2026 Midterm Elections: What’s at Stake for Markets

Investing is all about choices, so what should investors know when choosing between holding a financial asset or cash?----- 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, January 27th at 2 p.m. in London. Investing is about choices. In any market at any moment, an investor always has the option to hold a financial asset, like stocks or bonds, or hold cash. For much of the last decade, cash yielded next to nothing, or less than nothing if you were in the Eurozone. But cash rates have now risen substantially. 12-month Treasury bills now yield about 2.5% more than the S&P 500. When an asset yields less than what investors earn in cash, we say it has negative carry. For the S&P 500 that carry is now the worst since August of 2007. But this isn't only an equity story. A U.S. 30 year Treasury bond yields about 3.7%, much less than that 12 month Treasury bill at about 4.5%. Buying either U.S. stocks or bonds at current levels is asking investors to accept a historically low yield relative to short term cash. Just how low? For a 60/40 portfolio of the S&P 500 and 30 year Treasury bonds the yield, relative to those T-bills, is the lowest since January of 2001. To state the obvious low yields relative to what you can earn in cash isn't great for the story for either stocks or bonds. But we think bonds at least get an additional price boost if growth and inflation slow in line with our forecasts. It also suggests one may need to be more careful about picking one's spots within Treasury maturities. For example, we think 7 year treasuries look more appealing than the 30 year version. For stocks, we think carry is one of several factors that will support the outperformance of international over U.S. equities. Many non-U.S. stock markets still offer dividend yields much higher than the local cash rate, including indices in Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia. This sort of positive carry has historically been a supportive factor for equity performance, and we think that applies again today. Investing is always about choices. For investors, rising yields on cash are raising the bar for what stocks and bonds need to deliver. 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.

27 Jan 20232min

European equities have been outperforming U.S. stocks. What’s driving the rally, and will it continue?----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Graham Sacker, Head of Morgan Stanley's European Equity Strategy Team. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the recent outperformance of European equities and whether this could be the start of a longer upturn. It's Thursday, January the 26th at 4 p.m. in London. After a tricky period through last summer, the fourth quarter of 2022 saw European equities enjoy their best period of outperformance over U.S. stocks in over 30 years. Such was the size of this rally that MSCI Europe ended last year as the best performing region globally in dollar terms for the first time since 2000. In addition, the relative performance of Europe versus U.S. stocks has recently broken above its hundred week moving average for the first time since the global financial crisis. We do not think this latter event necessarily signals the start of a multi-year period of European outperformance going forward, however we do think it marks the end of Europe's structural underperformance that started in 2008. When we analyze the drivers behind Europe's recent rally, we can identify four main catalysts. Firstly, the economic news flow is holding up better in Europe than the U.S., with traditional leading indicators such as the purchasing managers surveys stabilizing in Europe over the last few months, but they continue to deteriorate in the U.S. Secondly, European gas prices continue to fall. After hitting nearly $300 last August, the price of gas is now down into the $60's and our commodity strategist Martin Rats, forecasts it falling further to around $20 later this year. Thirdly, Europe is more geared to China than the U.S., both economically and also in terms of corporate profits. For example, we calculate that European companies generate around 8% of their sales from China, versus just 4% for U.S. corporates. And then lastly, companies in Europe have enjoyed better earnings revisions trends than their peers in the U.S., and that does tend to correlate quite nicely with relative price performance too. The one factor that has not contributed to Europe's outperformance is fund flows, with EPFR data suggesting that European mutual fund and ETF flows were negative for each of the last 46 weeks of 2022. A consistency and duration of outflows we haven't seen in 20 years, a period that includes both the global financial crisis and the eurozone sovereign debt crisis. While the pace of recent European equity outperformance versus the U.S. is now tactically looking a bit stretched, improving investor sentiment towards China and still low investor positioning to Europe should continue to provide support. In addition, European equities remain very inexpensive versus their U.S. peers across a wide variety of metrics. For example, Europe trades at a 29% discount to the U.S. on a next 12 month price to earnings ratio of less than 13 versus over 17 for the S&P. European company attitudes to buybacks have also started to change over the last few years, such that we saw a record $220 billion of net buyback activity in 2022, nearly double the previous high from 2019. At 1.7%. Europe's net buyback yield does still remain below the U.S. at around 2.6%. However, when we combine dividends and net buybacks together, we find that Europe now offers a higher total yield than the U.S. for the first time in over 30 years. For those investors who are looking to add more Europe exposure to their portfolios, first we are positive on luxury goods and semis. Two sectors in Europe that should be beneficiaries of improving sentiment towards China, and our U.S. strategists forecast that U.S. Treasury yields are likely to move down towards 3%. A move lower in yields should favor the longer duration growth stocks, of which luxury and semis are two high profile ones in Europe. Secondly, we continue to like European banks, given a backdrop of attractive valuations, high cash returns and superior earnings revisions. Third, we prefer smaller mid-caps over large caps given that the former traditionally outperform post a peak in inflation and in periods of euro currency strength. Our FX strategists expect euro dollar to rise further to 115 later this year. The bottom line for us is that we think there is a good chance that the recent outperformance of Europe versus U.S. equities can continue as we move through the first half of 2023. Thanks for listening. 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.

