Thoughts on the Market

As the risks to international economic growth increase, global investors may find some good news in the Japanese equities market. -----Transcript-----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Jonathan Garner, Morgan Stanley's Chief Asia and Emerging Markets Equity Strategist. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, today I'll be reflecting on a recent visit to Japan. It's Thursday, June the 30th, at 1 p.m. in London. I spent two weeks in Tokyo meeting with a wide range of market participants and others. This trip came together as Japan opened up to business visitors and small groups of tourists, after a lengthy period of COVID related travel restrictions. Japan equities - currency hedged for the U.S. dollar based investor - are our top pick in global equities and have been doing well this year relative to other markets. My first impression was how cheap prices in Japan now are at the current exchange rate of ¥135 to the U.S. dollar. For example, a simple metro journey in the inner core of Tokyo is priced at ¥140, so almost exactly $1 USD currently. It's possible to get a delicious lunchtime meal of teriyaki salmon, rice, pickles, miso soup and a soft drink in one of the numerous small cafes under the giant urban skyscrapers of the Central District of Marinucci for ¥1,000 or even lower. So that's about $6 to $7 USD currently. We feel this competitive exchange rate bodes well for the major Japanese industrial, technology and pharmaceutical firms, which dominate the Japan equity market as they compete globally. Indeed, the currency at these levels is one of the reasons that earnings revisions estimates, by bottom up analysts covering these companies, continue to move higher. Unlike the overall situation in global equities currently. In meetings, I was often asked whether we shared some of the concerns which have been voiced by some commentators on the Bank of Japan's monetary policy stance. The Monetary Policy Committee meeting for June was held during my trip, and the Bank of Japan kept its short term policy rate at -0.1% and also reiterated its pledge to guide the ten year government bond yield at +/- 25 basis points around a target of zero. Clearly, this monetary policy is divergent with trends elsewhere in the world currently and in particularly with the U.S. And this divergence is a key reason why the yen has been weakening this year. We at Morgan Stanley feel strongly that this approach is the right one for Japan, for one key reason. Unlike the U.S., UK or other advanced economies, Japan's inflation rate remains in line with policy goals. Headline CPI inflation is running at just 2.5% year on year, while CPI ex food and energy is 0.8%. Japan does not have a breakout to the upside in wage inflation either. We also think BOJ Governor Kuroda-san was correct in identifying downside risks to international economic growth as a risk factor for Japan's own GDP growth going forward, which at the moment we think is likely to track at around 2% this year. During our trip, we also spent time with investors discussing Japan Prime Minister Kishida-san's modifications to the policies of his two predecessors, in particular around a more redistributive approach to fiscal policy and digitalization of the public sector. The trend to greater corporate engagement with minority investors and activist investors was also debated. Japan is now the second largest market globally after the US for activist investor campaigns to promote corporate restructuring, thereby unlocking shareholder value. For us. Ultimately, the proof of the pudding, and how the Japan story all comes together, is the trend in corporate return on equity for listed equities. This has risen from less than 5% on average in the 20 years prior to Abe-san's premiership to above 10% currently. And it's now converged with two key North Asian peers; China and Korea. With Japan equities trading at the low end of the valuation range for the last 10 years, below 12 x forward price to earnings multiple, we think it's a market which deserves more attention from global investors. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

As legislators try to manage the U.S. and China’s economic relationship, outbound investors will want to keep tabs on potential policy coming down the pipeline.-----Transcript-----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Head of Public Policy Research and Municipal Strategy for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the intersection between U.S. public policy and financial markets. It's Wednesday, June 29th, at 10 a.m. in New York. Washington, D.C., continues to focus on two areas of bipartisan concern: fighting inflation and managing the economic relationship with China. To that end, deliberations continue on legislation intended to reduce reliance on China supply chains for semiconductors and rare earth materials, as well as invest in research and development for emerging technologies. The Senate and House have both passed versions of this legislation, respectively called the USICA and the COMPETES Act. Now there's a conference committee deciding what's in the final bill. And here's where investors need to pay attention, because there continues to be news that this committee could end up including a provision that would limit U.S. companies ability to make business investments in, quote, unquote, countries of concern. If they do, it could create downside pressure for markets in China in the near term, and would underscore the secular trend we continue to focus on: "slowbalization", which creates both equity sector challenges and opportunities. Consider that these outbound investment restrictions would mirror ones already in place for inbound investments through CFIUS. