“The most interesting part of Thursday’s events will be Mark Carney’s press conference. The Bank will probably revise up their forecasts for inflation and growth in the short term. So Mr Carney is bound to be asked why he’s not planning on raising interest rates in response. The answer will be that the central bank looks beyond this kind of inflation because it thinks it won’t last.
President Trump argues that too many US workers have lost their jobs to foreign peers as companies have offshored manufacturing. US companies need to bring those jobs back and, in doing so, restore America’s industrial greatness. His diagnosis isn’t altogether wrong: fewer companies manufacture cars, for instance, in the US than was previously the case. But this thesis is too simplistic.
Barack Obama will enter the pantheon of great orators when he leaves office this month. It’s easy to forget how much optimism and genuine hope he inspired on the campaign trail. Even now, after a rancorous eight years in office, he has a profound skill to inspire with his words. What is less well remembered is was just how much of a rotten state the economy was in when he inherited the Presidency.
In many ways, The financial crisis and its aftermath have been the spectre haunting his Presidency. The financial crisis was not one of Obama’s making, but he had to deal with much of the wreckage. He oversaw the recovery of the US banking sector following its post-crisis bailout; a recovery that must be the envy of his European peers, who never have really sorted out their banks.
Another defining challenge was the political backdrop: the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives two years into Obama’s first administration (i.e. following the November 2010 elections) and control of the Senate in the November 2014 elections.
Many of the policy changes that populist politicians are calling for could feasibly support economic growth.
Since 1987, the high yield sector has generally produced healthy risk-adjusted returns, striking a good balance between return and risk. With almost 30 years of proof of concept, the US high yield sector (as represented by the BofA Merrill Lynch US High Yield Constrained Index) has provided over 80% of the upside and less than 60% of the downside when compared to equities (as represented by the S&P 500 Index).B As such, high yield remains a strong diversifier within an investor’s portfolio for those who can tolerate the risk. When we consider the expanded opportunity set in the global high-yield market, we think an investor can gain considerable advantages.
The Fed has finally delivered a second rate hike a year after the last one in this cycle.
“What’s more interesting is their guidance on where interest rates might go from here. This time last year the Fed turned out to be wildly off mark in what they were predicting. But this year there are reasons for thinking the Fed’s guidance is more realistic. The economy is in a more advanced stage of recovery and market pricing reflects this. We can expect rates to slowly climb through next year and beyond.”
The Fed is almost certainly going to hike, so this meeting is more about the guidance on interest rates next year.
