CoreMacro
BCA’s flagship global macro and investment strategy platform, helping investors anticipate regime shifts, connect signals across regions and asset classes, and navigate the world’s most difficult macro questions.
We are turning more constructive on Chinese internet stocks after several years of caution. We recommend going long offshore internet equities in absolute terms and upgrading MSCI China to overweight in a global equity portfolio.
While it is impossible to know exactly when global equities will peak, there are now enough vulnerabilities to justify keeping one’s finger near the eject button.
The ECB stood pat today, yet the policy path remains fraught with uncertainty as domestic resilience collides with global headwinds. This dichotomy continues to hold important implications for European assets over the coming months.
For the next few months at least, inflation risk trumps recession risk for both US markets and world markets. This because, correctly gauged, the US jobs market is still supply-constrained with ‘jobs looking for a worker’ exceeding ‘workers looking for a job’ by 0.4 percent. A still supply-constrained US jobs market cannot enter a demand-driven recession until it flips back to demand-constrained, so bond investors should underweight duration. Plus: a new tactical trade is overweight India (INDA).
Core Europe’s industrial sector will relapse in the coming months due to US tariffs and a strong euro. Investors can play the imminent deflationary shock by being long Central European bonds. They should, however, hedge the currency risk vis-à-vis the euro.
The Buenos Aires election results are a setback for the government's political momentum, but not the endgame. Our long-term bullish view remains in place, but short-term investors should stay on the sidelines in the near run.
The European Central Bank has achieved a soft landing. Inflation is back to target, with well-anchored inflation expectations. The unemployment rate is historically low, and real economic growth is stable, albeit weak. Given that little to no additional easing will come from the ECB, investors should underweight government bonds relative to equities.
Although our recession conviction has risen, we conclude our strategy review by closing our equity underweight and our fixed income and cash overweights. AI momentum is too strong to have anything more than modest exposure to an equity decline via a small SPY put position.
Inflation expectations in the US remain reasonably well anchored and there are few signs of a brewing wage-price spiral. Thus, the near-term risks to growth outweigh the risks of higher inflation. Looking beyond the next year or two, however, we are worried about stagflation.