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. In short, it could make it difficult for companies to, say, build a factory in China if the product or production process includes technology that the U.S. deems critical to its economic or national security. Some independent estimates suggest this could reduce foreign direct investment in China by as much as 40%. This is classic slowbalization in motion, where policy choices are cutting against the cost benefits of globalization, driven by security concerns as we move toward a multipolar world; one with more than one political economy power base. And the level of disruption from this particular provision could create downward pressure on equity markets in China. It could also underscore current headwinds to U.S. markets, suggesting that many U.S. companies' margins will be pressured as they spend more in the future to diversify supply chains away from China. Of course, in line with our thesis of slowbalization, there's opportunity too. The CapEx needed to build these new supply chains has to go somewhere, and for example, semiconductor capital equipment companies could see a major up shift in demand. So investors need to stay tuned to the deliberations on outbound investment restrictions. It's far from a done deal, to be clear, but a major policy development if it happens. While there's no timeline for when we will know if this provision is included, we recommend paying attention to the Biden administration's deliberations on China tariffs. If the administration decides to provide even just targeted and temporary tariff reductions, in an attempt to ease inflation pressures over the next couple of months, it might also feel compelled to, at the same time, announce new measures to demonstrate its continued seriousness about competing with China. An announcement of a legislative agreement on outbound investment restrictions could be one way to do this. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague, or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find the show.

As the Fed continues with aggressive policy tightening, fixed income investors may be wondering if the bond market is accurately priced and when we might see it rally. Chief Cross-Asset Strategist Andrew Sheets and Director of Fixed Income Research Vishy Tirupattur discuss.-----Transcript-----Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross-Asset Strategist for Morgan Stanley Research. Vishy Tirupattur: And I'm Vishy Tirupattur, Director of Fixed Income Research at Morgan Stanley. Andrew Sheets: And today on the podcast, we'll be discussing the outlook for the U.S. bond markets. It's Tuesday, June 28th, at 9 a.m. in San Francisco. Andrew Sheets: A note to our listeners, Vishy and I are recording this while we're on the road talking to clients, so if the audio quality sounds a little bit different, we hope you'll bear with us. Andrew Sheets: So Vishy, this has been a historically volatile start to the year for U.S. fixed income. We've seen some of the largest bond market losses in 40 years. Before we get into our views going forward, maybe just give a little bit of perspective about how you see this year so far, and what's been driving the market. Vishy Tirupattur: Andrew, what's been driving the market is the significant and substantial change in the monetary policy expectations, not only in the U.S. but also across most developed market economies. That means we started the year with the target Fed funds rate around close to 0%, and we have now ratcheted up quite significantly. And markets are already pricing in a further substantial increase in the Fed funds rate going forward. All this has meant that the duration sensitive parts of the bond market have taken it on the chin. Andrew Sheets: So Vishy that's interesting because we might be seeing kind of a transition in the market narrative as we head in the second half. What do you think the bond market, especially the Treasury market, is currently pricing in terms of Fed expectations? And do you think the bond market is priced for a recession? Vishy Tirupattur: I think bond market is sending some signals here. So the bond market is pricing that the Fed will continue to combat high inflation by being aggressively frontloaded in interest rate hikes. So this frontloading of the interest rate hikes means the front end of the Treasury curve perhaps has some more to go. And we expect that the end of the year, the two year Treasury will be at 4%. But on the other hand, the ten year Treasury, we expect the year at 350. That means the market is already beginning to become concerned about how growth and growth prospects for the U.S. economy will work out in the next 6 to 12 months. So by all measures we can look at the probability of a recession have significantly increased. That is what is being priced in the market at this point. Andrew Sheets: You know, I think it's safe to say that the dominant story, right, to start the year has been these upside surprises to inflation and then central banks, including the Fed, racing to catch up to those upside inflation surprises. And yet it's really interesting the way that Chair Powell and the Fed are now describing the way they're going to react to inflation is to say that we will effectively keep tightening policy as long as inflation surprises to the upside. But isn't the Fed using a tool that works with a lag?Vishy Tirupattur: That is absolutely correct Andrew. What the withdrawal of policy accommodation that the Fed is accomplishing through these frontloaded hikes is tightening of financial conditions. We have begun to see some effect of this tightening of financial conditions on the economic growth already. But in reality, the long experience suggest that these effects will be lagged anywhere between 6 to 18 months. So this is what our economists are thinking, given this frontloaded hiking path. We think the Fed will stop hiking towards the end of this year in December, and