The year is nearly over and the U.S. will see Donald Trump in the White House in 2025. Ryan Detrick’s analysis of historical equity returns found that stocks historically do better in the first two years of a president who was re-elected versus a new president in office. The key question is whether Trump 2.0 represents a re-election or a new term.
I unpack that question by focusing on the economic effects of Trump’s key initiatives, namely the TCJA tax cut extension, tariffs and immigration.
The full post can be found here.
The results of the latest BoA Global Fund Manager Survey could be setting the tone for the market’s reaction to the U.S. election. Respondents are most concerned about changes in trade policy as a result of the election.
The full post can be found here.
In the wake of Biden’s subpar debate performance and the assassination attempt on Trump, the prediction markets’ odds of a Trump victory in November have substantially risen. Equally important is Wall Street’s reaction, which has investors sitting up to take notice of the implications of a second Trump Administration in 2025.
Despite the real-time information from the betting markets, financial markets haven’t fully discounted the possibility of a Trump win. Here’s how you can take advantage of that arbitrage opportunity.
Remember that equity investors tend to enjoy strong returns in the absence of recession, which dents returns, or war and revolution, which can result in a permanent loss of capital. With those caveats in mind, the market gods are presenting patient investors with three gifts from the three economic blocs in the world: the U.S., Europe, and China.
The closely watched April PCE moderated as expected. Headline PCE came in 0.3%, in line with expectations, while core PCE was 0.2% (blue bars), which was softer than expectations. Supercore PCE, or services ex-energy and housing, also decelerated (red bars). This latest print represents useful progress, but won’t significantly move the needle on Fed policy.
Now that 2024 is nearly half over, it’s time to peer into 2025 to see the upside and downside factors that are expected to affect inflation and the Fed’s interest rate trajectory. The three main factors to consider are changes in immigration policy and how they affect employment; the evolution in productivity; and the possible political effects of the election on inflation.
The full post can be found here.
The full post can be found here.
Two weeks ago, I rhetorically asked if investors should be buying into the cyclical recovery theme (see Buy the cyclical and reflation trade?). Global green shoots of recovery were appearing, but I identified the "uncertainty of additional fiscal stimulus" as a key risk to the cyclical rebound thesis. Now that Biden appears to be winning the White House, but constrained by a Republican-controlled Senate, it's time to revisit the recovery question.
Regular readers know that I consider the global economy as three trade blocs, NAFTA, Europe, and Asia dominated by China. It is within that framework that I examine the global reflation question.
Is the global economy emerging from a global recession?
The full post can be found here.
With the US election just over two weeks away, it's time to look past the election and focus on how the economy and markets are likely to behave. Barry Ritholz correctly advised investors in a recent post to check their political beliefs at the door when analyzing markets. Stock prices have done slightly better under Democratic administrations, but the effect is mostly noise in light of the small sample size.
With that in mind, let's consider the differences in market environment if Trump were to win, compared to a Biden win.
The full post can be found here.
“Ultimately this is about governing,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has advised Mr. Trump. “There are two things he’s got to do between now and 2020: He has to keep America safe and create a lot of jobs. That’s what he promised in his speech. If he does those two things, everything else is noise.”The Newt Gingrich criteria is a variation of Ronald Reagan's "are you better off than you were four years ago" campaign slogan. The economy is one of Trump's perceived strengths. In survey after survey, voters consistently trust Trump than Biden on the ability to deal with the economy.
“The average American isn’t paying attention to this stuff,” he added. “They are going to look around in late 2019 and early 2020 and ask themselves if they are doing better. If the answer’s yes, they are going to say, ‘Cool, give me some more.’”
