2018. Even though the U.S. economy is now growing faster, with far less spare capacity and higher inflation, than it did at the end of 2013. This does suggest that the level of the neutral real fed funds rate has likely gone up, which the 43bps increase in our market-implied real neutral rate proxy so far in 2018 is likely reflecting. But does the Fed actually believe that the neutral funds rate should be higher? The minutes from the January FOMC meeting, released last week, noted that there was discussion on the neutral funds rate, but one that was different than during previous FOMC meetings in 2017 - the actual appropriate level of the neutral funds rate was a topic of debate: "Some participants also commented on the likely evolution of the neutral federal funds rate. [...] the outlook for the neutral rate was uncertain and would depend on the interplay of a number of forces. For example, the neutral rate, which appeared to have fallen sharply during the Global Financial Crisis when financial headwinds had restrained demand, might move up more than anticipated as the global economy strengthened. Alternatively, the longer-run level of the neutral rate might remain low in the absence of fundamental shifts in trends in productivity, demographics, or the demand for safe assets."2 Any change in the Fed's estimation of the long-run neutral funds rate is critical for the future path of Treasury yields, given where market pricing is at the moment. The U.S. OIS curve has now fully converged to the FOMC interest rate projections (the "dots") for this year and next year. More importantly, the market-implied terminal rate (the nominal 5-year OIS rate, 5-years forward) has now caught up to the FOMC terminal rate dot (Chart 4). The implication is that any further meaningful increase in Treasury yields can only come from higher inflation expectations - unless the Fed signals that a higher neutral rate is required. Our colleagues at our sister publication, U.S. Bond Strategy, recently noted that the Fed has historically been much more reluctant to raise its terminal rate projection in response to rising inflation than it was in cutting the projection when inflation falls.3 The conclusion is that inflation expectations will likely need to return to levels consistent with the Fed's inflation target - 2.3-2.5% on both the 10-year TIPS breakeven rate and the 5-year breakeven rate, 5-years forward - before the Fed would make any significant upward revisions to its terminal rate projection. In the meantime, Treasury yields are more likely to see a near-term consolidation, as U.S. data surprises have rolled over, market positioning has become very short, momentum is oversold and market pricing has fully converged with Fed expectations (Chart 5). In terms of data, the release of the next U.S. Employment report on March 9th is critical for the Treasury market in the near term, given that the January uptick in wage growth was the trigger for the spike in bond yields, and subsequent equity market correction, at the beginning of February (bottom panel). Chart 4Could The Fed Move##BR##The Interest Rate 'Goalposts'? Chart 5Treasury Selloff May Be##BR##Due For A Pause The ECB: "How Much Has The Euro Rally Damaged European Growth?" The European Central Bank (ECB) has been slowly preparing markets for an eventual withdrawal of its extraordinary monetary policy stimulus since last summer. Specifically, the ECB has begun a discussion of what it would take to end its bond buying program. Already, the central bank cut the monthly pace of its asset purchases in half at the beginning of 2018, and the topic of "tapering" has come up in many speeches from ECB officials. The ECB has been trying to not present an overly hawkish message when discussing an eventual end to its hyper-easy monetary stance. The overall level of government bond yields - both in the core and Periphery of the Euro Area - has been drifting higher, but by less than the increases seen in the U.S. Inflation expectations have been rising since the middle of 2017, although most of the 23bps increase in the benchmark 10-year German Bund yield seen so far in 2018 can be attributed to rising real yields (Chart 6). The market-implied real neutral rate has also been increasing, but still remains below zero (-0.2%). Yet despite only the modest increase in European interest rate expectations, there has been a substantially larger move in the euro. The trade-weighted euro has bond up by 8% over the past year, bringing the currency back to levels last seen in 2014 (Chart 7, top panel). The appreciating euro has become a subject of focus by the ECB, although it is not yet a cause for worry according to the minutes of the January ECB meeting released last week: Chart 6Only A Modest Rise In European Yields, So Far Chart 7A Potential ECB Dilemma "[...] although the past appreciation of the euro had so far had no significant impact on euro area external demand, volatility in foreign exchange markets represented a further increase that need monitoring."4 Chart 8No Damage Yet To European##BR##Exports From The Euro Rally The ECB is correct that the rising euro has not yet impacted Euro Area exports, the growth rate of which remains solid at 8% (bottom panel). This contrasts sharply with the performance the last time the trade-weighted euro was at current levels in 2014, when exports were barely growing at all. The difference is a much stronger global economy that is demanding far more European goods and services now compared to four years ago. For now, the ECB can look to the stability of export demand as a sign that the euro has not become a drag on the economy, but some warning signals may be flashing. Euro Area economic data surprises have plunged sharply, and the manufacturing PMI data has been softer in the past couple of months (Chart 8). While the absolute levels of the PMIs suggest an economy that is still growing at an above-trend pace, a continuation of the recent drops could pose a problem for the ECB as it tries to communicate its next policy move to the markets. The surging euro has done very little to drag down overall Euro Area headline inflation, given the strength in global oil prices over the past year (3rd panel). Core inflation has struggled to stay much above 1% over the past year or so, but our core inflation diffusion index - which measures the number of core Euro Area HICP sectors with rising inflation rates versus those with falling inflation rates - has surged in the past couple of months, which typically leads to a faster rate of core inflation (bottom panel). As long as the Euro Area export growth data holds up, the ECB is likely to focus more on rising core inflation than a stronger euro and should begin signaling an end to the asset purchase program by year-end. The Bank Of England: "Will Faster Wage Growth Offset Brexit Uncertainty?" The Bank of England (BoE) has surprised markets with its more hawkish commentary of late, particularly given the reason for the change - faster wage growth. The BoE had previously been cautious on its outlook for the U.K. economy, which was suffering from two powerful drags. First, the uncertainty over the Brexit negotiations was dampening business confidence and restraining capital spending. Second, the surge in realized inflation following the post-Brexit collapse of the British Pound triggered a period of contracting real wages that would be a drag on consumer spending. Until these were resolved, the BoE would be cautious with its future policy moves. Next month's European Union (EU) summit can provide some news on Brexit, as the U.K. government will be seeking a transition agreement that would give U.K. businesses a firm timeline for the separation of the U.K. from the EU. The U.K. government is reported to be seeking a two-year period for the agreement, but it may take longer than that to hammer out all the deals involved with the contentious issues of trade, immigration, etc. The longer the Brexit transition period, the more likely that U.K. firms will hold back on long-term investment spending because of uncertainty. As for the wage side of the story, the annual growth rate of Average Weekly Earnings has increased from 1.7% to 2.6% since the April 2017 low, but this is still below the headline CPI inflation rate of 3% (Chart 9, bottom panel). With the U.K. unemployment rate at a cyclical low of 4.4% - far below the OECD's estimate of the full employment NAIRU rate of 5.1% - additional increases in wage growth are possible if hiring demand does not begin to slow. Yet with U.K. data surprises rolling over (top panel), and with the OECD's U.K. leading economic indicator decelerating (middle panel), there is a growing risk that economic growth will slow in the coming quarters, to the detriment of hiring activity and wages. The current market pricing shows that there remains a wide gap between U.K. inflation expectations and nominal Gilt yields (Chart 10). The real 10-year Gilt yield is -1.84% (deflated by CPI swaps), while the market-implied neutral real interest rate is -1.94%. While such a deeply negative interest rate is unlikely to be a permanent state of affairs in the U.K., such an accommodative policy setting is required to prevent the economy from falling into a deep slump. Chart 9Is The BoE More Worried About##BR##Wage Pressures Than Growth? Chart 10Real Gilt Yields Rising,##BR##But Still Very Low As we noted back in January, we do not see the BoE being able to raise rates much at all this year given the likelihood of prolonged sluggishness of the U.K. economy and some reversal of the currency-fueled surge in inflation seen in 2017.5 The BoE choosing to tackle rising wage inflation while growth was decelerating would be a huge policy error that would eventually benefit the performance of U.K. Gilts. The Bank Of Japan: "Will A Stronger Yen Tip Japan Back Into Deflation?" The extraordinary monetary policy accommodation provided by the Bank of Japan (BoJ) makes an analysis of Japanese Government Bond (JGB) yields far less interesting. After all, when the central bank is actively intervening in large quantities to hold the level of the 10-year JGB around 0%, do the signals sent from money market and bond yield curves have any meaning vis-à-vis the actual Japanese economy? Right now, the pricing of the real 10-year JGB yield (deflated by CPI swaps) is just below 0%, as is the real terminal rate proxy from the Japanese OIS curve (Chart 11). Keeping JGB yields at such low levels is part of the BoJ's attempt to raise Japanese inflation back towards the central bank's 2% yield target. The mechanism by which that should happen is through a weaker Japanese yen. Yet the yen has been showing surprising strength in recent weeks, most notably the USD/JPY exchange rate that has been falling in the face of rising U.S.-Japan interest rate differentials (Chart 12, top panel). Chart 11Negative Real Rates Still Necessary In Japan Chart 12An Unwelcome Rise In The Yen The risk going forward is that the strengthening yen will create a drag on headline Japanese inflation that has recently accelerated back to 1% (middle panel). Given that both core CPI and nominal wages barely growing at all (bottom panel), the odds are increasing that Japanese inflation could begin to move lower without getting anywhere close to the BoJ's 2% target. As we discussed in our recent Special Report, a much weaker yen (i.e. USD/JPY between 115 and 120) is the first necessary precondition before the BoJ would consider raising its yield target on the 10-year JGB.6 We had placed odds of no more than 20% that the BoJ would raise its yield target in 2018, but if the yen continues to hold firm or even strengthen further from current levels, those odds fall to zero. Bank Of Canada & Reserve Bank Of Australia: "How Much Spare Capacity Truly Exists?" We are lumping the Bank of Canada (BoC) and Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) together in this report, as both are facing the same critical question. The BoC has already raised its policy rate three times since last summer, in response to accelerating growth and diminished spare capacity in Canada. Canadian bond yields have risen in response through higher inflation expectations, rising real yields and greater expected rate increases from the BoC (Chart 13). The real 10-year Canadian yield has risen back to the highs last seen in late 2013, while inflation expectations are not quite back to those levels - a similar story to that seen in the U.S. The BoC's own estimate of the Canadian output gap flipped into positive territory at the end of 2017, signifying that there was no longer any spare capacity in the Canadian economy (Chart 14, top panel). The signal from the Canadian labor market is similar, with the unemployment rate now at 5.9% - well below the OECD NAIRU estimate of 6.5% (middle panel). Yet Canadian inflation rates, both for headline and core CPI, are only at 1.7% and 1.5%, respectively - both not even at the midpoint of the BoC's 1-3% target band (bottom panel). At the same time, wages have been accelerating, with the annual growth rate of Average Hourly Earnings now up to a two-year high of 3.3%. Chart 13All Bond Yield Components Rising In Canada Chart 14Where's The Inflation? Such a wide gap between price inflation and wage growth does throw into the question if the BoC's own output gap estimate is correct. We expect Canadian price inflation to eventually begin to close the gap with wage inflation, which will keep the BoC on its current expected rate hiking path in 2018 as long as the economy does not begin to slow meaningfully. The CPI inflation reports will be the most important data to watch in Canada over the next few months to determine if our view will pan out. In Australia, the market pricing is nowhere near as hawkish as in Canada, with inflation expectations (10-year CPI swaps) having been stuck in a range between 2.2-2.4% for the past two years (Chart 15, 2nd panel). The market-implied neutral real interest rate is stuck at 0% and has not been sustainably above that level since 2014 (bottom panel). Yet, like Canada, there are questions about the true degree of slack in the economy. The Australian unemployment rate is currently at 5.5%, well below NAIRU (Chart 16, top panel). The last time that the Australian economy ran for so long beyond full employment was in 2010-11, when headline inflation breached the upper limit of the RBA's 1-3% target band (bottom panel). Yet the so-called "underemployment rate" - essentially, those working part-time that would like to work full-time - has been much higher in recent years and now sits at 8.3%. This also fits with the IMF's estimate of the Australian output gap, which is still a very large -1.8%. Chart 15Australian Yields Are Stuck In A Range Chart 16Very Different Than 2011-12 Given these signs of excess capacity in both the labor market and the overall economy, it is no surprise that Australian inflation has struggled to surpass even the 2% midpoint of the RBA target band. The implication is that the Australian NAIRU is much lower than the official OECD estimate, and that the RBA is under no pressure to contemplate any interest rate increases for at least the rest of 2018. Net-net, while both the BoC and RBA are facing questions over the true amount of spare capacity in their economies, the situation is much more bullish for Australian government bonds than Canadian equivalents given the greater slack Down Under. Robert Robis, Senior Vice President Global Fixed Income Strategy rrobis@bcaresearch.com 1 These are average quarterly growth rates of U.S. real GDP for the full calendar year of 2013 and 2017, respectively. 2 https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/fomcminutes20180131.pdf 3 Please see BCA U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, "The Two-Stage Bear Market In Bonds", dated February 20th, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com. 4 https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/accounts/2018/html/ecb.mg180222.en.html 5 Please see BCA Global Fixed Income Strategy Weekly Report, "A Melt Up In Equities AND Bond Yields?", dated January 23rd, 2018, available at gfis.bcaresearch.com. 6 Please see BCA Global Fixed Income Strategy Special Report, "What Would It Take For The Bank Of Japan To Raise Its Yield Target?", dated February 13th 2018, available at gfis.bcaresearch.com. Recommendations The GFIS Recommended Portfolio Vs. The Custom Benchmark Index Duration Regional Allocation Spread Product Tactical Trades Yields & Returns Global Bond Yields Historical Returns

