Now that David Rosenberg has thrown in the towel on deflation (spending a little too much risk parity time in Westport perhaps?) and sees inflationary signs everywhere, even in a payrolls report that was decidedly bearish, if not outright made up, the roster of skeptical realists gets even smaller. Luckily, voices such as Charles Gave's still remain. In the litany below, the GaveKal partner summarizes, in the most succinct fashion we have recently seen, just where the world finds itself right about now.
From GaveKal's Charles Gave
Here we are, with:
- China, the single biggest contributor to global growth over the past decade, slowing markedly.
- World trade now flirting with recession.
- OECD industrial production in negative territory YoY.
- Southern Europe showing renewed signs of political tensions (i.e.: Portugal, Greece, Italy...) as unemployment continues its relentless march higher and tax receipts continue to collapse.
- Short-term interest rates almost everywhere around the world that are unable to go any lower.
- Valuations on most equity markets that are nowhere near distressed (except perhaps for the BRICS?).
- A World MSCI that has now just dipped below its six month moving average.
- A diffusion index of global equity markets that is flashing dark amber.
- Margins in the US at record highs and likely to come under pressure, if only because of the rising dollar (most of the US margin expansion of the past decade has occurred thanks to foreign earnings—earnings that may now be challenging to sustain in the face of a weaker global trade growth and a stronger dollar).
Lackluster growth? Falling margins (outside of Japan)? Rising real rates? Unappealing valuations (outside of the BRICS)?... Perhaps these make up the wall of worry that global equities will climb successfully. After all, if the British and Irish Lions can win a rugby series in the Southern hemisphere, while a Scotsman wins Wimbledon, then nothing is impossible. Though perhaps the simpler explanation to the above growing list of bad omens was formulated by Claudius who said that “when sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions”.