we will watch for how these tighter financial conditions will restrain aggregate demand and slow the growth or slow the U.S. economy over the course of the next 6, 12, 18 months. Andrew Sheets: So Vishy, I'd like to move next into what all this means for our fixed income recommendations and to run through the major sectors of that market. So let's start with Treasuries. What do you see as our key views in the Treasury market? And where do you think we might differ the most from what's currently in market pricing? Vishy Tirupattur: I think we are still neutral in taking duration risk at this point. I expect that in the not so distant future we would become constructive on taking interest rate risk to the Treasury market. So our expectation is that a year from now, so second quarter of next year, ten year Treasury will be at three or five. Andrew Sheets: And Vishy, you know, we're in this environment where inflation is high and usually high inflation is bad for bonds. But growth is slowing, which is good for bonds. So, you know, given that push and pull, how do we think treasuries come out of that? Vishy Tirupattur: I think Treasuries will come out pretty well out of this. Why I say that is that the bulk of the pain from aggressive monetary policy has already been felt and taken in the market. So going forward, our expectation is not for incrementally more aggressive policy pops to be priced, but actually something that is more or less in line with already what is priced in the market. Andrew Sheets: Vishy, the next market I want to ask you about is the mortgage market. This is another huge part of the aggregate bond index. How do we think mortgages perform? Do we think they perform better or worse than the Treasury segment? Vishy Tirupattur: So the mortgage market is interesting. We started the year with the the generic mortgage rate around 3%. It had gone up almost to 6%, more or less doubled over the course of the last six months or so. So embedded in the mortgage market is a mortgage spread, but around 130 basis points of nominal mortgage spread is nearly at an all time high. And we think that that means a lot of this expectation coming out of higher rates, a slowing of the housing market, is already well priced into the mortgage market. So my expectation is that going forward, the mortgage market, will outperform the treasury market over the course of the next 6 to 12 months. Andrew Sheets: And Vishy, you know we talked about treasuries and we talked about mortgages and I probably can't ask you about those markets without also asking about quantitative tightening. The fact that the Fed has been big buyers, both Treasuries and mortgage bonds, and the Fed is going to stop doing that and is going to let its holdings of those securities roll off. So how important is that to the outlook for these markets? And is that quantitative tightening already in the price? Vishy Tirupattur: So two things on this. There is something called a stock effect and the flow effect. We think the stock effect component of the quantitative tightening, both in the context of treasuries and in the context of NBS, is mostly priced in. The flow effect will begin to manifest itself as the quantitative tightening actually begins to happen and we see this portfolio rebalancing channel to actually materialize. All that means is that the portfolio managers that had been underweight mortgages and overweight credit. We think that will change in favor of mortgages going from underweight towards neutral and credit going from overweight towards neutral. Andrew Sheets: So the last market I want to ask you about was the credit market, which is, I think, especially relevant given we've seen more market discussion of the risk to growth, the probability of a recession, the potential that defaults usually pick up during periods of weak economic growth. How do you see the outlook for corporate bonds fitting into this picture? Vishy Tirupattur: So if you look at the corporate bond market, the good thing here is that compared to other points at the beginning of a rate hiking cycle, the fundamentals of corporate bond market are in really good shape. You can see that in terms of leverage, interest coverage, as well as cash and balance sheet metrics. So that's a good thing. The second thing is that the financing needs of many of these companies is not as imposing as would otherwise being the case. Take the high yield market, high yield market and the leveraged loan market together about 3 trillion outstanding market. Only 10% of this is due for refinancing over the course of this year, 2022, 2023 and 2024. That means the world of maturities being an imposing challenge for the credit markets is that much, well, manageable. But that said, there's one segment of the market that is more vulnerable to hiking to higher interest rates, and that is the leveraged loan market, which is a floating rate funding market. So we expect that this market will see its cost of financing increase as interest rates start to get ratcheted up. But the one point I want to make here is that in terms of expectations of default rates, we won't see a dramatic spike in default rates the way we have seen in the past recessions. So compared to 2008-2009 recession, the post-COVID recession, early 2000's recession, in all of those instances when we had an economic slowdown and a recession, we saw a spike in corporate default rates. Because of the starting point of fundamentally is so much better this time, our expectation is that we will not see dramatic spikes in default rates in the credit market.Andrew Sheets: Vishy, thanks for taking the time to talk. Vishy Tirupattur: Always a pleasure to talk to you, Andrew. Andrew Sheets: Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please take a moment to rate and review us on the Apple Podcast app. It helps more people find the show. 