Highlights Fed: The Fed is getting more optimistic on growth and continues to forecast a rebound in inflation. Nevertheless, the March FOMC meeting is probably too soon to expect an upward revision to the Fed's rate hike expectations. Inflation: The headwinds working against inflation are set to fade this year. The core goods and medical care sectors will lead the way, but there are even tentative signs that the deceleration in shelter inflation might start to ease. Spread Product: A survey of investment grade bond sectors shows that municipal bonds, Foreign Agency bonds and Local Authority bonds are all attractively valued relative to corporates. In contrast, USD-denominated Sovereign bonds are expensive. At the upper-end of the credit spectrum, Consumer ABS offer good value but deteriorating credit fundamentals. Feature One byproduct of this year's increase in Treasury yields is that market expectations for the near-term path of Fed rate hikes have converged with the Fed's most recent median projection (Chart 1). At present, the overnight index swap curve is priced for a fed funds rate of 2.19% by the end of this year and 2.54% by the end of 2019. The Fed's most recent median projection calls for a fed funds rate between 2% and 2.25% by the end of 2018, and of 2.75% by the end of 2019.1 Chart 1Market Expectations Have Converged With The Fed Dots This convergence makes the next few Fed meetings particularly interesting. Will the Fed revise up its rate projections, giving the market permission to push short-dated yields even higher? Or will the Fed continue to signal three hikes this year and 2-3 more in 2019, restraining the bear market in short-dated bonds? Fortunately, last week we received a lot of information to help us answer these questions. Several FOMC members made noteworthy public remarks and the Fed released the minutes from the January FOMC meeting. What To Expect From The March FOMC Meeting The Fed's Rosy Growth Outlook The minutes from the January FOMC meeting showed a great deal of optimism about the U.S. recovery, from both the Fed staff and FOMC participants. Chart 2Substantial Stimulus In The Pipeline The minutes noted that the Fed staff submitted stronger economic projections at the January meeting than at previous meeting, noting that: [T]he forecast for real GDP growth was revised up, reflecting a reassessment of the recently enacted tax cuts, along with higher projected paths for equity prices and foreign economic growth and a lower assumed path for the foreign exchange value of the dollar. It's important to note that while these projections include the impact of recent changes to the tax code, they do not include the potential impact from the newly proposed two-year appropriations bill that is poised to pass through Congress in the next few weeks. This bill is significant with large outlays for disaster relief ($45 billion), the military ($165 billion) and non-defense discretionary items ($131 billion), spread over the next two years. Chart 2 demonstrates how much this spending bill and the recent tax cuts have altered the growth outlook. It shows two estimates of fiscal thrust, the initial economic impulse of changes in government tax and spending policies.2 One estimate is the IMF's baseline forecast that was made before the tax legislation was passed. That estimate showed that fiscal policy would have been contractionary this year, trimming about 0.5% from GDP, and only slightly expansionary in 2019. The second estimate, which incorporates both the tax legislation and the proposed spending bill, shows that the fiscal impulse will be +0.8% this year and +1.3% next year. A major turnaround, and the most stimulative fiscal policy since the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis. Staying The Course On Inflation At the January FOMC meeting the Fed saw a presentation on the performance of different inflation models, an exercise that is particularly important given that the Fed's traditional expectations-augmented Phillips curve model was not able to explain why prices decelerated last year. The staff concluded that while the prediction errors from Phillips curve-style models have been larger in recent years than during the 2001-07 period, they were not completely out of line with history. This synchs up with our own analysis. We re-created the Fed's expectations-augmented Phillips curve model using details from a speech given by Janet Yellen in 2015 (Chart 3).3 That model certainly shows a large prediction error in 2017, but one that is not inconsistent with past errors. The message is that 2017 was not an outlier in terms of the Fed's ability to forecast inflation, but rather that inflation is quite often difficult to forecast. The Fed staff did provide a couple reasons for why inflation lagged the model's predictions last year: [S]tructural changes in the price setting for some items, such as medical care, and the effects of idiosyncratic price shocks, such as the unusual drop in prices of wireless telephone services. And also forecast that inflation would reverse course in 2018: [C]ore PCE prices were forecast to rise notably faster in 2018, importantly reflecting both the expected waning of transitory factors that held down 12-month inflation measures in 2017 as well as the projected further tightening in resource utilization. We agree with this assessment. In fact, both CPI and PCE inflation measures have formed tentative troughs in the past few months and should see further near-term upside from both the core goods and medical care components (Chart 4). Core goods inflation has still not caught up with accelerating import prices (Chart 4, panel 2) and the PPI data show a recent large jump in health-care prices (Chart 4, panel 3). Chart 3The Fed's Inflation Model Chart 4Inflation Headwinds Will Fade On medical care, research from the San Francisco Fed has shown that a major reason for lower inflation in recent years has been the slower growth of Medicare payments to physicians and hospitals as mandated by the Affordable Care Act. But these payments are also forecast to grow 2% this year, much higher than the 0.6% growth seen last year and the 0.9% growth seen in 2016.4 It is even possible that the deceleration in shelter inflation could moderate in the months ahead, given the renewed decline in the rental vacancy rate (Chart 4, panel 4). Meanwhile, we continue to expect that stronger wage growth will eventually pressure core services inflation (excluding shelter and medical care) higher (Chart 4, bottom panel). But What Are They Saying? Even though the minutes conveyed a decidedly optimistic tone with regards to both growth and inflation, Fed speakers were much more cautious last week. Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said that "based on the relatively strong economy, but the continued stubbornness of inflation, I've penciled in two hikes for 2018." Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said he is "comfortable continuing with a slow removal of policy accommodation" but also that "that doesn't necessarily mean as many as three or four moves per year." St. Louis Fed President James Bullard also said that 100 basis points of rate hikes in 2018 "seems like a lot." At the very least it appears that upward revisions to GDP growth forecasts are not sufficient for these three members to revise their rate projections higher. But these three members also already projected shallower paths for rate hikes than the median FOMC member (Table 1). Table 1Composition Of The FOMC More important is whether FOMC members whose projections are consistent with the median - those with a "neutral" policy bias in Table 1 - are inclined to get more hawkish. One of those members is San Francisco Fed President John Williams who said last week that "it makes sense to think about three or four rate increases in 2018." Chart 5Still Not Back To Target At the moment, the median Fed projection calls for three rate hikes in 2018, and that median will only move higher in March if four out of the six members who currently forecast three hikes this year decide to increase their dots. Given the cautious tone struck by most Fed speakers last week, we think the odds of an upward revision to the Fed's 2018 rate hike forecasts at the March meeting are low. Bottom Line: The Fed is getting more optimistic on growth and continues to forecast a rebound in inflation. Nevertheless, the March FOMC meeting is probably too soon to expect an upward revision to the Fed's rate hike expectations. Our own assessment is that the headwinds working against inflation are set to fade this year and that 3-4 Fed rate hikes are likely. In either case, bond yields are still biased higher given that they are still not priced for an eventual return of inflation to the Fed's target (Chart 5). Maintain a below-benchmark duration stance. Searching For Late-Cycle Value In Spread Product As we have noted repeatedly in recent reports, we anticipate that we will start to de-risk the spread product side of our U.S. bond portfolio sometime in 2018, possibly quite soon depending on the future path of inflation.5 So this week we perform a survey of investment grade spread product sectors, with an eye towards identifying sectors that look attractively valued and also present a low risk of spread widening. Our primary tool for identifying value is the 12-month breakeven spread. The 12-month breakeven spread is the basis point spread widening required on a 12-month horizon for a sector to earn zero excess returns versus a duration-equivalent position in Treasury yields.6 Table 2 shows the 12-month breakeven spread for each sector split by credit rating. Table 212-Month Breakeven Spreads By Credit Rating The first thing we notice is the attractive spreads offered by municipal bonds after adjusting for the tax advantage. In fact, for investors exposed to the top marginal tax rate, the 12-month breakeven spread on a Aaa-rated municipal bond exceeds the spread offered by a Baa-rated corporate bond. We have previously noted that when the tax-adjusted spread on a 10-year Aaa-rated municipal bond exceeds the spread offered by the duration-matched investment grade corporate bond index, it has historically been a signal that the credit cycle is very late. We are not seeing this signal yet, but it is getting very close (Chart 6). The second observation that jumps out is that USD-denominated Sovereign debt is not attractive compared to U.S. corporate debt. This is true across the entire investment grade credit spectrum. Further, Chart 7 shows that Sovereign bonds typically exhibit greater excess return volatility than U.S. corporate bonds. Chart 6Positive Muni/Corporate Spreads##br## Are A Late-Cycle Indicator Chart 712-Month Breakeven Spread Versus ##br##Excess Return Volatility We anticipate getting an opportunity to shift out of corporate bonds and into Sovereign debt at some point during the next 12 months, but expect some poor performance from Sovereign bonds first. A quicker expected pace of Fed rate hikes has historically coincided with Sovereign bond underperformance (Chart 8), and if that plays out while growth outside the U.S. starts to moderate - a risk that has been flagged by both our leading indicators for the Chinese economy and the performance of EM/JPY currency carry trades - then this would further exacerbate the underperformance of Sovereign bonds by putting upward pressure on the U.S. dollar.7 A third observation from Table 2 is that Foreign Agency bonds look very attractive, and Chart 7 also shows that the sector has historically exhibited quite low volatility. Foreign state-owned energy companies make up a large portion of the Foreign Agency index, and this sector's performance closely tracks the price of oil (Chart 9). With our commodity strategists now calling for average 2018 crude oil prices of $74/bbl and $70/bbl for Brent and WTI respectively, the Foreign Agency sector should stay well supported.8 Local Authority bonds are also attractively valued, though to a lesser extent than Foreign Agencies, and also tend to exhibit relatively low excess return volatility. We continue to recommend an overweight position in this sector that is comprised principally of taxable municipal debt and USD-denominated Canadian provincial bonds. Chart 8Underweight Sovereigns Chart 9Overweight Foreign Agencies Finally, we notice that credit card and auto loan backed Consumer ABS offer very attractive spreads and relatively low volatility. While we retain a neutral allocation to Consumer ABS, we note that credit trends are starting to shift against the sector. Bank are now tightening lending standards on both credit cards and auto loans, and the delinquency rate has made a cyclical bottom (Chart 10). Aaa-rated non-Agency CMBS also offer an attractive breakeven spread, though this sector has historically been much more volatile. Here too we see that banks are tightening lending standards, but the tightening has moderated in recent quarters. If this continues then delinquencies could start to roll over and property prices could start to accelerate (Chart 11). We remain underweight non-agency CMBS for now, but note the tentative improvement in credit quality. Chart 10Neutral Consumer ABS Chart 11A Nascent Improvement In Credit Quality Bottom Line: A survey of investment grade bond sectors shows that municipal bonds, Foreign Agency bonds and Local Authority bonds are all attractively valued relative to corporates. In contrast, USD-denominated Sovereign bonds are expensive. At the upper-end of the credit spectrum, Consumer ABS offer good value but deteriorating credit fundamentals. Ryan Swift, Vice President U.S. Bond Strategy rswift@bcaresearch.com 1 We exclude the forecast provided by the St. Louis Fed President as an outlier and calculate the median from the remaining forecasts. 2 The fiscal thrust is defined as the change in the cyclically-adjusted budget balance, expressed as a percentage of GDP. 3 https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/yellen20150924a.htm 4 https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic-letter/2017/november/contribution-to-low-pce-inflation-from-healthcare/ 5 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, "On The MOVE", dated February 13, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 6 We calculate the 12-month breakeven spread as the average index option-adjusted spread divided by the average index duration. We ignore the impact of convexity. 7 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, "The Two-Stage Bear Market In Bonds", dated February 20, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 8 Please see Commodity & Energy Strategy Weekly Report, "OPEC 2.0 Getting Comfortable With Higher Prices", dated February 22, 2018, available at ces.bcaresearch.com Fixed Income Sector Performance Recommended Portfolio Specification

Highlights BCA has shifted its view on how fiscal policy will impact the U.S. economy, the path of S&P 500 earnings growth and the 10-year Treasury yield. While we remain positive on risk assets, the U.S. is in the late innings of the expansion and markets have entered a new, more volatile phase. The FOMC will continue to monitor financial stability under Powell and raise rates four times in 2018. Feature The S&P 500 and other risk assets continued their recovery last week after an early February swoon. Equity volatility ebbed, but remains well above levels seen at the start of the year. The dollar rose while the 10-year Treasury yield stabilized near 2.90%. WTI oil prices climbed above $63/bbl, but remain below BCA Commodity & Energy Strategy's revised $70 target for 2018.1 It was a quiet week for economic data and news. The U.S. data that was released (initial claims, existing home sales, leading economic indicators) continue to suggest that the U.S. economy will grow well above its long term potential in the next few quarters. The data calendar is full this week, and investors will focus on Fed Chair Jay Powell's Monetary Policy testimony to Congress on Tuesday, February 27. Changes BCA has shifted its view on how fiscal policy will impact the U.S. economy, the path of S&P 500 earnings growth and the 10-year Treasury yield. Notably, minutes from the FOMC's January meeting suggest that the Fed's forecast for above-trend growth and higher inflation solidified after the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 passed late last year. The influence of the tax bill, coupled with the Senate deal on spending, has turned the fiscal impulse positive in 2018, to the tune of 0.8% of GDP. Next year's impulse will be even larger at 1.3% (Chart 1). Our expectation in early January was that the direct effect of the tax cuts would likely boost U.S. real GDP growth in 2018 by only 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points. The U.S. budget deficit will likely jump to about 5.5% of GDP in FY2019, up from 3.3% in last year's CBO baseline forecast (Chart 2). This increase reflects the tax cuts, but also outlays for disaster relief ($45 billion), the military ($165 billion) and non-defense discretionary items ($131 billion), spread over the next two years. A deal on infrastructure spending would add to the deficit. The additional fiscal stimulus will lift nominal GDP growth as well. Stronger nominal growth and a patient Fed will be a positive combination for risk assets, such as corporate bonds and equities. Chart 3 provides an update of our top-down forecast for the S&P 500 operating profits, incorporating the economic impact of the new fiscal stimulus. We still expect profit growth to peak this year as industrial production tops out and margins begin to moderate on the back of rising wages. However, compared with our previous forecast, the projected peak will occur later in the year and at a higher level, and the entire profile is shifted up. Most of this improvement in the profit outlook is already discounted in prices, but the key point is that the earnings backdrop will remain a tailwind for stocks at least into early 2019. Chart 1Substantial Stimulus In The Pipeline Chart 2U.S. Budget Deficit To Reach 5 1/2 % In 2019 Chart 3The Profile For S&P 500 EPS Growth Shifts Up BCA's U.S. Bond Strategy service raised its year-end target for the 10-year Treasury yield from around 3% to 3.3-3.5%, partly reflecting the U.S. fiscal shock.2 Nonetheless, extreme short positioning and oversold conditions suggest that a consolidation phase is likely in the near term. Bottom Line: Fiscal stimulus will extend the expansion to 2020, but faster growth in the coming quarters will deepen the next recession. BCA's stance remains that the next economic downturn will be triggered by the Fed's overtightening. BCA's recommended asset allocation remains unchanged: overweight risk assets and below-benchmark on duration. In fixed-income portfolios, we will probably trim corporate bond exposure to neutral or underweight in advance of taking profits on equities. The dollar should head up at some point, although not in the