Les investisseurs sont revenus vers les actifs à risque tandis que les marchés obligataires ont légèrement reculé. Le crédit reste une classe d’actif recherchée, avec un nouveau resserrement des spreads. L’un dans l’autre, les portefeuilles intègrent un scénario de croissance économique molle et de recul de la croissance bénéficiaires, mais ils intègrent aussi une réduction des risques extrêmes.
C’est en tout cas l’analyse de Jan Loeys et des stratégistes de JPMorgan.
« Risk markets continue to yo-yo, with this week being up, while last week was down. Bond markets are mirroring the move, in reverse. Most markets remain within their 2-month range, but credit is outperforming with spreads reaching new lows for the year.
We continue to see risk markets supported by a better mean, despite a poorer mode. That is statistics language for saying that our best-guess modal forecasts for global economic growth and earnings next year are still edging gently down, but the probability weighted mean of different outcomes for next year is, in contrast, still slowly improving. This is because we and the market are gradually seeing less downside risk emanating from China and Europe, even as concerns are rising about the so-called US fiscal cliff.
The economic data flow continues to show signs of a bottoming and a coming rebound in growth. A few weeks ago, we got upward moves in PMIs, and especially in orders relative to inventories. This week, we received strong demand-side data on consumption for September in the US, UK and China. Business capital spending remains weak, though. Watch out next week for US durables and flash PMIs for further confirmation of the coming rebound. On the policy side, our US economists reassessed the likely fiscal tightening next year and upgraded the total fiscal drag to -2%, thus forcing 2013 US growth down from 1.9% to 1.7%.
In event risk terms, concern that gridlock in Washington will push the US into recession is rising, if only because decision time is nearing and both sides will try to show how committed they are to their positions. At the global level, we believe these greater concerns are offset by reduced worries about a Chinese hard landing and a Euro implosion.
Yesterday’s EU Summit did not make great progress on any of the items on the agenda, but it did make the ECB the top bank supervisor from next year on. To some degree, this was politically realistic progress and is preferred to high-level promises that are then unpicked over following weeks. Slow and steady is probably better now and keeps us positive on the Euro area. Chinese activity data and Q3 GDP show growth is rebounding, and is thus greatly reducing fears of a hard landing.
One worse risk (US) and two better ones keep us long risk assets across the world. The shifting of risk concerns from China and Europe to the US, however, is starting to have an impact on relative performance. US equities have started underperforming, but only slightly so far. The entry point is thus acceptable. We, therefore, go underweight US equities against the rest of the world. The overall rally in risk keeps us short the dollar. We now have a 2% yield target for both 10-year Bunds and USTs, which is 40bp higher for the first and 20bp for the second. We are thus now again long USTs vs. Bunds, reversing the trade we had before. »
Source: JPMorgan
