Asset Allocation

Highlights All of our recent investment recommendations have performed very strongly but have further to go: 1.   Own a combination of European banks plus U.S. T-bonds. 2.   Overweight EM versus DM. 3.   Overweight European versus U.S. equities. 4.   Overweight Italian assets versus European assets. 5.   Overweight the JPY. Feature Chart of the WeekBank Outperformance Corroborates A Growth Rebound Bank Outperformance Corroborates A Growth Rebound Bank Outperformance Corroborates A Growth Rebound 2019 will be the investment mirror-image of 2018. Last year started with growth fading and inflation on the cusp of picking up, both in Europe and around the world. This year has started with the European and global economies in the mirror-image configuration: growth likely to rebound, albeit modestly, and inflation set to fade (Chart I-2). Chart I-2Why 2019 Is The Mirror-Image Of 2018 Why 2019 Is The Mirror-Image Of 2018 Why 2019 Is The Mirror-Image Of 2018 However, as 2019 unfolds, the configuration will reverse, requiring a flip from a pro-cyclical to a pro-defensive investment tilt later in the year. This contrasts with 2018 which started pro-defensive and ended pro-cyclical. In this regard, the economic and investment shape of 2019 will be the mirror-image of 2018. Growth To Rebound, Inflation To Fade A tell-tale sign of a growth rebound is the recent outperformance of banks. Around the world, yield curves have flattened – or even inverted – meaning that banks’ net interest margins have compressed. This compression of bank profit margins is normally bad news for bank equities. Yet banks have been outperforming, not just in Europe but globally (Chart I-3). If margins are compressing, the plausible explanation for outperformance would be an improved outlook for asset growth, reflecting both a reduction in bad debt provisioning and a pick-up in bank credit growth. Chart I-3Banks Have Been Outperforming Since October Banks Have Been Outperforming Since October Banks Have Been Outperforming Since October Independently and reassuringly, our proprietary credit impulse analysis supports this thesis (Chart of the Week). Six-month credit impulses have been rebounding not only in Europe, but also in the United States and very impressively in China (Chart I-4).   Chart I-46-Month Credit Impulses Have Rebounded Everywhere 6-Month Credit Impulses Have Rebounded Everywhere 6-Month Credit Impulses Have Rebounded Everywhere At the same time, inflation is set to disappoint as the recent near-halving of the crude oil price feeds into both headline and core consumer price indexes. With central banks now promising even greater “dependence on the incoming data”, this unfolding dynamic will force them to temper any hawkish intentions and rhetoric, limiting the extent of upside in bond yields. In this configuration, the combination of European banks plus U.S. T-bonds which we first recommended in November is still appropriate (Chart I-5). The position is up 3 percent in little more than a month and has further to go.1 Chart I-5Own A Combination Of Banks And Bonds Own A Combination Of Banks And Bonds Own A Combination Of Banks And Bonds Europe’s largest economy, Germany, should benefit from another support to growth. Last year, the auto sector – a major engine of the German economy – spluttered as it absorbed the new WLTP emissions testing standard. Through the middle of 2018 German motor vehicle exports suffered a €20 billion hit which shaved 0.6 percent from Germany’s €3.4 trillion economy (Chart I-6). Now, if auto exports stabilize, this drag will disappear. And if auto exports recover to the pre-WLTP level after this one-off and temporary shock, Germany will receive a 0.6% mirror-image boost to growth.2 Chart I-6German Auto Exports Suffered A WLTP Hit German Auto Exports Suffered A WLTP Hit German Auto Exports Suffered A WLTP Hit Regional Allocation Is Always And Everywhere About Sectors The European equity earnings cycle is tightly connected with global growth oscillations (Chart I-7). The simple reason is that the European equity market is over-exposed to classically growth-sensitive sectors such as banks and industrials. Chart I-7The European EPS Cycle Is Tightly Connected With Global Growth Oscillations The European EPS Cycle Is Tightly Connected With Global Growth Oscillations The European EPS Cycle Is Tightly Connected With Global Growth Oscillations The emerging market earnings cycle is also connected with global growth oscillations (Chart I-8) because emerging markets have a very high exposure to banks. But the much less understood reason is that emerging markets have a near-zero exposure to healthcare (Table I-1). In sharp contrast, the U.S. equity earnings cycle has almost no connection with global growth oscillations (Chart I-9) because the U.S. equity market is over-exposed to technology and healthcare, neither of which are classically cyclical sectors. Chart I-8The EM EPS Cycle Is Also Connected With Global Growth Oscillations... The EM EPS Cycle Is Also Connected With Global Growth Oscillations... The EM EPS Cycle Is Also Connected With Global Growth Oscillations... Chart I-9...But The U.S. EPS Cycle Is Not Connected With Global Growth Oscillations ...But The U.S. EPS Cycle Is Not Connected With Global Growth Oscillations ...But The U.S. EPS Cycle Is Not Connected With Global Growth Oscillations Chart I- Hence the allocation to emerging market (EM) versus developed market (DM) equities, and to Europe versus the U.S. reduce to simple equity sector calls. A quick glance at Chart I-10 and Chart I-11 will reveal two fundamental and inescapable truths: Chart I-10EM Outperforms DM When Global Banks Outperform Healthcare EM Outperforms DM When Global Banks Outperform Healthcare EM Outperforms DM When Global Banks Outperform Healthcare Chart I-11European Equities Outperform U.S. Equities When Global Banks Outperform Technology 11. European Equities Outperform U.S. Equities When Global Banks Outperform Technology 11. European Equities Outperform U.S. Equities When Global Banks Outperform Technology EM outperforms DM when global banks outperform global healthcare. European equities outperform U.S. equities when global banks outperform global technology. But is this just about so-called ‘beta’? No, banks can outperform in a rising market by going up more or, as recently, in a falling market by going down less. So this is always and everywhere about head-to-head sector relative performances. My colleague Arthur Budaghyan, our chief emerging market strategist, remains steadfastly pessimistic on the structural outlook for EM versus DM. We agree with Arthur, albeit we arrive at the structural conclusion from a completely different perspective. To reiterate, for EM to outperform DM global banks must outperform global healthcare. However, over an extended period this will prove to be an extremely tall order. As detailed in European Banks: The Case For And Against, blockchain is a long-term extinction threat to banks’ business models and profitability. Whereas healthcare is still a major growth sector as people focus more spending on improving the quality and quantity of their lifespans.3  Nevertheless, from a purely tactical perspective, the growth up-oscillation phase that started in October can continue for a little while longer allowing the recent countertrend moves to persist – especially as the recent decline in bond yields could further spur credit growth in the near term. So for the moment stay overweight: EM versus DM. European equities versus U.S. equities. Italian assets versus European assets. Bargain Basement Currencies Another of my colleagues Doug Peta, our chief U.S. strategist, has coined a lovely metaphor: “you cannot get hurt falling out of a basement window”. The metaphor beautifully captures the asymmetry when you are near the floor or ‘zero-bound’. Doug uses it to explain that small contributors to an economy have a limited capacity to damage economic growth because they cannot fall very far. We think the metaphor applies equally to interest rates when they are at or near their lower bound, which is to say, in the basement. This begs the obvious question: if interest rates are in the basement, then what is it that cannot get hurt much? The answer is: the exchange rate. The payoff profile for exchange rates just tracks expected long-term interest rate differentials. This means that when the expected interest rate is in or near the basement, the currency possesses a highly attractive payoff profile called positive skew. In essence, for any central bank already at the realistic limit of ultra-loose policy – such as the BoJ and ECB – policy rate expectations are effectively in the basement. They cannot go significantly lower. In contrast, policy rate expectations for the Federal Reserve are somewhere between the seventh and twelfth storey of the building (Chart I-12). From which you can get seriously hurt if you fall out of the window! Chart I-12You Cannot Get Hurt Falling Out Of A Basement Window You Cannot Get Hurt Falling Out Of A Basement Window You Cannot Get Hurt Falling Out Of A Basement Window The upshot is that currency investors should always own at least one currency whose interest rate is in the basement against one whose interest rate is high up in the building, susceptible to fall out at some point, and get seriously hurt. The near term complication is the risk, albeit low, of a no-deal Brexit which would hurt European economies and currencies to a greater or lesser extent. Until the Brexit fog shows some signs of clearing, we would prefer the currency whose interest rate is in the basement to be a non-European currency. So for the moment, our favourite major currency remains the JPY. Dhaval Joshi, Senior Vice President Chief European Investment Strategist dhaval@bcaresearch.com Fractal Trading System* We are pleased to report that the 50:50 combination of Litecoin and Ethereum has surged by 42 percent in just two weeks! Also, long EUR/NZD achieved its 2.5 percent profit target and is now closed. This week’s trade is in line with the recommendation in the main body of this report to become pro-cyclical. Go long global industrials versus global utilities with a profit target of 3 percent and a symmetrical stop-loss. For any investment, excessive trend following and groupthink can reach a natural point of instability, at which point the established trend is highly likely to break down with or without an external catalyst. An early warning sign is the investment’s fractal dimension approaching its natural lower bound. Encouragingly, this trigger has consistently identified countertrend moves of various magnitudes across all asset classes. Chart I-13 Long Global Industrials Vs. Global Utilities Long Global Industrials Vs. Global Utilities The post-June 9, 2016 fractal trading model rules are: When the fractal dimension approaches the lower limit after an investment has been in an established trend it is a potential trigger for a liquidity-triggered trend reversal. Therefore, open a countertrend position. The profit target is a one-third reversal of the preceding 13-week move. Apply a symmetrical stop-loss. Close the position at the profit target or stop-loss. Otherwise close the position after 13 weeks. Use the position size multiple to control risk. The position size will be smaller for more risky positions.   *  For more details please see the European Investment Strategy Special Report “Fractals, Liquidity & A Trading Model,” dated December 11, 2014, available at eis.bcaresearch.com Footnotes 1 The European banks position is relative to the broader equity market, and the recommended combination is 25 cents in the banks and 75 cents in the bonds. 2 German auto net exports and GDP are quoted at annualized rates. The Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle test Procedure (WLTP) is a new standard for auto emissions that took effect on September 1, 2018. 3 Please see the European Investment Strategy Special Report “European Banks: The Case For And Against”, November 8, 2018 available at eis.bcaresearch.com. Fractal Trading System Recommendations Asset Allocation Equity Regional and Country Allocation Equity Sector Allocation Bond and Interest Rate Allocation Currency and Other Allocation Closed Fractal Trades Trades Closed Trades Asset Performance Currency & Bond Equity Sector Country Equity Indicators Bond Yields Chart II-1Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Chart II-2Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Chart II-3Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Chart II-4Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Interest Rate Chart II-5Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Chart II-6Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Chart II-7Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Chart II-8Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations

Highlights Chart 1Checklist To Buy Credit Checklist To Buy Credit Checklist To Buy Credit The sell-off in spread product continued through the holiday season, but with spreads now looking more attractive, it is time to consider increasing exposure to corporate credit. Much like in 2015/16, spread widening is being driven by the combination of weaker global growth and the perception of restrictive monetary policy. With that in mind, we are monitoring a checklist of global growth and monetary policy indicators to help us decide when to step back in.1 With the market now pricing-in rate cuts for the next 12 months, monetary policy indicators already signal a buying opportunity (Chart 1). However, before increasing spread product exposure from neutral to overweight we are waiting for a signal from our high frequency global growth indicators. The CRB Raw Industrials index has so far only flattened off (Chart 1, top panel). It started to rise prior to the early-2016 peak in credit spreads. Investors should maintain below-benchmark portfolio duration on a 6-12 month investment horizon, and a neutral allocation to spread product for now. We expect to upgrade spread product in the near future as global growth indicators stabilize. Stay tuned. Feature Investment Grade: Neutral Investment grade corporate bonds underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 106 basis points in December. The index option-adjusted spread widened 16 bps on the month to reach 153 bps. Corporate bonds underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 320 bps in 2018, making it the worst year for corporate bond performance since 2011. Recent poor performance has restored some value to the corporate bond sector. The 12-month breakeven spread for Baa-rated debt has only been wider 37% of the time since 1988 (Chart 2). As a result, we are actively looking for an opportunity to increase exposure to corporate bonds. Chart 2Investment Grade Market Overview Investment Grade Market Overview Investment Grade Market Overview To assess when to raise exposure from neutral to overweight, we are monitoring a checklist of indicators related to global growth and monetary policy.2 While current spread levels present an attractive tactical entry point, spreads may not re-tighten all the way back to their post-crisis lows. Corporate profit growth far outpaced debt growth during the past year causing our measure of gross leverage to fall (panel 4), but a stronger dollar and rising wage bill will weigh on profit growth in 2019. We expect gross corporate leverage to rise in 2019. Chart   Chart High-Yield: Neutral High-Yield underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 366 basis points in December. The average index option-adjusted spread widened 108 bps, and currently sits at 498 bps. High-Yield underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 363 bps in 2018, making it the worst year for high-yield excess returns since 2015. Our measure of the excess spread available in the High-Yield index after accounting for expected default losses is currently 394 bps, well above average historical levels (Chart 3). In other words, if corporate defaults match the Moody’s baseline forecast for the next 12 months, high-yield bonds will return 394 bps in excess of duration-matched Treasuries, assuming no change in spreads. If we factor in enough spread compression to bring the default-adjusted spread back to its historical average, then we get a 12-month expected excess return of 814 bps. Chart 3High-Yield Market Overview High-Yield Market Overview High-Yield Market Overview For a different perspective on valuation, we can also calculate the default rate necessary for High-Yield to deliver 12-month excess returns in line with the historical average. As of today, this spread-implied default rate is 4.58%, well above the 2.64% default rate anticipated by Moody’s (panel 4). Junk bond value is definitely attractive, and as stated on the front page of this report, we are looking for an opportunity to tactically upgrade the sector. That being said, the uptrend in job cut announcements makes it likely that default rate forecasts will be revised higher in 2019 (bottom panel). At present, spreads appear to offer enough of a buffer to absorb these upward revisions. MBS: Neutral Mortgage-Backed Securities underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 15 basis points in December. The conventional 30-year zero-volatility spread widened 8 bps on the month, driven by a 7 bps increase in the compensation for prepayment risk (option cost) and a 1 bp widening in the option-adjusted spread (OAS). MBS underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 59 bps in 2018. The zero-volatility spread widened 12 bps on the year, split between a 10 bps widening in the OAS and a 2 bps increase in the option cost. Lower mortgage rates during the past two months spurred a small jump in refinancings, but this increase will prove fleeting. Interest rates are poised to move higher in 2019, and higher rates will limit mortgage refi activity and keep a lid on MBS spreads (Chart 4). Chart 4MBS Market Overview MBS Market Overview MBS Market Overview All in all, with higher interest rates likely to limit refinancings, and with mortgage lending standards still easing from restrictive levels (bottom panel), the macro back-drop for MBS remains supportive. Elevated corporate bond spreads currently offer a better opportunity than those in the MBS space, but the supportive macro back-drop means that there is very low risk of significant MBS spread widening during the next 12 months. We maintain a neutral allocation to MBS for now, and will only look to upgrade the sector as the credit cycle matures and it becomes time to adopt an underweight allocation to corporate credit. For the time being, corporate bonds are the more attractive play. Government-Related: Underweight The Government-Related index underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 31 basis points in December, and by 80 bps in 2018. Sovereign debt underperformed the Treasury benchmark by 77 bps in December and by 263 bps in 2018. Sovereign spreads still appear unattractive compared to similarly-rated U.S. corporate spreads (Chart 5). Chart 5Government-Related Market Overview Government-Related Market Overview Government-Related Market Overview Foreign Agencies underperformed by 24 bps in December and by 152 bps in 2018. Local Authorities underperformed by 86 bps in December and by 75 bps in 2018. Domestic Agencies underperformed by 7 bps in December and by 6 bps in 2018. Supranationals outperformed by 3 bps in December and by 22 bps in 2018. In a recent report we looked at USD-denominated Emerging Market Sovereign debt by country and found that only a few nations offer excess spread compared to equivalently-rated U.S. corporates.3 Those countries are Argentina, Turkey, Lebanon and Ukraine at the low-end of the credit spectrum and Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE at the upper-end. We continue to view the Local Authority sector as very attractive. The sector offers similar value to Aa/A-rated corporate debt on a breakeven spread basis (bottom panel), and it is also dominated by taxable municipal securities that are insulated from weak foreign economic growth. Municipal Bonds: Overweight Municipal bonds underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 114 basis points in December, and by 17 bps in 2018 (before adjusting for the tax advantage). The average Aaa-rated Municipal / Treasury (M/T) yield ratio rose 2% in December, and currently sits at 87% (Chart 6). This is about one standard deviation below its post-crisis mean but above the average of 81% that prevailed in the late stages of the previous cycle, between mid-2006 and mid-2007. Chart 6Municipal Market Overview Municipal Market Overview Municipal Market Overview In our research into the phases of the credit cycle, we often divide the cycle based on the slope of the yield curve. Since 1983, in the middle phase of the credit cycle when the 3/10 Treasury slope is between 0 bps and +50 bps (where it stands today), investment grade corporate bonds have delivered annualized excess returns of -49 bps. In contrast, municipal bonds have delivered annualized excess returns of +45 bps before adjusting for the tax advantage.4 We attribute the pattern of mid-cycle outperformance to the fact that state & local government balance sheet health tends to lag the health of the corporate sector. At present, our Municipal Health Monitor remains in “improving health” territory, consistent with an environment where ratings upgrades will outpace downgrades (bottom panel). Meanwhile, corporations are already deep into the releveraging process. Treasury Curve: Favor The 2-Year Bullet Over The 1/5 Barbell Treasury yields fell sharply in December, but with only minor changes to the slope beyond the 2-year maturity point. The 2/10 slope was unchanged on the month and currently sits at 17 bps. The 5/30 slope steepened 5 bps on the month and currently sits at 49 bps. The biggest changes in slope occurred for maturities less than 2 years, as a result of Fed rate hikes being completely priced out of the curve (Chart 7). Our 12-month Fed Funds Discounter fell from +44 bps at the beginning of the month to -11 bps currently. Meanwhile, our 24-month discounter fell from +41 bps to -23 bps. Chart 7Treasury Yield Curve Overview Treasury Yield Curve Overview Treasury Yield Curve Overview As a result of the sharp 1/2 flattening, the 2-year note no longer appears cheap relative to the 1/5 barbell (panel 4). Alternatively, we could say that the 1/2/5 butterfly spread is now priced for 15 bps of 1/5 steepening during the next six months (bottom panel). In fact, our yield curve models now point to bullets being expensive relative to barbells for almost every butterfly spread combination (see Tables 4 and 5). This means it is currently less attractive to initiate curve steeper trades than flattener trades. Despite the relatively low yield pick-up in steepener trades, we think they still make sense at the moment given that the Treasury market is discounting an economic outlook that is far too grim. As we discussed in our Key Views report for 2019, sustainable yield curve inversion is unlikely until later in the year, after inflation expectations are re-anchored around pre-crisis levels.5 As such, we maintain our recommendation to favor the 2-year bullet over the duration-matched 1/5 barbell.  