near term. The End Of The Low-Vol Period While we remain positive on risk assets, the U.S. is in the late innings of the expansion and markets have entered a new, more volatile phase. We have been warning of upheaval when investor complacency regarding inflation is challenged, because the rally in risk assets has been balanced precariously on a three-legged stool of low inflation, depressed interest rates and modest economic volatility. All it took was a couple of small positive inflation surprises to spark a reset in the market for volatility. The key question is whether February's turmoil represented a healthy market correction or a signal that a bear market is approaching. The good news is that the widening in high-yield corporate bond spreads was muted (Chart 4). This market has often provided an early warning sign of an approaching major top in the stock market. The adjustment in other risk gauges, such as EM stocks and gold, was also fairly modest. This suggests that equity and volatility market action was largely technical in nature, in the context of extended investor positioning, crowded trades and elevated valuations. There has been no change in the items on our checklist for trimming equity exposure. We presented the checklist in the February Bank Credit Analyst.3 Our short-term economic growth models for the major countries remain upbeat and our global capital spending indicators are also bullish (Chart 5). Industrial production in the advanced economies is in hyperdrive as global capital spending growth accelerates (Chart 6). Chart 4February's Volatility Reset Chart 5Near-Term Growth Outlook Still Solid... Chart 6... Partly Due to Capex Acceleration Nonetheless, it will be difficult to put the 'vol genie' back into the bottle. The surge in bond yields has focused market attention on the leverage pressure points in the system. One potential source of volatility is the corporate bond space. We conclude that higher rates on their own won't cause significant pain, but the combination of higher rates and a downturn in earnings would lead to a major deterioration in credit quality.4 Moreover, expansionary fiscal policy and recent inflation surprises have limited the Fed's room to maneuver. Under Fed Chairs Bernanke and Yellen, markets relied on a so-called "Fed Put". When inflation was low and stable, economic slack was abundant and long-term inflation expectations were depressed. Then disappointing economic data or equity market setbacks were followed by an easing in the expectations for Fed rate hikes. This helped to calm investors' nerves. We do not think that the Powell FOMC represents a regime shift in terms of the Fed's reaction function, but the rise in long-term inflation expectations and the January inflation report have altered the Fed's calculus. The new Committee will be more tolerant of equity corrections and tighter financial conditions than in the past. Indeed, some FOMC members would welcome reduced frothiness in financial markets, as long as the correction is not large enough to undermine the economy (i.e. a 20% or greater equity market decline). The implication is that we are unlikely to see a return of market volatility to the lows observed early this year. Vol Spike The spike in equity volatility in early 2018 was extreme. Table 1 shows 10 episodes when the VIX climbed by more than 10% in a 13-week period when the economy was not in recession. The equity price index fell by an average of 7% during those episodes, with a range of -3.6 to -18.1%. Our November 13, 2017 report discussed volatility and its relationship with the business cycle, monetary policy and economic volatility.5 In that report, we noted that "any meaningful pickup in inflation would upset the 'low vol' applecart." Table 1Episodes When VIX Spiked Table 1 and Chart 7 show that a spike in volatility does not signal the end of the business cycle. However, 6 of the 10 of the upheavals outside of recessions occurred during the late stages of the business cycle. The step-up in volatility in 2010, 2011 and 2015 arose mid-cycle, while only one (2002) was in the early stages of an expansion. On average, the economic expansion lasted for an additional 41 months after the spikes noted in Table 1. Investors should be aware that the recent surge in volatility is another signal that the economy is in the final stages of the expansion. Chart 7Spikes In Vol Typically Occur Late In The Economic Cycle Volatility is not a leading indicator of equity prices. While U.S. equity prices declined during each of the episodes in Table 1, none marked the start of a bear market. U.S. stock prices were higher a year after a spike in vol in 8 of 9 episodes. The average interval between the spikes and the end of the bull market was 45 months. While there are many examples of shifts in correlation around elevated equity volatility, there is no consistent relationship between the two. Chart 8 examines the relationship between spikes in equity volatility and correlations among several key U.S. asset classes. For example, the relationship between the S&P 500 and the 10-year Treasury yield (panel 1) changed direction in about half of the 10 periods of higher vol. The correlation between the 10-year Treasury and the U.S. dollar changed in 7 of the 10 occasions (panel 2). Panel 6 shows that shifts in correlation between real Treasury yields and the S&P 500 tend to coincide with periods of higher equity volatility. On balance, however, it is not clear that a spike in equity volatility leads to widespread changes in the relationships between asset classes. Chart 8Spike In Vol Vs Stock,Bond Dollar, Oil Correlations Chart 9A shows that the correlation between S&P 500 and HY spreads do tend to flip near peaks in equity vol. Shifts in correlation between U.S. equity prices and most commodities change course more often than not around a surge in equity vol. Chart 9B shows a clear relationship between spikes in equity vol and changes in intra-S&P 500 correlations. Chart 9ASpikes In Vol Vs S&P 500 Correlation To HY And Commodities Chart 9BSpikes In Vol Vs Intra-S&P 500 Correlations The Fed's Third Mandate Revisited Chart 10FOMC Closely Monitoring Financial Stability BCA views financial stability as a third mandate6 for the central bank, along with low and stable inflation, and full employment. Financial stability was discussed at the January meeting by both Fed staff and voting FOMC members (Chart 10). However, the meeting ended prior to early February's turmoil in the stock market. Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen elevated financial stability during her tenure, leading discussions or staff briefings in 26 of the 32 meetings. New Fed Chair Jay Powell is expected to continue Yellen's lead and will likely face questions on financial stability this week from Congress, as he delivers testimony related to the Fed's semiannual Monetary Policy Report. The Fed does not provide a financial stability grade at every meeting. Fed staff described financial conditions as moderate in September and December 2013, and then again in April 2014. The next assessment (also moderate) was only in January 2016. Since then, the FOMC stepped up its discussions of financial stability. Fed staff provided an assessment of financial stability in 8 of its 16 subsequent meetings. FOMC participants debated financial stability at all but 1 of its 8 meetings in 2017, and in 13 of the 15 since April 2016. At the January meeting, Fed staff noted that valuations in financial assets were high, but that vulnerabilities due to leverage in the nonfinancial sector appeared to remain moderate. Fed staff downplayed risks in the financial sector associated with leverage and from maturity and liquidity transformation. Fed economists recently updated their quantitative assessments of the FOMC's minutes.7 The note provides a guide (Table 1 in the Fed paper and Table 2 below) to the number of quantitative descriptors in the minutes (one, a couple, a few, etc.). We use this rubric to assess the committee's latest views on financial stability, inflation and the impact of fiscal policy. FOMC meeting participants seemed less concerned with financial stability at the January meeting. That may change at the next meeting given the recent upheaval in financial markets. A couple of FOMC participants raised concerns that "a step-up in the pace of economic growth could tighten labor market conditions even more than they currently anticipated, posing risks to inflation and financial stability associated with substantially overshooting full employment". According to the FOMC minutes, for the second consecutive meeting, there was no assessment of overseas financial stability. However, at the October 2017 meeting, Fed staff had assessed overall vulnerabilities to foreign financial stability as moderate. Moreover, the staff highlighted specific vulnerabilities in some foreign economies, including weak banks, heavy indebtedness in the corporate and/or household sectors, rising property prices, overhangs of sovereign debt and susceptibility to political developments. Table 2FOMC Minutes Rubric Some FOMC participants raised the prospect that inflation would continue to fall short of the Committee's objectives, adding they observed no significant wage or inflationary pressures. However, they counselled patience before deciding whether to increase the target range for the federal funds rate. Notably, however, almost all participants continued to anticipate that inflation would move up to the Committee's 2 percent objective over the medium term as economic growth remained above trend and the labor market stayed strong. There were extensive comments from both Fed staff and FOMC participants about the impact of fiscal policy on views of the economy and inflation. Fed staff continued to assume that the tax cuts would boost real GDP growth moderately in the medium term. Moreover, they noted that the unemployment rate was projected to decline further in the next few years and would continue to run well below the staff's estimate of the longer-run natural rate of unemployment in that timeframe. FOMC participants, on the other hand, noted that there was still some uncertainty about how the tax bill would affect companies' investment or compensation plans. A number of participants bumped up their forecasts for economic growth in the near term, due in part to the bill's positive impact. Bottom Line: We maintain our base case scenario: the FOMC will continue to monitor financial stability under Powell and raise rates four times in 2018. The FOMC has revised up growth, but is reluctant to signal a faster pace of rate hikes until it sees how the fiscal impulse affects growth and inflation. This means they will be "behind the curve" as inflation lifts. However, once realized inflation climbs and inflation expectations approach 2.3%, the FOMC will have to get more aggressive. At that point, because the Fed would be targeting slower growth to curb inflation, another 'vol shock' is likely. This would be a negative signal for risk assets. Stay underweight duration. John Canally, CFA, Senior Vice President U.S. Investment Strategy johnc@bcaresearch.com Mark McClellan, Senior Vice President The Bank Credit Analyst markm@bcaresearch.com 1 Please see BCA Research's Commodity & Energy Strategy Weekly Report "OPEC 2.0 Getting Comfortable With Higher Prices", February 22,2018. Available at ces.bcaresearch.com. 2 Please see BCA Research U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report "Two Stage Bear Market In Bonds," February 13, 2018. Available at usbs.bcaresearch.com. 3 Please see BCA Research's Bank Credit Analyst Monthly Report, February 2018. Available at bca.bcaresearch.com. 4 Please see BCA Research's Bank Credit Analyst Monthly Report, March 2018. Available at bca.bcaresearch.com. 5 Please see BCA Research's U.S. Investment Strategy Weekly Report, "Patience Required", published November 13, 2017. Available at usis.bcaresearch.com. 6 Please see BCA Research's U.S. Investment Strategy Weekly Report, "The Fed's Third Mandate", published July 24, 2017. Available at usis.bcaresearch.com. 7 https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/the-fomc-meeting-minutes-an-update-of-counting-words-20170803.htm

Highlights We are shifting our U.S. recession call from late-2019 to 2020. A cheap dollar and fiscal support will give the Fed more scope to raise rates before monetary policy moves into restrictive territory. The fiscal impulse will fall sharply in 2020. By then, financial conditions will be tighter and economic imbalances will be more pronounced. As is usually the case, a downturn in the U.S. will infect the rest of the world. Emerging markets with large current account deficits and high debt levels are most vulnerable. A cyclical overweight to global equities is still appropriate, but long-term investors should begin to scale back risk exposure. Feature Records Are Meant To Be Broken The NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which contrary to popular belief does not serve as a matchmaking service for lonely-heart economists, estimates that the current economic expansion is going on nine years. If it makes it to July 2019, it will be the longest in history (Chart 1). Considering that records begin in 1854 - encompassing 33 business cycles - that will be an impressive achievement. Chart 1Nine Years And Still Going Strong There is an old adage that says "Expansions do not die of old age. They are murdered by the Fed." A year or so ago, it looked like the Fed would pull the trigger sometime in 2019. Now, however, it looks more likely that the deed will be committed in 2020. Two things have changed since the start of last year. First, the real trade-weighted dollar has fallen by 8%. According to the Fed's SIGMA macroeconomic model, this should boost growth by about 0.3% over the next two years. Chart 2U.S. Fiscal Policy Has Become##BR##Much More Stimulative Second, U.S. fiscal policy has become much more stimulative, a point very much in keeping with our Geopolitical Strategy team's long-standing view that age of austerity is giving way to a new age of populism.1 My colleague Mark McClellan estimates that the U.S. fiscal impulse will reach 0.8% of GDP in 2018 and 1.3% of GDP in 2019, up from -0.4% and 0.3%, respectively, in the IMF's October 2017 projections (Chart 2). Mark's calculations incorporate the CBO's assessment of the tax cuts, the recent Senate deal to raise the caps on defense and nondefense expenditures, and $45 billion in hurricane relief. He assumes some delay between when the bill is passed and when the spending takes place. According to the Congressional Budget Office, a little more than half of the expenditures in the 2013 and 2015 spending bills occurred in the same year the funding was authorized. These fiscal measures will cause the federal budget deficit to swell by about 2.3 percentage points to 5.6% of GDP in FY2019. Even that may be an understatement, as this does not include any additional infrastructure spending nor the possible restoration of "earmarks"- the widely criticized practice that allows members of Congress to add appropriations to unrelated bills to fund what often turn out to be politically motivated projects in their districts - which could add a further $25 billion in annual spending. Meanwhile, federal government revenue is coming in below target, which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has attributed to lower-than-expected taxable income from pass-through businesses and capital gains realizations. This problem could worsen over the next few years as creative accountants find new loopholes to exploit in the recently passed tax bill. Too Much, Too Late All this stimulus is arriving when the economy least needs it. The unemployment rate currently stands at 4.1%, 0.5 points below the level the Fed regards as consistent with full employment. It has been stuck at that number for four straight months, largely because job growth in the Household survey (which the unemployment rate is based on) has lagged the Establishment survey by a considerable margin. Given the underlying strength in GDP growth, it is likely the job gains in the Household survey will rebound strongly over the course of 2018, taking the unemployment rate down to 3.5% by year-end, well below the Fed's end-2018 projection of 3.9%. A lower-than-projected unemployment rate will permit the Fed to raise rates four times this year, one more hike than currently implied by the dots. The Fed will probably also hike rates three or four times next year. Yet, even those additional rate hikes will not come close to offsetting all the fiscal stimulus coming down the pike. In the absence of a sustained increase in productivity or labor force growth - neither of which appear forthcoming - the economy will continue to overheat. Inflation is a highly lagging indicator. It typically does not peak until well after a recession has begun and does not bottom until well after it has ended (Chart 3). The Fed knows this perfectly well, but has chosen to let the economy run hot for fear that a premature tightening will sow the seeds for a deflationary spiral. Chart 3Inflation Is A Lagging Indicator By the time the next recession rolls around, inflation will be higher and financial and economic imbalances will be greater. The fiscal impulse will also fall back towards zero in 2020 as the budget deficit stabilizes at an elevated level. It is the change in the budget balance that is correlated with GDP growth. If output is already being constrained by a lack of spare capacity going into late-2019, the subsequent decline in the fiscal impulse in 2020 could push growth below trend, leading to rising unemployment. And, as we have often noted, once unemployment starts rising, it keeps