In today’s briefing:
- The 2024 Liquidity BOOM?
- Positioning Watch – Buy everything seems to be consensus
- The Week That Was in ASEAN@Smartkarma – Ace Hardware Shines, AKRA’s Positive, and GoTo’s TikTok Move
- Energy Cable #50: Oil Back in Fashion
The 2024 Liquidity BOOM?
- US policy makers signal the peak in Fed Funds rates and to imply rates cut cuts as soon as March 2024
- Fed Liquidity has risen by a whopping US$534 billion or 16.6% since the start of 2023
- These moves are consistent with our long held view that the Global Liquidity cycle bottomed in October 2022 and is expanding towards a new peak in 2025.
Positioning Watch – Buy everything seems to be consensus
- Hello everyone, and welcome back to our weekly positioning watch following the surprisingly dovish FOMC meeting last Wednesday, which smells of a slight policy mistake given what we have been writing about forward-looking price and wage indicators over the past weeks now starting to tick upwards again.
- Despite a couple of Fed members trying to retrace after the meeting, pushing back on rate-cut expectations, market positioning has turned VERY bullish over the past week, and oh boy has equity markets positioned themselves for a binary outcome.
- The USDs parked at money-market funds have taken the spotlight since the FOMC meeting, as inflows in MMFs have continued despite 3-month T-bill yields reaching what looks to be a top after Powell’s remarks Wednesday.
The Week That Was in ASEAN@Smartkarma – Ace Hardware Shines, AKRA’s Positive, and GoTo’s TikTok Move
- The past week saw insights on Ace Hardware Indonesia (ACES IJ), AKR Corporindo (AKRA IJ), OUE Commercial REIT (OUECT SP), GoTo (GOTO IJ), and Sea (SE US).
- There was also a macro insight looking at Myanmar, an insight looking at Vietnam’s most recent index rebalance, and a credit insight on Lippo Malls Indonesia Retail Trust (LMRT SP).
- 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.
Energy Cable #50: Oil Back in Fashion
- Welcome to this week’s Energy Cable.
- We finally got stopped out of our crude oil trade at the beginning of last week, only to see crude rally at the end of the week on the back of the FOMC meeting and again today due to the supply chain.
- We also entered a long in utilities as advertised last week and we are already enjoying a healthy plus, also as a consequence of the FOMC.
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