US Dollar

The Joshi rule real-time US recession indicator remains at an elevated 0.154 versus its recession event horizon of 0.200, indicating weakening US labour demand. With the last mile of US disinflation requiring labour demand to ‘catch down’ with labour supply, investors should watch the Joshi rule very closely to pre-empt a potential tipping-point. Plus: tactically long Portugal versus Europe, and wheat versus cotton; and tactically short USD/CLP, Qualcomm (QCOM), and Salesforce (CRM).

This week, we review our currency positions, based on the latest data from G10 economies.

Presently, our four high-conviction themes are: (1) the US dollar will rally as US growth continues to outpace the rest of the world; (2) US equities will continue to outperform EM and European stocks until a major sell-off occurs; (3) a US profit margin squeeze is imminent; (4) EM domestic bonds and sovereign USD bonds are due for a setback.

Expected inflation has surged to its highest level in a year. This has surprised many people, but expected inflation is behaving just as expected. Expected inflation is not a prophecy, it is just a mathematical function of delivered inflation. We discuss what this means for central banks in the US, UK, euro area, and Japan. Plus: bitcoin’s structural uptrend to $100,000+ is still intact.

Amid patchy global growth, the US economy remains resilient. However, tight monetary policy will eventually trigger a recession in the US too. The stock market rally has been very narrow. Stay underweight risk assets.

MacroQuant upgraded equities to overweight in February on a tactical short-term (1-to-3 month) horizon, but it continues to see downside risks to stocks on a medium-term (12-month) horizon. Consistent with the model’s relatively somber medium-term growth outlook, it sees more downside for bond yields on a 12-month horizon than on a 1-to-3 month horizon.

In this week’s report, we release an update to our long-term REER valuation model and expected future returns for major currencies.