Economic Summary for the week ended 21st Sep 2015

Whilst all focus was on the Fed last week, some important European data points will be released this week. Eurozone consumer confidence is released on Tuesday and PMIs on Wednesday.

Consumer confidence is close to pre-crisis highs but we believe it can rise further in the medium term. Eurozone unemployment has been falling steadily over the last two years and is now showing signs of falling at a faster pace. The chart below shows that the change in the unemployment rate is closely linked with consumer confidence. As consumer confidence increases consumers spend more, which boosts the economy and reduces unemployment. This in turn further boosts consumer confidence creating a virtuous cycle. This positive feedback loop still has plenty of room to run in the Eurozone given that unemployment remains very high and therefore has the potential to fall much further. 

Economic Summary for the week ended 14th Sep 2015

Eurozone GDP was revised up this week showing that the eurozone grew 1.5% year on year in the second quarter. The underlying data showed a continued recovery in domestic demand and net exports.

Whilst the European Central Bank recently revised down their GDP growth forecasts slightly, they still expect 1.7% growth in 2016. They have also highlighted that they are willing to expand their Quantitative Easing (QE) programme if necessary to support growth and inflation. Even without further easing, money supply has been picking up strongly and suggests that GDP growth should remain well supported. With money supply and the economy picking up, and the EuroStoxx 50 down near where it was when Draghi first announced QE back in January, this would suggest that European equities have upside potential from here.

Economic Summary for the week ended 7th Sep 2015

The FTSE All Share is down nearly 10% since May. As the school holidays draw to a close and investors return from their summer breaks, it’s worth noting that intra-year corrections of this magnitude are the norm rather than the exception. In 17 of the last 25 years the last four months of the year have delivered positive returns, with the average return in those positive periods being 8.0% for the FTSE All Share. We don’t believe this market selloff is the precursor to a recession and, if we’re right, history suggests there is money to be made before the New Year.

Economic Summary for the week ended 31st Aug 2015

Volatility hit record highs: both the S&P 500 VIX and Euro VSTOXX peaked at 40.8 compared to respective five year averages of 17.5 and 23.0. These global equity drawdowns were not foreseen, and some portfolios did suffer losses, but it is important to remember the long-term. If an investor had stayed fully invested in the MSCI ACWI over the past 14 years, their returns would be over 180% — yet, if this same investor had missed even just the 20 best days of the ACWI’s performance, their investment would be in the red.  Keep calm and stay invested.

Economic Summary for the week ended 24th Aug 2015

Markets reacted with the pound strengthening against the dollar, reflecting the likelihood of an earlier rate rise. Yet, global disinflationary pressures from cheaper Chinese imports and falling commodity prices could counteract a pick-up in domestic demand. Across the channel, Eurozone five-year/five-year inflation expectations dropped dramatically on the news of the Renminbi’s devaluation, as highlighted in the chart. Continued imported deflation could force the ECB to extend its quantitative easing programme. When predicting central banks’ next moves across the world, investors would be wise to listen to Socrates: “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing”.

Economic Summary for the week ended 17th Aug 2015

Fears over Greece, China and the US Federal Reserve rate rise has resulted in there being more bears in the market than you’ll find at that oft-sung picnic in the woods.  This negative sentiment is highlighted in this week’s chart, which shows that the weekly bullish sentiment survey, conducted by American Association of Individual Investors, has reached multi-year lows.  Should investors be worried?  If history is any guide the collapse in sentiment is a strong contrarian indicator for US equities.  Historically, when bullish sentiment has dropped below 30% it has on led to 21.3% average return from the S&P 500 in the subsequent 12 months.  Past performance is not always a good guide of future performance however, in the famous words of Warren Buffett: “Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy”.