26 Jan 20234min

Last week, the U.S. Treasury hit the debt ceiling. How will markets respond as Congress decides how to move forward? Chief Cross-Asset Strategist Andrew Sheets and Head of Global Thematic and Public Policy Research Michael Zezas discuss.----- Transcript -----Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Morgan Stanley's Chief Cross-Asset Strategist. Michael Zezas: And I'm Michael Zezas, Head of Global Thematic and Public Policy Research. Andrew Sheets: And on this special episode of the podcast, we'll be discussing the U.S. debt ceiling. It's Wednesday, January 25th at 2 p.m. in London. Michael Zezas: And 9 a.m. in New York. Andrew Sheets: Mike, it's great to be here with you. I'm sure many listeners are familiar with the U.S. debt ceiling, but it's still probably worthwhile to spend 30 seconds on what it is and what hitting the debt ceiling really means. Michael Zezas: Well, in short, it means the government hit its legal limit, as set by Congress, to issue Treasury bonds. And when that happens, it can't access the cash it needs to make the payments it's mandated to make by Congress through appropriations. Hitting this limit isn't about the U.S. being unable to market its bonds, it's about Congress telling Treasury it can't do that until Congress authorizes it to have more bonds outstanding. Now, we hit the debt ceiling last week, but Treasury can buy time using cash management measures to avoid running out of money. And so what investors need to pay attention to is what's called the X date. So that's when there's actually not enough cash left on hand or coming in to pay all the obligations of the government. At that point, Treasury may need to prioritize some payments over others. That X date, it's a moving target and right now the estimates are that it will occur sometime this summer. Andrew Sheets: So I often see the debt ceiling and government shutdowns both used as reference points by investors, but the debt ceiling and government shutdowns are actually quite different things, right?Michael Zezas: That's right. So take a step back, the easiest way to think about it is this: Congress makes separate laws dictating how much revenue the government can collect, so taxes, how much money the government has to spend, and then how much debt it's allowed to incur. So within that dynamic, a debt ceiling problem is effectively a financing problem created by Congress. This problem eventually occurs if Congress' approve spending in excess of the tax revenue it's also approved, that makes a deficit. If, in that case, if Congress hasn't also approved a high enough level of debt to allow Treasury to meet its legal obligation to make sure Congress's approved spending gets done. And if then you also pass the X date, you're unable to fund the full operations of the government, potentially including principal and interest on Treasury bonds. But alternately a government shutdown, that's a problem if Congress doesn't authorize new spending. So if Congress says the government's authorized to spend X amount of dollars until a certain date, after that date, the government can't legally spend any more money with the exception of certain mandated items like principal and interest and entitlement programs. So in that case, the government shuts down until Congress can agree on a new spending plan.Andrew Sheets: So, Mike, let's bring this forward to where we are today in the current setup. How would you currently summarize the view of each camp when it comes to the debt ceiling? Michael Zezas: Well, Republicans say they won't raise the debt ceiling unless it comes with future spending cuts to reduce the budget deficit. Democrats say they just want a clean, no strings attached hike to the debt ceiling because the debate about how much money to spend is supposed to happen when Congress passes its budget, not afterwards, using the government's creditworthiness as a bargaining chip. But these positions aren't new. What's new here are two factors that we think means investors need to take the debt ceiling risk more seriously than at any point since the original debt ceiling crisis back in 2011. The first factor is that like in 2011, the debt ceiling negotiation is happening at a time when the U.S .economy is already flirting with recession. So any debt ceiling resolution that ends with reduced government spending could, at least in the near-term, cause some market concern that GDP growth could go negative. The second factor is the political dynamic, which is trickier than at any point since 2011. So Democrats control the White House and Senate, where Republicans have a slim majority in the House. And House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, he's in a tenuous position. So per the rules he agreed to with his caucus, any one member can call for a vote of no confidence to try and remove him from the speakership. And public reports are that he promised he wouldn't allow the debt ceiling to be raised without