rising. There has never been a case in the post-war era where the unemployment rate has risen by more than one-third of a percentage point that was not associated with a recession (Chart 4). Chart 4Even A Small Uptick In The Unemployment Rate Is Bad News For The Business Cycle A recent IMF report highlighted that changes in U.S. financial conditions strongly influence growth abroad.2 As the U.S. falls into a recession, equity prices will tumble and credit spreads will widen. Financial conditions will tighten, transmitting the downturn to the rest of the world. Emerging markets with large current account deficits and high debt levels will be the most vulnerable. The only saving grace is that interest rates will be higher in 2020 than they would have been if the recession had begun in 2019. This will give the Fed a bit more scope to ease monetary policy again. As discussed last week, this will likely set the stage for a stagflationary episode following the recession.3 For Now, Leading Indicators Look A-Okay While our baseline view is that the next recession will occur in 2020, this is more of an educated guess than a firm prediction. Many things, including an overly aggressive Fed, a sharp appreciation in the dollar, and a variety of political shocks, could cause the recession to occur sooner than anticipated. As such, we continue to watch a wide swathe of data to help guide our investment recommendations. The good news is that right now, none of our favorite leading economic indicators such as the level of ISM manufacturing new orders minus inventories, capital goods orders, initial unemployment claims, and building permits are flashing red (Chart 5). Many of these indicators appear in The Conference Board's LEI, which is still rising at a healthy 5.5% y/y pace. Historically, a decisive break below zero in the year-over-year change in the LEI has been a reliable recession indicator (Chart 6). We are still far from that point. Chart 5U.S. Leading Indicators Looking A-OKAY Chart 6U.S. LEI Is Not Flashing Red The same goes for leading financial variables such as credit spreads and the yield curve. The yield curve has inverted in the lead-up to every recession over the past 50 years (Chart 7). The fact that the 10-year/3-month slope has steepened by 30 basis points since the start of the year gives us some comfort that the next recession is still some time away. Chart 7An Inverted Yield Curve Has Often Been A Harbinger Of A Recession Keep An Eye On Credit Credit spreads remained well contained during the recent bout of market turbulence but we continue to watch them closely. Credit typically starts to underperform before equities do, which makes it a good leading indicator for the stock market. This is likely to be especially the case over the next two years. If there is one area where financial imbalances have accumulated to worrying levels, it is in the corporate debt arena. This month's issue of the Bank Credit Analyst estimates that the interest coverage ratio for U.S. companies would drop from 4 to 2½ if interest rates were to increase by 100 basis points across the corporate curve.4 This would take the coverage ratio to the lowest level in the 30-year history of our sample (Chart 8). Consumer staples, tech, and health care would be the most affected. Chart 8U.S. Interest Coverage Ratio##BR##Breakdown By Sector (I) Chart 8U.S. Interest Coverage Ratio##BR##Breakdown By Sector (II) We currently maintain an overweight to equities and spread product but expect to move to neutral later this year and to underweight sometime in 2019. Long-term investors should consider paring back exposure to both asset classes already, given that valuations have become stretched. The Dollar And The Return Of "Twin Deficits" Bigger budget deficits will drain national savings. Since the current account balance is simply the difference between what a country saves and what it invests, the U.S. current account deficit is likely to increase. How the emergence of these twin deficits will affect the dollar is a tough call. Historically, there is no clear relationship between the sum of the fiscal and current account balance and the value of the trade-weighted dollar (Chart 9). In the early 1980s, the twin deficits exploded on the back of the Reagan tax cuts and the military buildup, but the dollar strengthened. In contrast, the dollar weakened in the early 2000s, a period when the twin deficits rose in response to the Bush tax cuts, the Iraq War, and a decline in the household saving rate from the booming housing market. Much depends on what happens to real interest rates. If investors come to believe that persistently large budget deficits will lead to higher inflation, long-term real yields could decline, pushing the dollar lower. In contrast, if investors conclude that the Fed will raise rates by enough to keep inflation from spiraling upwards, real yields could rise. U.S. real yields have gone up across all maturities since the start of the year. As a result, real rate differentials have widened between the U.S. and its developed market peers (Chart 10). However, some of the increase in U.S. real rates has been due to a rising term premium, with the rest reflecting an upward revision to the expected path of policy rates. The latter is good for the dollar. The former is not, because it means that investors are starting to worry about the ability of the market to absorb the increasing supply of Treasurys. Meanwhile, rising interest rates threaten to put further pressure on the U.S. current account deficit. The U.S. net international investment position has deteriorated from -10% of GDP to -40% of GDP since 2007 (Chart 11). The U.S. owes the rest of the world about 68% of GDP in debt - almost all of which is denominated in dollars - but holds only 23% of GDP in foreign debt. Thus, a synchronized increase in global bond yields would cause U.S. net interest payments to rise. If yields in the U.S. increase more than elsewhere, net payments would rise even more. Chart 9Twin Deficits And The Dollar:##BR##No Clear-Cut Relationship Chart 10Real Rate Differentials Have##BR##Widened Between The U.S. And Its DM Peers Chart 11Deterioration In U.S. Net##BR##International Investment Position America's status as a major net external debtor could also constrain the extent to which the dollar appreciates. If the greenback were to strengthen, the dollar value of U.S. external assets would decline, as would the dollar value of interest or dividend payments that the U.S. receives from abroad. This would result in a deterioration in the current account balance and in a worsening in the U.S. net international investment position. Some Positives For The Greenback While the discussion above is bearish for the dollar, it needs to be put into some context. The U.S. current account deficit stands at 2.3% of GDP, down from almost 6% of GDP in 2006 (Chart 12). Much of the improvement in the U.S. balance of payments can be traced back to the plunge of almost 70% in net oil imports, a development that is likely to be permanent given the shale boom. Furthermore, the U.S. trade balance should benefit over the coming quarters from the lagged effects of a weaker dollar. And while we estimate that the primary income balance will deteriorate by about 0.6% of GDP over the next two years, it should still remain in positive territory and above the levels from a decade ago (Chart 13). Chart 12U.S. Balance Of Payments:##BR##Improvement Due To Sinking Oil Imports Chart 13Primary Income Balance Will Decline,##BR##But Will Remain In Positive Territory On the fiscal side, the projected rise in U.S. government debt levels at a time when the economy is booming is concerning. Nevertheless, the U.S. debt profile still compares favorably to countries such as Japan and Italy, two economies with worse growth prospects than the U.S. Italian 30-year bond yields are actually lower than in the United States. If one of the two countries is going to have a debt crisis over the next decade, our guess is that it will be Italy and not the U.S. A Cresting In Global Growth Could Help The Dollar Our preferred explanation for why the dollar began to weaken in 2017 focuses on the role of global growth as well as on technical factors. Chart 14USD Is A Momentum Winner Strong global growth - especially when concentrated outside the U.S., as was the case last year - tends to hurt the dollar. There are a number of reasons for this. First, a robust global economy pushes up natural resource prices, which boosts the terms of trade for commodity-exporting economies. Second, manufacturing represents a smaller share of the U.S. economy than it does in most other countries. Since manufacturing activity is quite cyclically-sensitive, faster global growth benefits economies such as Germany, Sweden, Japan, China, and Korea more than the U.S. Third, stronger global growth tends to boost risk appetites. This has translated into large inflows into EM funds and peripheral European debt markets. The latter have also seen an ebbing of political risk, which has translated into sharply lower sovereign spreads. The acceleration in global growth came at a time when long dollar positions had reached elevated levels. As those positions were unwound, the dollar began to tumble. At that point, the strong upward momentum that fueled the dollar rally following the U.S. presidential election was replaced by downward momentum. The U.S. dollar is one of the most momentum-driven currencies out there (Chart 14). Weakness led to even more weakness. It is impossible to know when the dollar's downward momentum will exhaust itself. What can be said is that speculative positioning has become increasingly dollar bearish. This raises the odds of a short-covering dollar rally (Chart 15). Chart 15Speculative Positioning Has Gotten Increasingly Dollar Bearish Perhaps more importantly, global growth may be peaking. China's economy has slowed, as gauged by the Li Keqiang index, which combines electricity production, freight traffic, and bank lending (Chart 16). Growth in Europe and Japan has also likely reached top velocity. U.S. financial conditions have eased sharply relative to the rest of the world (Chart 17). This, in conjunction with an easier U.S. fiscal policy, suggests that the composition of global growth will shift back towards the U.S. over the coming months. If this were to happen, the dollar could recoup some its losses. Chart 16Chinese Economy##BR##Has Slowed Chart 17U.S. Financial Conditions Have##BR##Eased Sharply Relative To ROW Peter Berezin, Chief Global Strategist Global Investment Strategy peterb@bcaresearch.com 1 Please see Geopolitical Strategy Special Report, "Constraints & Preferences Of The Trump Presidency," dated November 30, 2016. 2 Please see "Getting The Policy Mix Right," IMF Global Financial Stability Report, April 2017. 3 Please see Global Investment Strategy Weekly Report, "A Structural Bear Market In Bonds," dated February 16, 2018. 4 Please see The Bank Credit Analyst, "Leverage And Sensitivity To Rising Rates: The U.S. Corporate Sector," dated February 22, 2018. Available at bca.bcaresearch.com. Tactical Global Asset Allocation Recommendations Strategy & Market Trends Tactical Trades Strategic Recommendations Closed Trades

Special Report

We estimate the corporate sector's vulnerability to rising interest rates and a weaker economic environment, highlighting the industries that will be hit the hardest. Both our top-down and bottom-up Corporate Health Monitors show that overall corporate finances improved last year on the back of a mini profit boom. Nonetheless, leverage remained on the up-escalator. The re-leveraging of the corporate sector has been widespread across industries and ratings. The credit cycle has entered a late stage and we are biased to take profits early on our overweight corporate bond positioning. Rising interest rates will not, on their own, trigger a downgrade and default wave in the next few years. Nonetheless, the starting point for interest coverage ratios is low. The interest coverage ratio for the U.S. non-financial corporate sector will likely drop to all-time lows even in a mild recession. Downgrades will proliferate when the rating agencies realize that the economy is turning south. Our profit indicators are more likely to give an early warning sign than the economic data. We remain overweight corporates within fixed income portfolios for now, but a downgrade would be warranted given some combination of rising core consumer price inflation, a further increase in the 10-year TIPS breakeven to 2.3%, and/or a deterioration in our margin proxy. February's "volatility" tremors focused investor attention on leveraged pressure points in the financial system, at a time when valuation is stretched and central banks are turning down the monetary thermostat. The market swoon may have simply reflected the unwinding of crowded volatility-related trades, but the risk is that there are other landmines lurking just ahead. The corporate sector is one candidate. Equity buybacks have not been especially large compared to previous cycles after adjusting for the length of the expansion (i.e. adjusting for cumulative GDP over the period, Chart II-1).1 But the expansion has gone on for so long that cumulative buybacks exceed the previous three expansions in absolute terms (Chart II-1, bottom panel). One would expect a lot of financial engineering to take place in an environment where borrowing costs are held at very low levels for an extended period. But, of course, one should also expect there to be consequences. Chart II-1Cycle Comparison: Corporate Finance Trends As Chart II-2 shows, corporate spreads tend to follow the broad trends in leverage, albeit with lengthy periods of divergence. The chart suggests that current spreads are far too narrow given the level of corporate leverage. Balance sheet health is obviously not the key driver of corporate bond relative returns at the moment. Nonetheless, this will change as interest rates rise and investors begin to worry about the growth outlook rather than squeezing the last drop of yield out of spread product. Chart II-2Corporate Bond Spreads And Leverage In this Special Report, we estimate the corporate sector's vulnerability to rising interest rates and a weaker economic environment, highlighting the industries that will be hit the hardest. But first, we review recent trends in leverage and overall balance sheet health. BCA's Corporate Health Monitors BCA's top-down Corporate Health Monitor (CHM) has been a workhorse for our corporate bond strategy for almost 20 years (Chart II-3). It is based on six financial ratios constructed from the U.S. Flow of Funds data for the entire non-financial corporate sector (Table II-1). The top-down CHM shifted into "deteriorating health" territory in 2014 on the back of rising leverage and an eroding return on capital.2 The downward trend in the return on capital since 2007 is disturbing, as it suggests that there is a surplus of capital on U.S. balance sheets that is largely unproductive and not lifting profits. This can also be seen in the run-up in corporate borrowing in recent years that has been used to undertake share buybacks. If a company's best investment idea is to take on debt to repurchase its own stock, rather than borrow to invest in its own business, then the expected internal rate of return on investment must be quite low. This is a longer-term problem for corporate health. Alternatively, financial engineering may reflect misaligned incentives, such as stock options, rather than poor investment opportunities. Chart II-3Top Down U.S. Corporate Health Monitor Table II-1Definitions Of Ratios That Go Into The CHMs The good news is that profit margins bounced back in 2017, which was reflected in a small decline in our top-down CHM toward the zero line over the past year (although it remained in 'deteriorating' territory). While the top-down CHM has been a useful indicator to time bear markets in corporate bond relative performance, it tells us nothing about the distribution of credit quality. In 2016 we looked at the financials of 1,600 U.S. companies to obtain a more detailed picture of corporate health. After removing ones with limited history or missing data, our sample shrank to a still-respectable 770 companies from across the industrial and quality spectrum. We then constructed an overall Corporate Health Monitor for all companies in the sample, as well as for the nine non-financial industries. We refer to these indicators as bottom-up CHMs, which we regard as complements to our top-down Health Monitor. The companies selected for our universe provided a sector and credit-quality composition that roughly matched the Barclays corporate bond indexes. In our first report, published in the February 2016 monthly Bank Credit Analyst, we highlighted that the financial ratios and overall corporate health looked only a little better excluding the troubled energy and materials sectors. The level of debt/equity was even a bit higher outside of the commodity industries. The implication was that, at the time, corporate credit quality had deteriorated across industrial sectors and levels of credit quality. Profitability Drove Improving Health In 2017... An update of the bottom-up CHMs shows that corporate financial health improved in 2017 for both the investment-grade (IG) and high-yield (HY) sectors (Chart II-4 and Chart II-5). The IG bottom-up Monitor remains in "deteriorating health" territory, but HY Monitor moved almost all the way back to the neutral line by year end. Leverage continued to trend higher last year for both IG and HY, but this was more than offset by a strong earnings performance that was reflected in rising operating margins, interest coverage and debt coverage. Chart II-4Bottom-Up