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European natural gas prices are back to levels last seen before the war in Ukraine. This is partly due to the relatively mild winter we have seen. More importantly, Europe has made attempts to reduce its energy dependence towards Russia by shifting to LNG and other alternatives and boosting its transport and storage infrastructure. The … Continued
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Defence stocks are on the rise, also in Europe. Rheinmetall AG stock increased 376% since December 2021, Dassault Systèmes +244%, Leonardo +200%, BAE Systems +126% and SAAB +90%. These returns are comparable to NVDIA (+146%) over the same period. Defence spending is increasing with the geopolitical threats Europe is facing and a needed catch-up in … Continued
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The European consumer is not in good shape. Since the initial recovery after Covid, retail sales volumes are indeed on a downtrend. A combination of factors, from inflation, higher interest rates reducing disposable income to lack of confidence are at play. We remain cautious on consumer discretionary stocks focussed on European markets and focus instead … Continued
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Investors are waking up to geopolitical risks. In the widely followed BofA Merrill Lynch Global Fund Manager survey, this tail risk appears in January 2024 as the biggest concern keeping institutional investors awake at night. It has dethroned the risk of an economic hard landing or higher inflation as the biggest concerns. Time to stay … Continued
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82.5% ! That is the return you would have got by investing into MSCI World USD TR ( in USD ) over 5 years. So why bother about active management and pay a management fee to someone trying to beat Mr Market by allocating to countries, sectors and stocks? Think twice as past performance is … Continued
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The 2 main pharma companies heavily involved in weight-loss drugs, namely Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, currently trade at 100% to 200% premiums in terms of price-to-earnings ratio to their peers. Growth in obesity drugs is spectacular as analysts predict obesity drug could reach 100 bn USD of yearly sales by 2030. Over the next … Continued
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While the S&P 500 is up 18.5% y-t-d in 2023, it is all driven by the so-called Magnificent 7 Big-Tech companies, namely Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, NVDIA and Tesla. These 7 companies are up 80% in 2023, while the remaining 493 are basically flat. According to the Chief Economist of Apollo, these 7 stocks … Continued
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According to John Auther’s Bloomberg column, the latest numbers on monthly sales of existing homes in the US show they are selling at an annualized pace barely above 3 million units. Barring one bad month after the GFC, this is the worst figure in 27 years. It shows to what extend the US real estate … Continued
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US banks have been a dog this year with the KBW bank index, the benchmark regrouping the 24 most prominent banks, down 26% in an up markets. Share prices have indeed not recovered at all from the US regional banking crisis in Spring. We have 1 week to go until the result season of the … Continued
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The oil price has rallied more than 30% since mid-June with the global benchmark brent topping 95 USD for the first time since November last year. The physical market is tight as refiners struggle to make enough diesel ahead of the seasonal ramp-up in demand. Saudi Arabia and Russia are curtailing exports. The economic outlook … Continued