Economy
Republicans are favored in the House and Senate even if they do not win the White House. A Democratic sweep is a 20% risk. The policy implication would be inflationary, but not so much as under a Republican sweep. Election uncertainty should increasingly weigh on cyclical and high-beta assets in the second half of 2024.
After holding rates steady over the past nine months, the ECB delivered on its widely expected rate cut on Thursday. The Governing Council lowered all three key ECB interest rates by 25 bps, bringing the refinancing, marginal lending facility and deposit…
BCA’s Global Leading Economic Indicator has had a good track record of predicting year-on-year changes in the IMF global real GDP growth series. This GDP-weighted average of the standardized leading indicators of 23 DM and EM economies bottomed in early 2023,…
Healthcare has underperformed the S&P 500 by 23% since early 2023. Profit margins have been squeezed since the pandemic revenue windfall dried up and because long-term contracts prevented companies from raising prices in line with increasing costs. Moreover,…
The ISM Services PMI largely surpassed expectations in May. The headline index grew by 4.4 ppt to 53.8, returning to expansion following April’s one-month contraction. Double-digit jumps in new export orders (13.9 ppt) and business activity (+10.3 ppts) drove…
The Bank of Canada reduced its policy rate by 25 basis points from 5% to 4.75% on Wednesday, in line with the market consensus. Headline inflation and the BoC’s preferred measures of core inflation are within the BoC’s target range of 1-3%, and shorter-term…
The silver-to-gold ratio has surged close to 10% this year on the back of silver prices catching up to gold. Silver has returned 22% on a YTD basis, against 12% for gold, 13% for industrial metals and 5% for the broad commodity complex, making the white metal…
The long-term winners from the generative-AI gold rush are unlikely to be the ‘picks and shovels’ stock Nvidia or the overvalued US superstars of Web 2.0. We discuss the structural investment implications. Plus: time to go tactically overweight global consumer discretionary (RXI).
Corporate and junk bonds are the fixed-income sectors that are most exposed to an economic downturn. We’ve highlighted that markets continue to price in a Goldilocks scenario, with spreads narrowing despite ongoing deterioration in the labor market. Spreads…
According to BCA Research’s Global Asset Allocation service, the economy has been in the “Overheating” phase of the cycle for a while, with signs of slowing growth but also stubbornly high inflation. The most likely next phase is “Recession,” though the…