In today’s briefing:
- February Themes and Thematic Portfolio Review
- The Week That Was in ASEAN@Smartkarma – GoTo & Grab, BFIN’s Rising, and Astra Intl’s Oversold
- ECB Watch: A scope for a decent dovish surprise
- Energy Cable #59: More fuel for energy bulls?
- ISM Manufacturing – the Ugliest Macro Indicator for Stocks!
- Commodity Hedge Fund Positioning & Red Sea Update
- Monday Macro – a deep dive into stocks and bonds for the long run
- Mining Monthly: February Edition
- Switzerland CPI Inflation 1.2% y-o-y (consensus 1.1%) in Feb-24
- Bahrain CPI Inflation 0.6% m-o-m in Jan-24
February Themes and Thematic Portfolio Review
- A monthly review at how the markets and our themes are currently performing
- Analysing what went wrong and what went right in stocks and sectors
- Highlighting positions added or removed from the thematic investment portfolio
The Week That Was in ASEAN@Smartkarma – GoTo & Grab, BFIN’s Rising, and Astra Intl’s Oversold
- The Past week saw insights on GoTo, Grab Holdings (GRAB US),Sido Muncul (SIDO IJ), Matahari Department Store, BFI Finance Indonesia (BFIN IJ) and Astra International (ASII IJ).
- There was also a macro insight on the Thai Economy and further insights on Comfortdelgro Corp (CD SP), Bumrungrad Hospital Pub Co (BH TB), and UNOAsia in the Philippines.
- The Week That Was in ASEAN@Smartkarma is filled with an eclectic mix of differentiated, substantive, and actionable insights, macro and equity bottom-up, from across Southeast Asia.
ECB Watch: A scope for a decent dovish surprise
- The hopes of a March cut are long gone, but the ECB meeting will be interesting to watch nonetheless.
- The ECB has been dovishly surprised on right about every single measurable parameter since the December meeting, which will likely make its impact at the March meeting.
- HICP assumptions for Q1 averaged at 2.9% with the actual prints in January and February coming in at 2.8% and 2.6%, respectively.
Energy Cable #59: More fuel for energy bulls?
- Take aways: Another green week for natural gas. Bullish demand/supply outlook for crude. Seasonality will now be working in favor of crude. Israel Hamas-Ceasefire a little less impactful for crude now.
- Before we get to the OPEC supply cuts and crude, we would like to address our natural gas position from a couple of weeks ago.
- Our timing has been very fortunate with the position, as the market realized that we were trading too low. As we predicted, the low prices act as a natural constraint on supply as seen most recently by EQT Corp.
ISM Manufacturing – the Ugliest Macro Indicator for Stocks!
- Understanding the ISM Manufacturing Index has been a tricky affair in recent months. Based on regional PMI data, the ISM (48.7) was anticipated to breach the 50 mark (50.7).
- The gap between the current 10-year US Treasury yield and the ISM Manufacturing Index is huge!
- In addition, the latest ISM numbers suggest a 26% downside for the S&P 500 Index. Yikes!
Commodity Hedge Fund Positioning & Red Sea Update
- CTA Positioning Update According to UBS’ biweekly CTA momentum study, CTAs bought oil and sold precious metals in size in February.
- The investment bank expects ⅔ of those flows to reverse in the next two weeks.
- CTA’s have meanwhile built a decent short position in agriculturals, and flows should remain negative there.
Monday Macro – a deep dive into stocks and bonds for the long run
- This week, I’m going to try and combine my three interests: 1. working out what the heck markets might do next,
- 2. figuring out how economic growth rates impact stock market returns (surely there must be some relationship or are they entirely unrelated), and
- 3. digging into the economic history record books to see what’s worked in the past in investment terms.
Mining Monthly: February Edition
- Gold held flat in February, continuing a long period of consolidation, and most other metals were down modestly.
- The precious metal equities further sold off in February, compounding the losses in January, highlighting to the market this industry is still out of favour.
- We had several significant updates from companies within our coverage.
Switzerland CPI Inflation 1.2% y-o-y (consensus 1.1%) in Feb-24
- Switzerland’s CPI inflation in February 2024 slowed by a tenth to 1.2% year-on-year, slightly above the market expectations of 1.1%.
- The inflation rate continues to be below the average for most of 2023.
- The current inflation rate is significantly below the Swiss National Bank’s target.
This content is sourced through publicly available sources and has been machine generated. Information displayed is for general informational purposes only.
Bahrain CPI Inflation 0.6% m-o-m in Jan-24
- Bahrain’s CPI inflation rate saw a substantial rise of 0.6% in January 2024, representing the most significant growth since June 2023.
- The inflation rate for January 2024 surpassed the one-year average by 0.53 percentage points.
- This indicates a deviation from the usual inflationary behaviour.
This content is sourced through publicly available sources and has been machine generated. Information displayed is for general informational purposes only.
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