TIPS: Overweight TIPS underperformed the duration-equivalent nominal Treasury index by 196 basis points in December, and by 175 bps in 2018. The 10-year TIPS breakeven inflation rate fell 26 bps on the month and currently sits at 1.71%. The 5-year/5-year forward TIPS breakeven inflation rate also fell 26 bps on the month and currently sits at 1.91%. Long-maturity TIPS breakeven inflation rates have fallen sharply alongside the prices of oil and other commodities during the past two months, as they continue to grapple with two competing forces: Falling commodity prices on the one hand, and U.S. core inflation that continues to print close to the Fed’s target on the other. Eventually, the decisive factor in the TIPS market will be core U.S. inflation continuing to print close to the Fed’s 2% target. This will drive both the 10-year and 5-year/5-year forward TIPS breakeven inflation rates back into a range between 2.3% and 2.5%, once the headwind from weakening commodity prices has passed. This is reinforced by the fact that the 10-year TIPS breakeven inflation rate is now well below the fair value from our Adaptive Expectations Model (Chart 8).6 This model is based on a combination of long-run and short-run inflation measures and is premised on the idea that investors’ expectations take time to adjust to changing macro environments. In other words, the market will need to see core inflation print close to the Fed’s target for some time before deciding that it will remain there on a sustained basis. Chart 8Inflation Compensation Inflation Compensation Inflation Compensation ABS: Neutral Asset-Backed Securities underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 8 basis points in December, but outperformed by 13 bps in 2018. The index option-adjusted spread for Aaa-rated ABS widened by 6 bps on the month and now stands at 48 bps, 14 bps above its pre-crisis low. The excess return Bond Map on page 15 shows that consumer ABS offer greater expected returns than Domestic Agencies and Supranationals, though with a commensurate increase in risk. The Map also shows that Agency CMBS offer very similar return potential with much less risk. The New York Fed’s most recent SCE Credit Access Survey showed a decline in consumer credit applications during the past year, as well as an increase in rejection rates. This is consistent with the observed uptrends in household interest expense and the consumer credit delinquency rate (Chart 9). Chart 9ABS Market Overview ABS Market Overview ABS Market Overview Going forward, consumer credit delinquencies will continue to rise from very low levels, but are unlikely to spike without a significant deterioration in labor market conditions. As such, we maintain a neutral allocation to consumer ABS for now, but our next move will likely be a reduction to underweight as consumer credit delinquencies rise further. Non-Agency CMBS: Underweight Non-Agency Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 62 basis points in December, but outperformed by 20 bps in 2018. The index option-adjusted spread for non-agency Aaa-rated CMBS widened 14 bps on the month and currently sits at 92 bps (Chart 10). A typical negative environment for CMBS is characterized by tightening bank lending standards on commercial real estate loans as well as falling demand. The Fed’s Q3 Senior Loan Officer Survey showed that lending standards were close to unchanged and that demand deteriorated. All in all, a slightly negative macro picture for CMBS that will bear close monitoring in the coming quarters. Agency CMBS: Overweight Agency CMBS underperformed the duration-equivalent Treasury index by 15 bps in December, and by 2 bps in 2018. The index option-adjusted spread widened 4 bps on the month and currently sits at 60 bps. The Bond Maps on page 15 show that Agency CMBS offer high potential return compared to other low-risk spread products. An overweight allocation to this sector continues to make sense. Chart 10CMBS Market Overview CMBS Market Overview CMBS Market Overview The BCA Bond Maps The following page presents excess return and total return Bond Maps that we use to assess the relative risk/reward trade-off between different sectors of the U.S. fixed income market. The Maps employ volatility-adjusted breakeven spread/yield analysis to show how likely it is that a given sector will earn/lose money during the subsequent 12 months. The Maps do not impose any macroeconomic view. The Excess Return Bond Map The horizontal axis of the excess return Bond Map shows the number of days of average spread widening required for each sector to lose 100 bps versus a position in duration-matched Treasuries. Sectors plotting further to the left require more days of average spread widening and are therefore less likely to see losses. The vertical axis shows the number of days of average spread tightening required for each sector to earn 100 bps in excess of duration-matched Treasuries. Sectors plotting further toward the top require fewer days of spread tightening and are therefore more likely to earn 100 bps in excess of Treasuries. The Total Return Bond Map The horizontal axis of the total return Bond Map shows the number of days of average yield increase required for each sector to lose 5% in total return terms. Sectors plotting further to the left require more days of yield increases and are therefore less likely to lose 5%. The vertical axis shows the number of days of average yield decline required for each sector to earn 5% in total return terms. Sectors plotting further toward the top require fewer days of yield decline and are therefore more likely to earn 5%. Chart 11   Chart 12   Table 4Butterfly Strategy Valuation (As Of January 4, 2019) Get Ready To Buy Credit Get Ready To Buy Credit   Table 5Discounted Slope Change During Next 6 Months (BPs) Get Ready To Buy Credit Get Ready To Buy Credit   Ryan Swift, Vice President U.S. Bond Strategy rswift@bcaresearch.com Jeremie Peloso, Research Analyst JeremieP@bcaresearch.com Footnotes 1 Please see Charts 2A and 2B in U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, “The Fed In 2019”, dated December 18, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 2 For the full checklist please see Charts 2A and 2B from the U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, “The Fed In 2019”, dated December 18, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 3 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, “Oil Supply Shock Is A Risk For Junk”, dated October 9, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 4 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Special Report, “2019 Key Views: Implications For U.S. Fixed Income”, dated December 11, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 5 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Special Report, “2019 Key Views: Implications For U.S. Fixed Income”, dated December 11, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com 6 Please see U.S. Bond Strategy Weekly Report, “Adaptive Expectations In The TIPS Market”, dated November 20, 2018, available at usbs.bcaresearch.com Fixed Income Sector Performance Recommended Portfolio Specification Corporate Sector Relative Valuation And Recommended Allocation Total Return Comparison: 7-Year Bullet Versus 2-20 Barbell (6-Month Investment Horizon)

Highlights Risk assets have had a rough go of it since we last published on December 17th: Equities have been through the wringer, spreads have widened sharply, and the 10-year Treasury yield has tumbled to an 11-month low. We don’t put much stock in the talk that the Fed is about to go too far, … : We still judge that the fed funds rate is comfortably shy of its equilibrium level. The economy will decelerate this year, but fiscal stimulus will keep it growing above trend. … and even if market-unfriendly policies merit a lower equity multiple, … : A bull market in Washington uncertainty is a recipe for a lower multiple, and there are no signs that policy uncertainty will ebb any time soon. … we think the time has come to put our cash overweight to work: Equities priced in a lot of bad news when the forward multiple fell below 14. If earnings hold up like we think they will, a recovery to the mid-15s would deliver a double-digit gain, and that merits an equity overweight relative to cash and bonds. Feature Thanks to Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve falling on Mondays, we haven’t published since December 17th. A lot has happened in those three weeks, starting with the FOMC’s final 2018 meeting. As we’ve gathered our bearings and tried to set a course forward through the volatility, we’ve asked ourselves several questions about markets, policy and the economy. This week’s report reviews those questions, including the ones the clients we met three weeks ago might want to ask now. Is the expansion coming to an end? Not just yet; we still think it has at least a year to run. Following several uninspiring releases, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow forecast of real final domestic demand has slipped to 3.3% from 3.8%, but it’s still 3.3%. That may seem too good to be true this late in the cycle, but that’s what 100 basis points of fiscal stimulus can do when injected into an economy already operating at full capacity. The IMF estimates there’s still another 40 basis points of stimulus coming in 2019, and we expect that that infusion will be enough to stave off the next recession until 2020 or beyond. Is the Fed about to make a policy mistake? We do not think so. Although the neutral, or equilibrium, policy rate is only observable after the fact, research from the head of the New York Fed holds that the FOMC is not on the verge of breaching the neutral threshold. The widely-followed Laubach-Williams model estimates that the real neutral rate is between 0.75 and 0.875%, or 2.75-2.875% in nominal terms.1 Our internal equilibrium fed funds rate model sees even more breathing room – it estimates that the (nominal) equilibrium rate is around 3%, and that it will rise to around 3⅜% by the end of the year. U.S. equities have been hypersensitive to perceived inflection points in monetary policy throughout the sell-off, which began roughly after Jay Powell said in an October 3rd interview that interest rates were “a long way from neutral.” Interestingly, though, the money market’s expectations never really budged. At the time of the Powell interview, it was pricing in a December hike to 2.50%, and a 40% chance of one more hike to 2.75%. It would take the probability of a 2.75% terminal rate up to 80% in early November, but it was again calling for a 40% chance of 2.75% when we were on the road during the two-day December meeting. It now puts the odds of an additional hike at just 4%, and says the Fed will have cut rates once by the middle of next year (Chart 1). Chart 1According To The Money Market, The Fed's Done According To The Money Market, The Fed's Done According To The Money Market, The Fed's Done We do not know what is behind the money market’s obstinacy, but we see an economy that has far more accommodation than it needs. While we think it’s inevitable that the Fed will tighten into a recession – that’s life with a blunt monetary policy instrument that works with long and uncertain lags – we don’t think it is on the verge of doing so. Fiscal stimulus will ensure that the U.S. economy grows above trend again this year, and there are no imbalances in housing2 or the other cyclical segments of the economy that would make the expansion particularly vulnerable (Chart 2). Elevated rates of job openings (Chart 3, middle panel) and job quits (Chart 3, bottom panel) indicate that the labor market will continue drawing in workers (Chart 3, top panel), supporting consumption and growth. Chart 2No Signs Of Overheating, ... No Signs Of Overheating, ... No Signs Of Overheating, ...   Chart 3... And The Jobs Outlook Is Strong ... And The Jobs Outlook Is Strong ... And The Jobs Outlook Is Strong You aren’t still calling for four rate hikes this year, are you? Let’s call it three, now that the market-driven tightening in financial conditions (Chart 4) has already done some of the work of cooling off the economy. We take the Fed at its word when it says its actions are data-driven, and we don’t think that it will pile on when credit spreads have shot up to their 2015 oil-collapse/shale-patch-distress levels (Chart 5) and equity prices have swooned. If credit spreads retraced meaningfully, and equities went back to making new highs, four hikes might come back into play. Conversely, if spreads continued to widen and took aim at their 2016 peaks, two hikes might become more likely than three. Given our expectations for spreads (they will not approach 2015-6’s quasi-recession levels, but corporate leverage is too high to support material narrowing), and equities (the S&P 500 will be hard-pressed to eclipse September’s high), our base case is three hikes. Chart 4Tighter, Yes; Tight, No Tighter, Yes; Tight, No Tighter, Yes; Tight, No   Chart 5Spreads Say It's 2015-6, ... Spreads Say It's 2015-6, ... Spreads Say It's 2015-6, ... Have the economic fundamentals really deteriorated that much over the last three months? Not that we can tell. There have been some high-profile data disappointments here and there, like the punk manufacturing ISM release last Thursday, but the overall message has been positive, and Friday’s jobs report was consistent with an economy growing above trend. The economic surprise indexes have been declining since November, but they’re not at levels that are anywhere out of the ordinary (Chart 6). Our earnings-per-share model still sees robust growth for corporate earnings (Chart 7). Chart 6... But The Data Beg To Differ ... But The Data Beg To Differ ... But The Data Beg To Differ   Chart 7Earnings Will Decelerate, But They Won't Contract Earnings Will Decelerate, But They Won't Contract Earnings Will Decelerate, But They Won't Contract We are as discomfited by the prospect of new trade barriers as any other economists, and we have eyed the divergence between U.S. acceleration and rest-of-the-world deceleration with increasing wariness. Even for an economy as comparatively closed as the U.S., decoupling is only a temporary phenomenon. We tend to equate global activity with global trade, and generally view developing economies as especially dependent on trade. It is still early days, but we have found it mildly encouraging that EM activity and EM equities have been outpacing their DM equivalents. The growth backdrop can’t be that bad if the emerging markets are perking up. Do you still think the S&P 500 has yet to make its highs? Maybe, but we wouldn’t bet on it. We view stock prices, P, as the product of expected earnings, E, and the multiple investors are willing to pay for those earnings, P/E. If our confidence in the expansion is not misplaced, and corporate earnings match analysts’ consensus bottom-up expectations of $174, topping September 20th’s 2,930.75 closing high will require a multiple approaching 17. If analysts project year-over-year EPS gains across all of 2020’s quarters, E will rise over the course of the year, reducing the P/E expansion needed to make a new high, but an assault on the peak cannot succeed without a meaningful re-rating from today’s multiple in the 14s. Although multiple expansion has played second fiddle to earnings growth (Chart 8, middle panel) across the nine-and-a-half year bull market, it declined nearly 30% peak-to-trough in 2018, and was entirely responsible for the fourth-quarter sell-off (Chart 8, bottom panel). While we think the de-rating has gone too far, the last three months have persuaded us that a return to the 18.8 peak is too much to ask. Our working hypothesis is that the equity market has decided that Washington has become enough of an impediment that the market multiple has to come off a couple of points. Markets hate uncertainty, and the policy climate is flat-out unsettled: the principal architect and guarantor of the international postwar order repeatedly threatens to topple that order; the U.S.-China showdown does not appear to be nearing a resolution; and both political parties seem willing to sacrifice the economy to gain an advantage in 2020. In the absence of new deregulatory initiatives or tax cuts to balance out the broadly investment-unfriendly instincts of several of D.C.’s power players, a poisonous partisan climate and a dysfunctional administration can no longer be ignored. Chart 8Earnings Built The Bull Market; De-Rating Almost Wrecked It Earnings Built The Bull Market; De-Rating Almost Wrecked It Earnings Built The Bull Market; De-Rating Almost Wrecked It Okay, so what do you do now? We upgrade equities to overweight with the cash we raised in mid-June when we downgraded them from overweight to neutral. Although we wouldn’t bet on the S&P 500 topping 2,931, it doesn’t have to do so to generate alluring prospective returns. From a 2,500 starting point, a target of 2,750, or $174 earnings at a 15.75 multiple, would generate a 10% capital gain. If the economy holds up in line with our base-case expectation, it’s hard not to like U.S. equities at current levels. We were eager to put our cash overweight to work as we watched equities gyrate in October and November, but the combination of December’s valuation reset and the improved equity outlook from our Global Investment Strategy colleagues’ MacroQuant model encourages us to pull the trigger now. More money is made when conditions, or perceptions, go from terrible to bad than when they go from good to great. As the approaching earnings season redirects attention to the solid fundamental outlook, and the Treasury secretary stops taking actions that make investors wonder if conditions are far worse than they feared, there is a path for perceptions to improve. Chart 9Spreads Have Overreacted Spreads Have Overreacted Spreads Have Overreacted We continue to hold to our view that markets are underestimating the potential for inflation, making Treasuries vulnerable, especially at longer maturities. We reiterate our recommendation to underweight bonds via an underweight in Treasuries, and to hold interest-rate duration below benchmark in all fixed-income categories. We continue to recommend a neutral weighting in credit-sensitive fixed income, as the spread widening is incompatible with projected defaults (Chart 9), but we are not counting on meaningful spread compression this late in the cycle.   Doug Peta, Senior Vice President U.S. Investment Strategy dougp@bcaresearch.com   Footnotes 1 From the spreadsheet containing updated estimates of the baseline model described in “Measuring the Natural Rate of Interest,” by Thomas Laubach and John C. Williams, published in the November 2003 Review of Economics and Statistics, located at https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/policy/rstar, and accessed January 3, 2019. 2 We discussed housing at length in the November 19 and December 3, 2018 U.S. Investment Strategy Special Reports, “Housing: Past, Present And (Near) Future,” and “Housing Seminar,” respectively, available at usis.bcaresearch.com.