spending cuts. So the dynamic here is that both Republicans and Democrats are motivated to bring this negotiation to the brink. And because there's no obvious compromise, they'll have to improvise their way out. Andrew Sheets: So this idea of bringing things to the brink Mike, is I think a really nice segue to the next thing I wanted to discuss. There is a little bit of a catch 22 here where markets currently seem relatively relaxed about this risk. But the more relaxed markets are when it comes to the debt ceiling, the less urgency there might be to act, because one of the reasons to act is this risk that a default for the world's largest borrower would be a major financial disruption. So it's almost as if things might need to get worse in order to catalyze a resolution for things to get better. Michael Zezas: Yeah, I think that's right. And as you recall, that's pretty much what happened in 2011. The debt ceiling was a major story in May and June with extraordinary measures set to run out in early August. But markets remained near their highs until late July on continued hope that lawmakers would work something out. And this dynamic has been repeated around subsequent debt ceiling crisis over the last 11 or 12 years, and markets have almost become conditioned to sort of ignore this dynamic until it gets really close to being a problem. Andrew Sheets: And that's a great point, because I do think it's worth going back to 2011, as you mentioned, you know, there you had a situation by which you needed Congress and the White House to act by early August. And then it was only then, at kind of the last moment, that things got volatile in a hurry. You know, over the course of two weeks, starting in late July of 2011, the U.S. stock market dropped 17% and U.S. bond yields fell almost 1%. Michael Zezas: Right. And the fact that government bond yields fell, which meant government bond prices went up as the odds of default went up, it's a bit counterintuitive, right? Andrew Sheets: Yes. I think one would be forgiven for thinking that's an unusual result, given that the issue in question was a potential default by the issuer of those bonds, the U.S. government. But, you know, I actually think what the market was thinking was that the near-term nonpayment risk would be relatively short lived, that maybe there would be a near-term disruption, but Congress and the government would eventually reach a conclusion, especially as market volatility increased. But that the economic impact of that would be longer lasting, would lead to weaker growth over the long term, which generally supports lower bond yields. So, you know, I think that's something that's worth keeping in mind when thinking about the debt ceiling and what it means for portfolios. The most recent major example of the debt ceiling causing disruption was equities lower, but bond prices higher. Michael Zezas: So, Andrew, then, given that dynamic, is there really anything investors can do right now other than watch and wait and be prepared to see how this plays out? Andrew Sheets: Well, I do think 2011 carries some important lessons to it. One, it does say that the debt ceiling is an important issue. It really mattered for markets. It caused really large moves lower in stocks, in large moves higher in bond prices. But it also was one where the market didn't really have that reaction until almost the last minute, almost up until a couple of weeks before that final possible deadline. So I think that suggests that this is an important issue to keep an eye on. I think it suggests that if one is trying to invest over the very short term, other issues are very likely to overwhelm it. But I also think this generally is one more reason why we're approaching 2023, relatively cautious on U.S. assets. And we generally expect Bonds to do well now. Now, the debt ceiling is not the primary reason for that, but we do think that bonds are going to benefit from an environment of continued volatility and also slower growth over the course of this year. On a narrower level, this is an event that could cause disruption depending on what the maturity of the government bond in question is. And I think we've seen in prior instances where there's been some question over delays or payment, that delay matters a lot more for a 3 month bond that is expecting to get that money back quite quickly than a 10 year or a 30 year bond that is much more of an expression of where the market thinks interest rates will be over a longer period of time. So, again, you know, I think if we look back to 2011, 2011 turned out to be quite good for long term bonds of a lot of different stripes, but it certainly could pertain to some more disruption at the very front end of the bond market if that's where you happen to be to be investing. Andrew Sheets: Mike, thanks for taking the time to talk. Michael Zezas: Andrew, thanks so much for talking. Andrew Sheets: 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.

