What the New Tax Bill Means for Cross-Border Portfolios

Though U.S. consumer spending was surprisingly robust in 2022, this poses both new and continuing challenges as households draw down their excess savings.----- Transcript -----Michelle Weaver: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michelle Weaver from the Morgan Stanley U.S. Equity Strategy Team. Sarah Wolfe: And I'm Sarah Wolfe from the U.S. Economics Team. Michelle Weaver: On this special episode of the podcast, we'll discuss how the U.S. consumer is faring. It's Tuesday, February 14th at 10 a.m. in New York. Michelle Weaver: The health of the consumer is critical for the equity market, and consumer spending last year helped companies continue to grow their earnings. Sarah, can you give us a snapshot of the overall health of the U.S. consumer right now? Do people still have plenty of savings, and what are you expecting around consumer savings for the rest of the year? Sarah Wolfe: The U.S. consumer was extraordinarily strong in 2022, despite negative real disposable income growth. For perspective, spending was about 3% growth year over year in 2022, and real disposable income was negative 6.5%. Part of that was inflation eroding all income gains, but it was also a tough year as we lapped fiscal stimulus from 2021. So what got consumers through negative 6.5% real income growth? It was this excess savings story. Consumers tapped their excess savings pretty significantly, and we estimate that the drawdown was roughly 30% from its peak. However, when we look into 2023, we don't think consumers are going to be tapping into their savings reserves quite as much. Michelle Weaver: It sounds like households draw down quite a bit of their excess saving. Is there any danger that they're going to run out? And if that's the case, when do you think that will play out? Sarah Wolfe: So we don't think 100% of excess savings are going to get spent ever. Remember, savings is not cash in your wallet, it's just anything that hasn't been spent. So some of these savings have moved into longer term investment vehicles as well. We think that an additional 15% will get spent in 2023, and 10% in 2024, after 30% drawdown last year. This slower drawdown in the excess savings will allow the savings rate to recover after sitting at a two decade low in 2022 at roughly 3%. But there are important divergences when you look at the distributional holding of excess savings. For example, the bottom 25% has drawn down over 50% of their excess savings, compared to 30% overall. And we believe they're on track to run their savings dry by 2Q 2023. Michelle Weaver: Great. And then income, of course, is another really important source of spending for consumers. And the January jobs report we got was a big surprise. And the labor market continues to be pretty resilient without any clear signs of stopping. I run a proprietary survey in conjunction with our Alphawise team, and in our most recent wave we found that despite the tech layoffs that have been all over the news, 31% of people are actually less worried about losing their job now versus a year ago. Can you tell me a little bit about what your team expects for the labor market in 2023? Sarah Wolfe: Well, the February jobs report was a whopper by any standard, 517,000 jobs and the unemployment rate hitting all time lows at 3.4%. However, I think it's important to put these numbers into a bit of context. We identified three temporary factors that boosted nonfarm payrolls in January and that we think are unlikely to persist in February. The first is weather. A warmer than usual January added about 130,000 jobs last month. The return of strike workers added 36,000 jobs and seasonal factors added 3 million jobs. Typically, we see the shedding of a lot of workers in January after the holidays, so leisure and hospitality, retail workers, transportation. But because we're dealing with significant labor shortages, and as a result companies are hoarding workers, we're seeing a lot fewer layoffs than we typically would given this time of the year and as a result, the seasonal factors are adding too many jobs right now. We expect the February print to be about 200,000, which is more in line with the trend that we had seen from July until December of 2022. We continue to expect job growth to slow this year, hitting a low of 50,000 jobs a month in mid 2023, pushing the unemployment rate up to about 3.9% by the end of this year. Michelle, you mentioned that you have an alphawise survey. Could you tell us a little bit more about what the survey’s telling you about consumer spending plans? Michelle Weaver: Sure. So on this wave of the survey, we asked people to think about major purchases that they're planning on making over the next three months. And we defined a major purchase like a vehicle, large appliance or vacation. And we found that about a quarter of people are considering shifting to a cheaper alternative, while a third are expecting to delay the purchase altogether. We also asked several questions on everyday purchases, and our survey indicates that consumers are planning to spend less on more discretionary categories. So that would include tech products, electronics, clothing, alcohol and home improvement. Sarah Wolfe: Michelle, that makes a lot of sense, and it's great to see when the hard data matches the soft data. We've done a lot of modeling work on how higher interest rates impact consumer spending, and we see a similar response in those categories. In particular, consumers tend to pull back on durable goods consumption, including home furnishing, electronics and appliances and motor vehicles. We haven't really talked about the services side yet. There was a big travel boom, post-COVID, do we expect this to continue this year? Michelle Weaver: Stocks exposed to travel did really well post-COVID as people were excited to get out there and travel again. Last year, we saw international travel restrictions lifted, making it a big year for vacations. And so there is some reversion likely here. And our survey showed that consumers are less positive on travel spending this year versus last year, with 34% of people expecting to spend less on travel and only 23% expecting to spend more. Sarah Wolfe: That's a pretty big step down in spending intentions on travel that your survey work shows. It also looks like in the economic data that the strongest part of the services recovery is behind us. We saw 10% nominal spending growth on services in 2021 and 2022. So, it's no wonder that this should decelerate in 2023 as the labor market cools and we return back to normal spending behavior. Michelle Weaver: Finally, Sarah, let's talk about inflation. Inflation is something I've definitely felt a lot as a consumer. For example, when I go to the grocery store, egg prices seem to be out of control, but when I look at my energy bill, things seem to be getting a little bit better. Can you tell us what's going on here and what you expect on inflation for the rest of the year? Sarah Wolfe: Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of transparency on the future of food prices right now, but we have seen pretty remarkable progress in other components of inflation that were weighing on household wallets in 2022. The first and foremost being energy inflation, which has returned back to its pre-COVID levels. We've also seen nice progress on goods inflation, where price levels have been coming off, in particular on new and used motor vehicles. And then we are seeing a slowing among services prices as well. In fact, headline PCE inflation has moderated from 7% this past summer to 5% today. And while this is great progress, the job is not done yet. We think inflation does reach 2.5% by the end of 2023, but this is going to require more aggressive action by the Fed. We now have two more 25 basis point hikes from the Fed in March and in May, reaching a peak rate of 5.25%. And we think they're going to have to keep rates on hold at their peak through the end of the year in order to make sure that inflation is getting where it needs to be. Michelle Weaver: Sarah, thanks for taking the time to talk. Sarah Wolfe: It was great speaking with you, Michelle. Michelle Weaver: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