IG CHM Chart II-5Bottom-Up HY CHM These improvements were particularly evident in the sub-investment grade universe. Our industry high-yield CHMs fell significantly in 2017 from elevated (i.e. poor) levels all the way back to the neutral line for Consumer Discretionary, Energy, Industrials, Materials and Utilities (not shown). The high-yield Technology and Health Care sector CHMs are also close to neutral. ...But The Earnings Runway Is Limited Unfortunately, the profit tailwind won't last forever. At some point, earnings growth will stall and this cycle's debt accumulation will start to bite in the context of rising interest rates. While interest coverage (EBIT divided by interest payments) improved last year for most industries, it remains depressed by historical standards. This is despite ultra-low borrowing rates and a robust earnings backdrop. U.S. companies are not facing an imminent cash crunch that would raise downgrade/default risk, but depressed interest coverage suggests that there is less room for error than in previous years. Table II-2Widespread Re-Leveraging Now that government bond yields have bottomed for the cycle and the "green shoots" of inflation are beginning to emerge, it begs the question of corporate sector exposure to rising interest costs. The sensitivity is important because Moody's assigns a weight of between 20% and 40% for the leverage and coverage ratios when rating a company, depending on the industry. Downgrade risk will escalate if corporate borrowing rates continue rising and, especially, if the U.S. economy enters a downturn. Comparing the level of debt or leverage across industries is complicated by the fact that some industries perpetually carry more debt than others due to the nature of the business. Moody's uses different thresholds for leverage when rating companies, depending on the industry. Thus, the change in the leverage ratio is perhaps more important than its level when comparing industries. Table II-2 shows the change in the ratio of debt to the book value of equity from our bottom-up universe of companies from 2010 to 2017. Leverage rose sharply in all sectors except Utilities. The worse two sectors were Communications and Consumer Discretionary, where leverage rose by 81 and 104 percentage points, respectively. Highest Risk Sectors We expect a traditional end to the business cycle; the Fed overdoes the rate hike cycle, sending the economy into recession. The industrial sectors with the poorest financial health and the greatest earnings "beta" to the overall market are most at risk in this macro scenario. We first estimate earnings betas by comparing the peak-to-trough decline in EPS for each sector to the overall decline in the non-financial S&P 500 EPS, taking an average of the last two recessions (we could not include the early 1990s recession due to data limitations). Not surprisingly, Materials, Technology, Consumer Discretionary and Energy sport the highest earnings beta based on this methodology (Chart II-6). Chart II-6Earnings Beta Chart II-7 presents a scatter plot of 2017 leverage versus the industry's earnings beta. Consumer Discretionary stands out on the high side on both counts. Materials and Energy are also high-beta industries, but have lower leverage. Communications is a high-debt industry with a medium earnings beta. These same industries stand out when comparing the earnings beta to the interest coverage ratio (the lower the interest coverage ratio the more risky in Chart II-8). Chart II-7Leverage Vs. Earnings Beta Chart II-8Interest Coverage Ratio Vs. Earnings Beta Of course, a sector's sensitivity to rising interest rates will depend on both the level of debt and its maturity distribution. Higher rates will not have much impact in the near term for firms that have little debt to roll over in the next couple of years. Chart II-9 presents the percentage of total debt that will come due over the next three years by industry. Consumer Discretionary, Tech, Staples and Industrials are the most exposed to debt rollover. To further refine the analysis, we estimate the change in the interest coverage ratio over the next three years for a 100 basis point rise in interest rates across the corporate curve, taking into consideration the maturity distribution of the debt. We make the simplifying assumptions that companies do not issue any more debt over the three years, and that EBIT is unchanged, in order to isolate the impact of higher interest rates. For the universe of our companies, the interest coverage ratio would drop from about 4 to 2½, well below the lows of the Great Recession (denoted as "x" in Chart II-10). The Consumer Staples, Tech and Health Care are affected most deeply (Chart II-11 and Chart II-12). Char II-9Debt Maturing In Next ##br##Three Years (% Of Total) Chart II-10Interest Coverage Ratio ##br##Headed To New Lows Chart II-11Interest Coverage By ##br##Sector (IG Plus HY) Chart II-12Interest Coverage By ##br##Sector (IG Plus HY) Recession Shock Of course, the decline in interest coverage will be much worse if the Fed steps too far and monetary tightening sparks a recession. Looking again at Charts II-10 to II-12, "o" denotes the combination of a 100 basis point interest rate shock and a mild recession in which the S&P 500 suffers a 25% peak-to-trough decline in EPS. We estimate the decline in EPS based on the industry's earnings beta to the overall market. The overall interest coverage ratio falls even further into uncharted territory below two. The additional shock of the earnings recession makes little difference to earnings coverage for the low beta sectors such as Consumer Staples and Health Care. The coverage ratio falls sharply for the Communications and Industries, although not to new lows. It is a different story for Consumer Discretionary and Materials. The combination of elevated debt and a high earnings beta means that the interest coverage ratio would likely plunge to levels well below previous lows for these two industries. Corporate bond investors and rating agencies will certainly notice. Signposts Our top-down Corporate Health Monitor is one of the key indicators we use to identify cyclical bear phases for corporate bond excess returns. A shift from "improving" to "deteriorating" health has been a reliable confirming indicator for periods of sustained spread widening. The other two key indicators are (Chart II-13): Chart II-13Key Cyclical Drivers Of Corporate Excess Returns Bank lending standards for Commercial & Industrial loans: Banks begin to tighten up on lending standards when they realize that the economy is slowing and credit quality is deteriorating as a result. By making it more difficult for firms to roll over bank loans or replace bond financing, more restrictive standards reinforce the negative trend in corporate credit quality. We traditionally view lending standards as a confirming indicator for a turn in the credit cycle, since tightening standards are typically preceded by deteriorating corporate health and restrictive monetary policy. Restrictive monetary policy: This is the most difficult of the three indicators for which to determine critical values. We had a good idea of the level of the neutral real fed funds rate prior to 2007. Since then, our monetary compass is far less certain because the neutral rate has likely declined for cyclical and structural reasons. The real fed funds rate has moved just slightly into restrictive territory if we take the Laubach-Williams estimate at face value (Chart II-13, third panel). That said, we would expect the 2/10 Treasury yield curve to be closer to inverting if real short-term interest rates are indeed in restrictive territory. Taking the two indicators together, we conclude that monetary policy is not yet outright restrictive. Historically, all three indicators had to be flashing red in order to justify a shift to below-benchmark on corporate bonds within fixed-income portfolios. Only the CHM is negative at the moment, but this time we are unlikely to wait for all three signals to take profits. Poor valuation, lopsided positioning, financial engineering and uncertainty regarding the neutral fed funds rate all argue in favor of erring on the side of caution and not trying to closely time the peak in excess returns. The violent unwinding of short-volatility trades in January highlighted the potential for a quick and nasty repricing of corporate bonds spreads on any disappointments regarding the default rate outlook. Conclusion Both our top-down and bottom-up Corporate Health Monitors show that overall corporate finances improved last year on the back of a mini profit boom. Nonetheless, leverage remained on the up-escalator as businesses continued to pile up debt and return cash to shareholders. Our sample of individual companies reveals that the re-leveraging of the corporate sector has been widespread across industries and ratings. We have clearly entered the late stage of the credit cycle. Rising interest rates will not, on their own, trigger a downgrade and default wave in the next few years. However, debt levels are elevated and the starting point for interest coverage ratios is low. This means that, for any given size of recession, the next economic downturn will have a larger negative impact on corporate health than in the past. The interest coverage ratio for the non-financial corporate sector will likely drop to all-time lows even in a mild recession. Downgrades will proliferate when the rating agencies realize that the economy is turning and the profit boom is over. Last month's Overview listed the top economic indicators we are watching in order to time our exit from risky assets. Inflation expectations will be key; A rise in the 10-year inflation breakeven rate above 2.3% would be a warning that the FOMC will need to ramp up the speed of rate hikes to avoid a large inflation overshoot. While we are also watching a list of economic indicators, they have not provided any lead time for corporate spreads in the past (since the latter are themselves leading indicators). Our profit indicators are probably more likely to give an early warning sign than the economic data. Indeed, the profit outlook will be particularly important in this cycle because of the heightened sensitivity of corporate financial health changes in the macro backdrop. None of our earnings indicators are flashing a warning sign at the moment. A recent Special Report on corporate pricing power found that almost 80% of the sectors covered are lifting selling prices, at a time when labor costs are still subdued.3 These trends are captured by our U.S. Equity Strategy service's margin proxy, which remains in positive territory (Chart II-14). The margin proxy fell into negative territory ahead of the start of the last three sustained widening phases in U.S. corporate bonds. Chart II-14For Corporate Spreads, Watch Our Margin Proxy The bottom line is that we remain overweight corporates within fixed income portfolios for now, but a downgrade would be warranted given some combination of rising core consumer price inflation, a further increase in the 10-year TIPS breakeven to 2.3%, and/or a deterioration in our margin proxy. We expect to pull the trigger later this year but the timing is uncertain. Mark McClellan Senior Vice President The Bank Credit Analyst 1 The accumulation of equity buybacks, net equity withdrawal, dividends and capital spending are all adjusted by the accumulation of GDP during the expansion to facilitate comparison across business cycles. 2 The Monitor is an average of six financial ratios that are used by rating agencies to rate individual companies. We have applied the approach to the entire non-financial corporate sector, using the Fed's Flow of Funds data. To facilitate comparison with corporate spreads, the ratios are inverted so that a rising CHM indicates deteriorating health. The CHM has a very good track record of heralding trend changes in investment-grade and high-yield spreads over many cycles. 3 Please see BCA U.S. Equity Strategy Service Weekly Report, "Corporate Pricing Power Update," dated January 29, 2018, available at uses.bcaresearch.com.

Special Report

Highlights Following the establishment of an interest rate corridor system in 2015, the 1-week interbank repo rate is the new de jure policy rate in China. However, the massive rise in interbank repo rate spreads that has occurred over the past 18 months means that the 3-month repo rate has become the new de facto policy rate. This is the key rate that investors should be watching in order to predict the impact of monetary policy on average or effective interest rates in the real economy. Roughly 3/4ths of the tightening in monetary policy that has occurred since late-2016 has actually been regulatory/macro-prudential in nature. This raises the possibility that interbank spreads may rise outside of the central bank's comfort zone, but the PBOC appears to have the appropriate tools to respond to such an event. Concerns that rising inflation and a recent surge in monthly bank lending may spur tighter monetary policy over the coming 6-12 months are a red herring. Recent trends in the Chinese economy are more consistent with the need to ease monetary policy than the need to tighten. Investors should continue to maintain cyclical exposure to investable Chinese stocks, excluding the tech sector. Feature We examined the question of how to judge the stance of China's monetary policy in a Weekly Report published last month.1 In today's Special Report we answer seven questions about China's monetary policy framework, in order to clarify the transmission mechanism between the PBOC's interest rate corridor and the real economy and to help investors understand how to measure and track changes to the Chinese monetary policy landscape. Today's report makes several important conclusions. First, it underscores that while the 1-week interbank repo rate is the new de jure policy rate in China, a sharp rise in interbank spreads that began in late-2016 has caused the 3-month rate to become the de facto policy rate. This is the key rate that investors should be watching in order to predict the impact of monetary policy on average or effective interest rates in the real economy. Second, it highlights that roughly 3/4ths of China's monetary policy tightening since late-2016 has actually been caused by macro-prudential changes made by the PBOC, rather than due to direct interest rate hikes. Third, while the PBOC's rhetoric about inflation and the recent pickup in bank loans ostensibly suggests that further tightening is forthcoming, the reality is that recent trends in the Chinese economy are more consistent with the need to ease monetary policy than the need to tighten. From the perspective of investment strategy, our analysis continues to suggest that investors should maintain cyclical exposure to investable Chinese stocks excluding the tech sector. We outlined how the outlook for monetary policy fits into our "decision tree" for Chinese stocks in our first report of the year,2 and we continue to expect that the PBOC will refrain from significant further tightening over the coming 6-12 months. Our answers to the seven questions below should provide investors with a strong sense of how to predict potential inflection points in Chinese monetary policy, and whether it remains supportive of our recommended investment strategy over the coming year. Q: What is the PBOC's new policy framework, and how does it differ from the bank's traditional monetary policy tools? A: The PBOC has established a corridor system similar to that of many other countries, and now aims to control market-based interest rates as opposed to the old system of regulated interest rates. Chart 1China's Policy Rate: New Vs Old The PBOC's long, ongoing effort to liberalize its interest rate environment reached a new stage in mid-2015, when the central bank shifted to a corridor system similar to that observed in several other countries. Like in other nations, the objective of the corridor is to guide short-term interest rates towards a particular policy rate, which since late-2016 has been officially recognized as the 1-week interbank repo rate. Chart 1 illustrates this corridor, which is bounded by the PBOC's 1-week reverse repo rate on the lower end and by the 1-week standing lending facility rate on the upper end. The chart also shows the benchmark lending rate, which is China's "old" policy rate. For global investors who are more familiar with U.S. monetary policy, this corridor is conceptually equivalent to the target range for the federal funds rate, with the 1-week interbank repo rate acting as the effective fed funds rate. The key difference between China's old and new monetary policy framework is that the former is based heavily on regulated interest rates (and changes in the reserve requirement ratio), whereas the latter rests on manipulating market-based interest rates using a variety of tools. China's "old" policy tools still exist and may be employed if Chinese policymakers wish to rapidly shift the monetary policy stance. But more importantly, they continue to influence the monetary environment in a way that is important for investors to understand, even if they are not the day-to-day focus of policymakers (see next question). Q: What is the relationship between the new PBOC policy rate and the old one? A: The PBOC's corridor system influences 3-month interbank repo rates, which directly impact how many loans are issued at an interest rate above the old, benchmark policy rate (and by what magnitude). Chart 1 highlighted that the midpoint of the PBOC's interest rate corridor has been consistently and meaningfully below that of the old benchmark lending rate over the past two years, but the adoption of the corridor system