In this briefing:
- Bull Or Bear? Latest Global Liquidity Readings
- Risk of Future LNG Supply Glut as Bubble of New Projects Grows
- The Dollar IS the Story; Gold Confounds, A Brexit Rabbit Hole; EUR Punished
- Drill Results Confirm High-Grade Mineralisation (Flash Note)
- Screening the Silk Road: (Small-)Mid Cap Free Cash Flow
1. Bull Or Bear? Latest Global Liquidity Readings
- Global Liquidity bottoming out, but Central Banks not yet easing
- US Fed only withdrew $30bn in Q1, versus $350 bn in Q4
- PBoC still tightening through OMOs
- ECB on ‘pause’
- QE4 is coming in 2019, but no evidence it has started yet
2. Risk of Future LNG Supply Glut as Bubble of New Projects Grows
The rapidly improving outlook in the LNG industry over the last few years, reinforced towards the end of 2017 by the unexpected growth of demand from China, has set off a proliferation of new LNG projects especially from the US (Exhibit 1).
In its latest LNG Outlook report, Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA LN) is projecting from 2023 onwards a significant gap between the future LNG demand and the existing supply including the capacity under construction that could require up to 100mtpa of new LNG project sanctions by 2023.
The race to gain market share in the projected LNG demand-supply gap has produced an aggregated capacity of proposed new projects of up to 475mtpa, a number larger than the total LNG traded volume in 2018 of 319mtpa and way above the capacity required to meet the future growth in LNG demand.
Exhibit 1: Funnel of proposed LNG projects getting bigger
3. The Dollar IS the Story; Gold Confounds, A Brexit Rabbit Hole; EUR Punished
- The dollar IS the story
- EUR punished for negative yields
- Chasing Brexit down a rabbit hole
- Gold confounds
- Bitcoin at an interesting juncture
The fact that the dollar has strengthened despite the dovish turn at the Fed this year and the significant fall in US rates and bond yields has confounded many analysts.
4. Drill Results Confirm High-Grade Mineralisation (Flash Note)
- Significant thick, high-grade Zn/Pb intersections with substantial by-products
- X-sections highlight ore thickness variability
- On schedule for maiden Resource mid-June incorporating both S. Nights and Wagga Tank
- Current drill programmes to be completed within a month
- Employing VMS structural and geochemical specialists for future exploration vectoring
- Maintain Speculative Buy Recommendation
5. Screening the Silk Road: (Small-)Mid Cap Free Cash Flow
In April 2018, we published a FCF screen with the sole aim of identifying potential names which could prove to be strong candidates in a Small-Mid Cap portfolio. We move to update this list with a strong bias to the mid-cap stocks appearing.
This screen performs well with markets where the value style is in favour. Given the market appears to be trending back to this style, we believe the Small-Mid Cap universe should capitalise on this over the next 12-months. We identify within the screen some high trading liquidity deep value candidates across the Asia Pacific universe.
Our updated 2019 list of names contains 17 stocks, with a more diversified spread of countries and sectors, compared to April 2018. A point to note is that basic material stocks have strengthened within the composition. Interestingly, the style of stock which has increased its presence amongst the list is the contrarian style, highlighting an opening up in value.
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