Talk of recession continues among investors and consumers alike, but last week saw a sharp rally in U.S. Equities. Is this just a blip or could U.S. equity markets rally further?----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Mike Wilson, Chief Investment Officer and Chief U.S. Equity Strategist for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the latest trends in the financial marketplace. It's Monday, June 27th, at 2 p.m. in New York. So let's get after it.With talk of recession increasing sharply over the past few weeks, equity markets decided enough bad news had been priced and rallied sharply. Furthermore, the decline in both oil and interest rates helped ease some of the concerns on inflation. In our view, both the fall in oil and rates are being driven more by fears of an economic slowdown rather than a real peak in inflation and will lead to a more dovish Fed. However, with markets so oversold and bearishness pervasive, equity investors have taken the bullish view and rerated stocks higher.Based on Friday's close, the S&P 500 is trading back at 16.3 times, or one turn higher than where it was at the prior week's lows. This seems unusual given the growing concern about earnings, however. In fact, even taking into account the fall in 10-year yields, the equity risk premium is back below 300 basis points. In our view, that makes little sense in the context of the likely negative earnings revisions coming in the second quarter reporting season and the rising risk of recession over the next 6 to 12 months.Perhaps the best way to explain last week's rally has to do with the short-term rolling correlation between equities and real yields, which is now deeply negative again. This means the recent decline in bond yields has been perceived as positive for equities, something we think will prove to be incorrect if the falling yields are signaling slower growth or recession. For falling yields to be positive for equities at this stage, we would need to see cresting inflation pressures, a less hawkish Fed policy path, more durable economic growth than we expect, and a reacceleration in earnings revisions.In addition to this combination of factors, which suggests a soft landing for the economy, we would also need to see limited negative revisions to earnings. Thus, we see the recent rebound in equities as another bear market rally on the path to fair value price levels of 3400-3500 in the case a soft landing is achieved with modest earnings revisions. However, as noted last week, a recession would bring tactical price lows closer to 3000 as earnings decline by at least 20% before working back to our June 2023 bear case target of 3350. In short, the bear market is likely not over, although it may feel like it over the next few weeks. Markets are likely to take the lower rates as a sign the Fed can orchestrate a soft landing and prevent a meaningful revision to earnings forecasts.In that context, we think U.S. equity markets can rally further. In addition to lower rates and oil prices helping support the belief in a soft landing there is some equity demand from pension funds that need to rebalance at the end of the month and quarter this week. If retail investors join in like last week, that could carry equity prices higher before second quarter earnings season begins and the revisions arrive. Finally, a retracement of 38-50% of the entire decline would not be unnatural or out of line with prior bear market rallies, even ones associated with a recession at the end. In S&P 500 terms, that would translate into 4100-4200 or approximately 5-7% upside from Friday's close. Furthermore, if such a rally were to continue, it would likely be led by the longer duration or interest rate sensitive stocks like technology, or the Nasdaq.However, we want to be clear that in no way are we suggesting the bear market is over or that earnings estimates won't have to come down. Instead, we are simply being realistic about the nature of bear markets and their ability to confound all market participants at times, even the bears. We suggest using equity market strength over the next few weeks to lighten up further on portfolios.Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please take a moment to rate and review us on the Apple Podcasts app. It helps more people to find the show.

