Equities

In the near term, favor oil and oil producers outside the Gulf Arab states. Over a 12-month horizon, favor US and North American equities, defensive sectors over cyclicals, and safe-assets. Within cyclicals, stick to energy and defense.

The Telecoms industry is highly concentrated, and carriers compete on price and quality of service in a slow growing market. Demand for capex is relentless. The roll out of 5G has disappointed. Recently, capex outlays have slowed, and operating cash flow has rebounded. Further, Telecoms is a quintessential defensive industry that will outperform during a market pullback.

In the short run, global risk assets are vulnerable due to rising oil prices and bond yields. Cyclically, a global economic downturn will weigh on global risk assets.

We look beneath headline data to assess the state of the labor market in cyclical goods-producing industries that have previously led overall nonfarm payrolls and in the services segments that have recently been leading the charge. The bottom-up view looks a lot like the top-down view: the labor market is softening, but very slowly, and offers no indications that a recession is at hand.

Gold and bitcoin are conceptually joined at the hip because the value of both comes from their ‘non-confiscatability’ by inflation, by bank failure, and in the case of bitcoin, by state expropriation. The sharp recent rallies in both gold and bitcoin reflect that the market has suddenly upped the value of non-confiscatability, and a plausible explanation is that recent US inflation data show that the journey to sustained 2 percent inflation has stalled, raising the risk that the Fed might balk at finishing the journey. Plus: JPM, CL, and USD/CHF are tactical reversal candidates.