Calm after the storm
|After yesterday’s carnage, global equity markets have recovered some of their poise. Whether this is a pause before another wave of pressure or something more sustainable is debatable. It appears that US equities are finally succumbing to a plethora of bad news. Higher US yields have driven the equity risk premium lower. Also there’s probably a degree of profit taking ahead of the onset of the Q3 US earnings season.
At the same time valuations have become increasingly stretched. For example, the S&P 500 price/earnings ratio is around 6% higher than its 5 year average while almost all emerging market price/earnings ratios are well below their 5 year averages. While strong US growth prospects may justify some or even all of this differential, the gap with emerging markets has widened significantly.
While US President Trump blames an “out of control” US Federal Reserve, it would have been hard for the Fed to do anything else but raise policy rates at its last meeting. If the Fed didn’t hike at the end of September, bond yields would like have moved even higher than the 3.26% reached on the 10 year US Treasury yield earlier this week as markets would have believed the Fed is falling behind the curve. However, as US yields rise and the equity risk premium reacts, the opportunity cost of investing in equities rises too.
In the FX world the US dollar could succumb to more pressure if US equities fall further but as we saw yesterday, USD weakness may mainly be expressed versus other major currencies (EUR etc). Emerging market currencies continue to face too many headwinds including higher US rates and tightening USD liquidity, as well as trade tariffs. The fact that emerging market growth indicators are slowing, led by China, also does not bode well for EM assets. Unfortunately that means that emerging market assets will not benefit for the time being from any rout in US assets despite their valuation differences.
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