Original Release on June 9th, 2022: While many investors may be curious to know what other investors are thinking and feeling about markets, there’s a lot more to the calculation of investor sentiment than one might think.-----Transcript-----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross-Asset Strategist for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about trends across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together. It's Thursday, June 9th, at 6 p.m. in London. I've found that investors are almost always interested in what other types of investors are doing. Some of this is curiosity, but a lot of it is interest in sentiment and a desire to try to quantify market emotion to give a better indicator of when to buy or sell. One can find a variety of metrics that portend to reflect this investor mood. Many of them move in nice, big, oscillating waves between fear and greed. But as anyone trying to use them as encountered, investing based on sentiment is harder in theory than practice. The first challenge, of course, is that there is little agreement in professional circles on exactly the best way to capture market emotion. Is it different responses to a regular investor survey? Is it the level of implied volatility in the market? Is it the flow of money in and out of different funds? The potential list goes on. Next, once you have an indicator, what's the right threshold to establish if it's telling you something is extreme? If you poll a thousand investors every week, maybe 70% of those investors being negative tells you the mood is sufficiently sour. But maybe the magic number is 80%, or maybe it's 60%. Defining positive or negative sentiment isn't always straightforward. Finally, there's the simple but important point that sometimes the crowd is right. Think of a long bull market like the 1990s. People were often optimistic about the stock market and correct to think so as prices kept rising. Meanwhile, people are often bearish in a bear market. We remember the dour mood that persisted throughout 2008. It certainly didn't stop stocks from going down. With all of this in mind, our research is focused on finding some ways to use sentiment measures more effectively. We think it makes sense to use a composite of different indicators, as true extremes are likely to show up across multiple approaches to measurement. Valuing both the level and direction of sentiment can be helpful. Rather than trying to catch an absolute extreme or market bottom, the best risk reward is often when sentiment is negative but improving. And sentiment is more useful to identify market lows than market peaks, as negativity and despair tend to be stronger, sharper emotions. Identifying peak optimism, at least in our work, is much harder. So don't beat yourself up if you can't find a signal that consistently flags market tops. Those ideas underlie the tools that we've built to try to turn market sentiment into signals as the age old debate around the true state of fear and greed continues throughout this year. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to Thoughts on the Market on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review. We'd love to hear from you. 

Inflation has continued to surprise to the upside, causing global central banks to face a difficult choice; continue to raise rates at the risk of recession, or settle in for a long spell of elevated inflation.-----Transcript-----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley's Chief Global Economist. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives. Today, I'll be talking about the key challenges for central banks and particularly the European Central Bank. It's Thursday, June 23rd, at 3:30 p.m. in New York. Just about all conversations these days involve high inflation and monetary policy tightening. It is tough all over. Central banks all have to make harder and harder choices as inflation keeps surprising to the upside. Take the Fed. They hiked 75 basis points at their last meeting. That was 25 basis points more than was priced in just a week before the meeting. At the June European Central Bank meeting, President Lagarde also weighed in. She was clear about a 25 basis point hike in July and that the rate hike in September would be larger, presumably 50 basis points if the outlook for medium term inflation is still above target. Putting that simply, if the ECB does not lower its forecast for inflation in 2024, we should expect a 50 basis point hike in September. A lower inflation forecast faces long odds. Headline inflation in Europe will be pushed around by commodity prices. Consider that European inflation is much more non-core, that is food and energy, than it is core inflation. And for core inflation, the ECB typically looks to economic growth as the key driver, but with about a one year lag. So their forecast for 2024 inflation is going to depend on their forecast for 2023 growth. And it's just very hard to see what data we are going to get by September that's going to meaningfully lower their forecast for 2023 growth. So now the ECB has joined the ranks of central banks that are hiking more and more with the goal of slowing inflation. But they have to face the dilemma that I wrote a few pieces about back in January. At that point, I was discussing the Fed, but the same choice is there and it is stark— either cause a recession and bring inflation down in the near term or engineer a substantial slowdown, but one that is shy of a recession, and accept elevated inflation for years to come. You see, despite the typical lags of policy, if the ECB chose to engineer a recession right now, those effects would almost surely show through to growth by 2023, pulling down inflation in 2024. So why are they making this choice? On the most simple level, no central banker really wants to cause a recession if they can avoid it. And remember that euro area inflation is now heavily driven by food and energy prices. Those noncore prices are only barely related to Euro area activity. It would take a severe recession in Europe to meaningfully drive down noncore prices. And finally, reports are swirling of a new tool to ward off fragmentation in European markets. If we get a hard crash of the economy, that by itself could precipitate the market fragmentation that they're trying to avoid. So what happens next? The Governing Council is on a hiking cycle, but they want a soft landing. The problem is that we are more pessimistic than they are about Euro Area growth starting as soon as the second half of this year. With inflation currently high and their commitment to tightening to fight that inflation, we might not get the clear signals of a slowdown in the economy before it's too late. The ECB might think it is choosing the more benign path but if our forecasts are right, the risks of them hiking into a recession, even inadvertently, are clearly rising. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy this show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today. 