The Chinese did what was inevitable but still came as a surprise to the market – they devalued the renminbi against the dollar

The Pressure Tells

·         China surprises the market by devaluing the renminbi

·         Chinese authorities will position the change as structural

·         Massive portfolio outflows appear to have pushed the Chinese to act now

·         The surprise shift in policy only encourages investors to remain risk averse

·         The Fed may still move to increase interest rate in September

·         We continue to advise investors to remain risk averse and biased to bonds


What has happened?
The Chinese did what was inevitable but still came as a surprise to the market – they devalued the renminbi against the dollar. The devaluation has taken the form of adjusting the reference rate against the dollar, 1.84% higher on Tuesday and a further 1.6% higher today, Wednesday. We believe the currency is at risk of further downside. In a break with the past, the authorities will going forward set the reference rate closer to the market traded rate. This latter move is a form of structural change which will be welcomed over the longer term by the market. For the moment the markets are trying to come to terms with the shock of what has just happened.

Although the authorities say that the currency adjustment is a one-off given the state of the economy and the significant amount of hot money that has sat in CNY denominated products sold to foreign investors we believe there could be further downside.

One of the catalysts for the devaluation is the ongoing capital flight from China. Charts 2 shows that monthly portfolio flows from foreign investors turned very negative at the end of 2014. Except for one month this year, outflows have continued. Since the data series began there in 2009,  a net $474 billion of foreigners’ portfolio flowed into China, however in June alone $47bn left the country. The currency devaluation may precipitate even further outflows.

Why did they do it?

On first blush it doesn’t seem absolutely clear what specifically the Chinese authorities are trying to achieve with the move to a more flexible currency regime. Was it to make their exports more competitive to help growth? Exports have been weak but this weakness may be as much a reflection of weak global growth as it is about a loss of competitiveness of Chinese exporters. The Chinese must also have been aware that many Asian countries would move to maintain the status quo by letting their currencies fall back too.

The move could be seen in the context of ongoing economic reform. The new process around the reference rate is more transparent and certainly takes the country in a direction that would find favour with the IMF. However, it seems a little odd to make a structural shift in your currency management at a time of such marked weakness of the Chinese economy.

It appears that the authorities have had to respond to the capital outflows by letting their currency fall back rather than buying up all of the capital outflows. The volume of selling was just too big to cope with. The decision to let the currency slide was therefore rolled into a structural shift in the way in the hope that the impact would be more muted.

What happens next?

Despite the new flexibility in the renminbi currency regime we suspect the authorities will not be happy to see the reniminbi slide too sharply. Some intervention might be expected if the slide continues to be aggressive. The challenge for the authorities will be the potential scale of the outflows. As we said earlier there is potentially as much as $400bn of hot money from foreign investors still in China. It would be a surprise to see all of the hot money repatriated however the shock for investors of seeing the break from the previous safe haven nature of the reniminbi probably means it will be some time before we see foreign investors returning to the currency.

The reniminbi weakness will undoubtedly be good news for Chinese exporters. It is often forgotten that the government remains pro-exports with its programme of “One Belt, One Road” initiative.  The country is aiming to sell high-value equipment such as high-speed trains and renewable energy equipment.

Events in China have sent another shock through emerging markets.  Amongst the BRIC countries only India stands out as somewhere we a modicum of positive news. Asia has been rocked by the devaluation of the reniminbi and it has set off of a wave of weakness in other Asian currencies.  For the moment the scale of the Asian currency depreciations is insufficient to create a wave of inflation fears that could translate into early rises in interest rates. Hence we see this as a transitory crisis.

The risk of a rise in official interest rates by the Federal Reserve in September must have fallen. Such a view has already been discounted by and large by the market with a fall in the 10 year yield to below 2.10% and a two-year yield at 0.65%.

Events in China have limited near term implications for the MENA markets. However the China currency crisis has taken many of the equity markets back close to important supports which if broken could precipitate 5-10% downside. The devaluation also serves to highlight that for those countries that peg themselves to the dollar and yet are not able to mirror too closely the momentum of the US economy they will suffer. Luckily the GCC countries are by and large generating growth better than the US and hence are much less vulnerable to the current challenges in global markets

The fall in the renminbi has precipitated another risk-off phase for global markets. To us events in China are just another manifestation of the troubles in the global economy with too little growth and policy makers struggling to get sufficient traction with their policies to reinvigorate global growth. We continue to advise investors to have a bias to bonds and to only buy equities that offer yield or have good long term growth opportunities such as healthcare and technology.

Source:NBAD