World stocks, as measured by the MSCI, are down more than 7% since January, leaving many investors wondering where growth will come in the next six months.
2009 saw a gain of 32% for markets, in reality it was from mid-March that the rebound happened.
The weekend’s meeting of the Group of 20 biggest economies won’t have any impact on market sentiment, except to confirm that the unity seen a year ago and there’s a great deal more divergence on policy.
They agreed to disagree on the pace of fiscal consolidation and maintaining economic stimulus.
Austerity is the new ‘black’ for Europe, while in America, it’s all about trying to keep a sluggish economy on course and eating into the horrid unemployment overhang.
Compared with 2009, this year has been a very a different story since the peaks in April.
Markets have had losses, large and small: gold is up, as is the US dollar, US bond yields are down sharply (as are bonds in every major economy).
Commodity currencies like the Australian and NZ dollars have fallen.
Since April, investors have had to deal with the eurozone debt crisis and growing weakness in the US economy (see separate story) as well as starting to understand the changes coming in America and Europe to banking and financial regulations.
Despite the fears of American bears, China’s economy hasn’t imploded and there are signs the country’s economy and property sector are cooling without too much strain.
US bond yields are lower; the 10 year yield hit 3.11% on Friday on growing worries that America will see price deflation in coming months as the economy slows more sharply than forecast.
Inflation is dead, despite the continuing paranoia of gold bugs and funny money economists and analysts, mostly in the US.
Bonds have outperformed the market (see separate story) so far this year in the US and if deflation starts appearing, expect the 10 year yield to dip under 3%.
Another factor to keep an eye on is BP’s struggle to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
It’s hurting not only the oil giant and its shareholders, but the energy sector as a whole and the Obama Administration and could damage the US economy’s fragile growth path.
European industrial production (mostly Germany) remains solid, but not spectacular; unemployment is a continuing blight in the US, Japan and Europe, but China’s small freeing up of the Yuan will help relive tensions with the US.
Now attention in the US will turn to the second-quarter earnings season, which starts late next week, and then the Australian June year and interim results will start at the end of July.
According to Thomson Reuters, US analysts see the 500 companies in the Standard & Poor’s Index lifting quarterly earnings by 26.8% in the second quarter, with growth in most sectors. (What about home building and construction?)
The focus would be on banks and other financials, especially in the eurozone, given the impact on banks from the May surge in risk aversion, and new, higher taxes in the UK (the bonus tax) and coming tax imposts (in the US, eurozone and also in the UK, again).
Write-downs and losses on sovereign debt from Greece, Spain and Portugal could be a sleeper for bank results for the second quarter.
Goldman Sachs and BP’s results will be watched in particular for the cost of the SEC investigation and other problems in the case of the former, and the mounting cost ($US2.35 billion as of late last week) for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
There are a couple of other signals investors should be open to: the Baltic Dry Index, which measures the cost of ship chartering, especially for iron ore and coal for the steel industry, hit its lowest level since October last Thursday and may be telling us to expect a downturn in Chinese and Japanese steel production and demand (bad for the likes of BHP Billiton and Rio) and the Economic Cycle Research Institute’s weekly leading index which hit a new 45-week low last Friday of minus 6.9%.
Markets are also bracing themselves for Wednesday for the impact of the changes wrought from the downgrading of Greek sovereign debt and then the July 1 deadline when European banks have to pay back 442 billion euros worth of one-year loans borrowed from the European Central Bank last year.
That could be smoothed by switching to the new three month facility that is in place.
So a busy few weeks for investors to contemplate the impact of a rough quarter, mixed financial year, and a very clouded outlook for the third and fourth quarters, especially with many economies slowing.