25 Jan 20239min

As economic pressures continue to drive consumption in the U.S., how will the health of the economy influence the soft lines industry? Head of Retail and Consumer Credit for Fixed Income Research Jenna Giannelli and U.S. Soft Lines Retail Equity Analyst Alex Straton discuss----- Transcript -----Jenna Giannelli: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Jenna Giannelli, Head of Retail and Consumer Credit within Morgan Stanley's Fixed Income Research. Alex Straton: And I'm Alex Straton, Morgan Stanley's U.S. Soft Lines Retail Equity Analyst. Jenna Giannelli: And on this special episode of Thoughts on the Market we'll discuss soft lines from two different but complementary perspectives, equity and corporate credit. It's Tuesday, January 24th at 10 a.m. in New York. Jenna Giannelli: Our economists here at Morgan Stanley believe that tighter monetary policy and a slowing labor market will be the key drivers of consumption in the U.S. this year. Against this still uncertain backdrop where we're cautious on the health of the U.S. consumer, we're at an interesting moment to think about the soft lines industry. So let's start with the equity side. Alex, you recently said that you see 2023 as a 'tale of two halves' when it comes to soft lines. What do you mean by that and when do you see the inflection point? Alex Straton: So, Jenna, that's right, we are describing 2023 as a 'tale of two halves'. That's certainly one of the taglines we're using, the other being 'things are going to go down before they go up'. So let's start with a 'tale of two halves'. I say that because in the first half what retailers are facing are harder compares from a PNL perspective, an ongoing excess inventory overhang and likely recessionary conditions from a macro perspective. On top of that, what we've got is 2023 street EPS estimates sitting about 15% too high across our coverage. As we know, earnings revisions are the number one driver of stock prices in our space. So if we have negative revisions ahead, it's likely that we're also going to have our stocks move downwards, hence the bottom I'm calling for some time here in the first quarter, while that may seem like a pretty negative view to start the year, the story is actually very different when we move to the back half of the year. Hence, the 'tale of two halves' narrative and the 'down before up'. So what do I mean by that? In the back half, really, what we're facing is retailers with easier top line compares and returns that should enjoy year over year margin relief. That's on freight, cotton, promotions, there's a number of others there. On top of that, what we've got is inventory that should be mostly normalized. And then finally a recovering macro, I think with this improving backdrop and the fact that our stocks are the quintessential early cycle outperformers, they could quickly pivot off these bottoms and see some nice gains. Jenna Giannelli: Okay, Alex, that all makes a lot of sense. So what are the key factors that you're watching for to know when we've hit that bottom? Alex Straton: So on our end, it's really a few things. I think first it's where 2023 guidance comes in across our space. And, I think secondly, its inventory levels. Cleaner levels are essential for us to have a view on how long this margin risk we've seen in the back half of 2022 could potentially linger into this year. And then really finally, it's a few macro data points that will confirm that, you know, a recession is here, an early cycle is on the horizon. Jenna Giannelli: I mean, look, you touched on a bit just on inventory, but last year there was a lot of discussion around the inventory problem, right, which was seen as a key risk to earnings with oversupply, lagging demand weighing on margins. Where are we, in your view, on this issue now? And specifically, what is your outlook on inventory for the rest of the year? Alex Straton: So look, retailers and department stores, they made really nice progress in the third quarter. They worked levels down by about a little over ten points. But then from the preannouncements we had at ICR and using our work around our expectations for inventory normalization, it really seems like retailers might be able to bring that down by another ten points in the fourth quarter. But even though, you know, this rate of trend and clean up is good and people are getting a little bullish on that, I wouldn't say we're clean by any means. Inventory to forward sales spreads are still nearly just as wide as they were at the peak of last year. And to give people a perspective there, what a retailer wants to be to assume that inventory levels are clean is that the inventory growth should be in line with forward sales growth. But I think looking ahead, you know, department stores could be in good shape as soon as this upcoming quarter, that's a fourth quarter, so really remarkable there. It'll then probably be followed by the specialty retailers in the first quarter. And then finally it'll be most of the brands in the second quarter or later. The one exception though, is the off price. And these businesses have suffered from arguably the opposite problem in the last couple of years, which is no inventory because of all the supply chain problems and the fact that it's just become this year when inventory’s been realized as a problem. So let me turn it over to you, Jenna, and shift our focus to high yield retail. The high yield retail market is often fertile ground for finding equity-like returns, and you believe