GAA DM Equity Country Allocation Model Update The GAA DM Equity Country Allocation model is updated as of December 31, 2018.  The quant model reduced Spain’s large overweight to a slight overweight, and further downgraded the U.S. allocation. As a result, the model now has assigned overweight allocations to Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada and Italy, with underweight allocations to the U.S., Japan, France and U.K.  Australia and Sweden are now in the neutral zone, as shown in Table 1. Table 1Model Allocation Vs. Benchmark Weights GAA Quant Model Updates GAA Quant Model Updates As shown in Table 2 and Chart 1, Chart 2 and Chart 3, the overall model outperformed the MSCI world benchmark by 38 bps in December, with a 48 bps of outperformance from Level 1 model offset by a 21 bps of underperformance from Level 2. Since going live, the overall model has outperformed by 96 bps, with Level 2 outperforming by 120 bps and level 1 outperforming by 57 bps. Table 2Performance (Total Returns In USD %) GAA Quant Model Updates GAA Quant Model Updates   Chart 1GAA DM Model Vs. MSCI World GAA DM Model Vs. MSCI World GAA DM Model Vs. MSCI World Chart 2GAA U.S. Vs. Non U.S. Model (Level 1) GAA U.S. Vs. Non U.S. Model (Level 1) GAA U.S. Vs. Non U.S. Model (Level 1)   Chart 3GAA Non U.S. Model (Level 2) GAA Non U.S. Model (Level 2) GAA Non U.S. Model (Level 2)     Please see also the website http://gaa.bcaresearch.com/trades/allocation_performance. For more details on the models, please see Special Report, “Global Equity Allocation: Introducing The Developed Markets Country Allocation Model,” dated January 29, 2016, available at https://gaa.bcaresearch.com. Please note that the overall country and sector recommendations published in our Monthly Portfolio Update and Quarterly Portfolio Outlook use the results of these quantitative models as one input, but do not stick slavishly to them. We believe that models are a useful check, but structural changes and unquantifiable factors need to be considered too in making overall recommendations.     GAA Equity Sector Selection Model Dear Client, As advised in our October 2018 Special Alert, we have suspended the GAA Equity Sector Selection Model due to the significant changes in the GICS sector classifications, implemented at the end of September. We will rebuild the model using the newly constituted sectors once full back data is available from MSCI, which we understood would be in December but which we have not received yet. We thank you for your understanding.   Xiaoli Tang, Associate Vice President xiaoliT@bcaresearch.com Amr Hanafy, Research Associate amrh@bcaresearch.com

Feature No Recession – Add To Risk Again Markets have been notably weak and volatile since we published our 2019 Outlook1 in late November. Over the past couple of months, global equities have fallen by more than 10%, the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield has dipped from above 3.2% to below 2.7%, and high-yield bond spreads have risen by more than 200 basis points. The market is sniffing out the risk of recession on the near-term horizon. We think the market has got this wrong, and so we move back to overweight global equities (from neutral, to where we lowered our recommendation last June). Recommendations Monthly Portfolio Update Monthly Portfolio Update Last year, U.S. growth was much stronger than growth in the rest of the world (Chart 1). Markets are implying that the global slowdown will soon infect the U.S., with the stock market pointing to the manufacturing ISM, currently at 59.3, falling back to 50 in very short order (Chart 2). Chart 1Will U.S. Growth Also Fall Back? Will U.S. Growth Also Fall Back? Will U.S. Growth Also Fall Back? Chart 2Stocks Imply ISM At 50 Stocks Imply ISM At 50 Stocks Imply ISM At 50 It is, indeed, probable that growth will slow this year: the FOMC’s median forecast suggests a slowdown in real GDP growth from 3.0% in 2018 to 2.3%. And it may take the market a little longer to digest that deceleration. However, growth is likely to remain above trend (currently estimated at 1.8%). Higher interest rates have begun to take their toll on the housing market (with a noticeable deterioration in new housing starts and builder confidence). But residential investment is now only 4% of GDP, compared to 7% in 2006, so the impact of the slowdown will be limited. Moreover, consumption is likely to remain buoyant, with wage growth accelerating, consumer confidence strong, and the savings rate with room to fall (Chart 3). Additionally, though fiscal stimulus will not be as powerful in 2019, the IMF estimates that it will add a further half of one percentage point to U.S. GDP growth. Chart 3Consumption Likely To Remian Buoyant Consumption Likely To Remian Buoyant Consumption Likely To Remian Buoyant The Fed is reacting very pragmatically to the evolving circumstances. Chair Jerome Powell emphasized in his post-FOMC press conference in December that “some cross currents have emerged” and that “policy decisions are not on a pre-set course”. The FOMC cut its forecast for hikes in 2019 from three to two and lowered its estimate of the terminal rate from 3.0% to 2.8% (currently the fed funds rate is at 2.4%). This implies that it will take approximately two more 25 basis point rate hikes before the Fed gets rates back to neutral. As we have often shown, risk assets tend to outperform bonds until monetary policy is restrictive (Chart 4). Chart 4 Meanwhile, market sentiment has turned excessively bearish. Our sentiment index is at a level that has historically pointed to a good buying opportunity (Chart 5). The AAII survey shows that recently only 25% of U.S. retail investors expect the market to rise over the next six months, compared to 47% who expect it to fall. Valuations are cheap again: the forward PE for the MSCI All Country World Index (ACWI) is now back to the range it traded at in 2013 (Chart 6). The classic indicators of recession, such as the yield curve, are not yet flashing warning signals: the 3-month/10-year curve, which we have shown has historically been the most reliable,2 remains at +20 basis points (Chart 7). It needs to invert to signal recession – and, typically, it does that as much as 18-24 months in advance. Chart 5Sentiment Is Very Bearish Sentiment Is Very Bearish Sentiment Is Very Bearish   Chart 6Global PE Back To To 2013 Level Global PE Back To To 2013 Level Global PE Back To To 2013 Level Chart 7Yield Curve Has Not Inverted Yield Curve Has Not Inverted Yield Curve Has Not Inverted Certainly, there are risks (we would highlight a reignition of the trade war after March 1, Brexit, U.S. government shutdown, the possibility that falling stock and house prices hurt consumer and business sentiment, and China’s reluctance to implement a massive 2016-style reflationary stimulus). But our analysis suggests there is significantly more upside than downside risk for equities over the next 12 months. If earnings growth, particularly in the U.S., comes in close to our top-down forecasts (Chart 8), it is hard to imagine – given the current depressed multiples – equities underperforming bonds this year. Accordingly, we recommend raising global equities to overweight in a multi-asset portfolio on a 12-month horizon, and lowering cash to neutral. For now, we have not changed our other tilts, and continue to recommend an overweight on U.S. equities and defensive sectors, a preference for equities over credit, and a high degree of caution towards emerging market assets. Chart 8Earnings On Track To Grow Healthily In 2019 Earnings On Track To Grow Healthily In 2019 Earnings On Track To Grow Healthily In 2019 Currencies: With growth likely to remain stronger in the U.S. than in the rest of the world, we expect appreciation of the dollar over the next six months. BCA’s Central Bank Monitors point to the need for the Fed to tighten policy further, but for the ECB to remain dovish. The gap between these two monitors has done a good job at forecasting EUR/USD over the past 10 years (Chart 9). However, speculative positions are already quite long dollar (Chart 10) and so the upside might be limited to around 5% in trade-weighted terms. If global growth begins to reaccelerate midway through 2019, the dollar might weaken again. Chart 9Relative Policy Suggests Stronger USD Relative Policy Suggests Stronger USD Relative Policy Suggests Stronger USD Chart 10 Equities: We prefer DM equities over EM. Further rises in the dollar and long-term U.S. interest rates, combined with continuing slowdown in global trade and Chinese growth, will remain headwinds for EM equities even if the market moves into a more risk-on phase. Valuations in EM do not look attractive either, with forward PE relative to DM in line with recent averages, and earnings growth forecasts likely to be revised down into negative territory over the coming months given the challenges facing developing economies (Chart 11). Within DM, we have a preference for the U.S., given its stronger growth and likely currency appreciation, over the euro zone and Japan, which are more sensitive to the global manufacturing cycle. Europe, in particular, will continue to be held back by the travails of its banks, which have been a major determinant of relative equity market performance in recent years (Chart 12). In a recent Special Report, we concluded that the long-term outlook for euro zone bank profitability remains lackluster.3 Chart 11EM Equities Are Not Cheap EM Equities Are Not Cheap EM Equities Are Not Cheap Chart 12Banks Will Weigh On Euro Zone Stocks Banks Will Weigh On Euro Zone Stocks Banks Will Weigh On Euro Zone Stocks Fixed Income: We see further upside for long-term rates in 2019, driven by a combination of above-trend economic growth, more Fed hikes than the market is pricing in, a moderate pick-up in inflation, and the unwinding of the Fed’s balance-sheet. We do not see rates being an impediment to growth until they reach the level of trend nominal GDP growth, currently 3.8% (which was the crunch point in both 1999 and 2006 – Chart 13). Despite our more positive view on equities, we remain more cautious on credit. Spreads have widened recently to more attractive levels (Chart 14). However, we remain concerned about the high leverage of U.S. corporates, whose debt/assets ratio is on average higher now than in 2009 (Chart 15). Signs of strain are already showing in the junk bond market, with new issuance having largely dried up since early December. If this continues, borrowers may struggle to refinance maturing debt in early 2019.  At this stage of the cycle, credit spreads are unlikely to tighten much, even with an equity market rally. Furthermore, given the high leverage, credit is an asset class that is likely to perform particularly poorly in the next recession. Chart 13Only At 3.8% Do Rates Become A Risk Only At 3.8% Do Rates Become A Risk Only At 3.8% Do Rates Become A Risk Chart 14Credit Spreads Not More Attractive Credit Spreads Not More Attractive Credit Spreads Not More Attractive Chart 15U.S. Corporate Leverage Is A Problem U.S. Corporate Leverage Is A Problem U.S. Corporate Leverage Is A Problem Commodities: The sell-off in crude oil over the past two months was due to short-term supply-side shocks, most notably the U.S.’s agreeing to 180-day exceptions on Iranian sanctions. But supply is likely to tighten in coming months (Chart 16). Saudi Arabia and Russia intend to reduce production by 1.2 million barrels/day, and U.S. shale oil supply growth is likely to slow since one-year forward WTI is now around $49, slightly below the average breakeven level for shale oil producers. With global oil demand set to remain strong, our energy strategists see Brent oil rebounding to around $80 a barrel in 2019, with WTI $6 below that.4 Industrial commodities will continue to face headwinds from a stronger dollar and slowing China. Only when the effects of China’s moderate reflation measures start to come through in 2H 2019 would we expect to see a recovery in metals prices. Chart 16Oil Supply Set To Tighten Oil Supply Set To Tighten Oil Supply Set To Tighten   Garry Evans, Senior Vice President Global Asset Allocation garry@bcaresearch.com   Footnotes 1      Please see “Outlook 2019: Late-Cycle Turbulence,” dated 27 November 2018, available at bca.bcaresearch.com 2      Please see Global Asset Allocation Special Report, “Can Asset Allocators Rely On Yield Curves?”, dated 15 June 2018, available at gaa.bcaresearch.com 3      Please see Global Asset Allocation Special Report, “Euro Area Banks: Value Play Or Value Trap?”, dated 14 December 2018, available at gaa.bcaresearch.com 4      For the detailed rationale of their forecast, please see Commodity & Energy Strategy Weekly Report, “2019 Key Views Policy-Induced Volatility Will Drive Markets,” dated 13 December 2018, available at ces.bcaresearch.com GAA Asset Allocation  

Highlights Investors ran for cover in December as they succumbed to a litany of worries regarding the outlook. The key question is whether the pessimism is overdone or an extended equity bear market is underway. Our outlook for the U.S. and global economies has not changed since we published our 2019 Outlook. There are some tentative signs that the two U.S. weak spots, housing and capital spending, are bottoming out. However, our global leading economic indicators continue to herald a soft first half of 2019 outside of the U.S. The dollar thus has more upside in the near term. The political risks facing investors have not diminished either. In particular, we expect turbulence related to the U.S./China trade war to extend well beyond the 3-month “truce” period. The returns to stocks, corporate bonds and commodities historically have not been particularly attractive on average when the U.S. yield curve is this flat. Nonetheless, the risk/reward balance has improved enough as prices fell over the past month to justify upgrading equities in the advanced economies back to overweight. Move to a neutral level of cash, and keep bonds underweight on a 6-12 month investment horizon. The upgrade to stocks in the developed markets does not carry over to emerging markets. The backdrop will remain hostile to EM assets until China pulls out the big policy stimulus guns and the dollar peaks. Stay clear of EM assets and neutral on base metals for now, but be prepared to upgrade sometime in 2019. Global government bonds could rally a little more in the near term if the risk-off phase continues. Nonetheless, with little chance of any more rate hikes discounted in the U.S. yield curve, the risks for U.S. and global yields are tilted to the upside. Bond investors with a 6-12 month horizon should ride out the near-term volatility with a short-duration position. Oil prices have overshot to the downside. Supply is adjusting and, given robust energy demand in 2019, we still expect prices to rise to $82. Feature Investors ran for cover in December as they succumbed to concerns regarding the U.S./China trade war, corporate leverage, global growth, rising U.S. interest rates and the shift toward quantitative tightening. Some equity indexes, such as the Russell 2000, reached bear market territory, having lost more than 20%. Losses have been even worse outside the U.S. Earnings revisions have plunged into the “net downgrade” zone. Implied volatility has spiked and corporate bond spreads are surging (Chart I-1). The key question is whether the pessimism is overdone or an extended equity bear market is underway. Chart I-1A Flight To Quality A Flight To Quality A Flight To Quality We laid out our economic view in detail in the BCA Outlook 2019 report, published in late November. Not enough has changed on the global economic front in the three weeks since then that would justify such a violent shift in investor sentiment. That said, our favorite global leading economic indicators continue to erode (Chart I-2). The only ray of hope is that the diffusion index constructed from our Global Leading Economic Indicator appears to have bottomed. Nonetheless, the actual LEI will keep falling until the diffusion index shifts into positive territory.   Chart I-2Global Leading Indicators Still Weak Global Leading Indicators Still Weak Global Leading Indicators Flashing Red Global Leading Indicators Still Weak Global Leading Indicators Flashing Red For China, a key source of investor angst, the latest retail sales and industrial production reports reinforced that economic momentum continues to recede. We will not be convinced that growth is bottoming until we see an upturn in our credit impulse indicator (Chart I-3). Its continued decline in November suggests that the outlook for emerging market assets and commodity prices is poor for at least the next quarter. Global industrial output appears headed for a mild contraction. The manufacturing troubles are centered in the emerging Asian economies, but Europe and Japan are also feeling the negative effects. Chart I-3China: No Bottom Yet China: No Bottom Yet China: No Bottom Yet In the U.S., November’s bounce in housing starts and permits is a hopeful sign that the soft patch in this sector is ending. However, it is not clear how the devastating wildfires on the west coast have affected the housing data (Chart I-4). The downdraft in capital goods orders may also be drawing to a close, based on the latest reading from the Fed’s survey of capital spending intentions. The U.S. leading economic indicator dipped slightly in November, but remains consistent with above-trend real GDP growth in the months ahead. Chart I-4U.S.: Some Hopeful Signs U.S.: Some Hopeful Signs U.S.: Some Hopeful Signs The bottom line is that our outlook for growth has not been significantly altered. We see little risk of a U.S. recession in 2019. The global economy continues to weaken, but we expect enough policy stimulus out of China to stabilize growth in that economy in the second half of the year. We highlighted in the BCA Outlook 2019 that, while the risks appeared elevated, we would consider shifting back to overweight in stocks if they cheapened sufficiently. Valuation has indeed improved in recent weeks and sentiment has turned more cautious. Global growth will likely continue to decelerate in the first half of 2019, but markets have largely discounted this outcome. In other words, the shift toward pessimism in financial markets appears overdone. The fact that the Fed has signaled a move away from regular quarter-point rate hikes adds to our confidence in playing what will likely be the last upleg in risk assets in this cycle. Fed: Rate Hikes No Longer On Autopilot The Fed lifted rates by a quarter point in December and signaled that any additional tightening will be data-dependent. The FOMC also trimmed the expected peak in the funds rate and its estimate of the long-run, or neutral, level. Policymakers were likely swayed by some disappointing U.S. economic data, the pullback in core PCE inflation, and the sharp tightening in financial conditions (Chart I-5). Chart I-5Financial Conditions Have Tightened Financial Conditions Have Tightened Financial Conditions Have Tightened Monetary conditions are not tight by historical yardsticks, such as the level of real interest rates. The problem is that investors fear that the neutral level of the fed funds rate, the so-called R-star, remains very depressed. If true, it could mean that the Fed is already outright restrictive, which would signal that the monetary backdrop has turned hostile for risk assets. The OIS curve signals that the consensus believes that the Fed is pretty much done the tightening cycle (Chart I-6) Chart I-6Investors Believe The Fed Is Done! Investors Believe The Fed Is Done! Investors Believe The Fed Is Done! We believe that R-star is higher than the current policy setting and is rising, as the growth headwinds related to the Great Financial Crisis fade with the passage of time. The problem is that nobody knows the level of the neutral rate. Thus, we need to watch for signs that the fed funds rate has surpassed that