Cuts pushed back ?? ????
Hi folks!
Let me tell you we have a new strategy in the house for those toddler breakfast-time tantrums. We've set out a week-ahead forward calendar of breakfast menus, complete with sign off from our two (littlest) stakeholders. Seems to be working so far, although some late change requests for new specifications have been received outside of the agreed change process which has led to consternation.
So sorry to be as boring as to moan about weather but would a bit of sun be too much to ask here? It’s been raining ones and zeros for what feels like forever and that first glass of summer rosé still feels like a long way off (first world problems and all that). On a more serious note this is apparently causing serious issues for farmers and the food supply.
Markets mumble
Markets have been trundling sideways really close to all time highs for most of the last month, and took a bit of a hit yesterday as higher than expected US inflation followed hot on the heels of stronger than expected jobs growth, and expectations of rate cuts melted away. Given how much rate cuts have been priced out since the start of the year though it's a surprise stock markets are still as high as they are, to be honest, and a good lesson that all things are never equal in markets and singular explanations (in this case that rate cut expectations were the big driver of the late 2023 and early 2024 rally) tend to be incomplete.
Your global stocks are up 6-7%, outside the US it's about 4%. Real estate stocks in the US took a bit more of a hit, as usual for a fuller breakdown of yesterday’s market reaction John Authers is the go to.
Bond prices do not love to see rate cuts being postponed. 10 year yields are back up to their highest levels for the year, with gilts around 4.2% and US treasuries around 4.5%. There're not quite as high as the levels reached late last year in the peak of the higher-for-longer mumble, but the journey has been pretty painful for bond fund holders this year who'll likely be sitting on losses despite the healthy yields.
If you're thinking that the focus on individual noisy data points is a little much for long-term investors you'd be right, but where interest rates settle out longer term does matter for anything with duration and the market continues to grapple with a decently wide range of possible outcomes.
JP Morgan's Stephanie Aligia is out with a good quick take on the US inflation - it's being driven by car insurance and shelter.
That's starting to look like quite the plateau on the right-hand end of that chart isn't it, although there's legit quibbles about the details (see Paul Donovan's daily notes). It looks like UK inflation, for so long the standout could end up well below that of the US fairly soon.
Things I'm reading
The WEF has published a note proposing definitions and taxonomy for RI that seems pretty useful. It centres on the three potential differing objectives of RI: Financial returns, societal impact and values alignment, and brings out the difference between incorporation and consideration of factors (if you don't actually do something different as a result it's not RI). Tradeoffs do exist and should be acknowledged more often, and "more ESG" is not always better.
Thought bubble - We’ve tried to keep a lot of this in mind while writing our own updated RI policy, especially the point on objectives. I still think many asset owners and managers tend to fudge their way through the trade-offs and conflicting objectives, and I can sort of understand why based on history but surely RI is mature enough now that we can address these more squarely.
A worthwhile chaser to this is Paul Rissman's forbes piece on what ESG funds can and cannot achieve (link). "Engage equity, deny debt" is mentioned.
2. Oaktree Roundup of March credit letters (link)
A useful canter through a range of thinking from Oaktree's various credit desks. They think all the good news on the US economy is priced in and markets are complacent - they also thought this at the start of the year. There is talk of the looming maturity wall.
3. ShareAction's resolutions to watch 2024 (link).
领英推荐
Proxy-voting season is upon us and a range of issues are cropping up here - quite a few biodiversity related around deep-sea mining (including at Tesla), a couple on health at McDonald's & Nestle and climate at Shell.
Based on previous years' experience few if any of these resolutions will attract majority support, although that isn't the point - one already looks like it's been withdrawn presumably after agreement with the company and even a solid minority of shareholder voting for a resolution sends a strong signal for future discussions.
A reminder if you're keen to follow what happens in key votes during the proxy season that Redington's Votes to Watch blog by Paul Lee's is an essential follow.
Things I'm listening to
He thinks markets have got less efficient over his career not more. Haven't heard a good Cliff interview in a while and while there's not loads of new new stuff here it's a good entertaining canter through his views on markets and investing.
The man behind "Dunbar's number" - the number of stable interpersonal connections we can each maintain (about 150) gives a wonderful insight into his work on human connection and groups, with key sizes of the layers of our human connections focusing on the numbers 5 | 15 | 50 | 150 | 500 and 2,000.
3. Five minutes on curiosity from Tom Morgan at Sohn is worth your time on disconnection and the issues with too much left-brained thinking. (link - twitter)
Grab bag
Deadpan Andy Murray is gold:
Given our household investment in the Franco-British relationship there were some nice moments this week
Here's a novel idea - should we all be hosting an annual “PowerPoint night” with friends and family to learn exactly what they do for work? I’m here for it!!!
I'll just leave this here