Fixed Income
We update the indicators in our duration checklist following this morning’s employment report.
Presently, our four high-conviction themes are: (1) the US dollar will rally as US growth continues to outpace the rest of the world; (2) US equities will continue to outperform EM and European stocks until a major sell-off occurs; (3) a US profit margin squeeze is imminent; (4) EM domestic bonds and sovereign USD bonds are due for a setback.
Expected inflation has surged to its highest level in a year. This has surprised many people, but expected inflation is behaving just as expected. Expected inflation is not a prophecy, it is just a mathematical function of delivered inflation. We discuss what this means for central banks in the US, UK, euro area, and Japan. Plus: bitcoin’s structural uptrend to $100,000+ is still intact.
We feel as good about spurning the soft-landing narrative today as we did about spurning the recession narrative a year ago, but we are not giving into complacency. This week’s report looks at two key ways that we may be getting it wrong: by underestimating households’ asset support and the labor market’s durability. We remain tactically neutral but continue to look for opportunities to turn defensive.