Kommentator: Dette Aktierally er drevet af likviditet og “Animal Spirits”

Uddrag fra Authers, FT:

US stocks are at yet another record. It’s remarkable how much it’s been driven by momentum, while investors seem impervious to issues of quality — the catch-all term for companies with steady profits and resilient balance sheets.

It might be unfair to call this a dash for trash. But nobody seems to care about quality. This is from Bloomberg’s Factors To Watch service, showing the results of buying the top 20% of stocks by a factor while shorting the worst 20%. Since Liberation Day, buying quality stocks has been a one-way ticket to losses:

This isn’t just an American phenomenon. If we do the same exercise for Bloomberg’s stock universe for the world excluding the US, momentum is far more dominant. Of late the liquidity factor — buying the stocks with the greatest trading volumes — has been even more impressive:

In general, the stocks doing well are exactly the same ones that had momentum behind them before the double shocks of tariffs last year and now the Middle East conflict. A gusher of money is continuing to propel them. Despite all the geopolitical uncertainty, investors don’t seem prepared to pay anything for the extra security that comes with a robust balance sheet.

When a rally is moving like this, it can be dangerous to try to stand in front of it — which helps to maintain the momentum. And with governments spending money as companies splurge on capex, the environment for equities is propitious. None of that changes the fact that this rally is chiefly driven by liquidity and animal spirits. That would make it vulnerable to a sharp turn if the news worsens.