level, such as an inverted yield curve. The 10-year/3-month T-bill spread is still in positive territory, but barely so. Meanwhile, our R-star indicator is also flashing yellow as it sits on the zero line (Chart I-7). It is a composite of monetary indicators that in the past have been useful in signaling that monetary policy had become outright restrictive, leading to slower growth and trouble for risk assets. The lead time of this indicator relative to economic activity and risk asset prices has been quite variable historically, but a breakdown below zero would send a powerful bearish signal for risk assets if confirmed by an inverted yield curve. Chart I-7Worrying Signs Of Tight Money Worrying Signs Of Tight Money Worrying Signs Of Tight Money The Implications Of Four Fed Scenarios It is not surprising that investors are struggling with a number of different possible scenarios on how the R-star/Fed policy nexus will play out. We can perhaps boil down discussion of the Fed and the implications for financial markets to a matrix of four main outcomes, based on combinations related to the level of R-Star (high or low) and the pace of Fed rate hikes in 2019 (pause or continue increasing rates by 25 basis points per quarter). Policy Mistake #1: R-star is still very low, but policymakers do not realize this and the FOMC continues to tighten into restrictive territory in 2019. By definition, the economy begins to suffer in this scenario, inflation and inflation expectations decline and long-bond yields are flat-to-lower. The yield curve inverts. However, current real rates are still so low that the fed funds rate cannot be very far above R-Star, which means it would represent only a small policy mistake. As long as the Fed recognizes the economic slowdown early enough and truncates the rate hike cycle, then there is a good chance that a recession would be avoided. Investors would initially fear a recession, however, which means that risk assets would be hit hard in absolute terms and relative to bonds and cash until recession fears fade. The direction of the dollar is perhaps trickiest part because there are so many potential cross currents. To keep things simple we will assume that global growth follows our base-case view and remains lackluster in the first half of 2019, followed by a modest re-acceleration. We believe the dollar would likely rally a little as the Fed continues tightening, but then would fall back as the FOMC is forced to turn dovish in the face of a U.S. growth scare. Policy Mistake #2: R-Star is high and rising but the Fed fails to hike rates fast enough to keep up. The economy accelerates in this scenario because monetary policy remains stimulative through 2019, at a time when the 2018 fiscal stimulus will still be providing a demand tailwind. Core PCE inflation moves above 2% and long-term inflation expectations shift up, signaling to investors that the Fed has fallen behind the inflation curve. Risk assets rip for a while and the yield curve bear-steepens as the 10-year Treasury yield moves gradually higher at first. Belatedly, the FOMC realizes it has underestimated the neutral rate and signals a hawkish policy shift. A 50-basis point rate hike at one FOMC meeting causes risk assets to buckle on the back of surging Treasury yields. The yield curve begins to bear-flatten. Eventually the curve inverts and the economy enters recession. The dollar weakens at first because higher inflation lowers U.S. real interest rates relative to the rest of the world. Global growth prospects would initially get a boost from the acceleration in U.S. growth, which is also dollar-bearish. However, in the end the dollar would likely rise as global financial markets turn risk-off. Fed Gets It Right (1): R-star is high and rising. The Fed continues to tighten in line with the increase in the neutral rate. Treasurys sell off hard and the yield curve shifts higher, but remains fairly flat (parallel shift). The curve could mildly invert temporarily, but market worries about a recession eventually recede as economic momentum remains robust, allowing the curve to subsequently trade in the 0-50 basis point range. As discussed below, risk assets tend to outperform Treasurys and cash when the yield curve is in this range, but not by much. The Treasury market would suffer significant losses. This is the most dollar-bullish of the four scenarios, given our global growth view (tepid) and the fact that the market is not even priced for a full quarter-point rate hike in 2019. Fed Gets It Right (2): R-Star is actually still quite low, but the Fed correctly sees recent economic data disappointments and the tightening in financial conditions as signs that policy is close to neutral. The Fed pauses the rate hike cycle, followed by a slower and more data-dependent pace of tightening. The yield curve stays fairly flat and flirts with inversion as investors try to figure out if the Fed has overdone it. Risk assets are volatile and deliver little return over cash. Treasurys rally a bit as the chance of any further rate hikes is priced out of the market, but the rally is limited unless the economy falls into recession (which is not part of this scenario because we are assuming the Fed “gets it right”). The dollar fluctuates, but delivers no real trend since U.S. yield differentials versus the rest of the world do not change much. As we go to press, financial markets are moving in a way that is consistent the Policy Mistake #1; the consensus appears to believe that the Fed has already lifted the fed funds rate too far, causing financial conditions to tighten. But if U.S. real GDP growth remains above-trend as we expect, then the market view could eventually transition to a belief in Mistake #2; the Fed falls behind the inflation curve. The curve would re-steepen and risk assets could have one last hurrah before the Fed gets hawkish again and the 2020 recession arrives. The transition from Mistake #1 to Mistake #2 is essentially our base-case outlook. Nonetheless, obviously the risks around this central scenario are high, especially given how late it is in the U.S. economic and policy cycle. Asset Returns And The Yield Curve Our 2018 late-cycle investing theme focussed on historical asset return and policy dynamics after the U.S. unemployment rate fell below the full-employment level in past cycles. We found that risk assets tend to run into trouble once the U.S. S&P 500 operating margin peaks. As we highlighted in the BCA Outlook 2019, our margin proxies are still not heralding that a peak is at hand. Given the recent investor obsession with the U.S. yield curve, this month we look at historical asset returns at different levels of the 10-year/3-month T-bill yield curve slope: Phase I, when the slope is above 50 basis points; Phase II, when the curve is between 0 and 50 basis points; and Phase III, when the curve is inverted (Table I-1). The data are presented as (not annualized) monthly average returns. It may be surprising that risk asset returns are for the most part positive even in when the curve is inverted. However, keep in mind that we are focussing on the curve, not on recession periods. The curve can be inverted for a long time before the subsequent recession occurs. Risk asset returns often remain positive during this period. The broad conclusions are as follows: Unsurprisingly, risk assets perform their best, in absolute terms and relative to government bonds and cash, in Phase I when the yield curve is steep. Returns tend to deteriorate as the curve flattens. This includes equities, corporate bonds and commodities. Small caps underperform large caps when the curve is between 0 and 50 basis points, but the reverse is true when the curve is flatter or steeper than that range. The ratio of cyclical stocks to defensives has not revealed a consistent pattern with respect to the yield curve, although this may reflect the short historical period available. Value stocks shine versus growth when the curve is inverted. Hedge fund and private equity returns have not varied greatly across the three yield curve environments. Structured product, such as CMBS and ABS, have enjoyed their best performance when the curve is inverted. Timberland and Farmland have also rewarded investors during Phase III. We suspected that asset returns when the curve is in the 0-50 basis point range would vary importantly with the direction of the curve. In Table I-I we split Phase II into two parts: when the curve is steepening after being inverted, and when the curve is flattening after being steep. In other words, when the consensus is either transitioning from quite bullish to very bearish, or vice-versa. Chart I- Risk assets such as equities (U.S. and Global) and U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds indeed perform much better in absolute terms when the curve is flat but is steepening rather than flattening. The same is true for U.S. structured product. In terms of excess returns relative to government issues, both U.S. IG and HY corporates have tended to underperform when the curve is in the 0-50 basis point range. Surprisingly, the underperformance is worse when the curve is steepening than when it is flattening. This appears to reflect an anomalous period in early 2006 when the curve was flattening but corporate bonds enjoyed strong excess returns. Emerging market equities show very strong returns in all three curve phases. This reflects the inclusion of the pre-2000 period in the mean calculations, a time when EM equities were much less correlated with U.S. financial conditions. EM equity returns have been significantly lower on average since 2000 when the curve is in the 0-50 basis point range (and especially when the curve is flattening) The bottom line is that risk assets can still reward investors with positive returns during periods when the yield curve is flat. However, it is a dangerous time, especially when the global economy is up to its eyeballs in debt. This month’s Special Report beginning on page 17 argues that, although regulation has made the global financial system more resilient to shocks compared to the pre-Lehman years, the number of potentially destabilizing shocks has increased. Moreover, the trade war and Brexit risks make the investment backdrop all the more precarious. No Quick End To The Trade War The honeymoon following the trade ceasefire between the U.S. and China, agreed at the G20 summit in early December, did not last long. The arrest of the chief financial officer of Chinese telecom maker Huawei and continuing hawkish tweets from the U.S. president dampened hopes that a trade agreement can be negotiated by March. Even news that China intended to cut tariffs on U.S. auto imports did not help much. We highlighted in the BCA Outlook 2019 that negotiations will prove to be protracted and testy. It will take a lot more than some token market-opening action on the part of China to placate the U.S. Our geopolitical team emphasizes that “trade war” is a misnomer for a broader strategic conflict that is centered on the military-industrial balance rather than the trade balance.1 For example, while China is rapidly catching up to the U.S. in research and development spending, it is only spending about half as much as the U.S. relative to its overall economy (Chart I-8). While the U.S. can accept China’s eventually surpassing it in economic output, it cannot accept China’s technological superiority. This would translate into military and strategic supremacy over time. Chart I-8R&D Expenditure By Country R&D Expenditure By Country R&D Expenditure By Country U.S. demands will also be hard for China to swallow. Most importantly, the U.S. is requesting that China rein in its hacking and spying, shift its direct investment to less tech-sensitive sectors, adjust its “Made in China” targets to allow for more foreign competition, and lower foreign investment equity restrictions. These stumbling blocks will make it difficult to strike a deal on trade. We continue to believe that a final trade deal between the U.S. and China will not arrive in the 90-day timeframe of the ceasefire. Thus, global risk assets will be subject to swings in sentiment regarding the likelihood of a trade deal well beyond March. Meanwhile, as previously discussed, Chinese policy stimulus has not yet become aggressive enough to spark animal spirits in the private sector. The Chinese authorities are proceeding cautiously so as to avoid adding significantly to private- and public-sector’s debt mountain. This month’s Special Report also discusses the risks that the surge in debt over the past decade poses for the global financial system, including escalating risk in China’s shadow banking system. Brexit Pain Continues Politics surrounding the torturous Brexit process will also remain a source of volatility for global markets in 2019. Prime Minister May survived a leadership challenge, but this is hardly confidence-inspiring. The question is whether any deal can get through Westminster. The votes appear to be in place for the softest of soft Brexits, the so-called Norway+ option, if May convinces the Labour Party to break ranks. Such a deal would entail Common Market access, but at the cost of having to essentially pay for full EU membership with no ability to influence the regulatory policies that London would have to abide by. The alternative is to call for a new election (which may usher the even less pro-Brexit Labour Party into power), or to delay Brexit for a more substantive period of time, or simply to buckle under the pressure and call for a second referendum. We disagree that the failure of the Tories to endorse May’s proposed agreement means that the “no deal Brexit,” or the “Brexit cliff,” is nigh. Such an outcome is in nobody’s interest and both May and the EU can offer delays to ensure that it does not happen. Whatever happens, one thing is clear; the median voter is turning forcefully towards Bremain (Chart I-9). It will soon become untenable to delay the second referendum. The bottom line is that, while a soft Brexit is the most likely outcome, the path from here to the end result will be punishing. We do not recommend Brexit-related bets on the pound, despite the fact that it is cheap. Chart I-9A Shift Toward Bremain A Shift Toward Bremain A Shift Toward Bremain 2019: A Tale Of Two Halves For EM, Commodities And The Dollar One of our key themes in the BCA Outlook 2019 is that the growth divergence between China and the U.S. will persist at least for the first half of 2019. The result will be weak EM asset prices and currencies, little upside for base metals and a strong U.S. dollar. We expect the Chinese authorities will do enough to stabilize growth by mid-year, providing the impetus for a playable bounce in EM and commodity prices in the second half of 2019, coinciding with a peak in the U.S. dollar. Nonetheless, the dollar still has some upside potential in broad trade-weighted terms in the first half of 2019. Our Central Bank Monitors continue to show a greater need for policy tightening in the U.S. than in the rest of the major countries. The dollar has usually strengthened when this has been the case historically. In particular, the ECB’s Central Bank Monitor has slipped back into “easy money required” territory, reflecting moderating economic momentum and still-depressed consumer price inflation (Chart I-10). Chart I-10Our CB Monitors Support A Stronger Dollar Our CB Monitors Support A Stronger Dollar Our CB Monitors Support A Stronger Dollar The ECB announced the well-anticipated end of its asset purchase program in December. The central bank will now focus on forward guidance as its main policy tool outside of setting short-term interest rates. Lending via targeted LTROs will also be considered under certain circumstances. Policymakers retained the latest forward guidance after the December MPC meeting, that rates are on hold “through the summer of 2019”. The latest reading from our ECB Monitor suggests that the central bank could be on hold for longer than that. We expect Eurozone growth to improve somewhat through the year, but we still believe that interest rate differentials will move further in favor of the dollar relative to the euro and the other major currencies. Periods of slow global growth also tend to favor the greenback. The bottom line is that, while a correction is possible in the very near term, investors with at least a six-month horizon should remain long the dollar. Investment Conclusions: Our outlook for the U.S. and global economies has not changed since we published our 2019 Outlook. The risks facing investors have not diminished either, especially given the precarious nature of late-cycle investing and the uncertainty regarding the neutral level of the fed funds rate. Historically, the returns to stocks, corporate bonds and commodities have not been particularly attractive on average when the yield curve is this flat. Nonetheless, we believe that the risk/reward balance has improved enough as prices fell over the past month to justify upgrading equities in the advanced economies to overweight. Move to a neutral level of cash, and keep bonds underweight on a 6-12 month investment horizon. Despite our more positive view on equities, we remain cautious on credit. Spreads have widened recently to more attractive levels, but we remain concerned about the high leverage of U.S. corporates, whose debt/assets ratio is on average higher now than in 2009. Signs of strain are already showing in the junk bond market, with new issuance having largely dried up since early December. If this continues, borrowers may struggle to refinance maturing debt in early 2019.  