14 Helmi 20237min

Inflation was a key topic in a recent meeting at the Brookings Institution. While it has trended downward recently, the details are critical to tracking the path ahead.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Seth Carpenter, Global Chief Economist for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about inflation and the U.S. economy. It's Monday, February 13th at 10 a.m. in New York.This past week, I was fortunate to be part of a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution, a research think tank in Washington, D.C. I was one of three economists in discussion with one of the White House's main economic advisers. Unsurprisingly, the topic of inflation came up.One key chart from the White House economist juxtaposed services wage inflation with core services inflation, excluding housing. The key point of the chart was that falling wage inflation in the services sector may put some downward pressure on inflation in core services, excluding housing. This topic is timely because Chair Powell has repeatedly referenced services inflation, excluding housing, as a key risk to their goal for achieving price stability.A couple of weeks ago I'd written on the same topic, and there we tried to show that even the link itself between wage inflation and services inflation is a bit tenuous. But just looking at the raw data, it is clear that the monthly run rate on other services remains elevated. But a question we have to ask ourselves is, 'is it elevated a lot or a little?'Since June of last year, core services inflation, excluding housing, has trended down, and for December, it was at about 32 basis points on a month-over-month basis. That December pace is 3.9% in annual terms and would contribute about 2.1 percentage points to core PCE inflation. To put those numbers into context, recall that from 2013 to 2019, before COVID, core services inflation, excluding housing, averaged about 18 basis points a month or 2.2% at an annual rate. So yes, services inflation is higher than it has been historically, but it is nowhere near as high, relative to history, as housing inflation has been or core goods inflation has been, until recently. Indeed, from 2013 to 2019, core PCE inflation ran below the Fed's 2% inflation target. If goods inflation and housing inflation just went back to their averages from that period and services inflation, excluding housing, was at the rate that we saw in December, core PCE inflation would have overshot target, but by less than a half a percentage point. And we can't forget, for the past year, month-over-month services inflation, excluding housing, has been trending down.So are we out of the woods? No. Clearly, services inflation, excluding housing, is still high and needs to come down over time for the Fed to hit its target. But goods inflation and housing inflation were much bigger drivers of the surge in inflation. So, we really need to consider what's the path from here.Goods Inflation has been negative for the past few months, but used car prices look to have edged up a bit. Our US economics team expects the monthly change in core goods prices to be positive five basis points in January, interrupting that losing streak. We do not expect this reversion to last long, but the next couple of months could have some bumps in the path.Similarly, for housing inflation, the data on current new leases clearly points to a sharp deceleration in housing inflation over the rest of this year. Although overall housing inflation should come down, the closely watched component of owners' equivalent rent will likely stay elevated a bit longer and possibly give markets a bit of a head fake. The details matter, as always.The bottom line for us is twofold. First, inflation is coming down, but it will not be a smooth decline. A return to target for inflation was never very likely this year, so patience is required no matter what. Second, the recent high wage inflation does not spell failure for the Fed. Services inflation is not too far off target and the link between wages and inflation is there but it's small and both wage inflation and price inflation has been trending down despite the strong labor market.I conclude with what might be the most underappreciated moment from Chair Powell's public comments last week. He said he sees inflation getting close to 2% in 2024. When the FOMC did their projections in December, the median forecast was for 3.5% inflation at the end of this year. So, it seems like, based on the incoming data, Chair Powell might be pointing to a meaningful downward revision to the March forecast for inflation.Thanks for listening and if you enjoy the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

