Bloomberg (April 1)
“Rarely has the consensus been more uniformly bearish than it is now. Investors are sitting with the lowest allocation to US stocks in almost two decades.” But this extreme is creating a phenomena not seen “during any bear market in the past four decades.” Since “everyone’s leaning one way, big swings are apt to break out in the other…. Small gains can snowball when the worry is missing out on the next big rally.” As a result, “the S&P 500 just finished the first three months of the year up 7%, rounding out back-to-back quarterly gains.”
Tags: Allocation, Bear market, Bearish, Big swings, Consensus, Extreme, Investors, Rally, S&P 500, Small gains, Snowball, Stocks, U.S.
The Economist (February 2)
The decisive election of Petr Pavel as the new president of the Czech Republic shows that “all is not lost for the centrist liberal consensus” and also indicates that populism in Europe is, at last, “losing its mojo.” Pavel’s win “marks another blow for the narrative of European politics shifting inexorably to extremes.”
Tags: Centrist, Consensus, Czech Republic, Decisive, Election, Europe, Extremes, Liberal, Mojo, Pavel, Politics, Populism, President
Investment Week (August 23)
In early August, the Bank of England predicted “increased gas prices would cause inflation to rise above 13% by the end of the year.” The consensus is worse. “Goldman Sachs and EY forecast UK consumer price inflation would reach 15%, and Bank of America projected it would peak at 14% in January.” Citi bank has gone further and “riled markets” by forecasting “UK CPI to hit 18.6% in January… beating the 1979 peak when CPI hit 17.8% following the OPEC oil shock.” A recession looks all but inevitable.
Tags: Bank of America, BOE, Citi bank, Consensus, CPI, EY, Forecast, Gas prices, Goldman Sachs, Inflation, Markets, Oil shock, OPEC, Peak, Recession, UK
Bloomberg (February 14)
“Japan’s largest money managers appear to have come to a consensus about where to allocate their sustainable investment portfolios: anywhere but Japan. The country’s four largest ESG funds have put at least 95% of their net assets in foreign stocks… devoting only a small fraction of their 1.4 trillion yen ($12.1 billion) to domestic holdings.”
Tags: Consensus, Domestic holdings, ESG funds, Foreign stocks, Investment portfolios, Japan, Money managers, Net assets, Sustainable
The Economist (April 28)
“There is no consensus on what a crypto-asset is. Even within countries, authorities disagree on how to classify them. Are they a commodity, a currency, a security or their own, peculiar asset class?” The Swiss regulator, FINMA, took what may become a popular approach. FINMA’s treatment of crypto-assets will be based “on their actual function—ie, whether they are used for payments; as a utility token that gives its holder access to a specific service; or as an investment. This also means a token’s classification can change over time.”
Tags: Asset class, Authorities, Commodity, Consensus, Crypto-asset, Currency, FINMA, Regulator, Security, Switzerland, Treatment
Bloomberg (August 29)
“Brexit is beginning to look like a classic case of a mountain giving birth to a mouse” and, except for losing its say in EU affairs, little is likely to change. “The U.K. will simply lose its vote in the EU. The rest will remain as it is now for an indefinite period during which a new trade deal will be discussed in the standard EU fashion — slowly, deliberately, with each of the 27 EU countries working through its own agenda until there’s a consensus.”
Tags: Agenda, Brexit, Consensus, Deliberate, EU, Slow, Trade deal, UK
The Economist (November 12)
Trump’s election “threatens old certainties about America and its role in the world.” America’s allies have been rocked by “the sense that old certainties are crumbling…. The fear that globalisation has fallen flat has whipsawed markets. Although post-Brexit Britons know what that feels like, the referendum in Britain will be eclipsed by consequences of this election. Mr Trump’s victory has demolished a consensus. The question now is what takes its place.”
Tags: Allies, Brexit, Certainties, Consensus, Election, Fear, Globalization, Markets, Trump, U.S.
Bloomberg (January 26)
“Why are economists so willing to declare to the world that free trade is good?” Their consensus flies in the face of popular opinion and “powerful evidence that industries and regions that have been more exposed to Chinese import competition since 2000—the year China joined the World Trade Organization—have been hit hard and have not recovered.”
Tags: China, Competition, Consensus, Economists, Evidence, Free trade, Imports, Industries, Popular opinion, Regions, WTO
Financial Times (November 7)
Germany needs to take a more “active role in a disordered world,” and this means articulating their foreign policy. “Ms Merkel has built her political career on caution–on taking the temperature and weighing all the options before acting…. But leadership in foreign policy demands something more: an understanding that doing nothing can be more dangerous than doing something, and a readiness to step out in front of the crowd. Consensus may be comforting; it does not impress the likes of Mr Putin.”
Tags: Caution, Consensus, Disordered world, Foreign policy, Germany, Merkel, Putin, Readiness
Wall Street Journal (August 20)
“Mr. Modi’s plans to unleash market forces will lift millions of Indians out of poverty, but he also has ideas about how government can better meet the immediate needs of the poor.” Though some of his plans “may sound oddly simple to developed-world ears” (e.g. access to toilets and bank accounts), “the Prime Minister’s humble background gives him an understanding of what the poor need to find their own path to prosperity and the credibility to build a new consensus for those policies.”
Tags: Background, Bank accounts, Consensus, Credibility, Government, Humble, India, Modi, Policies, Poverty, Prosperity, Toilets
