BofA Global Research | We stay overweight France, Spain and Italy, as they should benefit from a continued rebound in PMIs. We raise the UK to marketweight after the recent undershoot. We remain marketweight Germany, as it discounts much good news. We are underweight Switzerland, as it tends to underperform when improving growth momentum lifts bond yields.
Ranko Berich (Monex Europe) | “After months of the greenback rallying on bad news as investors sought safe havens, it seems like the uniquely bad domestic COVID-19 situation has finally caught up with the US dollar. It is the end of the quarter, but today’s price action nonetheless has a feel of the dollar’s chickens coming home to roost.
Chris Iggo (AXA Investment Managers) | The second quarter was disastrous for society and the global economy. The danger on both fronts is passing only slowly. Yet the quarter was great for markets. Barely any asset class delivered a negative return. Trillions of dollars of money was created and central bank balance sheets boomed. It has been a lesson in not underestimating the power of policy. Cheap valuations and rocket-fuel policy drove risk assets. The starting point for Q3 is not quite the same. Where fundamentals go is much more important now.
In the US, although the figures are deteriorating in just 16 of 50 states, the problem lies in the fact that this group is made up of some of the most relevant from an economic perspective: California, Texas and Florida. But while the proximity of Independence Day celebrations is perceived as a potential risk for an explosion of new infections, the reality is that fine tuning measures are being advocated and large-scale closures will be avoided at all costs in the US and elsewhere in the world.
José Ramón Díez Guijarro (Bankia Estudios ) | The first weeks of the opening of the economies are serving to gauge the response of consumption, a key variable in determining the profile and intensity of the recovery. In the US, the fiscal programmes for aid to families injected more than 300 billion dollars into disposable income in the second quarter. In Europe, instead of using direct aid as in the US, they have preferred to activate temporary employment suspension programmes (ERTE in Spain, kurzabeit in Germany, etc).
Esther M. Sit | The border clash between China and India has made the headlines of international news. On May 5, troops from both countries confronted each other on the banks of Pangong Lake in Ladakh, the northernmost region of India. Four days later, they squared off in North Sikkim, an area of India that lies between Nepal and Bhutan.
Adam Vettese (eToro) | FC Barcelona fans have invested over $1.3m in tokens issued by the club which gives them the chance to vote on how it is run. Known as Barca Fan Tokens, more than 600,000 tokens were sold at $2 each in just two hours earlier this week, according to Coindesk
Gilles Moec (AXA IM) | The divergence between Europe and the United States on the pandemic front continues.In the latter, the number of states facing an acceleration in the propagation of the virus rose furthe. Meanwhile, in Europe, while some clusters continue to appear, the speed of the epidemic is still markedly lower than when authorities considered it was safe to start re-opening the economy.
Frenzied rate cuts (more than a hundred worldwide) and liquidity injections by various central banks, amounting to more than $6 trillion, added to the fiscal stimuli of all kinds already committed for another $9 trillion. An unprecedented aid package that amounts to 19% of the world’s GDP in 2019. All aimed at trying to achieve a V-shaped recovery that will mitigate the effects (-5% of world GDP) of such an unexpected recession.
Angela Freyre (Julius Baer) | Russia’s central bank slashed its benchmark interest rate to a post-Soviet low as the economy enters a deep recession fuelled by the fall in oil prices and the coronavirus pandemic. The bank lowered its key rate by 100 basis points to 4.5%, following a 50 basis-point cut in April.