13 Helmi 20234min

While the risk of economic contraction has lessened in a few regions, is the story of recession and market risk being oversimplified?----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross-Asset Strategist for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about trends across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together. It's Friday, February 10th at 2 p.m. in London. Markets have been fixated on the question of whether the U.S. and Europe will enter recession this year. With Europe benefiting from a fall in energy prices and the U.S. adding half a million jobs in January, it's tempting to think that recession risk is now lower and by extension, the risk to markets has passed. But the story may be more complicated. Near term, the risk of an economic contraction or recession has fallen. Europe has seen the largest swings here, where much lower energy prices, a result of a mild winter and plentiful supply from the United States, is leading to both less inflation and better growth, the proverbial 2-for-1 deal. Recession risk has also fallen a bit in the U.S., where our economists tracking estimate for U.S. GDP has been moving modestly higher. For markets, however, we fear that this story is getting oversimplified, to a recession is bad and no recession is good. At one level yes, avoiding a recession is definitely preferable. But markets often care most about the rate of change. It remains likely that U.S. growth will decelerate meaningfully this year, even in a scenario where a recession is avoided. For one, the idea that the U.S. avoids recession but still sees a meaningful slowdown in growth is the current forecast from Morgan Stanley's economists. And that's also the signal that we're getting from our market indicators. We classify an environment where leading economic data is strong but starting to soften as 'downturn'. That phase tends to see below average returns for stocks relative to bonds over the ensuing 6 to 12 months. We entered that phase recently. Of course, the U.S. economy has been defying predictions of a slowdown for many months now, and it could still have a few surprises up its sleeve. For now, however, we think favoring bonds over stocks is still consistent with our forecast for slowing growth, even if a recession is avoided. In Europe, we think the biggest beneficiary of lower energy prices and better growth prospects is the euro. What we think the euro performs well broadly, we think it does especially well versus the British pound, where economic challenges remain greater and our economists do forecast a recession this year. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to Thoughts on the Market on Apple Podcasts, or where ever you listen, and leave us a review. We'd love to hear from you.