As inflation remains top of mind from Wall Street to the White House, policy makers continue to propose possible actions to fight inflation, but will these proposals ever be enacted?-----Transcript-----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Head of Public Policy Research and Municipal Strategy for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the intersection between U.S. public policy and financial markets. It's Wednesday, June 22nd, at 10 a.m. in New York. Main Street and Wall Street agree that inflation is a problem. And of course, Washington, DC continues to take notice. The White House and Democratic leadership continues to press publicly that they're taking inflation seriously and pursuing a variety of options to slow rising prices in the economy. This includes today's news that the White House is endorsing a plan for a gas tax holiday, which would need congressional approval. Not surprisingly, then, investors have been asking us a lot lately about policy options that have been floated in news headlines as possible inflation fighters. In short, we think many proposals will remain simply that, proposals, keeping pressure on the Fed to be the inflation fighter. Why won't most proposals be enacted? Simply put, most options on the table can't get enough votes in Congress to be enacted due to political concerns, effectiveness concerns, and sometimes both. Take the gas tax holiday proposal. Key Republican senators have already voiced opposition to the move, as have moderates in the Democratic caucus, on concerns that the holiday would have only a limited impact on prices at the pump, while steering money away from infrastructure maintenance. Accordingly, you might see the administration take some actions on its own. For example, there have been many headlines about the White House considering easing tariffs on imports from China. But in our view, any tariff reduction is likely to be temporary and small in scope, focusing on a subset of consumer goods rather than blanket tariff reductions, as administration is likely reticent to do too much on tariff reduction without a reciprocal concession from China. Given that independent economists estimate that a blanket tariff removal would only reduce inflation by a few tenths of a percent, this smaller scale action would not meaningfully impact key inflation measures like CPI. So that means the Fed remains the main inflation fighter in DC. And fight they will, in the view of our economists, who expect they will hike rates another 2% over the balance of this year in order to curb economic activity. For investors, that means a higher chance of recession, and in the view of our U.S. equity strategy team, some remaining downside for stock prices in the near term. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find the show.

As price to earnings multiples fall and inflation continues to weigh on the economy, long term earnings estimates may still be too high as the risk of a recession rises. -----Transcript-----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Mike Wilson, Chief Investment Officer and Chief U.S. Equity Strategist for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about the latest trends in the financial marketplace. It's Tuesday, June 21st at 11 a.m. in New York. So let's get after it. Coming into the year, we had a very out of consensus view that valuations would fall at least 20% due to rising interest rates and tighter monetary policy from the Fed. We also believed earnings were at risk, given payback and demand, rising costs and inventory. With price to earnings multiples falling by 28% year to date, the de-rating process is no longer much of a call, nor is it out of consensus. Having said that, many others are still assuming much higher price to earnings multiples for year end S&P 500 price targets. In contrast, we have lowered our price to earnings targets even further as 10 year U.S. Treasury yields have exceeded our expectations to the upside. In short, the price to earnings multiple should still fall towards 14x, assuming Treasury yields and earnings estimates remain stable. Of course, these are big assumptions. At this point, a recession is no longer just a tail risk given the Fed's predicament with inflation. Indeed, this is the essence of our fire and ice narrative - the Fed having to tighten into a slowdown or worse. Our bear case for this year always assumed a recessionary outcome, but the odds were just 20%. Now they're closer to 35%, according to our economists. We would probably err a bit higher given our more negative view on the consumer and corporate profitability. From a market standpoint, this is just another reason why we think the equity risk premium could far exceed our fair value estimate of 370 basis points. Of course, the 10 year Treasury yield will not be static in a recession either, and would likely fall considerably if growth expectations plunge. For example, the equity risk premium exceeded 600 basis points during the last two recessions. We appreciate that the next recession is unlikely to be accompanied by a crisis like the housing bust in 2008, or a pandemic in 2020. Therefore, we're willing to accept a lower upside target of 500 basis points should a recession come to pass. Should the risk of recession increase to the point where it becomes the