did not instantly ease monetary policy in China. The reason is that the vast majority of loans in China are issued at rates above the benchmark rate, and the link between the PBOC's old and new monetary policy framework appears to be how the interbank market influences the breadth and depth of this loan rate premium above the old benchmark. Chart 2A Strong Link Between 3-Month Repo Rates ##br##And Economy-Wide Rates Chart 2 highlights that there is a strong (and leading) relationship between changes in China's 3-month interbank repo rate and 1) changes in the percentage of loans issued above the benchmark rate and 2) the changes in the gap between the weighted-average interest rate and the benchmark rate. While the 1-week interbank repo rate has only increased by around 50 bps since late-2016, the 3-month rate has risen about 200 bps, which explains the extent of the rise in the share of loans issued at above-benchmark rates and the rise in average interest rates relative to the benchmark. This relationship is crucial for investors to understand, since we noted in our January 18 Weekly Report that the midpoint of the 2014-2016 range for average interest rates represents our best estimate of the threshold between easy and tight monetary policy in China.3 Charts 1 and 2 also underscore another very important point: while the 1-week interbank repo rate is the new de jure policy rate, the 3-month rate is the new de facto policy rate as long as interbank repo spreads remain elevated. Q: Why have 3-month interbank repo rates risen so much relative to the 1-week rate? Is this a sign of serious interbank stress? A: No, the rise has been intentionally caused by changes in macro-prudential policy. But the rise in spreads has made up a significant portion of monetary tightening in China since late-2016. By the standards of developed markets, China's interbank repo spreads are extraordinarily high. Chart 3 presents China's 3-month / 1-week interbank repo spread since the PBOC established its new monetary policy framework versus the U.S. 3-month / 1-week LIBOR and repo rate spreads. During the worst of the U.S. subprime financial crisis, these spreads peaked at 182 and 105 bps, respectively. By contrast, China's repo rate spread currently stands at 200 bps. Part of this difference is likely explained by the fact that repos in China tend to be conducted on a 'pledged' basis (where ownership of the collateral remains with the cash borrower but is pledged to the lender),4 but we strongly doubt that it explains a majority of the difference given how low Chinese interbank repo spreads were prior to Q4 2016. Chart 3Chinese Repo Rate Spreads Are Outsized##br## Compared With The U.S. As there are no other signs of an outright banking crisis in China, it follows that China's interbank repo spreads have risen due to a distortion in the market. We reject expectations of further increases in the interest rate corridor as an explanation, given that the rise in spreads has occurred at what is still the short-end of the interbank repo market and that it has persisted for more than a year in the face of very minor changes to the corridor. It is difficult to judge the ultimate cause of the rise in repo spreads with a high degree of confidence, because it began in late-November 2016 when global financial markets were in a high state of flux. Government bond yields rose globally following the U.S. election in early-November in response to (ultimately validated) expectations of stimulative fiscal policy from the Trump administration, and the 1-week repo rate itself was rising during the period. But to us, two pieces of evidence suggest that the rise in interbank repo spreads was caused by the PBOC's decision to include banks' off-balance sheet holdings of wealth management products into its macro-prudential assessment (MPA): The Timing of the MPA Decision: While the PBOC's inclusion of WMPs in its MPA only began in the first quarter of 2017, news that the PBOC had begun a trial of the program broke in mid-November, in advance of the sharp rise in spreads.5 The Rise In 7-Day Depository / Non-Depository Repo Spreads: Chart 4 shows the difference between the 7-day interbank repo rate for all financial institutions and that for depository corporations only (the latter being the new, de jure policy rate). The chart shows that the spread between these two same-maturity rates began a significant uptrend around the same time that the 3-month / 1-week repo spread started to rise. Since non-depository financial institutions appear to have been more active in issuing WMPs over the past several years, this rise in 7-day depository / non-depository repo spreads is consistent with a liquidity squeeze (in anticipation of an upcoming MPA "stress test") among heavy issuers of WMPs. Chart 4Repo Rate Spreads Have Risen ##br##Due To Shadow Banking Crackdown While the rise in the 3-month / 1-week interbank repo spread does therefore appear to represent a "liquidity event" that is squeezing some Chinese banks, it does not seem to meet the description of real banking "stress". True financial system stress tends to occur when banks become wary of lending to each other due to solvency concerns, whereas the current rise in interbank spreads has occurred entirely due to regulatory changes (i.e. the Xi administration's crackdown on shadow banking). As such, while the rise in spreads undoubtedly represents tighter monetary policy, we have already incorporated this development into our framework for China's economy and its financial markets and see no reason to make any changes to our recommended investment strategy unless interbank spreads were to rise sharply further from here. Q: What can the PBOC do to control interbank spreads if they rise significantly from current levels? A: It can use open market operations to inject liquidity into the banking system. Our discussion above highlights that most of the tightening in Chinese market interest rates that has occurred since late-2016 has been regulatory in nature rather than due to direct increases in the PBOC's new policy rate. In fact, since the 3-month interbank repo rate has risen approximately 200 bps because of a 150 bps rise in 3-month / 1-week repo spreads, then it would appear that a full 75% of China's recent monetary policy tightening is attributable to the PBOC's decision to crack down on WMP issuance and shadow lending more generally. This undoubtedly showcases the potential for macro-prudential policies to significantly influence monetary policy in China, but it also raises the question of whether the crackdown may unintentionally tighten financial conditions by more than the PBOC expects. For example, while the PBOC likely knew that increasing its scrutiny over WMPs would impact the interbank market, it is not likely that they were able to predict the magnitude of the impact with any precision. Chart 5The PBOC Has Ample Room ##br##To Inject Liquidity If Needed Chart 5 presents one monetary policy tool that the PBOC can use to try to reduce spreads in the interbank repo market were they to rise outside of the central bank's comfort zone. The chart shows the rolling 1-year net liquidity injection into the banking system from the PBOC's open market operations (OMOs), and highlights that the period of rising interbank repo spreads has generally corresponded with declining net liquidity injections. In fact, the chart shows that the PBOC injected no net liquidity into the banking system in 2017, which likely increased the magnitude of the rise in interbank repo spreads. More recently, net liquidity injections have fallen quite sharply, but this appears to have been caused by the PBOC's use of a different policy tool, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, to inject a substantial amount of liquidity to help meet cash demand during the Chinese New Year. In short, while it is possible that interbank repo spreads could rise significantly and unexpectedly from current levels, the fact that spreads have been elevated but stable over the past year when the PBOC injected no net liquidity into the banking system suggests that monetary authorities should be able to reign in any outsized rise back to levels within the central bank's comfort zone. Q: Is the PBOC likely to tighten aggressively further to control inflation? A: No. The PBOC specifically noted in their latest monetary policy report that inflation needs to be "closely watched", so further tightening to control inflation cannot be ruled out. However, several observations suggest that the risk of aggressive further tightening to control inflation is moderate at most: We have highlighted in past reports that Chinese core consumer prices have recently been correlated with past values of the Li Keqiang index, which has declined meaningfully from its high early last year (Chart 6). The most recent inflation release suggests that the rate of appreciation in core prices is indeed rolling over, suggesting that inflationary pressure is set to ease (rather than intensify) over the coming 6-12 months. Chart 7 presents the BCA China Regional CPI Diffusion Index, which is made up of headline inflation data from 31 first-level administrative divisions. The index is shown alongside overall headline inflation, and while it does confirm that there has been some increase in inflation pressure, the index has not decisively risen above the boom/bust line. Chart 8 illustrates the measure of household inflation expectations that the PBOC cited along with headline CPI. While it is true that the measure has increased, it has done so from a below-median level, and the relationship shown in the chart suggests that further increases would be needed simply to have headline CPI accelerate. Given that headline inflation is 150 bps below the central bank's stated target, it appears that the PBOC is exaggerating the risk of an inflationary breakout to maintain hawkish rhetoric as part of its efforts to reduce the presence of moral hazard in financial markets and the real economy.6 Chart 6Ebbing Inflationary Risk Chart 7No Decisive Outbreak Chart 8Rising, But From A Low Level To be clear, we agree that the PBOC will likely raise its interest rate corridor (potentially significantly) further if core inflation re-accelerates and the disinflationary impact of food & energy prices dissipates. However, we see low odds of such a scenario over the coming 6-12 months barring a material re-acceleration of the economy. Q: Does the spike in new RMB loans in January raise the risk of further monetary tightening? A: No. Credit trends in the Chinese economy are more consistent with the need to ease than the need to tighten. Chart 9 shows the monthly increase in new RMB loans, which rose massively in January. Some market commentators have suggested that the January increase in this series carries special significance for loan growth over the remainder of the year, and that the rise suggests that further monetary tightening is forthcoming. But a closer examination of the data highlights that these concerns are unfounded. Panel 2 of Chart 9 shows the domestic bank loan component of total social financing, which is nearly identical to the new RMB loans series shown in panel 1. When presented as the YoY growth rate of a stock rather than a monthly flow,7 it is clear that bank loan growth did not meaningfully accelerate in January. In fact, Chart 10 shows that the YoY growth rate of total social financing (adjusted for equity and municipal bond issuance) continues to decelerate, highlighting that credit trends in the Chinese economy are more consistent with the need to ease monetary policy rather than tighten. Chart 9A Sharp MoM Rise... Chart 10...But Not In YoY Terms Q: What market-based indicators can investors use to tell if Chinese monetary policy is becoming restrictive? A: Watch the correlation between the 3-month interbank repo rate and China's relative sovereign CDS spread vs Germany. Chart 11A Market-Based Indicator ##br##Of The Restrictiveness Of Monetary Policy Besides a generalized selloff in Chinese risky financial assets, one warning sign that investors can use to monitor whether monetary policy has become restrictive is the rolling 1-year correlation between the 3-month interbank repo rate and the relative sovereign CDS spread between China and a large, fiscally sound developed economy (such as Germany). Despite the fact that actual sovereign credit risk in China is extremely low, Chart 11 shows that the relative CDS spread has acted as a good bellwether for growth conditions in the Chinese economy. It shows that the correlation between this spread and the 3-month interbank repo rate was initially positive in late-2016 (representing concern on the part of investors that monetary policy is restrictive), but has since come back down into negative territory. Interestingly, the correlation was consistently positive from mid-2011 to mid-2014, when average lending rates averaged 7% or higher and the benchmark lending rate exceeded the IMF's Taylor Rule estimate by about 1%.8 So while this is but one measure that we will be tracking, it's performance over the past several years as an indicator for restrictive policy appears to accord with our ex-post understanding of the impact of monetary conditions on the Chinese economy. Jonathan LaBerge, CFA, Vice President Special Reports jonathanl@bcaresearch.com 1 Please see China Investment Strategy Weekly Report, "Monetary Tightening In China: How Much Is Too Much?" dated January 18, 2018, available at cis.bcaresearch.com. 2 Please see China Investment Strategy Weekly Report, "The 'Decision Tree' For Chinese Stocks", dated January 4, 2018, available at cis.bcaresearch.com. 3 Please see China Investment Strategy Weekly Report, "Monetary Tightening In China: How Much Is Too Much?" dated January 18, 2018, available at cis.bcaresearch.com. 4 For more information on the structure of China's repo market, please see "The Chinese Interbank Repo Market" by Ross Kendall and Jonathan Lees, Reserve Bank of Australia Bulletin, June 2017. 5 "China's tightened rules on wealth management products having little effect", Cathy Zhang, South China Morning Post, November 17, 2016 6 Please see our January 25 webcast for our geopolitical team's perspective on the potential impact of Governor Xiaochuan's approaching retirement on the PBOC's policy bias: https://gps.bcaresearch.com/webcasts/index/178# 7 We cumulate the social financing series using the best available estimates of the initial starting point of each component series. 8 Please see China Investment Strategy Weekly Report, "Monetary Tightening In China: How Much Is Too Much?" dated January 18, 2018, available at cis.bcaresearch.com. Cyclical Investment Stance Equity Sector Recommendations

Special Report

Highlights Economy: The Italian economy is enjoying a solid, if unspectacular, cyclical upturn led by exports, but inflation pressures remain subdued. Banks: The health of Italian banks has improved drastically over the last year, with liquidity, solvency, and systemic risks fading for the time being. Politics: Euroskepticism will not be the major issue in the election given an expanding economy, but none of the likely outcomes will lead to a prudent fiscal policy. ECB: The inevitable tapering of ECB asset purchases later in 2018 will not have a meaningful impact on Italian government bond valuations - as long as the ECB does not begin to raise rates soon after. Upgrade Italian government bonds to neutral until signs of an economic slowdown in Italy emerge. Feature Italy's financial markets have been on quite a roll over the past year. Italian equities are up 13% since the beginning of 2017 in local currency terms, well above the 8% increase in overall Euro Area stocks (Chart 1). Italian government bonds returned 1.8% over that same period (also in local currency terms), massively outperforming core European equivalents that have suffered significant losses as global bond yields have risen substantially. Investors have been focusing on the upbeat news of a cyclical economic expansion and the improving health of Italian banks, which has helped reduce the risk premia on Italian financial assets (Chart 2). At the same time, markets are not pricing in any political risk in the run-up to next month's Italian parliamentary elections that could end up with, at best, yet another unstable coalition government. Chart 1Italy Has Been##BR##A Star Performer Chart 2Investors Are Focusing On Italian Growth,##BR##Not Politics Most importantly, the growing pressure on the European Central Bank (ECB) to begin shifting away from the era of extreme monetary policy accommodation threatens to remove a major buyer of Italian debt. This is a large problem down the road, as the easy money policies of the ECB have helped paper over a lot of structural cracks that still exist in Italy. In this Special Report, jointly prepared by BCA's Global Fixed Income Strategy and Geopolitical Strategy teams, we examine the outlook for Italian financial assets, both in the short run heading into the March 4th election and also over a medium-term perspective. Specifically, we look at the ultimate measure of Italian risk - the Italy-Germany government bond yield spread. Our conclusion is that Italy's economy and financial markets may be better placed to survive the more volatile global investment backdrop in 2018 than is commonly believed. Beyond this time horizon, however, Italian politics remains a risk. The Economy: Looking Better, But Highly Levered To Global Growth Italy's economy is enjoying a relatively strong economic expansion, judged by its own modest standards. Real GDP grew 1.5% last year, delivering the fourth consecutive year of growth following the recession in 2012-13. That was slower than the 2.5% pace witnessed