10 Helmi 20232min

With the latest U.S. employment report showing unexpected resilience in the labor market, what happens now for the Fed and the policy tightening cycle?----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Vishy Tirupattur, Morgan Stanley's Head of Fixed Income Research and Director of Quantitative Research. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, today I will discuss the market implications from the latest U.S. employment report. It's Thursday, February 9th at noon in New York. When it comes to economic data releases, there are surprises and there are shockers. Last Friday's U.S. employment report was clearly in the latter category. Ahead of the release, the market consensus estimate was for 185,000 new jobs based on Bloomberg's survey of 77 economists. And yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 517,000 new jobs added during the month, which is about eight and half standard deviations from the average expectation of the Bloomberg survey participants. By any measure, that's huge. The report showed strength across the board. Of course, there were some temporary drivers, like technical adjustments to seasonality factors, mild weather in January, and a resolution of certain strikes that contributed to this large scale boost to the January employment data. These things are unlikely to persist. Still, the U.S. labor market remains far more resilient than previously expected, with really no clear signs of stopping on the Monday following the January data release, Fed Chair Powell struck a more hawkish tone as he emphasized there is a significant road ahead before policymakers would be assured that inflation is returning to the 2% target. So what happens now? Even if the January employment report is not indicative of a change of trajectory in the U.S. labor market, it will likely take a few more months for the true underlying trends to emerge. Respecting the strength of the current labor market conditions, our U.S. economists believe that more evidence of labor market slowing is needed for the Fed to consider an end of the tightening cycle. Therefore, they now expect the Fed to deliver a 25 basis point hike, both in March and in May, that brings the peak policy rate to range of 5% to 5.25%, which would be in line with the FOMCs December projections. Given the change in the expectation for the Fed policy path, our strategists across multiple markets have revised many of our market goals. I would like to flag three key tactical changes. First, we turn neutral on U.S. Treasuries versus our previous overweight recommendation. Considering how big of an outlier the job number was, we think hard data is too strong for the Fed to look past it. With this realization, we think investors no longer assume that the interest rates have peaked. The market debate will likely turn into the interest rate sensitivity of the economy, and if the neutral rate should be higher than previously thought. Until we have greater clarity on these issues, we think being neutral is a better call on treasuries. Second, in the foreign exchange market, we turn neutral on the U.S. dollar, versus our previous call for a weakening dollar. The strong U.S. labor market data will likely cause investors to question whether the U.S. economy is slowing relative to the rest of the world. As a result, investors are likely to be a little more bullish in their U.S. dollar positioning. Third, in the agency mortgage market, we turned to underweight from neutral. The January employment report increases the uncertainty of the rate paths, which means higher interest rate volatility going forward, that's not great for agency MBS. Relative to other fixed income securities, we don't think investors are being compensated sufficiently for this higher interest rate uncertainty. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

9 Helmi 20233min

Following last night’s State of the Union Address by President Biden, what are some signals from the speech that investors should consider?----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Head of Global Thematic and Public Policy Research for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the intersection between public policy and financial markets. It's Wednesday, February 8th at 10 a.m. in New York. Last night, President Biden delivered the annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. Traditionally, this speech lays out the policy proposals of the administration. In the past, this hasn't signaled much, with only about 24% of proposals historically ending up enacted that year. As a recent 538.com study highlighted. But amidst the noise, there's some potential signal for investors to consider. Here's what we're watching. First, it's clear that U.S. policy will still drive the key investment themes of slowing globalization and the shift to a multipolar world. Biden's speech had much to say about the impact of recently enacted legislation like CHIPS+ and the Inflation Reduction Act, both of which included incentives to shift supply chains on key technologies back to the U.S. or friendly countries. One area this supports is the clean tech industry, which should see substantial demand for its U.S. produced products. Second, it's clear that investors need to keep paying attention to the debate on tech regulation. Biden referenced bipartisan antitrust legislation aimed at tech companies. While, as we previously discussed, there's a lot of details to be worked out before this type of legislation has a fighting chance of being enacted, the momentum behind it seems to be building. So it will be important to assess the impact of different types of regulation to large cap tech companies. Finally, and perhaps most important in the near term, the speech underscores something we've been flagging: the negotiation on how to raise the debt ceiling will be tricky and not solved in a timely manner. While calling for the debt ceiling to be raised without condition, Biden also seemed to concede there's room for negotiation on reducing the deficit. But in our view, that didn't signal a resolution was closer because the president also heavily referenced his desire for changes to the tax code to be part of that solution, something that's historically been a nonstarter for Republicans. In short, it appears in this negotiation so far, compromise has taken a backseat to rhetorical positioning by both sides. So as we stated here in the past, investors may want to prepare for an extended negotiation with a potentially late resolution, where knock-on effects to what is likely to be an already slowing economy are a distinct possibility. This is another reason our U.S. equity strategists continue to flag caution despite some solid recent performance in stocks. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague, or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find the show.