market's base case, it would also come alongside a much lower earnings per share forecast. In other words, a recession would imply a much lower trough for the S&P 500 of approximately 3000 rather than our base case of 3400 we've been using lately. As of Friday's close, our negative view is not nearly as fat of a pitch, with so much of the street now in our camp on both financial conditions and growth. Having said that, the upside is quite limited as well, making the near-term a bit of a gamble. Equity markets are very oversold, but they can stay oversold until market participants feel like the risk of recession has been extinguished or at least reduced considerably. We do not see that outcome in the near term. However, we can't rule it out either and appreciate that markets can be quite fickle in the short term on both the downside and the upside. What we can say with more certainty today versus a few months ago is that earnings estimates are too high, even in the event a recession is avoided. Our base case 3400 near-term downside target accounts for the kind of earnings risk we envision in the event a soft landing is accomplished. For us, the end game remains the same. We see a poor risk reward over the next 3 to 6 months, with recession risk rising in the face of very stubborn inflation readings. Valuations are closer to fair at this point, but hardly a bargain if earnings are likely to come down or a recession is coming. While investors have suffered quite a setback this year, we can't yet get bullish for more than just a bear market rally until recession arrives or the risk of one falls materially. At the stock level, we continue to favor late cycle defensives and companies with high operational efficiency. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please take a moment to rate and review us on the Apple Podcast app. It helps more people to find the show.

With so much going on in markets, some moves that may have been hot topics against a less chaotic backdrop, such as policy shifts towards shrinking central bank balance sheets, are hitting the back burner.-----Transcript-----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Chief Cross-Asset Strategist for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about trends across the global investment landscape and how we put those ideas together. It's Friday, June 17th, at 2 p.m. in London. There is so much going on in markets that events that would usually dominate discussions find themselves relegated. You'll emerge from an investor meeting having discussed everything from Fed policy to China's COVID response, and realize there was no time for a discussion of, say, the situation in Japan where the yen has just seen one of its sharpest declines in the last 30 years. I think that applies, in a notable way, to the conversation around central bank balance sheets. For much of the last decade, the bond buying of central banks, also known as quantitative easing, was the dominant market story. That buying is now reversing with the balance sheet of central banks in the U.S., Euro area, the UK and Japan, set to shrink by about $4 trillion between now and the end of 2023. And yet, with so much else going on, this quantitative tightening really feels like it's taking a backseat. One reason is that while the size of this balance sheet reduction is large, it is, for the moment, looking like it will be quite predictable, with central banks stating that these reductions will happen in a regular manner, almost regardless of market conditions. That's in sharp contrast to the situation in interest rates, where central bank policy has been rapidly changing, much less predictable and very dependent on incoming data. We were reminded of this again on Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve decided to raise interest rates by 75 basis points, on top of the 50 basis point rise they executed last month. In the press conference that followed Chair Powell emphasized how important incoming data would be in shaping further interest rate decisions. With every data point potentially shifting the near-term interest rate outlook, the steady decline of the balance sheet all of a sudden becomes less pressing. There is also a legitimate question of how much central bank bond purchases mattered in the first place. There's a whole branch of statistics designed to test how much of the variance of one thing, like stock prices, can be explained by changes in another thing, like central bank balance sheets. When we put the data through these rigorous tests, most of the stock market moves over the last 12 years are explained by factors other than the central bank balance sheet. And one final piece of trivia; bond prices have tended to do worse when Fed bond holdings were rising, and better when bond holdings were shrinking. That might sound counterintuitive, but consider the following. Quantitative easing usually began when the economy was weak and bond prices were already high, while quantitative tightening has occurred when the economy was strong and bond prices were already lower. It's just one more example that the balance sheet is one of many factors driving cross-asset performance. Thanks for listening. Subscribe to Thoughts on the Market on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review. We'd love to hear from you.

