Gavekal Research

Yanmei Xie, Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian

Mar 30th 2020

Will the US$2trn fiscal packiage prove big enough? The initial market reaction might have suggested that it won’t. However, if extreme lockdowns last no longer than a month or two, the fiscal package may well succeed in its twin objectives of averting mass business failures and preventing a big rise in long term unemployment.

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer, Yanmei Xie

Mar 24th 2020

On Monday, the US Federal Reserve rolled out some of its heaviest artillery. In a move reminiscent of the moves in March 2009 which finally succeeded in stabilizing markets, it both relaxed accounting rules for banks and launched a whole suite of programs designed to take risk off private sector balance sheets, including by buying corporate bonds.

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer

Mar 16th 2020

While other US government agencies tackle the coronavirus crisis, the Federal Reserve has promised ample liquidity and functioning credit markets. Its “whatever it takes” plan is to ensure that US dollars are available at home and abroad, US credit markets remain liquid and solvent companies and individuals are not stopped out.

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer, Tan Kai Xian

Feb 28th 2020

The Covid-19 outbreak has sparked a flight to safety, reversing an incipient weakening of the US dollar. This is hardly unfounded, as the US so far has been spared a major outbreak and its economy is decently insulated. Yet most of the factors weighing on the US dollar late last year remain valid. Thus Will and KX advise a negative dollar bias.

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer

Feb 07th 2020

There are few people outside Donald Trump’s administration who think the US-China trade war was a good thing. There are surely even fewer who think the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak has any positive aspects at all. Nevertheless, while both last year’s trade war and this year’s viral epidemic are bad for global economic growth, they are both largely beneficial for US households.

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer

Jan 20th 2020

The US’s growth outlook has been bolstered by easy financial conditions and trade deals being reached with China and its near neighbors. Yet, those prospects are also hampered by a tight labor market that threatens corporate profits. What recent data releases highlight is both the enduring strength of the US economy and niggling late-cycle factors that could yet undo it.

Gavekal Research

Tan Kai Xian, Will Denyer

Jan 03rd 2020

Global markets began 2020 on a bullish note, with the US S&P 500 climbing to a fresh record close, up a chunky 4.3% over the last month. Indeed, the US monetary backdrop at the start of 2020 is reminiscent of that in early 2017, a year which saw the S&P 500 climb 19.4%. History may not repeat this year, but there are good reasons to believe it may yet rhyme.

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer

Dec 17th 2019

Following the US dollar liquidity squeeze and repo rate spike in mid-September—an event which went on to trigger hearty liquidity injections from the Federal Reserve—the market has been on the lookout for new stressors in the US dollar money markets. There were concerns of renewed stress on Monday as the Treasury sucked up an estimated US$84bn on the settlement of new debt issues and through the receipt of corporate taxes. US money market rates...

Gavekal Research

Will Denyer

Dec 09th 2019

November’s employment figures show that the US jobs market is slowing, but the slowdown is gradual and not sufficient to worry investors to any significant degree about an impending recession. Nor, with inflation expectations subdued, do recent jobs data give the Federal Reserve reason to act either one way or the other at this week’s policy meeting.