8 Helmi 20232min

As the outlook for 2023 shows emerging markets looking better positioned than developed markets, how is Latin America faring in this more optimistic story? Chief Latin American Equity Strategist Gui Paiva and Chief Latin American Economist Andre Loes discuss.----- Transcript -----Gui Paiva: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Gui Paiva, Morgan Stanley's Chief Latin American Equity Strategist. Andre Loes: And I'm Andre Loes, Morgan Stanley's Chief LatAm Economist. Gui Paiva: And on this special episode of the podcast, we will discuss this year's economic and equity outlook for Latin America. It is Tuesday, February 7th, at 10 a.m. in New York. Andre Loes:] And noon in Sao Paulo. Gui Paiva: By all accounts, last year was a difficult one for global markets. Yet so far, 2023 is starting on a brighter note. There are reasons to be more optimistic with moderating inflation and the outlook for China and Europe solidifying the case for a weaker U.S. dollar. Overall, emerging markets look better positioned than developed markets, and within EM today we'll take a look specifically at Latin America. Andre, to set the stage can you give us a sense of how Latin America has fared post-COVID, and how it has dealt with the big global challenges of 2022? Andre Loes: Well Gui, the growth performance of the region was not particularly different from the other regions during the bulk of the COVID slump. But the levels of poverty in LatAm were already high at the beginning of the pandemic and the increase in unemployment in 2020 and 2021 aggravated that situation. The erosion of purchasing power stemming from accelerating inflation played an important role as well, and the result was mounting strain for political proposals backing more unorthodox ideas, especially a permanent rise in fiscal spending. So the policy reaction aiming to control inflation has been deployed amid these more challenging contexts. Gui Paiva: Well, you just mentioned policy reaction. Indeed, with rampant inflation in the region, Latin American central banks were probably ahead of the global curve in 2022, having started hiking interest rates in 21. Andre, how effective has their monetary policy been so far and what are your expectations for the rate cycle from here? Andre Loes: Well, the response of LatAm central banks came quite early and has been proving effective in most countries. One of the reasons central bankers of the region react promptly is related to the inflation prone past of the region, which is still fresh in the mind of many economic agents, which leads to de-anchoring of inflation expectations as soon as observed inflation accelerates. This means central banks need to react timely, and as a result, the central banks of Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Peru started to hike rates still in the first half of 2021, with Colombia following early on the second half. With the exception of Colombia, inflation has peaked in all countries under our coverage where the central banks pursue an inflation target. With lower inflation we see an easy cycle is starting in all countries in the region, with Chile leading in the second quarter, Peru and Mexico in the third quarter, and Brazil and Colombia cutting towards year end. Gui Paiva: And what are your economic growth forecasts for the rest of this year and the longer term? Andre Loes: Growth in 2023 will show a deceleration compared to last year with both Brazil and Mexico slowing down from 3% in 2022 to 1.4% in the current year. Deceleration will be more intense in Argentina, Chile, and Colombia, with Chile effectively go into a strong recession, a contraction of around 2%, in order to regain both price and theoretical stability. Lower growth is mostly due to the lagged effects of the material monetary policy tightening we have just discussed. But lower global growth will also play a part on that, especially for Mexico, given the strong economic integration of this country with the U.S. For South America, China's recovery may prove a boon, as the Asian country is the main export destination for Brazil, Argentina, as well as the metro exporters Chile, Peru. But Gui, let me turn it over to you on the equities side. What are some of the key investment themes you are following this year? Gui Paiva: We forecast 20% dollar upside for Latin American equities in 2023. The reasons behind our optimism are the region's leverage to the global economic cycle and the price you currently pay for regional stocks. So let me expand