Our bullishness last week was clearly not the right call. Volatility has crept into the market and there is a lot of uncertainty around what happens next. Therefore, in order to clear our own minds of bias, we will be looking at markets from purely a technical perspective this week.
Purely a technical perspective Read More
Sometimes markets can be fairly boring. Well, that very much depends on where you look, but if you are looking at the major indices now, things seem fairly boring to be honest. The market keeps grinding higher on better and better looking market fundamentals. Sure at some point the tapering will start and we’ll all suddenly wake up and realise that inflation was not transitory afterall…
So the much anticipated Jackson Hole symposium is over and believe it or not, the wheels did not fall off. Fed chair Jerome Powell was rather dovish in fact. Although he said that the process to begin tapering can begin, he also implied that there is not set (or anticipated) start date. Thus the market infers that there will be no tapering until November. In the meantime, the delta-variant of the covid-19 virus still poses the most immediate risk in the form of further global lockdowns and supply chain disruptions. It seems that the central bankers will remain ‘accommodating’ until they feel this threat is no longer a threat. Apologies to the next generation that has to foot the bill.
No tapering until November? Read More
All eyes are on Jerome Powell and the Jackson Hole symposium this week. Jerome Powell is expected to talk on the 26th of August and the market is waiting to hear when we can expect tapering. Although tapering the does not mean a sudden and abrupt end to QE, the market certainly will pretend that it does up until the very minute that it actually happens. We think it is almost inevitable now that we see some tapering by the end of the year. This does not mean that we see interest rate hikes, or a complete end to bond/asset purchases by the FED. It does mean though that the rate at which they are providing liquidity to the market will slow down. This could cause a bit of a speed wobble and some risk-off sentiment.
excited about. Overall though, we expect the week ahead to be ‘risk on’. At least for the developed world. South African markets might be facing its own headwinds and continued currency fallout as a result of the cabinet reshuffle last week. Setups are sparse, so play defense and don’t try to force trades that are not there.
As anticipated, the FOMC made no changes to interest rates last week and are unlikely to make any real moves without very clearly communicating it to the market. Our focus now shifts to the Jackson Hole symposium to be held near the end of the month. We think that Jerome Powell will likely use Jackson Hole as the platform on which to start communicating tapering warnings to the market. At some point the FED must admit that the printing is creating inflation. Although it will likely not do so directly, we can watch the language use around the topic. It was interesting to note that Powell essentially admitted that he does not know ‘where’ inflation is coming from. He also stated that inflation is likely to stay around longer than initially anticipated.
markets) seem to be very attractive ‘underperformers’ that seemingly offer a huge amount of value. Generally the thinking is that we are entering into a new global growth phase and that the underperforming emerging markets ‘should’ catch up to developed markets. That is an enticing narrative and one probably worth positioning for. However, there are some warning signs that are not going away and are difficult to ignore.
The BTFD crowd win again Read More
The last two weeks have been tough. In all honesty, the reason this blog post is only being posted now is because I found it difficult to not express an opinion on the current happenings in our country. It is deeply concerning. I must have written and rewritten this first paragraph at least ten times. It just feels disingenuous to write up a blog post that optimistically looks for opportunities, while our cities are burning. So with a heavy heart, I have to force myself to clear my mind of the anxiety and noise and focus on the charts.
We have to admit that today’s post was difficult to write. It is hard to focus on opportunities in the week ahead while our country appears to be… well, having a really rough time. We often say that we must filter out the noise and focus only on those things that can accurately analyse (aka. the chart), so that is exactly what we are going to do. Besides, the world’s financial markets are looking fairly good and we’ve positioned well for strength in the offshore portfolio’s. The only thing to do now really is to be patient and hold our positions.
Be patient and hold the longs Read More
The second half of last week got really wild, really fast. Given the fact that hardly anything has changed – in the sense that there are no interest rate hikes on the table for at least another year and a half, and that the FED will continue to buy $120bn worth of bonds every month – we think that the market might have had a bit of a strong ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to the FOMC minutes. Thus, we say buy the dip. As long as the free money keeps flowing, it will be difficult for the market to sustain downside.
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