there are a number of investment opportunities today. So tell me, what's your view on the high yield retail sector and what are the key factors that are informing that view? Jenna Giannelli: So, look, we have a very nuanced and very bottoms up company specific approach to the sector, we're looking at cash flow, we're looking at liquidity, we're looking at balance sheets and all in all in the whole for 23 things look okay. And so that's our starting point. So going into 2023, we're taking a slightly more constructive approach that there are some companies in certain categories, in certain channels up in quality that actually could provide nice returns for investors. So from a valuation standpoint, you know, look, I think that the primary drivers of what frame our view are very similar to yours, Alex. It really comes down to fundamentals and valuation. From the valuations and retail credit, levels are attractive versus historical standpoints. So to give some context, the high yield market was down 11% last year, high yield retail was down 21%. And this significant underperformance is still despite the fact that the overall balance sheet health of the average credit quality right now in this sector is better than in the five years leading up to COVID. So essentially, simply put, it means you're getting paid more to invest in this sector than you would have historically, despite balance sheets being in a generally better place. You know, from a fundamental standpoint, we fully incorporate caution on the consumer in 2023. We do take a slightly more constructive view on the higher end consumer. Taking that all together, you know, valuation’s more attractive, earnings outlook is actually neutral when we look at the full 2023 with pressure in the first half and expected improvement in the second half. Alex Straton: All right, Jenna, that's a helpful backdrop for how you're thinking about the year. I think maybe taking a step back, can you walk us through what the framework is that you use as you assess these companies more broadly? Jenna Giannelli: Sure. So we use a framework that we've dubbed our five C's, and this is really our assessment of the five key factors that allow us to rank order our preference from, you know, favorite to least favorite of all the companies in our coverage universe. So when we think about it, what are those five C's? What are these most important factors? They're content, they're category, channel, catalysts, and compensation. You know, in the case of content, this is probably the most intangible, but we're looking at brand value, brand trajectory and how that company's product really speaks to the consumer. Oftentimes when I talk to investors we're discussing: does it have an identity, what is the company and who do they and what do they represent? In the category bucket we're assessing whether the business is in a category that's growing or outperforming, like beauty is one that we've been very constructive on, or if it's heavily concentrated in mid-tier apparel, which has been, you know, underperforming. In the case of channel, look, we like diversification. That's the primary driver. So those that offer their products everywhere, similar to what the consumer would want. When we're thinking about catalysts for a company, as this is very important on the kind of the shorter term horizon, what are the events that are pending, whether with, you know, company management acquisition or restructuring related. And then of course, finally on compensation, this may be the more obvious, but are we getting paid appropriately versus the peer set? And in the context of the, you know, the risk of the company? And if you don't rank highly, at least in most or all of those boxes, we're probably not going to have a favorable outlook on the company. Alex Straton: Now, maybe using these five C's and applying them across your space, what are the biggest opportunities that you're seeing? Jenna Giannelli: So we definitely are more constructive on the categories, like a beauty or in casual footwear, right? Companies that fall in that arena. Or again, that have exposure to more luxury, luxury as a category. Look, there's been a lot of debate around the high end consumer and whether we're going to see, ya know, start to see softening there. Within our recommendations, we are less constructive on those names that are heavily apparel focused. Activewear is actually a negative, because we're lapping such really significant comps versus, you know, strength in COVID. And so there's still some pressure of lapping that strength. I think long term, the category still has some really nice upside and potential, but short term, we're still seeing that, you know, that pressure from the reopening and return to occasions and work and social events that keep the demand for that category a little bit lower. There are also companies that might have exposure to occasion based apparel. So that is where we would be more constructive. It's a little bit more nuanced, I'd say, than just general apparel, but where we're most negative, it's sort of in that mid-tier women's apparel where brands are particularly struggling. Alex Straton: Well, Jenna, I feel like I learned quite a bit and so thanks for taking the time to talk with me. Jenna Giannelli: Thank you, Alex. Great speaking with you. Alex Straton: As a reminder, if you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please take a moment to rate and review us on the Apple Podcasts app. It helps more people to find the show.

