Marknadens optimism fortsätter att hålla i sig inför stundande rapportsäsong med asiatiska börserna idel gröna. Tydligt hur investerare snabbt skakar av sig handelsoron med USDJPY återigen över 111 och högre räntor längs hela kurvan med tioåringen upp till 2,86%. Gårdagens besked om att Boris Johnson avgår efter oenigheter i brexitförhandlingarna ökar oron med endast nio månader kvar till Storbritanniens formella utträdesdatum. Ser en ökad pessimism bland hedgefonder där den korta positioneringen i pundet har ökat sedan början på juni och har inte varit såhär negativ sedan september förra året.
De globala marknaderna de senaste 24 timmarna
US equities were higher Monday as focus finally shifted away from politics and into fundamentals. Dow +1,3%, S&P 500 +0,9%, Nasdaq +0,9% and Russell 2000 +0,6%.
Politics and especially trade war has dominated the market movement lately but yesterday investors seemed to change their view on the trade war. Yields went higher and Industrials together with Financial finished on top while some of the defensives like Utilities and Telecom ended lower. This is a big shift relative to what we have seen for the last 2 months where market have been trading sideways, long bond yields have dropped and defensives have outperformed cyclicals. The obvious reason is a surprisingly quiet Trump on trade. While we think it’s too early to call the trade war over and hope for negations to take over, we definitely think it’s positive that Trump didn’t take the opportunity to escalate trade war Friday after both US and China enforced the latest set of tariffs.
Looking at fundamentals, it’s very hard to pin point where you can actually see the effects of trade war. Of course, some few selected industries are hit and prices on selected product groups are higher but in broader terms, it’s hard to see.
We have argued that investments intensions and business confidence should be some of the first places to see the negative effects of a trade war but so far, this is not visible. Also, analyst are still revising their earnings estimates higher. By now we should expect to see the opposite if trade war was a real game changer for companies. Earnings revisions are typically lacking when things are turning around, but as the trade war/spate has been with us for quite a while now, one should expect that it would have been feeding into estimates.
The impression from our own analysts are that companies are following the trade war closely but so far, they have taken very limited action.
Later this week US earnings season kicks off and we see very good chances that results will surpass the current consensus estimate of 20% EPS growth (more on this later this week).
European equities started the week on a positive note, STOXX 600 up 0,6% lifted by the cyclical sectors. FTSE +0,9% outperformed as David Davis, Brexit secretary, handed in his resignation Sunday. After the close Monday, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was the next minister to leave his position. The decision to go for a softer Brexit is clearly splitting the conservative party but from a market perspective, it will be seen as positive if connections between UK and EU are kept as tight as possible.