Credit is an asset class that is likely to perform particularly poorly in the next recession. Our upgrade to stocks in the advanced markets does not carry over to emerging markets. The backdrop will remain hostile to EM assets until China pulls out the big policy stimulus guns and the dollar peaks. Stay clear of EM assets and neutral on base metals for now. Global government bonds could rally a little more in the near term if the risk-off phase continues. Nonetheless, with little chance of any more rate hikes discounted in the U.S. yield curve, the risks for U.S. and global yields are tilted to the upside. Bond investors with a 6-12 month horizon should ride out the near-term volatility with a short-duration position. Oil markets are still in the process of re-adjusting to an extraordinary policy reversal by the Trump Administration on its Iranian oil-export sanctions in November, as last-minute waivers were granted to Iran’s largest oil importers. We believe that oil prices have overshot to the downside. Following OPEC 2.0’s decision to cut 1.2mm b/d of production to re-balance markets in the first half of the year, we continue to expect prices to recover on the back of solid global energy demand. Canada also mandated energy firms to trim production. Our energy experts expect oil prices to reach $82/bbl in 2019. We also like gold as long as the fed funds rate remains below its neutral level. Mark McClellan Senior Vice President The Bank Credit Analyst December 21, 2018 Next Report: January 31, 2019 II. (Part II) The Long Shadow Of The Financial Crisis This is the second of a two-part Special Report on the structural changes that have occurred as a result of the Great Recession and financial crisis. We look at three issues: asset correlation, the safety of the financial system, and the level of global debt. First, correlations among financial assets shifted dramatically during the financial crisis and the after-effects lingered for years. Some believe that the underlying level of correlation among risk assets has shifted permanently higher for two main reasons: (1) trading factors such as the increased use of exchange-traded funds and algorithms; and (2) the risk-on/risk-off environment in which trading has become more binary in nature, due to the sharp rise in policy uncertainty, risk aversion and risk premiums in the aftermath of the Great Recession. We have sympathy for the second explanation. The equity risk premium (ERP) was forced higher on a sustained basis by the financial crisis, driven by fears that the advanced economies had entered a ‘secular stagnation’. Elevated correlation among risk assets was a result of a higher-than-normal ERP. The ERP should decline as fears of secular stagnation fade, leading to a lower average level of risk asset correlation than has been the case over the last decade. Second, regulators have been working hard to ensure that the financial crisis never happens again. But is the financial system really any safer today? Undoubtedly, banks have improved balance sheet and funding resilience, and have significantly reduced their involvement in complex financial activities. The propensity for contagion among banks has diminished and there has been a dramatic decline in the volume of complex structured credit securities. The bad news is that the level of global debt has increased at an alarming pace. The third part of this report highlights that elevated levels of debt could cause instability in the global financial system. Choking debt levels boost the vulnerability to negative shocks. The number and probability of potential shocks appear to have increased since 2007, including extreme weather events, sovereign debt crises, large-scale migration, populism, water crises and cyber & data attacks. The lack of a fiscal buffer in most countries means that it will be difficult or impossible to provide any fiscal relief in the event of a negative shock. Moreover, the end of the Debt Supercycle means that the monetary and fiscal authorities will find it difficult to encourage the private sector to spend more in most cases. For EM, deleveraging has not even started and more financial fireworks seem inevitable in the context of a strong dollar and rising global yields. China may avoid a crisis, but the adjustment to a less credit-driven economy is already proving to be a painful process. The Great Recession and Financial Crisis cast a long shadow that will affect economies, policy and financial markets for years to come. Rather than reviewing the roots of the crisis, the first of our two-part series examined the areas where we believe structural change has occurred related to the economy or financial markets. We covered the changing structure of the corporate bond market, the inflation outlook, central bank policymaking and equilibrium bond yields. We highlighted that the financial crisis transformed the corporate bond market in several ways that heighten the risk for quality spreads in the next downturn. We made the case that the prolonged inflation undershoot is sowing the seeds of an overshoot in the coming years, in part related to central bank policymakers that are doomed to fight the last war. Finally, we argued that the forces behind the structural and cyclical bull market in bonds reached an inflection point in 2016/2017. In Part II, we examine the theory that the financial crisis has permanently lifted market correlations among risk assets. Next, we look at whether regulatory changes implemented as a result of the financial crisis have made the global financial system safer. Finally, we highlight the implications of the continued rise in global leverage over the past decade in the context of BCA’s Debt Supercycle theme. The bottom line is that the global financial system still faces substantial risks, despite a more highly regulated banking system. (1) Are Risk Asset Correlations Permanently Higher? Correlations among financial assets shifted dramatically during the financial crisis and the after-effects lingered for years. For example, risk assets became more highly correlated, suggesting little differentiation within or across asset classes. Chart II-1 presents a proxy for U.S. equity market correlations, using a sample of current S&P 100 companies. The average correlation was depressed in the 1990s and 2000s relative to the 1980s. It spiked in 2007 and fluctuated at extremely high levels for several years, before moving erratically lower. It has jumped recently and is roughly in the middle of the post-1980s range. Chart II-1Two Factors Driving Correlation bca.bca_mp_2019_01_01_s2_c1 bca.bca_mp_2019_01_01_s2_c1 Correlations will undoubtedly ebb and flow in the coming years and will spike again in the next recession. But a key question is whether correlations will oscillate around a higher average level than in the 1990s and 2000s. The consensus seems to believe that the underlying level of correlation among risk assets has indeed shifted higher on a structural basis for two main reasons: Market Structure Changes: Many investors point to trading factors such as the increased use of index products (exchange-traded funds for example), and high-frequency/algorithmic trading as likely culprits. Macro “theme” investing has reportedly become more popular and is often implemented through algorithms. The result is an increase in stock market volatility and a tendency for risk-asset prices to move up and down based on momentum because they are all being traded as a group. These factors would likely be evident today even if the financial crisis never happened, but the popularity of algorithm trading may have been encouraged by the fact that the macro backdrop was so uncertain for years after Lehman collapsed. Risk On/Off Trading Environment: Trading has become more binary in nature, due to the sharp rise in policy uncertainty, risk aversion and risk premiums in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Even after the recession ended, the headwinds to growth were formidable and many felt that the sustainability of the recovery hinged largely on the success or failure of unorthodox monetary policies. The general feeling was that either the policies would “work”, the output gap would gradually close and risk assets would perform well, or it would fail and risk assets would be dragged down by a return to recession. Thus, markets traded on an extreme “risk-on/risk-off” basis, as sentiment swung wildly with each new piece of economic and earnings data. While the market structure thesis has merit on the surface, the impact should only be short term in nature. It is difficult to see how a change in the intra-day microstructure of the market could have such a fundamental, wide-ranging and permanent impact on market prices. Previous research suggests that any impact on market correlation beyond the very short term is likely to be small. For the sake of brevity, we won’t present the evidence here, but instead refer readers to two BCA Special Reports.2 The risk on/off trading environment thesis is a more plausible explanation. However, we find it more useful to think about it in terms of the equity risk premium (ERP). A higher ERP causes investors to revalue cash flows from all firms, which, in turn, causes structural shifts in the correlation among stocks. A lower ERP results in less homogenization of the present value of future cash flows, and raises the effect of differentiation among business models. A rise in the ERP could occur for different reasons, but the most obvious are an increase in the perceived riskiness of firms, a shift in investor risk aversion, or both. Shifts in the ERP are sometimes structural in nature, but there is also a strong cyclical element in that persistent equity declines historically have had the effect of temporarily raising the ERP and correlations. A simple model based on the ERP and volatility explains a lot of the historical variation in equity correlation, including the elevated levels observed in the years after 2007 (Chart II-2).3 The shift lower in correlations after 2012 reflects both a lower equity risk premium and a dramatic decline in downside volatility. Chart II-2Simple Model Explains Correlation Simple Model Explains Correlation Simple Model Explains Correlation It is tempting to believe that the lingering shell-shock related to the financial crisis means that the underlying equity risk premium has shifted permanently higher. The ERP is still elevated by historical standards, but this is more reflective of extraordinarily low bond yields than an elevated forward earnings yield. Investors evidently believe that the U.S. and other developed economies are stuck in a “secular stagnation”, which will require low interest rates for many years just to keep economic growth near its trend pace. In other words, the equilibrium interest rate, or R-star, is still very low. The ERP and correlations among risk assets will undoubtedly spike again in the next recession. Nonetheless, in the absence of recession, we expect fears regarding secular stagnation to fade further. If the advanced economies hold up as short-term interest rates and bond yields rise, then concerns that R-star is extremely low will dissipate and expectations regarding equilibrium bond yields will shift higher. The ERP will move lower as bond yields, rather than the earnings yield, do most of the adjustment. The underlying correlations among risk asset prices should correspondingly recede. This includes correlations among a wide variety of risk assets, such as corporate bonds and commodities. While this describes our base case outlook, there is a non-trivial risk that the next recession arrives soon and is deep. This would underscore the view that R-star is indeed very low and the economy needs constant monetary stimulus just to keep it out of recession (i.e. the secular stagnation thesis). The ERP and correlations would stay elevated on average in that scenario. What About The Stock/Bond Correlation? Chart II-3 shows the rolling correlation between monthly changes in the 10-year Treasury bond yield and the S&P 500. The correlation was generally negative between the late-1960s and the early-2000s. Bond yields tended to rise whenever the S&P 500 was falling. Over the past two decades, however, bond yields have generally declined when the stock market has swooned. Chart II-3Structural Shifts In The Stock/Bond Correlation Structural Shifts In The Stock/Bond Correlation Structural Shifts In The Stock/Bond Correlation Inflation expectations can help explain the shift in stock/bond correlation. Expectations became unmoored after 1970, which meant that inflationary shocks became the primary driver of bond yields. Strong growth became associated with rising inflation and inflation expectations, and the view that central banks had fallen behind the curve. Bond yields surged as markets discounted aggressive tightening designed to choke off inflation. And, given that inflation lags the cycle and had a lot of persistence, central banks were not in a position to ease policy at the first hint of a growth slowdown. This was obviously a poor backdrop for stocks. When inflation expectations became well anchored again around the late 1990s, investors no longer feared that central banks would have to aggressively stomp on growth whenever actual inflation edged higher. Central banks also had more latitude to react quickly by cutting rates at the first sign of slower economic growth. Fluctuations in growth became the primary driver of bond yields, allowing stock prices to rise and fall along with yields. The correlation has therefore been positive most of the time since 2003. Bottom Line: A negative correlation between stocks and bond yields reared its ugly head in the last quarter of 2018. The equity correction reflected several factors, but the previous surge in bond yields and hawkish Fed comments appeared to spook markets. Investors became nervous that the fed funds rate had already entered restrictive territory, at a time when the global economy was cooling off. We expect more of these episodes as the Fed normalizes short-term interest rates over the next couple of years. Nonetheless, we see no evidence that inflation expectations have become unmoored. This implies that the stock-bond correlation will generally be positive most of the time over the medium term. In addition, the average level of correlation among risk assets has probably not been permanently raised, although spikes during recessions or growth scares will inevitably occur. (2) Is The Global Financial System Really Safer Today? The roots of the great financial crisis and recession involved a global banking and shadow banking system that encouraged leverage and risk-taking in ways that were hard for investors and regulators to assess. Complex and opaque financial instruments helped to hide risk, at a time when regulators were “asleep at the switch”. In many countries, credit grew at a much faster pace than GDP and capital buffers were dangerously low. Banking sector compensation skewed the system toward short-term gains over long-term sustainable returns. Lax lending standards and a heavy reliance on short-term wholesale markets to fund trading and lending activity contributed to cascading defaults and a complete seizure in parts of the money and fixed income markets. A vital question is whether the financial system is any less vulnerable today to contagion and seizure. The short answer is that the financial system is better prepared for a shock, but the problem is that the number of potential sources of instability have increased since 2007. Since the financial crisis, regulators have been working hard to ensure that the financial crisis never happens again. Reforms have come under four key headings: Capital: Regulators raised the minimum capital requirement for banks, added a buffer requirement, and implemented a surcharge on systemically important banks. Liquidity: Regulators implemented a Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and a Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) in order to ensure that banks have sufficient short-term funds to avoid liquidity shortages and bank runs.4 Risk Management: Banks are being forced to develop systems to better monitor risk, and are subject to periodic stress tests. Resolution Planning: Banks have also been asked to detail options for resolution that, hopefully, should reduce systemic risk should a major financial institution become insolvent. Global systemically-important banks, in particular, will require sufficient loss-absorbing capacity. A major study by the Bank for International Settlements,5 along with other recent studies, found that systemic risk in the global financial system has diminished markedly as a result of the new regulations. On the whole, banks have improved balance sheet and funding resilience, and have significantly reduced their involvement in complex financial activities. Lending standards have tightened almost across the board relative to pre-crisis levels, particularly for residential mortgages. Additional capital and liquid assets provide a much wider buffer today against adverse shocks, allowing most banks to pass recent stress tests (Chart II-4). Financial institutions have generally re-positioned toward retail and commercial banking and wealth management, and away from more complex and capital-intensive activities (Chart II-5). The median share of trading assets in total assets for individual G-SIBs has declined from around 20% to 12% over 2009-16. Chart II-4 Chart II-5 Moreover, the propensity for contagion among banks has diminished. The BIS notes that assessing all the complex interactions in the global financial system is extremely difficult. Nonetheless, a positive sign is that banks are focusing more on their home markets since the crisis, and that direct connections between banks through lending and derivatives exposures have declined. The BIS highlights that aggregate foreign bank claims have declined by 16% since the crisis, driven particularly by banks from the advanced economies most affected by the crisis, especially from some European countries (Chart II-6). It is also positive that European banks have made some headway in diminishing over-capacity, although problems still exist in Italy. Finally, and importantly, there has been a distinct shift toward more stable sources of funding, such as deposits, away from fickle wholesale markets (Charts II-7 and II-8). Chart II-6Less Cross Border Lending (Until Recently) Less Cross Border Lending (Until Recently) Less Cross Border Lending (Until Recently)   Chart II-7 Chart II-8 Outside of banking, many other regulatory changes have been implemented to make the system safer. One important example is that rules were adjusted to reduce the risk of runs on money market funds. What About Shadow Banking? Of course, more could be done to further indemnify the financial system. Concentration in the global banking system has not diminished, and it appears that the problem of “too big to fail” has not been solved. And then there is the shadow banking sector, which played a major role in the financial crisis by providing banks a way of moving risk to off-balance sheet entities and securities, and thereby hiding the inherent risks. Shadow banking is defined as credit provision that occurs outside of the banking system, but involves the key features of bank lending including leverage, and liquidity and maturity transformation. Complex structured credit securities, such as Collateralized Debt Obligations, allowed this type of transformation to mushroom in ways that were difficult for regulators and investors to understand. A recent study by the Group of Thirty6 concluded that securitization has dropped to a small fraction of its pre-crisis level, and that growing non-bank credit intermediation since the Great Recession has primarily been in forms that do not appear to raise financial stability concerns. Much of the credit creation has been in non-financial corporate bonds, which is a more stable and less risky form of credit extension than bank lending. Other types of lending have increased, such as corporate credit to pension funds and insurance companies, but this does not involve maturity transformation, according to the Group of Thirty. There has been a dramatic decline in the volume of complex structured credit securities such as collateralized debt obligations, asset-backed commercial paper, and structured investment vehicles since 2007 (Chart II-9). While the situation must be monitored, the Group of Thirty study concludes that the financial system in the advanced economies appears to be less vulnerable to bouts of self-reinforcing forced selling, such as occurred during the 2008 crisis. Chart II-9Less Private-Sector Securitization Less Private-Sector Securitization Less Private-Sector Securitization One exception is the U.S. leveraged loan market, which has swelled to $1.13 trillion and about half has been pooled into Collateralized Loan Obligations. As with U.S. high-yield bonds, the situation is fine as long as profitability remains favorable. But in the next recession, lax lending standards today will contribute to painful losses in leveraged loans. The Bad News That’s the good news. The bad news is that, while the financial system might have become less complex and opaque, the level of debt has increased at an alarming rate in both the private and public sectors in many countries. Elevated levels of debt could cause instability in the global financial system, especially as global bond yields return to more normal levels by historical standards. We discuss other pressure points such as Emerging Markets and China in the next section, although the latter deserves a few comments before we leave the subject of shadow banking. The Group of Thirty notes that 30% of Chinese credit is provided by a broad array of poorly regulated shadow banking entities and activities, including trust funds, wealth management products, and “entrusted loans.” Links between these entities and banks are unclear, and sometimes involve informal commitments to provide credit or liquidity support. The study takes some comfort that most of Chinese debt takes place between Chinese domestic state-owned banks and state-owned companies or local government financing vehicles. Foreign investors have limited involvement, thus reducing