Good morning and welcome to our monthly house view. This month saw the failure of three regional banks in the US and the acquisition of Credit Suisse by UBS. Let’s discuss how this impacts our scenario and our positioning.
Tensions on the US banking sector led to large deposit outflows from regional banks to large banks, and to higher yielding products such as money market funds. The swift response from the Federal Reserve helped stabilize the system by providing ample liquidity.
The US banking sector is likely to remain volatile as it will be facing more regulation. In Europe, banks have a stronger capital base and are more regulated, so we expect the latest events to have a lower impact on activity.
For the rest of the year, we expect tighter credit standards and downward pressure on commercial real estate to be a catalyst for slower economic growth in the US. But a sharp recession remains highly unlikely given the strength of households’ balance sheet.
Regarding fixed income markets, we think that investors are overstating their expectations of rate cuts as soon as this summer. A repricing of the yield curve could happen, but we are unlikely to see 10-year yields rise above 4% again during this cycle. Given the downside risks to growth, we have increased our exposure to long-dated sovereign bonds in Europe.
In equities, we remain slightly underweight as we are sceptical of investors’ earnings expectations. We have however started to increase our exposure towards growth versus value stocks. Finally, we sold half of our gold exposure after the recent rally. Thank you for listening and see you next month.
