Højdespringerne på aktiemarkeder bliver i denne tid skiftet ud. Højteknologi- og digitalselskaber med de største værdistigninger blev kaldt FAANG, herunder Facebook og Google, men de har mistet pusten, og nu kalder Merrill de nye højdespringere for FAANG 2.0, og de omfatter fundamentalt andre selskaber, f.eks. producenter af mineraler, fødevarer og energi. Efter coronaen har krigen i Ukraine totalt flyttet fokus på aktiemarkederne. Men er det klogt at samle aktiegrupper og give dem navne – som om selskaberne i grupperne er noget helt specielt ? Det sætter en trænet analytiker, Ruchir Sharma, formand for Rockefeller International, spørgsmålstegn ved i Financial Times. Den slags betegnelser holder kun i kort tid, for så ændret markedet sig, som kapitalismen altid udsættes for forandringer, der vender op og ned på vindere og tabere. BRIC-landene er – som gruppe – heller ikke længere de hurtigst voksende lande.
Warp Speed: The Rotation from FAANG 1.0 to FAANG 2.0
Swift and violent market rotations are not uncommon although the massive moves of late have been among the most pronounced in recent history. In the span of just over two years, the world economy has been stricken by a pandemic and challenged by a military conflict in
Ukraine, with soaring inflationary pressures in between those bookends.
Against this backdrop, the CIO launched FAANG 2.0 thesis in late February in recognition of the shifting tectonic plates of the global economy. In a matter of months, we have gone from a pandemic to Putin; infections to inflation; Big Data to Big Oil; zoom to zinc; masks to mascara; E-commerce to electric vehicles; jabs to javelins; swabs to sanctions; Webex to weddings; boosters to bombs; Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to liquefied natural gas (LNG); Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); work-fromhome to work-from-office; the cloud to cobalt; and lite assets to hard assets.
Accordingly, FAANG 2.0 pivots around fuels, aerospace & defense, agriculture, nuclear and renewables, and gold and metals/minerals. This cohort is emblematic of a world undergoing profound change. A sampling of this change: energy security is now the top priority of most governments—just ask Poland and Bulgaria, cut off from Russian gas last week.
Global defense spending topped $2 trillion for the first time in 2021 and is headed higher. World food prices are at record highs. Nuclear is poised for a comeback; Electric Vehicle demand continues to soar. Gold is now the preferred asset of central banks thanks to geopolitics, while resource/food nationalism is proliferating around the world, adding even more upside pressure to metal/mineral and food prices.
That said, notwithstanding decade-long market cap growth for FAANG 1.0 (Exhibit 5A), we expect further FAANG 2.0 performance divergence as rotations in the equity market complement a world of geopolitical risks and resource/hard asset intensity (Exhibit 5B).