24 Jan 202310min

While there seemed to be a consensus that U.S. Equities will struggle through the first half of the year before finishing strong, views are now varying on the degree and timing of a potential recession.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Mike Wilson, Chief Investment Officer and Chief U.S. Equity Strategist for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the latest trends in the financial marketplace. It's Monday, January 23rd at 11am in New York. So let's get after it. Coming into this year, the number one investor concern was that everyone seemed to have the same outlook for U.S. equities - a tough first half followed by a strong finish. Views varied on the degree of the drawdown expected and magnitude of the rebound, but a majority expected a U.S. recession to begin sooner rather than later. Fast forward just a few weeks and the consensus view has shifted materially, particularly as it relates to the recession view. More specifically, while more investors are starting to entertain a soft landing for the economy, many others have pushed out the timing of a recession to the second half of the year. This change is due in part to China's reopening gaining steam and the sharp decline in European natural gas prices. While these are valid considerations for investors to modify their views, we think that price action has been the main influence. The rally this year has been led by low quality and heavily shorted stocks. It's also witnessed a strong move in cyclical stocks relative to defensive ones. This cyclical rotation in particular is convincing investors they are missing the bottom and they must reposition. Truth be told, it has been a powerful shift, but we also recognize that bear markets have a way of fooling everyone before they're done. The final stages of the bear are always the trickiest. In bear markets like last year, when just about everyone loses money, Investors lose confidence. They question their process as the price action and cross-currents in the data create a hall of mirrors. This hall of mirrors only increases the confusion. This is exactly the time one must trust their own work and ignore the noise. Suffice it to say we're not biting on this recent rally because our work in process is so convincingly bearish on earnings. Importantly, our call on earnings is not predicated on the timing of a recession or even if one occurs this year. Our work continues to show further erosion with the gap between our model and the forward estimates as wide as it's ever been. Could our model be wrong? Of course, but given its track record, we don't think it will be wrong directionally, particularly given the collection of leading series and models we published that point to a similar outcome. This is simply a matter of timing and magnitude, and we think the timing is imminent. We find the shift in investor tone helpful for our call for new lows in the S&P 500, which will finish this bear market later this quarter or early in the second quarter. Getting more specific, our forecasts are predicated on margin disappointment and the evidence in that regard is increasing. When costs are growing faster than sales, margins erode. This is very typical during any unexpected revenue slowdown. Recessions in particular lead to significant negative operating leverage for that very reason. In other words, sales fall off quickly and unexpectedly, while costs remain sticky in the short term. Inventory bloating, less productive headcount and other issues are the primary culprits. This is exactly what is happening in many industries already, and this is without a recession. It's also right in line with our forecast and the thesis that companies would regret adding costs so aggressively a year ago when sales and demand were running so far above trend. Bottom line, after a very challenging 2022, many investors are still bearish fundamentally, but are questioning whether negative fundamentals have already been priced into stocks. Our view has not changed as we expect the path and earnings in the U.S. to disappoint the consensus, expectations and current valuations. In fact, we welcome the change in sentiment positioning over the past few weeks as a necessary development for the last stage of this bear market to play out. Bear markets are like a hall of mirrors designed to confuse investors and take their money. We advise staying focused on the fundamentals and ignoring the false signals and misleading reflections. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please take a moment to rate and review us on the Apple Podcast app. It helps more people to find the show.

