europe Archives - Runnymede Capital Management

Europe to surpass China with most active coronavirus cases

Back in January, I wrote a blog post when coronavirus, COVID-19, first appeared on the radar. There were just 600 cases and the Chinese government had already locked down Wuhan and neighboring cities. I was hopeful that with modern medicine and China's quick quarantine that the coronavirus could be contained. While the Chinese appear to have contained their cases, the rest of the world hasn't taken enough aggressive action to stop it in its tracks and now Western Europe is about to pass China in number of active cases! This is a frightening thought as only Italy has gone into lockdown and it did so at over 10k cases. The Europeans aren't taking enough action and this problem is spiraling out of control.

Prepare for negative rates in the US

Back in 2016, we wrote “Watch out! Negative interest rate policy is coming to the US sooner than later.” To us, the future feels inevitable with virtually all the other developed nations in negative territory again in 2019. PIMCO's Joachim Fels echoed this thought saying that it's “no longer absurd to think that the nominal yield on U.S. Treasury securities could go negative.”

Will Europe drag the US into recession?

European growth peaked at the end of 2017 and has been slowing ever since. Despite the ECB saying there is no recession in Europe, there is mounting evidence that Europe is entering a recession. Germany, which is often seen as the engine of the Eurozone, saw its GDP contract in the 3rd quarter and its manufacturing PMI fell below 50 in January. Italy has waived the white flag and is already in recession with the European Commission forecasting just 0.2 percent growth for 2019. The ECB just stopped its asset purchase program in December and now may have to try to stimulate again.

IM 014: The Unstoppable Rise of Soccer’s Super-Rich Owners | James Montague

James Montague is author of The Billionaires Club, a book about the one per cent; the super-rich, the billionaire class who now control football.

European junk bonds pose systemic risk in next downturn

This week, Fitch Ratings warned that record junk bond prices combined with risky corporate bond issuance is creating “increasing uncertainty” and is raising the chances of a sharp turnaround in the European high-yield, aka junk bond, credit market. Thanks to massive quantitative easing by the European Central Bank, yields on Euro junk bonds have been dropping steadily since early 2016 when the ECB began buying huge amounts of corporate debt. The most popular benchmark for European junk bonds fell below two percent for the first time ever last week. This is flat out crazy as investors are taking significant risk for just a two percent yield, less than a 5-year US Treasury Note which is considered the safest bond in the world. Fitch warned that recent market calm and the distorting impact of monetary policy “obscure the true risk-return dynamics faced by investors.”

The Deflationary Impact of Negative Interest Rates

The Japanese and European central banks have taken extraordinary measures to resuscitate their economies. Instead, they may be sending them further into a deflationary spiral. If you take a quick look at the major stock markets around the world, you will observe a clear pattern that is likely to surprise you. Zero/negative rates are highly correlated to poor stock market returns this year; while higher central bank rates correlate with high market returns. It is the economies that are in the worst shape that are having to test negative rates.