Resume af teksten:
Mark Carney har påpeget, at den internationale orden er i en tilstand af brud. USAs og Kinas økonomiske forskelle er blevet større, med et stigende amerikansk underskud og en stigende kinesisk overskudsbalance. I USA er underskuddet nu drevet af finanspolitik frem for det private marked, mens Kina oplever overskud delvist på grund af kollapset i ejendomssektoren. Risikoen ligger nu mere i eksterne faktorer som geopolitiske begivenheder snarere end i de finansielle systemer. Trods øgede ubalancer ses der ikke ud til at være skrøbeligheder, der kan forårsage systemisk stress. Investorer anbefales fortsat at være åbne og fleksible i deres strategi, især med fokus på markedsvolatilitet og diversificering.
Fra Julius Bär:
Earlier this year, Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, remarked in his World Economic Forum address that the rules-based international order is in a state of ‘rupture, not transition’. We have examined a more nuanced perspective, suggesting that rather than a clean break, we are witnessing a gradual, if uneven, transition.
1. Widening US–China divergences reignite debate
After narrowing in the decade following the Global Financial Crisis, likely due to prolonged fiscal austerity, the dispersion of global imbalances has increased again in recent years. While still below their pre-Global Financial Crisis peak, developments in the US and China in particular (with a widening US deficit and a rising Chinese surplus) have reignited the debate. Since the beginning of this decade, the US deficit (excess consumption) has gradually increased, while the Chinese surplus (excess savings) has picked up as well, particularly rapidly over the last two years.
2. Drivers for global imbalances have shifted
The key difference in the current cycle lies in the drivers behind these divergences. In the US, it is no longer the private sector but rather fiscal policy that is underpinning the widening deficit. With the Global Financial Crisis, US households and corporates were net borrowers; today, by contrast, the US private sector is a net saver with balance sheets in robust health. This has important implications. With imbalances now concentrated in public rather than private sector balance sheets, systemic vulnerabilities appear considerably lower. Moreover, over the past 15 years, tighter regulation has shifted a larger share of lending away from traditional banks and towards non-bank institutions (the so-called ‘shadow banking’ system), thereby diversifying the sources of financing and lowering the risk of a classic banking crisis.
In China, the high current account surplus is driven not merely by exports but also by excess savings resulting largely from the collapse of the real estate sector that began at the start of the decade. China is dealing with a balance sheet recession, but the good news is that while support for the economy has been channelled through a ramp-up in exports, particularly in higher-value-added segments such as batteries and electric vehicles, policy makers are acutely aware of the diagnosis and are seeking to stimulate private sector consumption at a structural level, notably by engineering a managed bull market in equities and encouraging greater household participation to help repair private balance sheets. At the same time, the renminbi has been strengthening and is likely to continue doing so, given the country’s massive current account surplus and the ongoing fiscal dominance in the US and other G7 (US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) countries. Overall, shifting macroeconomic conditions and the policy landscape are favourable for an eventual revival of currently depressed Chinese household consumption.
3. A changing risk landscape and global context
While imbalances have widened on the surface, there is little evidence of endogenous vulnerabilities that could trigger systemic stress, supporting the view that the evolution towards a multipolar global order is likely to be gradual rather than abrupt. Instead, today’s primary risks lie outside the financial system, driven by exogenous (geo)political and natural events (e.g. wars, pandemics) that are unpredictable. Furthermore, these risks are fundamentally binary, i.e. either they materialise, or they fail to do so. The concerns about oil flow disruption as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed captured investors’ attention in March and April. Meanwhile, important data on AI diffusion went unnoticed. Anthropic, for instance, has been shaping up as the company ramping up its business at the fastest pace in the history of capitalism. At the same time, prices for dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and rental rates for central processing units (CPU) have surged as the war has raged on in the Middle East. In other words, the geopolitical storm has managed to hide AI’s key performance indicators (KPIs).
What does this mean for investors?
Investors must participate sufficiently in the market upside, as this remains the best protection against the infrequent but inevitable downturns. Additionally, it is crucial to remain open-minded and flexible: alternative strategies that capitalise on external shock driven market volatility provide an additional source of diversification in an everchanging investment environment.
In equities, return concentration, driven by the AI cycle, allows very little room for error – even single-stock underweights can materially hurt performance. In the US, exposure should be focused on segments that are truly unique. Elsewhere, international diversification, including into tangible-heavy business models, should continue to work.
Hurtige nyheder er stadig i beta-fasen, og fejl kan derfor forekomme.