across the entire Euro Area. The cyclical trend in Italy, however, remains highly correlated to that of its common currency neighbors, as all have benefitted from the easy financial conditions created by ECB policy (Chart 3). Consumer spending has been a modest contributor to the current economic upturn. Consumer confidence is steadily climbing and approaching its 2015 highs, yet retail sales volumes are only growing at a 1% pace. Sluggish incomes are the reason. Real wage growth has struggled to stay positive in the years since the last recession and now sits at a mere 0.25% (Chart 4). Against this backdrop, Italian consumers have been reluctant to significantly run down savings or ramp up debt to support a faster pace of consumption. The household debt/GDP ratio is only 42%, well below the Euro Area median. The decline in Italian interest rates, however, has helped free up income available for spending; the household debt service ratio is now sitting at 4.5%, one full percentage point below the 2012 peak (bottom panel). Chart 3Italian Growth Is Out Of The Doldrums Chart 4A Modest Pick-Up In Consumer Spending A bigger boost to Italian growth has come from the corporate sector. Business confidence has been steadily improving in response to the cyclical upturn in global economic growth. Exports, which now represent about one-third of Italian GDP, are growing just over 5% in real terms. This has helped boost industrial production and capacity utilization, with the latter reaching the highest level since 2007 (Chart 5). Companies have responded by ramping up capital spending, which grew 4.6% (year-over-year) in Q3 2017. Structurally, problems of poor labor productivity continues to plague Italian companies, however, and it remains to be seen if the rise in the euro over the past year will begin to have an impact on sales and profits. For now, the cyclical industrial upturn will likely continue as long as global growth, and specifically export demand, remain buoyant. Another underappreciated driver of the current Italian expansion has been mildly stimulative fiscal policy. Italy benefited from four consecutive years of positive "fiscal thrust", i.e., the change in the cyclically-adjusted primary budget balance (Chart 6). This was a welcome relief given the austerity that was imposed on Italy after the European Debt Crisis, which drained 3% from the Italian economy from 2011 to 2013. The IMF is projecting that Italian fiscal policy will turn restrictive this year and in 2019 but, as we discuss later in this report, the upcoming Italian election is likely to deliver a government that will go for more fiscal stimulus, not less. Chart 5An Expansion##BR##Fueled By Exports Chart 6Fiscal Tightening Will Not Happen,##BR##Post-Election The labor market recovery from the 2012 recession has been slow. Italy's unemployment rate is 10.8%, down from a peak level of 13% in 2014 but still well above the OECD's estimate of full employment (NAIRU). For Italy, the youth unemployment rate remains a major problem - at 33%, it is easily the highest among European countries and continues to fuel support for the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. More generally, Italy's relatively high unemployment rate is not necessarily a sign of underlying economic malaise. Italy's labor force participation rate has risen from a low of 60.4% in August 2010 to 64.5% at the end of 2017 (Chart 7). The steadily improving economy is drawing discouraged workers back into the labor force, as we predicted it would in 2012,1 with the extra labor supply ensuring that Italian wage growth will stay sluggish for some time. On a related note, Italy's inflation remains well below the ECB's 2% target rate. Headline HICP and core HICP inflation are 1% and 0.6%, respectively. These levels are also well below the Euro Area aggregate levels, which are 1.35% and 1.2% for headline and core HICP, respectively. Although consumer spending has improved in Italy, it has not been strong enough to put upward pressure on consumer prices, and weaker wage growth will not force businesses to raise prices to protect profitability. In addition, the IMF projects that Italy's output gap will not close until 2022, or three years after the overall Euro Area gap will be eliminated (Chart 8). Chart 7Plenty Of Labor Market Slack In Italy Chart 8No Sign Of Inflation Pressures Bottom Line: The Italian economy is enjoying a solid, if unspectacular, cyclical upturn. This is being led by exports and flowing through into domestic production and investment. Inflation pressures remain subdued, however, given ample slack in labor markets. The Banks: Drastic Improvement, But Risks Remain The Italian banking system has a well-earned reputation of being dysfunctional, undercapitalized and plagued by non-performing loans (NPLs). However, last summer, the ECB declared that two Italian banks were "failing or likely to fail," prompting state intervention. The Italian government followed that with a E5.4 billion bailout for Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Italy's fourth largest bank. Given the tight correlation between Italy's relative financial asset performance and its banking sector, these actions were met with loud cheers from investors as both Italian equities and bonds rallied. Standard & Poor's credit rating agency then raised Italy's sovereign debt rating to BBB, citing "subsiding risks" in the banking sector. As a result, investors' fears have eased, as evidenced by recent successful capital raisings and the collapse in bank credit default spreads (CDS) for the major banks, which have now fallen to nearly the same levels as their European counterparts (Chart 9). The health of the Italian banking system has improved drastically over the past year given the improving economy. Italy still sits on a large absolute amount of non-performing loans at E274 billion, but this is a risk has receded quickly from its peak of E328 billion in Q1 2017. The continued economic recovery and sales of bad loans have pushed the NPL ratio down to approximately 15%, well below its peak of over 19% (Chart 10). The Bank of Italy's recent Financial Stability Review projects that the one-year forward default probability from a sample of nearly 300,000 indebted companies has fallen to 1% in mid-2017 from 2.5% in 2013. Fewer new loans are becoming impaired, which is encouraging given the ongoing pressures on the banks from the ECB and the Italian government to improve asset quality. Chart 9Italian Bank Risk##BR##Has Declined Chart 10Banks Better Capitalized,##BR##But NPLs Remain A Problem The rise in capital ratios over the last year is also a very positive development. For the major banks, liquidity coverage ratios are nearly 200%, the ratio of tangible equity to tangible assets has skyrocketed to nearly 7%, and the Tier 1 capital ratio has increased to 14.8%. Even with the introduction of the IFRS 9 accounting rules in January, which is estimated to reduce the Tier 1 ratio by 38bps, capital levels are high and will allow for banks to operate more normally. Bank earnings rebounded in Q4 2017 on the back of aggressive cost cutting, falling loan impairments and solid net interest income. Margins remain stubbornly weak, even though the yield curve has been steepening since early 2015. Going forward, earnings expectations do not seem overly optimistic, particularly in relation to long-term averages. The continued acceleration in economic growth will provide a considerable tailwind. Lending volumes should rise, albeit at a relatively slow pace, due to improving business confidence. Asset quality is set to strengthen as NPLs decline further, reducing the cost of capital and loss provisions. Bank expenses will also decline due to additional layoffs and a reduction in branch locations. However, despite the substantial improvement in their balance sheets, the Italian banking system is far from invulnerable. Apart from the obvious downturn in economic growth, banks are heavily exposed to Italian government bonds. Holdings of government debt securities as a percentage of total assets have declined considerably to 9% from nearly 11% a year ago, but still remain much higher than levels seen during the euro debt crisis (Chart 11). This suggests that fears of the so-called "doom loop" - where the credit quality of the government and the banks are intertwined through bond holdings – may arise once again in the future if Italy suffers another sovereign debt crisis. Another potential source of risk to the banking sector is the housing market. Unlike its EU counterparts, where house prices have been in an uptrend since 2013, house prices in Italy have been collapsing in both nominal and real terms since 2008, falling -20% and -28% respectively (Chart 12). The Italian real estate market is facing multiple headwinds: poor demographics, a lack of property investors dampening transaction volumes, banks aggressively selling repossessed homes at large discounts, and a large stock of unsold properties. Further declines could damage asset quality and impair bank balance sheets. Nevertheless, prices in nominal terms appear to be stabilizing. As real GDP growth continues to recover, the real estate market should eventually start to catch up. Chart 11Can The 'Doom Loop' Be Broken? Chart 12No Recovery In Italian House Prices Bottom Line: The health of Italian banks has improved drastically over the last year. Cost cutting has been aggressive, capital levels have risen, and non-performing loans are slowly declining in a growing economy. Recently added macro-prudential measures will provide additional buffers. As such, liquidity, solvency and systemic risks have faded for the time being. The Political Outlook: Acute Pain Is Gone, But Chronic Risks Linger Italian equity and bond markets have priced out political risk in the country's asset markets over the past 12 months, and for good reasons: New election rules: The October 2017 electoral rule changes have made it highly likely that the next government in Italy will be a coalition government, reducing the probability of a runaway electoral performance by an anti-establishment party.2 Anti-establishment becomes the establishment: Italy's populists have dulled their edge by moving to the middle on the key question of Euro Area membership. The anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) announced in early January that "it is no longer the right moment for Italy to leave the euro." The party's leader, Luigi Di Maio, pledged to remain "comfortably below the antiquated and stupid three percent level" EU deficit limit. The party followed this announcement by slaughtering its final sacred cow and renouncing its promise never to form a coalition with traditional, centrist parties. Migration crisis has ended: While continental Europe has gotten relief from the migration wave since early 2016, Italy continued to be impacted throughout 2017. Nonetheless, the EU's intervention in Libyan security and politics has successfully, and dramatically, altered the trajectory of migrants arriving in Italy and Europe as a whole (Chart 13). Current polls show that no single party is close to the 40% threshold needed to win the election outright, although the ostensibly center-right coalition of Forza Italia, Lega Nord, and Fratelli d'Italia is the closest (Chart 14). Predicting the outcome of the election is therefore impossible, other than to guarantee that the next Italian government will be a coalition. Chart 13Italians (And Europeans) Reject Immigration Chart 14Italy: No Party Will Rule Alone New electoral rules - which favor coalition building - and poor turnout in a recent regional election will encourage parties to make extravagant promises, particularly on the spending side of the ledger. Italian politicians understand that, in a coalition government, the partner can always be blamed for why election promises fell by the wayside. This has produced a deluge of unrealistic promises.3 What should investors know about the upcoming election? First, the center-right is not the center-right. When investors hear that the "center right is likely to win," they are likely to bid up assets in expectation of structural reforms and prudent fiscal policy. If the recent polling performance of Forza Italia and Lega Nord has in any way contributed to the appreciation of Italian assets, we would caution investors to fade the rally. Former PM Silvio Berlusconi, leader of Forza Italia, has promised to reverse crucial (and bitterly fought) employment law reforms. Meanwhile, his coalition partner Matteo Salvini, leader of Lega Nord, has promised to scrap pension cuts altogether. The proper characterization for the Forza-Lega alliance is therefore "conservative populism," not pro-market center-right. In fact, the two parties are the most vociferously anti-EU and anti-euro of the four major parties, with Lega still pushing for the abolishment of the euro and even for an EU exit. For a summary of the most market-relevant electoral promises, please refer to Box 1. Box 1: Italian Electoral Promises Of Major Parties Presented in the order of current polling Five Star Movement (M5S) Italy's anti-establishment party wants to abolish 400 laws, including a web of regulation that makes it difficult for businesses to invest. The promise is unusually "supply-side" oriented for an anti-establishment party, but Italy's establishment has made the business environment difficult. In addition, the party wants to invest in technology and clean energy. What is truly anti-establishment is that M5S has promised to provide a monthly universal income of E780, but also to introduce means-testing for public services so that the well-off pensioners do not receive them. It also seeks broad justice system reforms, including a crackdown on corruption and the mafia, building new prisons, and hiring more police. Its immigration plans are centrist, if not right-leaning, with plans to repatriate migrants back to their original countries. Democratic Party (PD) Led by former PM Matteo Renzi, the Democratic Party (PD) is contesting elections on the basis of its past achievements, which includes passing the 2015 "Jobs Act," mitigating the country's banking crisis, and keeping up the pulse of the otherwise sclerotic economy. Current caretaker PM Paolo Gentiloni remains popular, in part because of his no-nonsense, humble approach to governance. Other than minor proposals - scrapping the TV license fee that finances the national Rai network and raising the minimum wage - the party is largely standing pat in terms of promises. The PD-led government has clashed with the EU, including over its 2018 budget proposal, which the Commission criticized as a "significant deviation" from the bloc's fiscal target. However, aside from its disagreements with the Commission over fiscal policy, PD is broadly pro-Europe and pro-euro. Forza Italia Populist Forza is proposing a flat tax of 23%, which would abolish the current staggered income tax rate. It would also abolish taxes on real estate, inheritance, and transportation, and expand reprieves to tax payers with financial problems. The party would double minimum pension payments and scrap the 2015 "Jobs Act." That said, leader Silvio Berlusconi has said that his proposals would respect the EU's 3% of GDP budget deficit target - in fact that his government would eliminate the deficit completely by 2023 - and that it would rein in the debt-to-GDP ratio to 100%. However, it is unclear how the math would actually work. At the same time, a collision course with the EU is likely as the party wants not only to end budget austerity but also to revise EU treaties, including the fiscal compact, and to pay less into the EU's annual budget. Lega Nord The other populist party looks to out-do the more establishment Forza by proposing an even lower flat tax rate of 15%. The revenue shortfall would be made up by aggressive enforcement against tax cheats. The party is the most Euroskeptic of the major Italian parties, arguing that a Euro-exit is in the country's national interest and should be contemplated unless fiscal rules set out by the Maastricht Treaty are scrapped. Leader Matteo Salvini recently suggested that he had changed his position on the euro, but the chief economist of the party - Claudio Borghi - has since reversed that position, stating that "one second after the League is in government it will begin all possible preparations to arrive at our monetary sovereignty." This last statement is more in keeping with the Lega's recent history of euroskepticism. Second, the electoral platforms of all four major parties are profligate. The flat tax proposal by Forza and Lega is likely the most egregious. Generally speaking, Berlusconi's previous governments can be associated with a rise in expenditure, deficits, and debt levels, with no real track record of fiscal prudence. Even during the boom years (2001-2006), Berlusconi failed to reduce the budget deficit. By contrast, the center-left has been marginally more fiscally prudent (Chart 15), with a considerable improvement in the country's budget balance under each Democratic Party-led government (Chart 16). Chart 15Italy's Debt Dynamics Are Contained Chart 16Democratic Party Is Relatively Prudent Given the mildly Euroskeptic positioning of the conservative populist coalition and their likely bias toward profligacy, we would rank the currently most likely electoral coalition as the least pro-market. Below are the three potential outcomes and their likely impact on the markets: Scenario 1 - Populist Coalition Probability of winning: 35% - Polls currently put the Forza-Lega coalition in a clear lead and only several percentage points away from the likely 40% threshold needed to secure a majority. Fiscal impact: We would assign a 100% probability