BCA Indicators/Model

The failure of EM stock prices to rally over the past 13 years is rooted in their companies’ inability to grow their profits. Even though EM equities appear cheap based on their cyclically adjusted P/E ratio, there has been a regime change in EM corporate profitability. Therefore, the CAPE model should not be used to value EM stocks now.

In Section I, we examine some concerning signs of US economic weakness that emerged in June. We also discuss portfolio positioning in the face of falling interest rates and cross-check our recommended US equity overweight in the face of extremely optimistic expectations about AI’s impact on growth. We conclude that defensive positioning continues to be warranted. In Section II, we dig into those optimistic expectations for AI. We find that the US equity market is significantly overvalued unless the deployment of AI technology causes a 10-to-20 year productivity surge in line with what occurred during the IT revolution of the 1990s, with persistently high margins on the revenue generated from the improvement in growth. We doubt that AI will end up truly boosting economic activity by this magnitude.