on these topics. First about the leverage to the global economic cycle. Historically, LatAm equities tend to perform well during the early and mid stages of the global economic cycle. The region produces several important soft and hard commodities like grains, copper, steel and iron ore, as well as energy products like crude oil and natural gas. Therefore, a rising commodity prices produces a positive terms of trade shock, which leads to stronger domestic economic growth and benefits, both directly and indirectly the public traded companies across the region. Let me pivot now to the second topic, which is the price of currently pay for regional stocks. In my 20 years as an equity strategist, I have learned that the return in an investment is highly correlated to the price you pay for the assets. Therefore, current depressed valuations of Latin equities provide an interesting entry point for investors looking to gain exposure to the EM trade at a discount. Moreover, historically, Latin American equities have posted strong returns during the 12 months following an EM bear market trough boosted by both global and local cyclical sectors. Andre Loes: Can you also walk us through some of the largest economies in the region and give us some color as to what's happening in the different LatAm markets? Maybe start with Mexico and in particular the nearshoring opportunities there. Gui Paiva: Sure Andre. In Mexico we struggle to have a positive structural view of our local equities over the past four years, because of the government's state centric approach to some of the key sectors in the economy, like energy and electricity. However, we are more optimistic now, and we believe economic growth could surprise to the upside from 2024 to 2030, and benefit the local stock market. First, if our U.S. house view is correct and the current bear market in U.S. equities finally ends in the first half of the year, Mexico should benefit in the second as a leveraged play on a potential 2024 U.S. economic recovery. Second, we have presidential elections in Mexico in mid 24, and we believe a newly elected government would likely take a less state centric approach to the key energy and electricity sectors, which would ultimately help boost private sector business confidence and thus investments. Last but not least, we see Mexico as potentially enjoying gains from the ongoing on and nearshoring manufacturing trends. If we are correct, then economic growth in Mexico shows surprise to the upside over the next six years and the current on and nearshoring investment theme in the country, which is limited to a handful of mid and small cap stocks, would broaden out, include some of the Mexican large caps. Andre Loes: And what about Brazil Gui? Gui Paiva: In Brazil, we have a neutral stance towards local equities because the current government has given signs that he intends to run a looser fiscal stance over the next few years, which should lead to a higher for longer monetary policy rate, higher real bond yields, which should undermine the apparently attractive valuation story for local equities. If we are correct in our assessment, the next few years should be good for Brazilian fixed income assets, but not necessarily for equities. However, we believe there are a few interesting investment themes in the local equity market and we are currently positioning some stocks which should benefit from them. For instance, we like private sector banks, insurance companies which tend to do well during periods of higher for longer interest rates. Andre Loes: Finally, what are some key upcoming events and catalysts our listeners should be aware of, Gui? Gui Paiva: Well, from a global perspective, Andre, we do expect the U.S. Fed to reach its peak rate of 4.625% in March and then stop. Therefore U.S. payrolls and inflation data are key for the outlook of U.S. monetary policy and therefore global risky assets. Meanwhile, in China, the latest batch of economic indicators has surprised to the upside, and we do expect the trend to continue in Q2. Finally, regionally, in Mexico, we expect the central bank, Banxico, to end the current monetary tightening cycle at 10.75% in February, while in Brazil, the newly elected government should try to push through Congress an important tax reform and a new long term fiscal framework during Q2. Gui Paiva: Andre, thanks very much for your questions and for taking the time to talk. Andre Loes: Great speaking with you Gui. Gui Paiva: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

