Commodities & Energy Sector
MacroQuant recommends a strong underweight position in equities, favors a below-benchmark duration stance in fixed-income portfolios, has become neutral-to-slightly positive on the US dollar, has downgraded gold to neutral and copper to a strong underweight, and is bullish on oil.
The current macro environment is a toxic brew of many of the same vulnerabilities that haunted the global economy in the lead-up to past recessions: Rising oil prices, an unsustainable tech capex boom, elevated equity valuations, excessively high homes prices, and brewing stresses in private credit and other parts of the financial system. While global equities look increasingly oversold in the very near term, they will still finish the year below current levels.
Higher oil prices threaten the global economy, warranting an underweight stance on equities. Over the long haul, industrial metals will fare better than crude.
The gap between PCE and CPI inflation will narrow within the next few months, mostly driven by core PCE inflation converging toward its trimmed mean.
MacroQuant recommends a modest overweight position in equities, favors an above-benchmark duration stance in fixed-income portfolios, remains bearish on the US dollar, has downgraded oil to neutral, and is bullish on copper and gold.
If humanoid robots were to become substitutable for workers, the AI age could lead to rapid growth in the size of the effective global labor force. The result could be a larger version of the “China shock,” which followed China’s entry into the global economy.
MacroQuant recommends a slight underweight in equities, favors a below-benchmark duration stance in fixed-income portfolios, remains bearish on the US dollar, has upgraded oil and copper to overweight, and is bullish on gold.
After silver's parabolic surge, we assess the rally's vulnerability by examining its weakest links. We conclude that silver is ripe for a pullback.
Much like the 2000 episode, we expect this year to unfold in two stages: A “Great Rotation” from tech stocks to non-tech names in the first half of 2026 followed by a broad-based selloff in stocks in the second half on the back of a weakening US economy.
2026 has closer parallels with 2021 than with 2000 because an ultra-accommodative Fed can prolong the stock market rally even as a tech capex boom ends. Plus, a new tactical trade is short silver versus gold.