Analyser fra internationale finanshuse

Commerzbank: “China – Positive fiscal impulse in 2024”. “There are no big surprises in this year’s economic plan outlined in the National People’s Congress annual meeting. Most economic support will still focus on the supply side. However, the size of the broad fiscal deficit will increase significantly from last year’s. The fiscal boost will be achieved through increased investment in emerging industries. But diminishing returns in overcapacity industries, including electric vehicles and battery production, means that Beijing will need to invest prudently. In addition, given the ongoing challenges such as the real estate troubles, it won’t be easy to achieve the 5% growth target for this year. To meet ambitious growth target… The Chinese government sets an ambitious GDP growth target of “around 5%” for 2024 at the annual meeting of National People’s Congress (NPC). This is the same target as in 2023. However, it was easier to attain in 2023 (and in fact, surpassed at a 5.2% growth) due to the reopening recovery from the low base in 2022 when China’s economy was impacted by Covid lockdowns and grew only at 3%.” Læs hele analysen her.

Deutsche Bank: Fem grunde til, at Bitcoin-priser fortsat vil ligge højt. ”On March 13, Bitcoin prices reached a new all-time high of $73,157. This remarkable performance has been fuelled by five key factors: the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF, expectations of future ETF approvals, the upcoming Bitcoin halving (expected April 19th), impending central bank rate cuts, and regulation. Firstly, demand for the new US spot Bitcoin ETFs has driven recent gains in Bitcoin prices. Since the SEC’s approval on January 10th, there have been $12bn net inflows into the new spot Bitcoin ETFs. To date, Blackrock’s fund alone has received over $13bn in inflows, and Fidelity’s fund has received nearly $6.9bn. Following the successful start to the spot Bitcoin ETF, more ETFs are likely coming. A total of seven spot Ethereum ETFs are pending, with the SEC’s first decision expected on the 23rd of May. ProShares has also announced plans to launch five additional ETFs, including one that would provide twice the daily exposure to a Bitcoin-tracking index. The evolving ETF landscape and participations of institutional players are helping crypto mature into a more established asset class. In addition, Ethereum has also undergone a recent update on March 13, the Dencun upgrade, its most significant upgrade since the Merge in September 2022.”

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Unicredit: Derfor holder beskæftigelsen i eurozonen sig meget stabil. ”At a sector level, strong employment has largely reflected developments in public services and construction, while in market services we have not detected meaningful changes compared to the prepandemic period. In terms of time, this mainly originated in the five quarters from 4Q22 to 4Q23, when economic expansion came to a halt while employment continued to grow at a healthy pace. We also found highly heterogeneous developments at the country level. We think that several factors help explain the solid employment numbers: * The unusually strong increase in firms’ profits in the postpandemic recovery. This mainly reflects the strong pricing power of firms amid unprecedented supply-side constraints and large sectoral shifts in demand supported by excess savings.
* Pockets of labor hoarding. There are several reasons why firms might want to hoard labor during times of weak activity: a tight labor market and fears of losing staff that will likely be difficult to re-hire in the future due to unfavorable demographic trends (and maybe memories of labor (and maybe memories of labor shortages during the pandemic) are likely part of the explanation
*Weak productivity per hour worked. This has been a common feature in most sectors, but peculiar (and likely unsustainable) developments in the public and construction sectors make the picture look worse than it really is.”

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ING: Negativ effekt på lønsomhed for europæiske banker, hvis ECB øger reservekrav. ”Banks have now enough central bank deposits for an MRR hike… Eurozone banks must set aside c.€161bn as minimum required reserves to meet the 1% requirement as of March 2024. An increase to 2% would double the level unless it came with action by banks to drive down their individual absolute requirements. An increase would have been negative for bank profitability as the ECB doesn’t pay interest on funds posted for the MRR. Looking purely at current and deposit accounts, eurozone banks are well positioned for a potential (modest) increase. In all countries, banks could absorb an increase to 2%, and this is also the case if adjusting for the outstanding ECB funding programmes.”

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Morten W. Langer