Market Rebounds but Growth Is Uncertain

Although markets have recovered over the last few weeks after a sudden drop, our Head of Corporate Credit Research warns that investors are still skeptical about the growth outlook.

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Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Head of Corporate Credit Research at Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives, today we’ll discuss the big round trip for markets and why we’re not out of the woods.

It's Friday, August 23rd at 2pm in London.

The last few weeks have been a rollercoaster. July ended on a high with markets rallying as the Federal Reserve kept interest rates unchanged. Things turned almost immediately thereafter as weak data releases fanned fears that maybe the Fed was being just a little too nonchalant on the economy, making its patience withholding rates high look like a vice, rather than a virtue. A late summer period where many investors were out probably amplified the moves that followed. And so at the morning lows on August 5th, the S&P 500 had fallen more than 8 percent in just 3 trading days, and expected volatility had jumped to one of its highest readings in a decade. 

But since those volatile lows, markets have come back. Really come back. Stock prices, credit spreads, and those levels of expected volatility are all now more or less where they ended July. It was an almost complete round-trip. We have a colleague who got back from a two-week vacation on Monday. The prices on their screen had barely changed. 

The reason for that snapback was the data. Just as weak data in the aftermath of the Fed’s meeting drove fears of a policy mistake, better data in the days since have improved confidence. This has been especially true for data related to the US consumer, as both retail sales and the number of new jobless claims have been better than expected. 

This round-trip in markets has been welcome, especially for those, like ourselves, who are optimistic on credit, and see it well-positioned for the economic soft-landing that Morgan Stanley expects. 

But it is also a reminder that we’re not out of the woods. The last few weeks couldn’t be clearer about the importance of growth for the market outlook. This is a crucial moment for the economy, where U.S. growth is slowing, the Fed’s rates are still highly restrictive, and any help from cutting those rates may not be felt for several quarters. 

At Morgan Stanley we think that growth won’t slow too much, and so this will ultimately be fine for the credit market. But incoming data will remain important, and recent events show that the market’s confidence can be quickly shaken. Even with the sharp snapback, for example, cyclical stocks, which tend to be more economically sensitive, have badly lagged more defensive shares – a sign that healthy skepticism around growth from investors still remains. 

The quick recovery is welcome, but we’re not out of the woods, and investors should continue to hope for solid data. Good is good. 

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