7 Helmi 20238min

As new gene therapies are researched, developed and begin clinical trials, what hurdles must genetic medicine overcome before these therapies are commonly available? Head of U.S. Pharmaceuticals Terence Flynn and Head of U.S. Biotech Matthew Harrison discuss. ----- Transcript -----Terence Flynn: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Terence Flynn, Head of U.S. Pharma for Morgan Stanley Research. Matthew Harrison: And I'm Matthew Harrison, Head of U.S. Biotech. Terence Flynn: And on this special episode of Thoughts on the Market, we'll be discussing the bold promise of genetic medicine. It's Monday, February 6th, at 10 a.m. in New York. Terence Flynn: 2023 marks 20 years since the completion of the Human Genome Project. The unprecedented global scientific collaboration that generated the first sequence of the human genome. The pace of research in molecular biology and human genetics has not relented since 2003, and today we're at the start of a real revolution in the practice of medicine. Matthew what exactly is genetic medicine and what's the difference between gene therapy and gene editing? Matthew Harrison: As I think about this, I think it's important to talk about context. And so as we've thought about medical developments and drug development over the last many decades, you started with pills. And then we moved into drugs from living cells. These are more complicated drugs. And now we're moving on to editing actual pieces of our genome to deliver potentially long lasting cures. And so this opens up a huge range of new treatments and new opportunities. And so in general, as we think about it, they're basically two approaches to genetic medicine. The first is called gene therapy, and the second is called gene editing. The major difference here is that in gene therapy you just deliver a snippet of a gene or pre-programmed message to the body that then allows the body to make the protein that's missing, With gene editing, instead what you do is you go in and you directly edit the genes in the person's body, potentially giving a long lasting cure to that person. So obviously two different approaches, but both could be very effective. And so, Terence, as you think about what's happening in research and development right now, you know, how long do you think it's going to be before some of these new therapies make it to market? Terence Flynn: As we think about some of the other technologies you mentioned, Matthew, those took, you know, decades in some cases to really refine them and broaden their applicability to a number of diseases. So we think the same is likely to play out here with genetic medicine, where you're likely to see an iterative approach over time as companies work to optimize different features of these technologies. So as we think about where it's focused right now, it's being primarily on the rare genetic disease side. So diseases such as hemophilia, spinal muscular atrophy and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which affect a very small percentage of the population, but the risk benefit is very favorable for these new medicines. Now, there are currently five gene therapies approved in the U.S. and several more on the horizon in later stage development. No gene editing therapies have been approved yet, but there is one for sickle cell disease that could actually be approved next year, which would be a pretty big milestone. And the majority of the other gene editing therapies are actually in earlier stages of development. So it's likely going to be several years before those reach the market. As, again as we've seen happen time and time again in biopharma as these new therapies and new platforms are rolled out they have very broad potential. And obviously there's a lot of excitement here around these genetic medicines and thinking about where these could be applied. But I think before we go there, Matthew, obviously there are still some hurdles that needs to be addressed before we see a broader rollout here. So maybe you could touch on that for us. Matthew Harrison: You're right, there are some issues that we're still working through as we think about applying these technologies. The first one is really delivery. You obviously can't just inject some genes into the body and they'll know what to do. So you have to package them somehow. And there are a variety of techniques that are in development, whether using particles of fat to shield them or using inert viruses to send them into the body. But right now, we can't deliver to every tissue in every organ, and so that limits where you can send these medicines and how they can be effective. So there's still a lot of work to be done on delivery. And the second is when you go in and you edit a gene, even if you're very precise about where you want to edit, you might cause some what we call off target effects on the edges of where you've edited. And so there's concern about could those off target effects lead to safety issues. And then the third thing which we've touched on previously is durability. There's potentially a difference between gene therapy and gene editing, where gene editing may lead to a very long lasting cure, where different kinds of gene therapies may have longer term potential, but some may need to be redosed. Terence, as we turn back to thinking about the progress of the pipeline here, you know, what are the key catalysts you're watching over 23 and 24? Terence Flynn: You know, as everyone probably knows, biopharma is a highly regulated industry. We have the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration here in the U.S., and we have the EMA in Europe. Those are the bodies that, you know, evaluate risk benefit of every therapy that's entering clinical trials and ultimately will reach the market. So this year we're expecting much of the focus for the gene editing companies to be broadly on regulatory progress. So again, this includes completion of regulatory filings here in the U.S. and Europe for the sickle cell disease drug that I mentioned before. And then something that's known as an IND filing. So essentially what companies are required to do is file that before they conduct clinical trials in humans in the U.S. There are companies that are pursuing this for hereditary angioedema and TTR amyloidosis. Those, if successful, would allow clinical trials to be conducted here in the U.S. and include U.S. patients. The other big thing we're watching is additional clinical data related to durability of efficacy. So, I think we've seen already with some of the gene therapies for hemophilia that we have durable efficacy out to five years, which is very exciting and promising. But the question is, will that last even longer? And how to think about gene therapy relative to gene editing on the durability side. And then lastly, I'd say safety. Obviously that's important for any therapy, but given some of the hurdles still that you mentioned, Matthew, that's obviously an important focus here as we look out over the longer term and something that the companies and the regulators are going to be following pretty closely. So again, as we think about the development of the field, one of the other key questions is access to patients. And so pricing reimbursement plays a key role here for any new therapy. There are some differences here, obviously, because we're talking about cures versus traditional chronic therapies. So maybe Matthew you could elaborate on that topic. Matthew Harrison: So as you think about these genetic medicines, the ones that we've seen approved have pretty broad price ranges, anywhere from a million to a few million dollars per patient, but you're talking about a potential cure here. And as I think about many of the chronic therapies, especially the more sophisticated ones that patients take, they can cost anywhere between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So you can see over a decade or more of use how they can actually eclipse what seems like a very high upfront price of these genetic medicines. Now, one of the issues obviously, is that the way the payers are set up is different in different parts of the world. So in Europe, for example, there are single payer systems for the patient never switches between health insurance carriers. And so therefore you can capture that value very easily. In the U.S., obviously it's a much more complicated system, many people move between payers as they switch jobs, as you change from, you know, commercial payers when you're younger to a government payer as you move into Medicare. And so there needs to be a mechanism worked out on how to spread that value out. And so I think that's one of the things that will need to evolve. But, you know, it's a very exciting time here in genetic medicine. There's significant opportunity and I think we're on the cusp of really seeing a robust expansion of this field and leading to many potential therapies in the years to come. Terence Flynn: That's great, Matthew. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk today. Matthew Harrison: Great speaking with you, Terrence. Terence Flynn: As a reminder, if you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts app. It helps more people to find the show.