With home prices hitting new highs and inventory hitting new lows, the differences between now and the last housing bubble may help ease investors' worries that the market is about to burst. Co-Heads of U.S. Securitized Products Research Jim Egan and Jay Bacow discuss.-----Transcript-----Jay Bacow: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Jay Bacow, Co-Head of U.S. Securitized Products Research here at Morgan Stanley. Jim Egan: And I'm Jim Egan, the other Co-Head of U.S. Securitized Products Research. Jay Bacow: And on this episode of the podcast, we'll be discussing the path for both housing prices, housing activity and agency mortgages through the end of the year. It's Thursday, June 16th, at noon in New York. Jay Bacow: Jim, it seems like every time we come on this podcast, there's another record in the housing market. And this time it's no different. Jim Egan: Absolutely not. Home prices just set a new record, 20.6% year over year growth. They set a new month over month growth record. Affordability, when you combine that growth in home prices with the increase we've seen in mortgage rates, we've deteriorated more in the past 12 months than any year that we have on record. And a lot of that growth can be attributed to the fact that inventory levels are at their lowest level on record. Consumer attitudes toward buying homes are worse than they've been since 1982. That's not a record, but you get my point. Jay Bacow: All right. So we're setting records for home prices. We're setting records for change in affordability. With all these broken records, investors are understandably a little worried that we might have another housing bubble. What do you think? Jim Egan: Look, given the run up in housing in the 2000s and the fact that we,ve reset the record for the pace of home price growth, investors can be permitted a little anxiety. We do not think there is a bubble forming in the U.S. housing market. There are a number of reasons for that, two things I would highlight. First, the pre GFC run up in home prices, that was fueled by lax lending standards that really elevated demand to what we think were unsustainable levels. And that ultimately led to an incredible increase in defaults, where borrowers with risky mortgages were not able to refinance and their only real option at that point was foreclosures. This time around, lending standards have remained at the tight end of historical ranges, while supply has languished at all time lows. And that demand supply mismatch is what's driving this increase in prices this time around. The second reason, we talked about affordability deteriorating more over the past 12 months than any year on record. That hit from affordability is just not as widely spread as it has been in prior mortgage markets, largely because most mortgages today are fixed rate. We're not talking about adjustable rate mortgages where current homeowners can see their payments reset higher. This time around a majority of borrowers have fixed rate mortgages with very affordable payments. And so they don't see that affordability pressure. What they're more likely to experience is being locked in at current rates, much less likely to list their home for sale and exacerbating that historically tight inventory environment that we just talked about. Jay Bacow: All right. So, you don't think we're going to have another housing bubble. Things aren't going to pop. So does that mean we're going to continue to set records? Jim Egan: I wouldn't say that we're going to continue to set records from here. I think that home prices and housing activity are going to go their separate ways. Home prices will still grow, they're just going to grow at a slower pace. Home sales is where we are really going to see decreases. Those affordability pressures that we've talked about have already made themselves manifest in existing home sales, in purchase applications, in new home sales, which have seen the biggest drops. Those kinds of decreases, we think those are going to continue. That lack of inventory, the lack of foreclosures from what we believe have been very robust underwriting standards, that keeps home prices growing, even if at a slower pace. That record level we just talked about? That was 20.6% year over year. We think that slows to 10% by December of this year, 3% by December of 2023. But we're not talking about home prices falling and we're not talking about a bubble popping. Jim Egan: But with that backdrop, Jay, you cover the agency mortgage backed securities markets, a large liquid way to invest in mortgages, how would you invest in this? Jay Bacow: So, buying a home is generally the single largest investment for individuals, but you can scale that up in the agency mortgage market. It's an $8.5 trillion market where the government has underwritten the credit risk and that agency paper provides a pretty attractive way to get exposure to the housing outlook that you've described. If housing activity is going to slow, there's less supply to the market. That's just good for investors. And the recent concern around the Fed running off their balance sheet, combined with high inflation, has meant that the spread that you get for owning these bonds looks really attractive. It's well over 100 basis points on the mortgages that are getting produced today versus treasuries. It hasn't been over 100 basis points for as long as it has since the financial crisis. Jim, just in the same way that you don't think we're having another housing bubble, we don't think mortgages are supposed to be priced for financial crisis levels. Jim Egan: Jay, thanks for taking the time to talk. Jay Bacow: Great speaking with you, Jim. Jim Egan: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.