23 Jan 20233min

The financial landscape is filled with predictions about what comes next for markets, but how do investors use these forecasts to put a portfolio together?----- 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, January 20th at 2 p.m. in London. The financial landscape is filled with predictions about what markets will do. But how are these predictions used? Today, I want to take you through a quick journey through how Morgan Stanley research thinks about forecasting, and how those numbers can help put a portfolio together. Forecasting is difficult and as such it's always easier to be more vague when talking about the future. But when we think about market expectations, being specific is essential. That not only gives an expectation of which direction we think markets will go, but by how much and over a specific 12 month horizon. Details here can also really matter. For example, making sure you add dividends back to equity returns, adjusting bond forecasts for where the forwards are, and thinking about all asset classes in the same currency. In this case, U.S. dollars. Consistency in assumptions is another factor that is difficult but important. We try to set all of our forecasts to scenarios from our global economics team. That is more likely to produce asset class returns that are consistent with each other and to the economy we expect. With these returns in hand, we can then ask, "what's an optimal asset allocation based on our forecasts?" Now, everyone's investment objectives are different. So in this case we'll define optimal as a portfolio that will generate higher returns than a benchmark with a similar or better ratio of return to volatility. This type of analysis will consider expected return and historical risk, but also how well different asset classes diversify each other. As Morgan Stanley's forecasts currently stand this approach suggests U.S. equities are relatively unattractive. Sitting almost exactly at the year end price target of my colleague Mike Wilson, our U.S. Equity Strategist, expected returns are low, while volatility is high and U.S. stocks offer minimal benefits for diversification. Stocks in Japan and emerging markets look better by comparison. But the real winner of this approach continues to be fixed income. Morgan Stanley's rate strategists in the U.S. and Europe continue to think that moderating inflation in 2023 will help bond yields either hold around current levels, or push lower, resulting in returns that are better than equities with less volatility. Our expected returns for emerging market bonds are also higher, with less volatility than U.S. and European stocks. Forecasting the future is difficult, and it's very possible that either our market forecasts or the economic assumptions to back them will be off to some degree. Still, considering what is optimal based on these best estimates, is a useful anchor when thinking about strategy. And for the moment, this still favors bonds over stocks. 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.

20 Jan 20233min

With housing data from the last few months of 2022 coming in weaker than expected, what might be in store for mortgage investors? Co-Heads of U.S. Securitized Products Research Jim Egan and Jay Bacow discuss.----- Transcript -----Jim Egan: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Jim Egan, Co-Head of U.S. Securitized Products Research here at Morgan Stanley. Jay Bacow: And I'm Jay Bacow, the other Co-Head of U.S. Securitized Products Research. Jim Egan: And on this episode of the podcast, we'll be discussing the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. It's Thursday, January 19th at 11 a.m. in New York. Jay Bacow: So, Jim, the housing data hasn't been looking all that great recently. We've talked about this bifurcated outlook for the U.S. housing market, still holding that view? Jim Egan: So to catch people up, the bifurcated housing narrative was between housing activity. And by that we mean sales and housing starts and home prices. We thought there was going to be a lot more weakness in sales and starts at the end of 2022 and throughout 2023, then home prices, which we thought would be more protected. Since we came out with that outlook, it's safe to say that sales have been materially weaker than we thought they'd be. To put that into a little bit of context, existing home sales for the most recent month of data, which was November, showed the largest year over year decrease for that time series since the early 1980s. Pending home sales, we only have that data going back to 2001, but pending home sales just showed their weakest November in the entire history of that time series, so weaker than it was during the great financial crisis. Now, Jay, when we talk about those kind of weaker than anticipated sales volumes, what does that mean for your markets? Jay Bacow: Right. So while homeowners clearly are going to care about home prices, mortgage investors care more about the housing activity. And they care about that because that housing activity, those home sales, that results in supply to the market and it actually results in supply to the market from two different sides. There's the organic net supply from home sales. And then furthermore, because the Fed is doing QT, the faster the pace of home sales, the more the Fed balance sheet runoff is. And so as those home sales numbers come down, you get less supply to the market, which is inarguably good for mortgage investors. Now, the problem is mortgage spreads have repriced to reflect that at this point. Jim Egan: Now Jay, a lot of things have repriced. Jay Bacow: Right. And I think the question now is, is that going to keep up? But turning it over to you, what's causing this slowdown in home sales? And do we think that's going to continue? Jim Egan: I think in a word, it's affordability. A lot of the underlying premises behind our bifurcated narrative, we still see those there they're just impacting the market a little bit more than we thought they would. From an affordability perspective, and we've said this on this podcast before, the monthly mortgage payment as a percentage of household income has deteriorated more over the past year than really any year we have on record. From a numbers perspective, that payment's gone up over $700. That's a 58% increase. That's making it more difficult for first time buyers to buy homes and therefore pulling sales activity down. But where the bifurcation part of this narrative comes from, a lot of current homeowners have very low, call it maybe 3-3.5%, 30 year fixed rate mortgages. They're not incentivized to list their homes in this current environment and we're seeing that. Listing volumes are close to 40 year lows. In a month in which sales fall as sharply as they just did, we would expect months of supply at least to move higher and that roughly stayed flat. And so you have this lack of inventory, people aren't selling their homes, that means they're also not buying a home on the follow which pulls sales volumes down, leading to some of those numbers we talked about on top of just how long it's been since we've seen sales fall as sharply as they have. But on the other side of the equation, that's also keeping home prices a little bit more protected. Jay Bacow: Okay. So you mentioned affordability is impacting home sales, but then what's happening to actual home prices? Are they holding up then? Jim Egan: We think they will now. Don't hear what I'm not saying, that doesn't mean that home prices keep climbing. It just means that the pace with which they're going to slow down or the pace with which they're going to fall isn't as substantial as what we're going to see on the activity front. Now year over year HPA most recently up 9.2%. We think in the next month's print, that's going to slow to a little bit below 8% down to 7.9%. On a month over month basis from peak in June of 2022, home prices are off 3%. We think they'll fall a further 4% in 2023. But to kind of put some guardrails around that bifurcation narrative, that drop only brings us to the fourth quarter of 2021. That's 30% above where home prices were onset of the pandemic in March of 2020. On the sale side, our base case was that we were going to fall back to 2013 levels of transactions. And given how data has come in since then, it looks like we're heading lower than that. Jay Bacow: All right. So we think housing activity is going to continue to fall, but that slowdown in housing activity means that home prices, while seeing the first year on year decline since 2012, are going to be well supported. Jay Bacow [00:04:51] Jim, always a pleasure talking to you. Jim Egan: Great talking to you, too, Jay. Jay Bacow: And thank you for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on the Apple Podcasts app, and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