6 Helmi 20237min

After a year of falling assets, 2023 has started strong for global markets. Chief Cross-Asset Strategist Andrew Sheets outlines which markets could sustain their momentum.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross-Asset Strategist for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about trends across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together. It's Friday, February 3rd at 2 p.m. in London. 2022 was a year where almost all assets fell. 2023 so far has been the opposite. Stocks in China, Japan, Europe and the U.S. are all off to unusually good starts. Meanwhile, U.S. long term bonds have actually risen more than the stock market. But behind this widespread strength are some rather different stories. I want to talk through these and how they inform our view of where this strength could continue, or not. One set of strength is coming out of Asia, where China's reopening from COVID has been much more aggressive than expected. This is a material change of policy in the world's second largest economy, which has persisted despite a large initial rise in case numbers. That persistence has made our analysts more confident that large amounts of consumer spending could still be unlocked. While valuations in emerging markets and China equities have risen as a result of this reopening, we think they remain reasonable, and therefore our overweight equities in China, Korea and Taiwan. The second story is Europe. China's rebound is part of the narrative here, but we think a larger driver is energy. A mild winter and abundant supplies of U.S. LNG have caused the price of natural gas in Europe to fall by more than 60% since early December, and by more than 80% since late August. This decline has specific benefits reducing inflation while simultaneously easing pressures on economic growth, a proverbial win-win. But falling energy prices also have a more general benefit. For much of the last six months, the specter of a severe energy shortage has hung over Europe, discouraging investment. With the existential threat of energy shortages easing, the region is once again attracting capital. Flows by U.S. investors into European stock ETFs, for example, is on the rise, and we think continued investment flows into the region will help boost the euro. The third story, the U.S. story, is different still. Better growth in China and Europe are part of this, but we think the bigger issue is growing confidence of a so-called soft landing, where growth slows enough to reduce inflation, but not so much to cause a recession. That soft landing scenario is the base case forecast of Morgan Stanley's economists. But on several key variables, major uncertainties remain. On the one hand, the index of economic leading indicators or measures of new manufacturing orders have been surprisingly weak. But today's U.S. labor market report was extremely strong, with the lowest unemployment rate since 1969. And while inflation has been easing, every update here will remain important, including the next reading of the Consumer Price Index on February 14th. Global markets have been almost universally strong, but the drivers are quite different. We think the stories in Asia and Europe have the best chance of persisting throughout the year, while the U.S. story remains more data dependent. Stay tuned. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to Thoughts on the Market on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review. We'd love to hear from you.

3 Helmi 20233min