potential direct contagion outside of China in the event of a financial event. Still, the potential for contagion internationally via global sentiment and/or the economic fallout is high. The other bad news is that, while regulators in the advanced economies have managed to improve the ability of financial institutions to weather shocks, potential risks to the financial system have increased in number and in probability of occurrence. The Global Risk Institute (GRI) recently published a detailed comparison of potential shocks today relative to 2007.7 The report sees twice the number of risks versus 2007 that are identified as “current” (i.e. could occur at any time) and of “high impact”. The most pressing risks today include extreme weather events, asset bubbles, sovereign debt crises, large-scale involuntary migration, water crises and cyber & data attacks. Any of these could trigger a broad financial crisis if the shock is sufficiently intense, despite improved regulation. The GRI study also eventuates how the risks will evolve over the next 11 years. Readers should see the study for details, but it is interesting that the experts foresee cyber dependency rising to the top of the risk pile by 2030. The increase is driven by the importance of data ownership, the increasing role of algorithms and control systems, and the $1.2 trillion projected cost of cyber, data and infrastructure attacks. Our computer systems are not prepared for the advances of technology, such as quantum computing. Climate change moves to the number two risk spot in its base-case outlook. Space limitations precluded a discussion of the rise of populism in this report, but the GRI sees the political tensions related to income inequality as the number three threat to the global financial system by 2030. Bottom Line: Regulators have managed to substantially reduce the amount of hidden risk and the potential for contagion between financial institutions and across countries since 2007. Banks have a larger buffer against stocks. Unfortunately, the number and probability of potential shocks to the financial system appear to have increased since 2007. (3) Implications Of The Global Debt Overhang The End of the Debt Supercycle is a key BCA theme influencing our macro view of the economic and market outlook for the coming years. For several decades, the willingness of both lenders and borrowers to embrace credit was a lubricant for economic growth and rising asset prices and, importantly, underpinned the effectiveness of monetary policy. During times of economic and/or financial stress, it was relatively easy for the Federal Reserve and other central banks to improve the situation by engineering a new credit up-cycle. However, since the 2007-09 meltdown, even zero (or negative) policy rates have been unable to trigger a strong revival in private credit growth in the major developed economies, except in a few cases. The end of the Debt Supercycle has severely impaired the key transmission channel between changes in monetary policy and economic activity. The combination of high debt burdens and economic uncertainty has curbed borrowers’ appetite for credit while increased regulatory pressures and those same uncertainties have made lenders less willing to extend loans. This has severely eroded the effectiveness of lower interest in boosting credit demand and supply, forcing central banks to rely increasingly on manipulating asset prices and exchange rates. On a positive note, the plunge in interest rates has lowered debt servicing costs to historically low levels. Yet, it is the level, rather than the cost, of debt that seems to have been an impediment to the credit cycle, contributing to a lethargic economic expansion. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) publishes an excellent dataset of credit trends across a broad swath of developing and emerging economies. Some broad conclusions come from an examination of the data (Charts II-10 and II-11):8 Chart II-10Advanced Economies: Some Deleveraging Advanced Economies: Some Deleveraging Advanced Economies: Some Deleveraging Chart II-11EM: Deleveraging Has Not Even Started EM: Deleveraging Has Not Even Started EM: Deleveraging Has Not Even Started Private debt growth has only recently accelerated for the advanced economies as a whole. There are only a handful of developed economies where private debt-to-GDP ratios have moved up meaningfully in the past few years. These are countries that avoided a real estate/banking bust and where property prices have continued to rise (e.g. Canada and Australia). The high level of real estate prices and household debt currently is a major source of concern to the authorities in those few countries. Even where some significant consumer deleveraging has occurred (e.g. the U.S., Spain and Ireland), debt-to-income ratios remain very high by historical standards. In many cases, a stabilization or decline in private debt burdens has been offset by a continued rise in public debt, keeping overall leverage close to peak levels. This is a key legacy of the financial crisis; many governments were forced to offset the loss of demand from private sector deleveraging by running larger and persistent budget deficits. Weak private demand accounts for close to 50% of the rise in public debt on average according to the IMF. Global debt of all types (public and private) has soared from 207% of GDP in 2007 to 246% today. The Debt Supercycle did not end everywhere at the same time. It peaked in Japan more than 20 years ago and has not yet reached a decisive bottom. The 2007-09 meltdown marked the turning point for the U.S. and Europe, but it has not even started in the emerging world. The financial crisis accelerated the accumulation of debt in the latter as investors shifted capital away from the struggling advanced economies to (seemingly less risky) emerging markets. Both EM private- and public-sector debt ratios have continued to move up at an alarming pace. The lesson from Japan is that deleveraging cycles following the bursting of a major credit bubble can last a very long time indeed. One key area where there has been significant deleveraging is the U.S. household sector (Chart II-12). The ratio of household debt to income has fallen below its long-term trend, suggesting that the deleveraging process is well advanced. However, one could argue that the ratio will undershoot the trend for an extended period in a mirror image of the previous overshoot. Or, it may be that the trend has changed; it could now be flat or even down. Chart II-12U.S. Household Deleveraging... U.S. Household Deleveraging... U.S. Household Deleveraging... What is clear is that U.S. attitudes toward saving and spending have changed dramatically since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) (Chart II-13). Like the Great Depression of the 1930s that turned more than one generation off of debt, the 2008/09 crisis appears to have been a watershed event that marked a structural shift in U.S. consumer attitudes toward credit-financed spending. The Debt Supercycle is over for this sector. Chart II-13...As Attitudes To Debt Change ...As Attitudes To Debt Change ...As Attitudes To Debt Change Developing Countries: Debt And Economic Fundamentals BCA’s long-held caution on emerging economies and markets is rooted in concern about deteriorating fundamentals. Trade wars and a tightening Fed are negative for EM assets, but the main headwinds facing this asset class are structural. Excessive debt is a ticking time bomb for many of these countries. EM dollar-denominated debt is now as high as it was in the late 1990s as a share of both GDP and exports (Chart II-14). Moreover, the declining long-term growth potential for emerging economies as a group makes it more difficult for them to service the debt. The structural downtrend in EM labor force and productivity growth underscores that trend GDP growth has collapsed over the past three decades (Chart II-14, bottom panel). Chart II-14EM: High Debt And Slow Growth... EM: High Debt And Slow Growth... EM: High Debt And Slow Growth... The 2019 Key Views9 report from our Emerging Markets Strategy team highlights that excessive capital inflows over the past decade have contributed to over-investment and mal-investment. Much of the borrowing was used to fund unprofitable projects, as highlighted by the plunge in productivity growth, profit margins and return on assets in the EM space relative to pre-Lehman levels (Chart II-15) Decelerating global growth in 2018 has exposed these poor fundamentals. Chart II-15...Along With Deteriorating Profitability ...Along With Deteriorating Profitability ...Along With Deteriorating Profitability As we highlighted in the BCA Outlook 2019, emerging financial markets may enjoy a rally in the second half of 2019 on the back of Chinese policy stimulus. However, this will only represent a ‘sugar high’. The debt overhang in emerging market economies is unlikely to end benignly because a painful period of corporate restructuring, bank recapitalization and structural reforms are required in order to boost productivity and thereby improve these countries’ ability to service their debt mountains. China’s Debt Problem Space limitations preclude a full discussion of the complex debt situation in China and the risks it poses for the global financial system. Waves of stimulus have caused total debt to soar from 140% of GDP in 2008 to 260% of GDP at present (Chart II-16). Since most of the new credit has been used to finance fixed-asset investment, China has ended up with a severe overcapacity problem. The rate of return on assets in the state-owned corporate sector has fallen below borrowing costs (Chart II-17). Chinese banks are currently being told that they must lend more money to support the economy, while ensuring that their loans do not sour. This has become an impossible feat. Chart II-16China's Overinvestment... China's Overinvestment... China's Overinvestment... Chart II-17Has Undermined The Return On Assets Has Undermined The Return On Assets Has Undermined The Return On Assets The previous section highlighted that much of the debt has been created in the opaque shadow banking system, where vast amounts of hidden risk have likely accumulated. Whether or not the central government is willing and/or able to cover a wave of defaults and recapitalize the banking system in the event of a negative shock is hotly debated, both within and outside of BCA. But even if a financial crisis can be avoided, bringing an end to the unsustainable credit boom will undoubtedly have significant consequences for the Chinese economy and the emerging economies that trade with it. Interest Costs To Rise Globally, many are concerned about rising interest costs as interest rates normalize over the coming years. In Appendix Charts II-19 to II-21, we provide interest-cost simulations for selected government, corporate and household sectors under three interest-rate scenarios. The good news is that the starting point for interest rates is still low, and that it takes years for the stock of outstanding debt to adjust to higher market rates. Even if rates rise by another 100 basis points, interest burdens will increase but will generally remain low by historical standards. It would take a surge of 300 basis points across the yield curve to really ‘move the needle’ in terms of interest expense. This does not imply that the global debt situation is sustainable or that a financial crisis can be easily avoided. The next economic downturn will probably not be the direct result of rising interest costs. Nonetheless, elevated government, household and/or corporate leverage has several important long-term negative implications: Limits To Counter-Cyclical Fiscal Policy: Government indebtedness will limit the use of counter-cyclical fiscal policy during the next economic downturn. Chart II-18 highlights that structural budget deficits and government debt levels are higher today compared to previous years that preceded recessions. The risk is especially high for emerging economies and some advanced economies (such as Italy) where investors will be unwilling to lend at a reasonable rate due to default fears. Even in countries where the market still appears willing to lend to the government at a low interest rate, political constraints may limit the room to maneuver as voters and fiscally-conservative politicians revolt against a surge in budget deficits. This will almost certainly be the case in the U.S., where the 2018 tax cuts mean that the federal budget deficit is likely to be around 6% of GDP in the coming years even in the absence of recession. A recession would push it close to a whopping 10%. Even in countries where fiscal stimulus is possible, the end of the Debt Supercycle means that the monetary and fiscal authorities will find it difficult to encourage the private sector to spend and take on more debt. Chart II-18 Growth Headwinds: The debt situation condemns the global economy to a slower pace of trend growth in part because of weaker capital spending. From one perspective this is a good thing, because spending financed by the excessive use of credit is unsustainable. Still, deleveraging has much further to go at the global level, which means that spending will have to be constrained relative to income growth. The IMF estimates that deleveraging in the private sector for the advanced economies is only a third of historical precedents at this point in the cycle. The IMF also found that debt overhangs have historically been associated with lower GDP growth even in the absence of a financial crisis. Sooner or later, overleveraged sectors have to retrench. Vulnerability To Negative Shocks: If adjustment is postponed, debt reaches levels that make the economy highly vulnerable to negative shocks as defaults rise and lenders demand a higher return or withdraw funding altogether. IMF work shows that economic downturns are more costly in terms of lost GDP when it is driven or accompanied by a financial crisis. This is particularly the case for emerging markets. Bottom Line: Although credit growth has been subdued in most major advanced economies, there has been little deleveraging overall and debt-to-GDP is still rising at the global level. Elevated debt levels are far from benign, even if it appears to be easily financed at the moment. It acts as dead weight on economic activity and makes the world economy vulnerable to negative shocks. It steals growth from the future and, in the event of such a shock, the lack of a fiscal buffer in most countries means that it will be difficult or impossible to provide fiscal relief. The end of the Debt Supercycle means that the monetary and fiscal authorities will find it difficult to encourage the private sector to spend in most cases. For EM, deleveraging has not even started and more financial fireworks seem inevitable in the context of a strong dollar and rising global yields. China may avoid a crisis, but the adjustment to a less credit-driven economy is already proving to be a painful process. Mark McClellan Senior Vice President The Bank Credit Analyst APPENDIX Chart II-19Corporate Interest Cost Scenarios Corporate Interest Interest Cost Scenarios Corporate Interest Interest Cost Scenarios   Chart II-20Government Interest Cost Scenarios Government Interest Cost Scenarios Government Interest Cost Scenarios   Chart II-21U.S. Household Sector Interest Cost Scenarios U.S. Household Sector Interest Cost Scenarios U.S. Household Sector Interest Cost Scenarios   III. Indicators And Reference Charts Our tactical upgrade of equities to overweight this month goes against most of our proprietary indicators. Our Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) indicators for the U.S., Japan and Europe are all heading lower. The WTP indicators track flows, and thus provide information on what investors are actually doing, as opposed to sentiment indexes that track how investors are feeling. Investors are clearly moving funds away from the equity market at the moment. Our Revealed Preference Indicator (RPI) for stocks continues to issue a ‘sell’ signal. The RPI combines the idea of market momentum with valuation and policy measures. It provides a powerful bullish signal if positive market momentum lines up with constructive signals from the policy and valuation measures. Conversely, if constructive market momentum is not supported by valuation and policy, investors should lean against the market trend. Momentum remains out of sync with valuation and policy, supporting the view that caution is still warranted. The U.S. net earnings revisions ratio has dropped into negative territory. The earnings surprises index has also declined, although it remains above 60%. Finally, our Composite Technical Equity Indicator has broken below the zero line and its 9-month exponential moving average, sending a negative technical signal. On the positive side, our Monetary Indicator has hooked up, although it is still in negative territory for equities. From a contrary perspective, the fact that equity sentiment has turned bearish is positive for stocks. In fact, this is the main reason why we upgraded stocks this month. While it is late in the U.S. economic expansion and the Fed is tightening, sentiment regarding U.S. and global growth has become overly pessimistic. Thus, we are playing a late-cycle bounce in stocks. For bonds, the term premium moved further into negative territory in December, which is unsustainable from a long-term perspective. Long-term inflation expectations are also too low to be consistent with the Fed meeting its 2% target over the medium term. These facts suggest that bond yields have not peaked for the cycle, although at the moment they have not yet worked off oversold conditions according to our technical indicator. The U.S. dollar is overbought and very expensive on a PPP basis. Nonetheless, we believe it will become more expensive in the first half of 2019, before its structural downtrend resumes in broad trade-weighted terms. EQUITIES: Chart III-1U.S. Equity Indicators U.S. Equity Indicators U.S. Equity Indicators   Chart III-2Willingness To Pay For Risk Willingness To Pay For Risk Willingness To Pay For Risk Chart III-3U.S. Equity Sentiment Indicators U.S. Equity Sentiment Indicators U.S. Equity Sentiment Indicators Chart III-4Revealed Preference Indicator Revealed Preference Indicator Revealed Preference Indicator   Chart III-5U.S. Stock Market Valuation U.S. Stock Market Valuation U.S. Stock Market Valuation Chart III-6U.S. Earnings U.S. Earnings U.S. Earnings Chart III-7Global Stock Market And Earnings: Relative Performance Global Stock Market And Earnings: Relative Performance Global Stock Market And Earnings: Relative Performance Chart III-8Global Stock Market And Earnings: Relative Performance Global Stock Market And Earnings: Relative Performance Global Stock Market And Earnings: Relative Performance FIXED INCOME: Chart III-9U.S. Treasurys And Valuations U.S. Treasurys And Valuations U.S. Treasurys And Valuations Chart III-10Yield Curve Slopes Yield Curve Slopes Yield Curve Slopes Chart III-11Selected U.S. Bond Yields Selected U.S. Bond Yields Selected U.S. Bond Yields   Chart III-1210-Year Treasury Yield Components 10-Year Treasury Yield Components 10-Year Treasury Yield Components Chart III-13U.S. Corporate Bonds And Health Monitor U.S. Corporate Bonds And Health Monitor U.S. Corporate Bonds And Health Monitor Chart III-14Global Bonds: Developed Markets Global Bonds: Developed Markets Global Bonds: Developed Markets Chart III-15Global Bonds: Emerging Markets Global Bonds: Emerging Markets Global Bonds: Emerging Markets CURRENCIES: Chart III-16U.S. Dollar And PPP U.S. Dollar And PPP U.S. Dollar And PPP   Chart III-17U.S. Dollar And Indicator U.S. Dollar And Indicator U.S. Dollar And Indicator   Chart III-18U.S. Dollar Fundamentals U.S. Dollar Fundamentals U.S. Dollar Fundamentals   Chart III-19Japanese Yen Technicals Japanese Yen Technicals Japanese Yen Technicals Chart III-20Euro Technicals Euro Technicals Euro Technicals Chart III-21Euro/Yen Technicals Euro/Yen Technicals Euro/Yen Technicals Chart III-22Euro/Pound Technicals Euro/Pound Technicals Euro/Pound Technicals COMMODITIES: Chart III-23Broad Commodity Indicators Broad Commodity Indicators Broad Commodity Indicators   Chart III-24Commodity Prices Commodity Prices Commodity Prices Chart III-25Commodity Prices Commodity Prices Commodity Prices Chart III-26Commodity Sentiment Commodity Sentiment Commodity Sentiment Chart III-27Speculative Positioning Speculative Positioning Speculative Positioning ECONOMY: Chart III-28U.S. And Global Macro Backdrop U.S. And Global Macro Backdrop U.S. And Global Macro Backdrop   Chart III-29U.S. Macro Snapshot U.S. Macro Snapshot U.S. Macro Snapshot   Chart III-30U.S. Growth Outlook U.S. Growth Outlook U.S. Growth Outlook Chart III-31U.S. Cyclical Spending U.S. Cyclical Spending U.S. Cyclical Spending Chart III-32U.S. Labor Market U.S. Labor Market U.S. Labor Market Chart III-33U.S. Consumption U.S. Consumption U.S. Consumption Chart III-34U.S. Housing U.S. Housing U.S. Housing Chart III-35U.S. Debt And Deleveraging U.S. Debt And Deleveraging U.S. Debt And Deleveraging Chart III-36U.S. Financial Conditions U.S. Financial Conditions U.S. Financial Conditions   Chart III-37Global Economic Snapshot: Europe Global Economic Snapshot: Europe Global Economic Snapshot: Europe Chart III-38Global Economic Snapshot: China Global Economic Snapshot: China Global Economic Snapshot: China Mark McClellan Senior Vice President The Bank Credit Analyst   1      For more details, please see BCA Geopolitical Strategy Special Report "U.S.