19 Jan 20235min

At a recent meeting of analysts from around the globe, we identified three central transitions for 2023 that may help investors shift towards a focus on long-term trends as opportunities.----- 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, January 18th at 10 a.m. in New York. What do you get when 45 global research analysts gather in a room for two days to debate secular market trends? A plan. In particular, a plan to deal with a world where key underpinnings of the global political economy are changing rapidly. For investors, we think that means concentrating on multi-year secular trends as an opportunity. In markets where short-term focus has become the norm, it stands to reason that there's less competition and more potential outperformance to be earned by analyzing the market impacts of longer-term trends. That's why we recently gathered analysts from around the globe to identify the key secular themes that Morgan Stanley research should focus on this year. The agenda for our meeting included over 30 topics, but the discussion gravitated around a smaller subset of themes whose potential market impact was substantial, but perhaps beyond what analysts could plausibly perceive or analyze individually. Understanding these three global transitions appeared central to the questions of inflation, interest rates and the structure of markets themselves. The first is rewiring global commerce for a multipolar world, one with more than one meaningful power base and commercial standard, where companies and countries can no longer seek efficiencies through global supply chains and market access without factoring in geopolitical risks. We've spoken much about that in this space, but our analysts believe the practical implications of this trend are not yet well understood. The second is decarbonization. While this isn't a new theme, we think investors need to shift from debating whether it will be meaningfully attempted to sizing up the impact of that attempt. After all, 2022 saw both U.S. and European policymakers putting the power of government behind decarbonization. Now we'll focus on helping investors grapple with both the positive and negative market impacts of this transition, which the International Energy Agency estimates could cost about $70 trillion over the next 30 years. Identifying the companies, sectors and macro markets that will benefit, or face fresh challenges, is thus essential work. Finally, we'll remain focused on tech diffusion. Once again, not a new theme, but what is new is the speed and breadth with which tech diffusion can impact sectors that were previously untouched. Fragmented industries or those with high regulatory barriers look poised for a multi-year transition via tech diffusion. Opportunities may appear in finance, health care and biopharma. We expect the next five years of tech diffusion to move meaningfully faster than the last five, and so we'll focus on delivering important market related insights. So, you'll be hearing more from us over the course of 2023 on these three transitions and their impacts on markets. 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.

18 Jan 20233min