that the Forza-Lega coalition would negatively impact the country's budget balance, with debt levels most likely rising. Reform impact: There is a 0% probability of pro-growth, structural reforms being passed by the conservative populist coalition. As such, investors should stop referring to the Forza-Lega alliance as a center-right alliance. European integration: We would assign a high probability, around 50%, that a Forza-Lega government would threaten to exit the Euro Area at some point during its mandate. This is based on a two-fold assumption that there will be a recession at some point during its reign and that its electoral platform reveals the potential for a serious Euroskeptic turn not only by Lega Nord but also by the formerly staunchly pro-EU Forza Italia. Scenario 2 - Grand Coalition Probability of winning: 35% - If the Forza-Lega coalition fails to win enough votes, the second-most likely outcome would be a grand coalition between Forza Italia and the center-right Democratic Party (PD), perhaps with both M5S and Lega joining in. Fiscal impact: Given that all four major parties are essentially looking to spend more money and collect less revenue, we would expect that the country's budget balance would be negatively impacted in this scenario. However, both PD and M5S have less profligate electoral platforms. As such, the impact would likely be a lot less dramatic than if Forza-Lega coalition won. Reform impact: With Forza-Lega potentially in a grand coalition, we would expect the probability of pro-growth reforms to be just 25%. European integration: We would assign a very low probability, essentially 0%, that a grand coalition contemplates Euro-exit during its mandate. However, a global recession that impacts Italy would almost certainly force such a government to fall as Euroskeptic parties withdrew their support, thus shortening the electoral mandate. This means that a grand coalition is the least viable and least stable outcome. It would allow the Euroskeptic Forza-Lega to campaign from a populist, Euroskeptic, position. Scenario 3 - Center-Left Coalition Probability of winning: 30% - A PD-M5S coalition is less likely despite being mathematically the most likely. This is because M5S has not said that it would ever join a coalition with the PD; only that it would join a grand coalition with all parties. Nonetheless, such a coalition makes the most sense ideologically now that M5S has abandoned its Euroskepticism. Fiscal impact: Both parties are looking to expand the minimum wage, with M5S arguing for a universal basic income. It is very likely that the impact on the budget balance would be negative, although we would not expect extreme profligacy. Reform impact: Given the electoral platform of M5S and the reform record of PD, we assign a healthy 75% probability for pro-growth structural reforms. Despite the view that M5S is an anti-establishment party, it is actually quite pro-reform, with several of its proposals in the past being characterized as impacting the supply-side. Investors should remember that being anti-establishment does not mean being anti-reform, especially in Italy where the establishment has an atrocious record of being pro-reform! European integration: We do not think that the M5S move to the middle on European integration is false. Forcing it to be in government, particularly once a recession hits over the course of its mandate, will only lock in its establishment position on European integration. As we have expected for some time, the M5S has followed the path of other Mediterranean, left-leaning, anti-establishment parties on the euro, with both Podemos (Spain) and SYRIZA (Greece) now being fully pro-Europe. As such, the probability that a PD-M5S government considers Euro-exit during its mandate is 0%. Counterintuitively, a PD-M5S coalition is therefore the most pro-market option for Italy. It would be relatively fiscally prudent and would surprise to the upside on structural reforms. In addition, it would give Italy a five-year window during which no challenge to its membership in European institutions is possible (provided that the coalition does not rely on small parties whose exit threatens the stability of government). This outcome could extend the current rally in Italian assets, although that rally is already long-in-the-tooth. On the other hand, a Forza-Lega coalition is the least stable. First, we believe that such a coalition has a 50% probability of challenging Italy's membership in European institutions at the first sign of a domestic recession. Lega is outwardly Euroskeptic, even at the top of the global economic cycle and with a healthy Italian recovery underway. Meanwhile, Silvio Berlusconi has consciously evolved his Forza Italia towards a more Euroskeptic position. In addition, we believe that this populist alliance would be fiscally profligate and would not attempt any structural reforms. This political outcome is therefore an occasion to underweight Italian sovereign bonds. Finally, a grand coalition would have a neutral market impact. However, due to structural political risks, we would expect such a government to collapse at the first sign of economic hardship.4 This would open up the risk of a Euroskeptic electoral challenge and a potential market riot as the likelihood of brinkmanship with Brussels and Berlin rises.5 We encourage our clients to revisit our "Divine Comedy" series on Italy, where we have set out the argument for why Euroskepticism continues to have appeal in Italy. We would briefly remind our readers that: Italians remain Euroskeptic despite a European-wide recovery in support for the common currency (Chart 17); Italians are increasingly confident in a future outside of Europe (Chart 18), whereas such a trend is not identifiable in wider Europe (Chart 19); Chart 17Italy Lags In Support For Euro Chart 18Italians Optimists About Future Outside EU While Europeans are increasingly comfortable with dual-identities (national and continental), Italians are increasingly identifying as strictly Italian (Chart 20); Chart 19Europeans Pessimists About Future Outside EU Chart 20We Are Italian (Not European)! Italians do not see the EU as a geopolitical project, leaving them more likely to focus on the transactional and economic nature of their relationship with Europe (Chart 21); Chart 21Italians View The EU In Transactional Terms On net, Italians are the most anti-immigrant people in core Europe (Chart 22), which suggests that the migration crisis hit them quite hard. Any restart of that crisis could push the country towards anti-EU politicians; Chart 22Italians Are Staunchly Anti-Immigration Finally, we would remind investors that many Italians continue to see FX devaluation as a panacea that can save the economy. Our view is that Italy has, by far, the highest baseline level of Euroskepticism among Euro Area members. The March 4 election is important because the next government will likely have to face a recession and a global downturn during its mandate. A grand coalition or a populist coalition would both leave Italy more vulnerable to Euroskeptic alternatives. This is because a grand coalition would most likely collapse at the first sign of a recession whereas a populist government would itself turn to Euroskepticism. If the election produces either of these outcomes, we would assign a very high probability - near 50% - that Italy produces a global risk off event sometime within the next five years. Bottom Line: The upcoming Italian parliamentary election is difficult to call, but one thing seems certain - the winning coalition will seek to ease fiscal policy. Euroskepticism will not be the major issue in the election given the expanding economy; yet, in two of the scenarios discussed above, it will come back with a vengeance after the next Italian recession. The ECB: Don't Fear The QE Unwind If there is one consensus view on Italy among investors (at least among the BCA clients that ask questions on Italy!), it is that Italian government bonds will suffer significant losses when the ECB begins to unwind its easy money policies. For many people, 10-year bonds trading with less than a 2% yield, with a government debt/GDP ratio near 130%, in a country with a structural low growth problem and perpetually unstable politics, just screams "bubble" - one that will end badly when the ECB is eventually forced to stop buying government bonds. With the broader Euro Area economy now operating at full employment, an announcement of a tapering of asset purchases by the ECB is inevitable. Our base case remains that the ECB will announce during the summer that the bond buying program will be wound down by year-end. After that, maturing bonds will be reinvested, with the first interest rate hike not taking place until the latter half of 2019. How the ECB communicates that message to the markets will be critical in avoiding a "Taper Tantrum 2.0." Already, the ECB is sending a bit of a mixed message with its current asset purchases. Officially, the central bank has been aiming to distribute its monthly pace of asset purchases along the lines of the ECB's Capital Key, which is roughly correlated to the size of each Euro Area country. This rule was put in place by the ECB to avoid any accusations that the central bank would politically favor the more indebted countries when executing its bond buying. Yet a look at the ECB's actual data on its monthly purchases shows that the Capital Key limits have often been breached, and for what appears to be reasons rooted in politics (Chart 23). The ECB exceeded the Capital Key limit on French bonds in the run-up to last year's French presidential election. The limit on Italian bonds was also consistently breached for much of last year, as investors were beginning to grow more concerned about potential ECB tapering and anti-euro factions winning the next election in Italy. We shared those concerns, which led us to downgrade Italian government bonds to underweight in Global Fixed Income Strategy in late 2016, both in absolute terms and versus Spanish debt. That call has obviously not worked out as we hoped. In fact, a counterintuitive result occurred where Italian bonds outperformed German debt in 2017, even as the ECB was already beginning to slow the pace of its bond buying. That can be seen in Chart 24, which shows the annual growth rate of the ECB's monetary base (which proxies the flow of bonds purchased by the ECB) versus both the Italy-Germany 10-year government bond spread (top panel) and the annual excess return of Italian government bonds relative to German debt (bottom panel).6 There has been no reliable correlation between the pace of ECB buying and the Italy-Germany spread, but there has been a very strong correlation with relative returns. When the ECB was buying more bonds in 2015 and 2016, Germany was outperforming Italy. The opposite occurred last year when the ECB started to dial back the pace of its purchases. Why? Most likely, it was because the Italian economy was starting to gain momentum, which helps alleviate (but not eliminate) the debt sustainability fears about Italy's massive debt stock. The ECB's other extraordinary policy tool, low interest rates, has been an even bigger support for Italian debt sustainability. The government of Italy has been able to consistently issue bonds with coupons below 1% in the years after the ECB went to its zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) in 2014, according to the Bank of Italy (Chart 25). This has lowered the average interest rate on all outstanding Italian government bonds from 4% to 3% over that same period. This also reduced the ratio of Italian government interest payments to GDP by nearly one full percentage point over the past three years (bottom panel). Chart 23The Capital Key Is Only##BR##A 'Guideline' For ECB QE Chart 24Less ECB Bond Buying =##BR##Italian Bond Outperformance! Chart 25ZIRP/NIRP More Helpful##BR##For Italy Than QE Italy still has a significant long-run fiscal problem, however. The gross government debt/GDP ratio of 126% is only dwarfed by Japan and Greece within the developed markets (Chart 26). Even when looked at on a net basis (i.e. excluding the debt owned by Italian government entities like state pension funds) and, more importantly, after removing the bonds owned by the ECB, Italy still has a stock of debt equal to 100% of GDP (Chart 27). This is the highest in the Euro Area for countries eligible for the ECB's asset purchase program. Chart 26Italy's Debt Problems Have Not Gone Away Chart 27Still A Big Stock Of Italian Debt, Net Of ECB Purchases Importantly for market perceptions of Italy's debt sustainability, the ECB absorbing 15% of the stock of Italian government bonds has provided some wiggle room for an expansion of fiscal deficits without materially affecting long-term interest rates. That is no small matter, given how it is highly likely that the winner of the March 4th Italian election will step on the fiscal accelerator. Bottom Line: The inevitable tapering of ECB asset purchases later in 2018 will not have a meaningful impact on Italian government bond valuations - as long as the ECB is not planning on quickly raising interest rates soon after tapering. Upgrade Italian government bonds to neutral until signs of an economic slowdown in Italy emerge. Investment Conclusions After assessing the four main drivers of Italian bond risk premia - economic growth, the health of the banks, domestic politics and ECB monetary policy - it is clear that the state of the economy is the most important factor. If Italian growth is strong enough, investors will feel more comfortable about chasing the higher yields on Italy's government bonds and be a lot more relaxed about its Euroskeptic leanings. Given Italy's heavy reliance on exports as the driver of the current cyclical upturn, this means Italian financial assets are a levered play on global growth. The next most important factor is the ECB's monetary policy, but specifically, its interest rate policy and not its asset purchase program. Chart 28Upgrade Italian Debt To##BR##Neutral Until Growth Rolls Over This week, we are upgrading our recommended allocation to Italian government bonds to neutral from underweight in Global Fixed Income Strategy. At current yield levels and spreads to core European debt, a move all the way to an overweight recommendation is not ideal. Yet the case for Italian bond underperformance on the back of political uncertainty and eventual ECB tapering is even less ideal. Moving to neutral is a sensible compromise between a positive cyclical backdrop with poor valuation. Going forward through 2018, we will monitor the Italy Leading Economic Indicator (LEI) as a signal for when to consider downgrading Italian debt. If the LEI begins to hook down, that would be a bearish sign for the relative performance of both Italian government bonds and Italian equities (Chart 28). In addition, any indication that the ECB is considering not only tapering its bond buying, but also raising interest rates, could pose a problem for Italian assets. Although given the low starting point for any shift higher in policy rates, it would likely take several interest rate increases before Italian economic growth would start to be negatively impacted. Over a longer-term time horizon, investment implications are difficult to gauge. Structurally, both from an economic and political perspective, Italy is the least stable pillar of European economy. As such, it still has a potential to be a source of global risk-off if an economic downturn negatively impacts the current political stability. Robert Robis, Senior Vice President Global Fixed Income Strategy rrobis@bcaresearch.com Marko Papic, Senior Vice President Chief Geopolitical Strategist marko@bcaresearch.com Patrick Trinh, Associate Editor Patrick@bcaresearch.com Ray Park, Research Analyst Ray@bcaresearch.com 1 Please see BCA Geopolitical Strategy Special Report, "Demographics And Geopolitics, Part I: A Silver Lining?", dated October 10, 2012, available at gps.bcaresearch.com. 2 The new Italian Electoral law - also known as Rosatellum - is particularly negative for Five Start Movement (M5S). First, it assigns over a third (37%) of the seats using a first-past-the-post system. This will hurt M5S, which lacks a geographical base where it can guarantee easy electoral district wins. Second, the vote eliminates a seat bonus for the party that wins a plurality of votes, forcing the winning coalition to gain at least around 40% of the vote to govern. Eliminating the bonus hurts M5S as it has led other parties in the polls. That said, a coalition government almost guarantees that fiscal spending will increase over the course of the next administration, given that budget outlays will be used to grease-the-wheels of any coalition deal. 3 The Italian public, known for its knack for satire, has parodied the electoral platforms with a Twitter hashtag #AboliamoQualcosa ("let's abolish something"). Twitter and Facebook have suggested that everything from French carbonara to vegan Bolognese should be abolished (BCA's Geopolitical Strategy heartily agrees with both suggestions!). 4 Please see BCA Geopolitical Strategy Special Report, "Europe's Divine Comedy: Italian Inferno," dated September 2016, available at gps.bcaresearch.com. 5 Please see BCA Geopolitical Strategy Special Report, "Europe's Divine Comedy Part II: Italy In Purgatorio," dated June 21, 2017, available at gps.bcaresearch.com. 6 It is important to note that the relative returns shown in the bottom panel Chart 24 are calculated using the Bloomberg Barclays benchmark Treasury indices for Italy and Germany. These indices include debt across all maturities for both countries, not just the benchmark 10-year Italy-Germany spread shown in the top panel.