-China: The Tech War And Reform Agenda," dated December 12, 2018, available at gps.bcaresearch.com 2      Please see BCA U.S. Investment Strategy Special Report "The Bane Of Investors’ Existence: Why Is Correlation High And When Will It Fall?" dated January 4, 2012, available at usis.bcaresearch.com. Also see BCA Global ETF Strategy Special Report "The Passive Menace," dated September 13, 2017, available at etf.bcaresearch.com 3       We use only below average returns in the calculation of volatility (downside volatility) because we are more concerned with the risk of equity market declines for the purposes of this model. 4       The LCR requires a large bank to hold enough high-quality liquid assets to cover the net cash outflows the bank would expect to occur over a 30-day stress scenario. The NSFR complements the LCR by requiring an amount of stable funding that is tailored to the liquidity risk of a bank’s assets and liabilities, based on a one-year time horizon. 5       Structural Changes in Banking After the Crisis. CGFS Papers No.60. Bank for International Settlements, January 2018. 6       Shadow Banking and Capital Markets Risks and Opportunities. Group of Thirty. Washington, D.C., November 2016. 7       Back to the Future: 2007 to 2030. Are New Financial Risks Foreshadowing a Systemic Risk Event? Global Risk Institute. 8       For more details on public and private debt trends, please see BCA Special Report "The End Of The Debt Supercycle: An Update," dated May 11, 2016, available at bca.bcaresearch.com 9       Please see BCA Emerging Markets Strategy Weekly Report "2019 Key Views: Will The EM Lost Decade End With A Bang Or A Whimper?" dated December 6, 2018, available at ems.bcaresearch.com EQUITIES:FIXED INCOME:CURRENCIES:COMMODITIES:ECONOMY:

Highlights Asset allocation: Start 2019 with an overweight to industrial commodities versus equities. Await an oversold sell-off signal on the 65-day fractal dimension to go tactically overweight equities versus cash. Equities: Start 2019 with a cyclical equity sector tilt, but become more defensive as the global economy inevitably flips into a down-oscillation later in 2019. Start tactically overweight Italy’s MIB versus the Eurostoxx. Bonds: Initiate a bond yield convergence play: long 10-year Italian BTPs versus Spanish Bonos. Currencies: Start 2019 short EUR/JPY combined with long EUR/USD. There will be a great opportunity to buy the GBP, but not yet. Alternatives: A compelling buying opportunity for the cryptocurrencies Litecoin and Ethereum. Feature 2019 will present investors a mirror-image pattern to 2018. Through most of 2018, global growth was decelerating while inflation was accelerating. Now this configuration is flipping: global growth is rebounding while inflation is set to collapse. Growth To Rebound, Then Fade Global growth has entered an up-oscillation, for which the evidence is irrefutable: Industrial (non-oil) commodities are strongly outperforming equities, and rising even in absolute terms (Chart of the Week and Chart 2). Emerging markets are strongly outperforming developed markets (Chart 3). Financials are outperforming the broad equity market (Chart 4). Sweden’s manufacturing PMI – a bellwether of global activity – is rebounding strongly (Chart 5). Perhaps most importantly, China’s 6-month credit impulse has gone vertical (Chart 6). Chart of the WeekNon-Oil Commodities Are Strongly Outperforming Equities Non-Oil Commodities Are Strongly Outperforming Equities Non-Oil Commodities Are Strongly Outperforming Equities   Chart I-2Non-Oil Commodities Are Recovering In Absolute Terms Too Non-Oil Commodities Are Recovering In Absolute Terms Too Non-Oil Commodities Are Recovering In Absolute Terms Too   Chart I-3Emerging Markets Are Strongly Outperforming Developed Markets Emerging Markets Are Strongly Outperforming Developed Markets Emerging Markets Are Strongly Outperforming Developed Markets Chart I-4Financials Are Outperforming Financials Are Outperforming Financials Are Outperforming Chart I-5Sweden’s Manufacturing PMI Is Up Sharply Sweden's Manufacturing PMI Is Up Sharply Sweden's Manufacturing PMI Is Up Sharply Chart I-6China’s 6-Month Credit Impulse Has Gone Vertical China's 6-Month Credit Impulse Has Gone Vertical China's 6-Month Credit Impulse Has Gone Vertical Taken together, this is compelling evidence of a growth rebound, even if it is modest. Crucially, such up-oscillations tend to last at least six to eight months. Hence, equity sector performances, which always take their cue from global growth, will follow a mirror-image pattern in 2019 to that in 2018. Bottom Line: Start the year with an overweight to industrial commodities versus equities and a cyclical equity sector tilt, but prepare to fade to a more defensive tilt as the global economy inevitably flips into a down-oscillation later in 2019. Inflation Is The Dog That Will Not Bark There are not many things that are certain in the economy, but a racing certainty for early 2019 is that headline inflation will collapse. This is because the plunge in the crude oil price – 40 percent so far and getting worse by the day – is about to feed through into headline consumer price indexes (Chart 7 and Chart 8). Inevitably, it will seep through into core inflation too, via the impact on energy dependent prices such as transport costs. Chart I-7Headline Inflation Will Collapse In Europe Headline Inflation Will Collapse In Europe Headline Inflation Will Collapse In Europe Chart I-8Headline Inflation Will Collapse In The U.S. Headline Inflation Will Collapse In The U.S. Headline Inflation Will Collapse In The U.S. Coming at a time that central banks have professed a much greater reliance on “incoming data”, we can deduce that central banks will find it hard to tighten policy in the face of weaker headline and core inflation prints. Crucially though, the ECB and BoJ were not planning on tightening policy anyway, so the plunge in reported inflation will be much more impactful on the Fed. This makes the dollar vulnerable, leaving us a choice between the euro and yen as our preferred major currency. And on this head-to-head the yen still beats the euro given its lower political risk: Bottom Line: Start 2019 short EUR/JPY combined with long EUR/USD. Use ‘The Rule Of 4’ And Fractals To Predict Tipping-Points For Equities Investment strategists are obsessed with timing the next recession. The thinking is that by predicting the next recession they can predict the next equity bear market. The logic sounds fine, except that the causality rarely runs from economic downturns to financial market instabilities. The causality almost always runs the other way. Paul Volcker, arguably the greatest central banker of the modern era, correctly points out that the danger to the economy almost always comes from systemic financial disturbances. The last three downturns, in 2000, 2007 and 2011, all resulted from financial disturbances: the bursting of the dot com bubble, the gross mispricing of U.S. sub-prime mortgages, and the distortion of euro area sovereign debt markets respectively. Instead of timing the next recession to predict financial market instability, the correct approach is to flip the logic around and ask: is there a glaring source of financial instability that could cause the next recession? To which the answer is yes. The current glaring instability is the hyper-vulnerability of elevated risk-asset valuations to the global bond yield. Near the lower bound of bond yields, bond prices develop the same unattractive negative asymmetry as equities, removing the need for an equity risk premium, and justifying sharply higher equity valuations. But when the 10-year global bond yield rises back to around 2 percent – or equivalently when the sum of the 10-year U.S. T-bond, German bund and Japanese government bond approaches 4 percent ‘the rule of 4’ – the process viciously reverses: bond prices lose their negative asymmetry, re-requiring an equity risk premium and sharply lower equity valuations (Chart 9 and Chart 10). Chart I-9Equities Plunged In February After A Spike In Bond Yields Equities Plunged In February After A Spike In Bond Yields Equities Plunged In February After A Spike In Bond Yields Chart I-10Equities Plunged In October After A Spike In Bond Yields Equities Plunged In October After A Spike In Bond Yields Equities Plunged In October After A Spike In Bond Yields In 2019, just as in 2018, investors should use this dynamic to allocate tactically to equities versus cash as follows: 1. When the rule of 4 approaches 4 and the market’s 65-day fractal dimension signals an overbought rally, go underweight equities. 2. When the rule of 4 approaches 3 and the market’s 65-day fractal dimension signals an oversold sell-off, go overweight equities. 3. At all other times stay neutral. Bottom Line: With the rule of 4 now approaching 3, await an oversold sell-off signal on the 65-day fractal dimension to go tactically overweight equities versus cash. Britain Escalates EU Tensions, Italy De-Escalates The two points of political tension in Europe, the U.K. and Italy, have a common theme: brinkmanship with the EU. The Brexit tension remains high and may even intensify in early 2019 before a resolution. Hence, while 2019 will offer a great opportunity to buy the pound, it might require a little patience. In contrast, Italy is de-escalating its brinkmanship with Brussels over its budget deficit. Meanwhile the crux of Italy’s long-standing woes – its banking system – is also showing signs of healing. The proportion of bank loans that are non-performing is plummeting, while the solvency of the banking system continues to improve (Chart 11 and Chart 12). Chart I-11Italian Banks’ NPLs Are Plummeting… Italian Banks' NPLs Are Plummeting... Italian Banks' NPLs Are Plummeting... Chart I-12…And Italian Banks’ Solvency Is Improving ...And Italian Banks' Solvency Is Improving ...And Italian Banks' Solvency Is Improving Bottom Line: Initiate a bond yield convergence play: long 10-year Italian BTPs versus Spanish Bonos. And tactically overweight Italy’s MIB versus the Eurostoxx. Cryptocurrencies Will Rebound 60 Percent Cryptocurrencies are here to stay, because the underlying technology, the blockchain, is here to stay. Just as the internet’s major innovation was to decentralise and democratise information, the blockchain’s major innovation is to decentralise and democratise trust. Until now, counterparties without an established trust relationship could only transact through an intermediary who could provide the necessary trust overlay. But once each participant in a transaction trusts the blockchain itself, they no longer need to use a conventional intermediary, like a bank or a law firm. One major argument against the blockchain is that it is energy intensive and therefore prohibitively costly. But conventional intermediation also exacts a significant cost. Let’s say that the stock of excess savings that the banks intermediate to borrowers conservatively equals global GDP. If the risk-adjusted interest rate spread that banks charge for their intermediation role conservatively equals 1 percent, it means that this conventional intermediation is costing 1 percent of global GDP. Against this, global energy consumption equals roughly 5 percent of global GDP. So even if the blockchain consumed a fifth of the world’s energy, its cost might still be comparable to conventional intermediation. The plunge in cryptocurrencies during 2018 was exacerbated by the recent ‘hard fork’ in bitcoin protocol. But such hard forks are a necessary part of the evolutionary process – being analogous to a Darwinian mutation which eliminates the weakest protocols while allowing the strongest and fittest to thrive. In the latest fork, the battle was between those who want cryptocurrencies to remain a speculative asset with low long-term survival prospects, and those who want them to become a stable means of payment with high long-term survival prospects. A year ago almost to the day, we recommended selling bitcoin at a price of $18,000. Our rationale was that excessive herding required a price gap down to normalise liquidity. The subsequent decline in the price to $3500 today has rewarded that recommendation handsomely. But today, Litecoin and Ethereum are approaching an opposite tipping-point where the price may have to gap up to normalise liquidity (Chart 13 and Chart 14). Chart I-13Litecoin Is Oversold On A 65-Day Horizon Litecoin Is Oversold On A 65-Day Horizon Litecoin Is Oversold On A 65-Day Horizon   Chart I-14Litecoin Is Oversold On A 130-Day Horizon Litecoin Is Oversold On A 130-Day Horizon Litecoin Is Oversold On A 130-Day Horizon Bottom Line: A compelling buying opportunity for the cryptocurrencies Litecoin and Ethereum. For a 50:50 basket, target a return of 60 percent. And on that positive note, I am signing off for the year. I do hope that you have enjoyed reading this year’s reports, but more importantly that you have found value in them. This publication’s philosophy is to think out of the box, independently and unconstrained, never to shirk from challenging the received wisdom, and ultimately to provide successful investment ideas. We promise to continue this way in 2019! It just remains for me to wish you a very happy holiday season and a prosperous new year. Dhaval Joshi, Senior Vice President Chief European Investment Strategist dhaval@bcaresearch.com   Fractal Trading Model* As discussed in the main body of this report, this week’s recommended trade is to buy a 50:50 combination of Litecoin and Ethereum. Set a profit target of 60 percent with a symmetrical stop-loss. As also discussed in the main body of this report, remain tactically overweight Italy’s MIB versus the Eurostoxx. For any investment, excessive trend following and groupthink can reach a natural point of instability, at which point the established trend is highly likely to break down with or without an external catalyst. An early warning sign is the investment’s fractal dimension approaching its natural lower bound. Encouragingly, this trigger has consistently identified countertrend moves of various magnitudes across all asset classes. Long MIB Vs. Euro Stoxx Long MIB Vs. Euro Stoxx * For more details please see the European Investment Strategy Special Report “Fractals, Liquidity & A Trading Model,” dated December 11, 2014, available at eis.bcaresearch.com. Fractal Trading Model Recommendations Asset Allocation Equity Regional and Country Allocation Equity Sector Allocation Bond and Interest Rate Allocation Currency and Other Allocation Closed Fractal Trades Trades Closed Trades Asset Performance Currency & Bond Equity Sector Country Equity Indicators Bond Yields Chart II-1 Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Chart II-2 Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Chart II-3 Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Chart II-4 Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Indicators To Watch - Bond Yields Interest Rate Chart II-5 Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Chart II-6 Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Chart II-7 Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Chart II-8 Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations Indicators To Watch - Interest Rate Expectations

We downgraded global equities this summer based on lofty valuations, overly bullish sentiment, and the prospect of slowing global growth. Since then, valuations have improved, sentiment has turned more cautious, and while global growth will continue to decelerate in the first half of 2019, asset markets have largely discounted this outcome. Consistent with this turn of events, our MacroQuant equity model is now sending a more upbeat signal on equities, while flagging a more challenging outlook for bonds. As such, we recommend that clients overweight global equities during the next 12 months, underweight government bonds, and move cash allocations from overweight back down to neutral. We discussed our key views for 2019 in this week’s report and they remain in place following today’s adjustments.  Today’s FOMC statement and press conference do not alter these conclusions. The Fed now expects to raise rates two times in 2019, down from three hikes in the September statement. The more gradual pace of rate increases reflects the tightening in financial conditions observed over the past few months as well as somewhat lower-than-expected inflation readings. Ultimately, we think the Fed will be able to raise rates at least three times next year as it becomes clear that the U.S. economy can tolerate tighter monetary policy. Higher U.S. rates, in conjunction with slowing Chinese growth, will keep the dollar well bid in the first half of next year, allowing U.S. stocks to outperform their foreign peers in dollar terms. In past reports, we highlighted our intention to go long the MSCI All-Country World index if the ACWI ETF reached $64. This occurred today and we are now long the index as part of our structural trade recommendations. Peter Berezin, Chief Global Strategist Global Investment Strategy peterb@bcaresearch.com

We downgraded global equities this summer based on lofty valuations, overly bullish sentiment, and the prospect of slowing global growth. Since then, valuations have improved, sentiment has turned more cautious, and while global growth will continue to decelerate in the first half of 2019, asset markets have largely discounted this outcome. Consistent with this turn of events, our MacroQuant equity model is now sending a more upbeat signal on equities, while flagging a more challenging outlook for bonds. As such, we recommend that clients overweight global equities during the next 12 months, underweight government bonds, and move cash allocations from overweight back down to neutral. We discussed our key views for 2019 in this week’s report and they remain in place following today’s adjustments.  Today’s FOMC statement and press conference do not alter these conclusions. The Fed now expects to raise rates two times in 2019, down from three hikes in the September statement. The more gradual pace of rate increases reflects the tightening in financial conditions observed over the past few months as well as somewhat lower-than-expected inflation readings. Ultimately, we think the Fed will be able to raise rates at least three times next year as it becomes clear that the U.S. economy can tolerate tighter monetary policy. Higher U.S. rates, in conjunction with slowing Chinese growth, will keep the dollar well bid in the first half of next year, allowing U.S. stocks to outperform their foreign peers in dollar terms. In past reports, we highlighted our intention to go long the MSCI All-Country World index if the ACWI ETF reached $64. This occurred today and we are now long the index as part of our structural trade recommendations. Peter Berezin, Chief Global Strategist Global Investment Strategy peterb@bcaresearch.com

