Steno Research

Steno Research is a new macro and geopolitical research house. We are based out of Copenhagen, Denmark, but have an international team and a strong network of sources and partners around the world. The team is lead by Andreas Steno, previous global head of strategy at Nordea Bank, and Mikkel Rosenvold, former chief consultant in the Danish Ministry of Finance.

Macro and Geopolitical Research House

Head of Research and Global Chief Strategist, Steno Research

Andreas Steno

Head of Research and Global Chief Strategist

Macroeconomics

<ul><li>Hello everyone, and welcome back to our weekly positioning watch, which today will start at the growing number of BoJ officials who are now supporting an exit from NIRP possibly already in March, sending Nikkei 225 down &gt;2% in Asia hours yesterday, while China and China-proxies were bid – quite a surprising dynamic in Asian equities, which we won’t rule out to continue over the next weeks, as markets are likely shifting away from Japanese equities if a hike actually comes through.</li><li>Our 250-day prediction from our PCA-tool (the blue line) has also been flagging the rally in Japanese equities, and now see a major divergence in the trend relative to the macro fundamentals, which has left a &gt;2 standard deviations fair value gap, which seems likely to be closed via a retracement lower in Nikkei.</li><li>Chart of the week: Our models have been bearish Japan since early 2024It looks like some parts of the markets had already sniffed out the slight overpricing of Japanese equities given risks of substantial moves in JPY-rates, and inflows into US-traded Japan ETFs have decreased since early February, while China ETFs began to see modest inflows, but has now went back into negative territory.</li></ul>

Hello everyone, and welcome back to our weekly positioning watch, which today will start at the growing number of BoJ officials who are now supporting an exit from NIRP possibly already in March, sending Nikkei 225 down &gt;2% in Asia hours yesterday, while China and China-proxies were bid – quite a surprising dynamic in Asian equities, which we won’t rule out to continue over the next weeks, as markets are likely shifting away from Japanese equities if a hike actually comes through.Our 250-day prediction from our PCA-tool (the blue line) has also been flagging the rally in Japanese equities, and now see a major divergence in the trend relative to the macro fundamentals, which has left a &gt;2 standard deviations fair value gap, which seems likely to be closed via a retracement lower in Nikkei.Chart of the week: Our models have been bearish Japan since early 2024It looks like some parts of the markets had already sniffed out the slight overpricing of Japanese equities given risks of substantial moves in JPY-rates, and inflows into US-traded Japan ETFs have decreased since early February, while China ETFs began to see modest inflows, but has now went back into negative territory.

Positioning Watch – Bye Bye Japanese Consensus Case?