Commodities & Energy Sector
In response to lower energy prices and China’s reopening, European assets prices are outperforming. Will the ECB spoil the party?
CCP policy stimulus will boost growth in China this year. Copper prices breached $4.00/lb on COMEX this week, as expected. We continue to forecast $4.50/lb this year, with upside price risk dominating. Iron ore also will rise, but economic and regulatory policy uncertainty clouds the outlook. We remain long the COMT and XME ETFs. We are getting tactically long BRL/USD and AUS/USD on the back of our metals view, which is constrained by China’s reversion to absolute autocracy and ability to reverse policy suddenly and unpredictably.
The crucial question for 2023 is: will the US and UK Beveridge Curves shift back inwards to their pre-pandemic versions, ushering in a soft landing? Or, will we slide down the new post-pandemic Beveridge Curves into recession? Plus: we reveal the most important chart for Europe and the most important chart for China in early 2023.
The European Commission risks retarding the development of long-term contracting for renewable energy just as momentum is building. Policy uncertainty will continue to dog firms and households in the EU, if the Commission's attempts to lower energy costs for consumers at the expense of renewable-energy producers by extending “windfall profits taxes” and mandated lower costs succeed. Such measures will lower producers’ revenues, which will translate into lower renewables investment.
Slowing growth would be bad for equities, but so would stronger growth since it would mean more rate hikes.
In Section I, we note that the global growth outlook has modestly deteriorated over the past month, despite an improving 12-month outlook for Chinese domestic demand in response to the imminent end of the nation’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy. Investors should remain conservatively positioned over the coming year, as we recommended in our Annual Outlook report. In Section II, we examine whether the structural risks facing global stocks are higher or lower today than they were prior to the global financial crisis, and what that implies for stock and bond risk premia.
Energy and metal supplies are becoming increasingly scarce. In such a market, we will re-establish our long commodity exposure via the COMT ETF after being stopped out with a -4% return this week. We remain long equity exposure to oil and gas producers, and metals miners via the XOP and XME ETFs, respectively. Our energy recommendations closed this year posted an average 18.4% gain.