Highlights Dear Client, This is the final Global Fixed Income Strategy report for 2018. We will return with our first report of the new year on January 8th, 2019. Our entire team wishes you a very happy holiday season and a prosperous new year. Best regards, Rob Robis, Chief Strategist 2019 Model Bond Portfolio Positioning: Translating our 2019 key global fixed income views into recommended overall positioning within our model bond portfolio yields the following: target a modest level of active portfolio risk, with below-benchmark duration and only neutral exposure to corporate credit. Country Allocation: Government bond allocation should continue to reflect relative expectations for monetary policy changes. That means an overweight in countries where central banks will have little scope to increase rates (core Europe, Japan, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand) and an underweight where central banks are likely to tighten more than markets currently discount (U.S., Canada, Sweden). Corporate Credit: We currently prefer U.S. corporate bonds to European and EM equivalents based on better U.S. profit prospects, which enhances debt serviceability. However, we will look to pare U.S. exposure as the Fed shifts to a more restrictive stance later in 2019. Feature Last week, we published our 2019 “Key Views” report, outlining the thematic implications of the 2019 BCA Outlook for global bond markets.1 In this follow-up report, we translate those themes into specific investment recommendations for next year. We also recommend changes to the allocations in the Global Fixed Income Strategy model bond portfolio to reflect our 2019 themes. The main takeaway is that 2019 will be another year of poor returns, with increased volatility, for most global fixed income markets. The greater pressures should come in the latter half of the year, after the U.S. Federal Reserve delivers additional rate hikes and decisive signs of a slowing U.S. economy unfold. Investors should maintain a defensive strategic posture on fixed income markets throughout the year, both for interest rate duration and credit exposure. Selling into market rallies, rather than chasing them, will prove to be the prudent strategy. Top-Down Bond Market Implications Of Our Key Views As a reminder, the main fixed income investment themes from last week’s Key Views report were the following: Late-cycle pressures will keep bond yields elevated. Global growth will remain above trend in 2019, keeping unemployment rates low and preventing central banks from turning dovish. The unwind of crisis-era global monetary policies will continue. Slowing central bank asset purchases will worsen the supply/demand balance for both government bonds, resulting in gentle upward pressure on yields via higher term premia. It is too early to worry about inverted yield curves. The time to be concerned about the recessionary implications of an inverted U.S. Treasury curve will come after the Fed has lifted real interest rates to above neutral (R*), which should occur in the latter half of 2019. Expect poor corporate bond returns from an aging credit cycle. While default risk is likely to stay modest in 2019, the greater risk for corporates could come from concerns over future credit downgrades, as well as diminished inflows in a “post-QE” world. We now present the specific fixed income investment recommendations that flow from those themes in the following categories: overall portfolio risk, overall duration exposure, country allocations within government bonds, yield curve allocations within countries, and corporate credit allocations by country and credit rating. Overall Portfolio Risk: DEFENSIVE Government bond yields enter 2019 at very low (i.e. expensive) levels across the major developed markets, even after the cumulative rise in U.S. Treasury yields seen over the past twelve months. Real yields remain below trend real GDP growth rates, a consequence of central banks keeping policy rates below neutral levels as measured by concepts like the Taylor Rule (Chart of the Week). In addition, credit spreads remain near the low end of long-run historical ranges in all markets. Without the initial starting point of cheap valuations, fixed income return expectations in 2019 should be severely tempered (Charts 2& 3). Chart 1   Chart 2Low Yields = Low Expected Returns For U.S. Corporates … Low Yields = Low Expected Returns For U.S. Corporates... Low Yields = Low Expected Returns For U.S. Corporates...   Chart 3… And European Corporates ...and European Corporates ...and European Corporates Volatility measures like the VIX index will remain elevated until markets begin to sniff out a bottoming of global growth. Much will depend on developments in China, but our expectation is that policymakers there will only act to stabilize the economy rather than provide large, 2016-scale stimulus. That may be enough to create a tactical “risk-on” trading opportunity by mid-year but we recommend using any such rally to reduce credit exposure given the risk of a more lasting global economic downturn in 2020. Importantly, cross-asset correlations should continue to drift lower without broad support from coordinated global economic growth or expanding monetary liquidity via central bank asset purchases (Chart 4). Without those rising tides lifting all boats, more active security selection by country, sector and credit rating should help portfolio managers outperform their benchmarks in what is likely to be another down year for absolute returns. Chart 4High Volatilities With Low Correlations High Volatilities With Low Correlations High Volatilities With Low Correlations That combination of diminished return prospects and elevated volatility means investors should maintain a defensive bias in fixed income portfolios heading into 2019. Within our own GFIS recommended model bond portfolio, this means keeping our tracking error (the relative expected volatility versus our custom benchmark performance index) well below our maximum target level of 100bps (Chart 5). Chart 5Maintain Moderate Overall Portfolio Risk Maintain Moderate Overall Portfolio Risk Maintain Moderate Overall Portfolio Risk Overall Duration Stance: BELOW BENCHMARK We do not think that global bond yields have peaked for this business cycle. The current period of softening global economic momentum will not turn into a prolonged period of sub-trend growth that would push up unemployment rates in the major developed economies. With the global output gap nearly closed, and monetary policymakers firmly believing in the Phillips Curve framework (lower unemployment leads to higher inflation) to forecast inflation, a more dovish stance from the major central banks seems unlikely. As we discussed in last week’s report, global bond yields are in a process of normalization away from the depressed levels seen after the 2008-09 global financial crisis and recession (Chart 6). Term premia, inflation expectations and real yields all have upside potential as central banks slowly back away from quantitative easing and low interest rate policies. Thus, we continue to recommend a defensive, below-benchmark strategic stance on overall portfolio duration exposure (Chart 7). Chart 6Bond Yields Will Continue To Normalize In 2019 Bond Yields Will Continue To Normalize In 2019 Bond Yields Will Continue To Normalize In 2019   Chart 7Stay Below-Benchmark On Duration Risk Stay Below-Benchmark On Duration Risk Stay Below-Benchmark On Duration Risk Government Bond Country Allocation: Underweight U.S., Canada, Sweden, Italy. Overweight Germany, France, U.K., Japan, Australia, New Zealand At the country level, we recommend underweighting government bond markets where central banks will be more likely to raise interest rates (because of firm domestic economic growth and building inflation pressures), but where too few rate hikes are currently discounted in money market yield curves. The U.S., Canada and Sweden fit that description (Chart 8). The U.K. would also be part of this group, but the Brexit uncertainty leads us to maintain an overweight stance on U.K. Gilts entering 2019. Chart 8Monetary Policy Expectations Drive Country Allocations Monetary Policy Expectations Drive Country Allocations Monetary Policy Expectations Drive Country Allocations By the same token, we are recommending overweights in countries where rate hikes are unlikely to occur in 2019 because of underwhelming inflation, like core Europe, Japan and New Zealand. We are currently overweight Australian government bonds, but we expect to cut that exposure in 2019 as pressure builds for a rate hike in the latter half of the year as inflation picks up. Italian government bonds represent a special case of a developed market trading off sovereign credit risk rather than interest rate or inflation risk. We continue to treat Italian government bonds the same way we view corporate debt, as a growth-sensitive asset. On that basis, we will remain underweight Italian government bonds until Italy’s leading economic indicator bottoms out, mollifying concerns about debt sustainability. The Fed is still the one central bank that is most likely to hike rates multiple times in 2019, which will sustain wide differentials between Treasuries and non-U.S. bond yields (Chart 9). Chart 9ECB, BoE, BoJ Resisting Pressure From Tight Labor Markets ECB, BoE, BoJ Resisting Pressure From Tight Labor Markets ECB, BoE, BoJ Resisting Pressure From Tight Labor Markets The greatest potential for spread widening will be for Treasuries versus JGBs, with no changes in the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy expected due to stubbornly low inflation. The 10-year Treasury-Gilt spread could also widen if the Bank of England stays on the sidelines for longer until Brexit uncertainty is resolved. The 10-year U.S.-New Zealand spread should also widen with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand staying on hold for a while due to underwhelming growth and inflation momentum. The U.S.-Canada spread will be rangebound, with the Bank of Canada likely to match, but not exceed, Fed tightening in 2019. There are some markets, though, where yields could rise a bit more than Treasury yields due to shifting monetary policies. While the ECB will refrain from raising rates next year, there is a potential for the U.S. Treasury-German Bund spread to narrow marginally if the end of ECB new asset purchases lifts Bund yields via a recovery in the German term premium. There is more (albeit still modest) scope for a narrowing in the 10-year U.S.-Australia and U.S.-Sweden spreads. After keeping monetary policy very loose for a long time, the beginning of rate hikes next year by the Reserve Bank of Australia and Riksbank could put meaningful upward pressure on deeply depressed longer-maturity Australian and Swedish yields. Yield Curve Positioning: Favor Bearish Steepeners Everywhere In The First Half Of 2019, Then Switch To Bearish Flatteners In The U.S., Canada, Australia And Sweden We expect some bearish steepening pressures to appear in most countries in the first quarter of 2019 with inflation breakevens likely to rebound if the bullish oil forecast of BCA’s Commodity & Energy Strategy team comes to fruition (Charts 10 & 11). The end of the net new buying phase of the ECB’s Asset Purchase Program in January will also put upward pressure on longer-dated European yields through a worsening supply/demand balance for European government bonds and a wider term premium, helping keep European yield curves steep. Chart 10Inflation Expectations & Bond Yields Will Rebound In 2019 … Inflation Expectations & Bond Yields Will Rebound In 2019... Inflation Expectations & Bond Yields Will Rebound In 2019...   Chart 11… As BCA’s Bullish Oil View Comes To Fruition ...As BCA's Bullish Oil View Comes To Fruition ...As BCA's Bullish Oil View Comes To Fruition Importantly, it is too soon to worry about an inversion of the U.S. Treasury curve, as we discussed in last week’s report, with the fed funds rate not yet at a restrictive level (i.e. real rates above measures of neutral like R-star). That outcome should occur by the end of 2019, when we expect the Treasury curve to move towards a true monetary policy-induced inversion. Similar patterns – steepening first from rising inflation expectations, flattening later from more hawkish central banks delivering rate hikes – should unfold in Canada, Australia and Sweden. Applying Our Global Golden Rule To Government Bond Allocations Back in September, we published a Special Report introducing a government bond return forecasting methodology called the “Global Golden Rule.”2 This is an extension of a framework introduced by our sister service, U.S. Bond Strategy, that links U.S. Treasury returns to changes in the fed funds rate that are not discounted in money markets (using our 12-month Discounters derived from Overnight Index Swap curves). In Table 1, we show the expected returns generated by the Global Golden Rule (shown hedged into U.S. dollars) for the countries in our model bond portfolio custom benchmark, based on monetary policy scenarios that we deem to be most plausible for 2019. In Table 2, we show the returns on a duration-adjusted basis (expected total return divided by duration). We then rank the return scenarios for overall country indices, aggregating the returns of the individual yield curve maturity buckets shown in those two tables, in Table 3. Table 1Global Golden Rule Return Forecasts For 2019 2019 Key Views, Part II: Time To Play Defense 2019 Key Views, Part II: Time To Play Defense   Table 2Global Golden Rule Duration-Adjusted Return Forecasts For 2019 2019 Key Views, Part II: Time To Play Defense 2019 Key Views, Part II: Time To Play Defense The shaded cells in Table 3 represent our base case forecasts for policy rate changes in each country. On this basis, the better return prospects for 2019 will be in markets where central banks will stand pat throughout the year (Germany, Japan). Conversely, the weaker returns will occur where we expect more rate hikes than currently discounted by markets (U.S., Canada). These returns fit with our recommended country allocation outlined above. Table 3Ranking The 2019 Return Scenarios 2019 Key Views, Part II: Time To Play Defense 2019 Key Views, Part II: Time To Play Defense Corporate Credit Allocation: Neutral Overall, But Overweight In U.S. Investment Grade And High-Yield Relative To European And Emerging Market Equivalents. Look To Cut The U.S. To Underweight In The Latter Half Of 2019. We enter 2019 maintaining our recommended overall neutral exposure to corporate debt. As discussed earlier, we expect to see some stabilization of global growth in the first half of 2019. This will create a playable “risk-on” rally for growth sensitive assets like corporates, but we anticipate selling into that rally by downgrading our recommended U.S. credit allocations to underweight. Within U.S. credit markets, we are recommending a less aggressive medium-term stance, staying up in quality within investment grade debt (single-B and single-A rated names versus BBBs) and high-yield (BB-rated vs CCC-rated). With 50% of the investment grade benchmark index now rated just above junk, there is a growing risk of “fallen angel” downgrades to junk status in the event of a material slowing of U.S. economic growth. At the same time, default-adjusted spreads on U.S. high-yield debt only appear attractive if the current exceptionally low default rate backdrop persists (Chart 12). In other words, both U.S. investment grade and high-yield corporate debt are vulnerable to any major slowing of U.S. economic growth and slump in corporate profits. Chart 12U.S. Corporates Vulnerable To Slower Growth U.S. Corporates Vulnerable To Slower Growth U.S. Corporates Vulnerable To Slower Growth The confluence of above-trend U.S. growth and still pro-cyclical Fed policy will support U.S. credit in the near-term, but that will all change later in 2019. We expect the Fed to deliver at least 75bps of rate hikes in 2019 – perhaps only pausing from the current 25bps per quarter pace at the March meeting – which will push the funds rate into restrictive territory and invert the Treasury curve sometime in the 4th quarter of the year. This will cause investors to start to discount a deep growth slowdown in 2020, which will trigger systemic credit spread widening (Chart 13). We expect our next move on U.S. corporate debt to be a downgrade to underweight, likely sometime around mid-year. Chart 13Growth Differentials Continue To Favor U.S. Growth Differentials Continue To Favor U.S. Growth Differentials Continue To Favor U.S. We still prefer U.S. corporates to European or Emerging Market (EM) equivalents, however, thanks to the likelihood of better near-term growth prospects in the U.S. We are concerned about how the European corporate bond market will perform without the support of ECB asset purchases, which leads us to underweight both investment grade and high-yield European corporates (Chart 14).3 Chart 14Stay Overweight U.S. Corporates Vs European Corporates Stay Overweight U.S. Corporates Vs European Corporates Stay Overweight U.S. Corporates Vs European Corporates EM corporates will continue to suffer from the toxic combination of rising U.S. interest rates, a stronger dollar and global growth concerns. Our political strategists remain skeptical on the prospects for a permanent deal on thorny U.S.-China trade issues, leaving EM assets exposed to slowing momentum in China’s economy. We continue to prefer owning U.S. credit, given how the relative performance of EM and U.S. credit has not yet converged to levels implied by U.S./EM growth differentials (Chart 15). Chart 15Stay Overweight U.S. Corporates Vs EM Corporates Stay Overweight U.S. Corporates Vs EM Corporates Stay Overweight U.S. Corporates Vs EM Corporates Model Portfolio Adjustments To Begin 2019 In terms of our model bond portfolio, we recommend a few changes to our current allocations to reflect our 2019 outlook and key views (see the table below). We make a few adjustments to our individual country duration allocations, given our expectations of some re-steepening of global yield curves. We also bump up our allocation to core European debt given our expectation that the ECB will keep policy rates on hold throughout 2019. We fund that increase in European exposure from U.S. Treasuries, where too few Fed rate hikes are now discounted. Finally, we make a modest adjustment to our U.S. high-yield allocations, cutting CCC-rated exposure and upgrading B-rated credit.   Robert Robis, CFA, Senior Vice President Global Fixed Income Strategy rrobis@bcaresearch.com   Footnotes 1 Please see BCA Global Fixed Income Strategy Weekly Report, “2019 Key Views: Normalization Is The “New Normal””, dated December 12th 2018, available at gfis.bcarsearch.com. 2 Please see BCA Global Fixed Income Strategy Special Report, “The Global Golden Rule Of Bond Investing”, dated September 25th 2018, available at gfis.bcaresearch.com. 3 Please see BCA Global Fixed Income Strategy Weekly Report, “Stubbornly Resilient Bond Yields”, dated November 13th 2018, available at gfis.bcaresearch.com. Recommendations The GFIS Recommended Portfolio Vs. The Custom Benchmark Index 2019 Key Views, Part II: Time To Play Defense 2019 Key Views, Part II: Time To Play Defense Duration Regional Allocation Spread Product Tactical Trades Yields & Returns Global Bond Yields Historical Returns