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Good Morning: The Long & the Short of it and The Bigger Picture - 22 May 2020 - ADM ISI


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Ostwald, Marc
09:08 (53 minutes ago)

to Marc






- China NPC headlines and international reaction to HK security proposals
likely to cast long shadow over modest run of data: UK Retail Sales, PSNB
and GfK Consumer Confidence & off-plan India rate to digest; Canada
Retail Sales and Mexico CPI ahead; long weekends in US & UK

- Inflated market valuations increasingly struggling to ignore prospect of
weak recovery, long road to vaccine

- If not China and India, then who is going to propel recovery, above all
in face of rising protectionism and geopolitical tensions, and
mushrooming debt mountain

- Charts: US HY vs. Asia USD HY vs. JPM EM Debt spreads; WTI second mth vs
GSCI Commodity Price Index

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** EVENTS PREVIEW **
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Today's data schedule is modest, being primarily a case of digesting the overnight run of UK GfK Consumer Confidence, Retail Sales & PSNB Budget readings, and Japan's national CPI and Dept Store Sales, with only the less than timely Canada Retail Sales for March and Mexico's April CPI ahead. Given the rising tensions between China and the US, and a number of other countries, the headlines out of China's National People's Congress will require very close monitoring. It is also another deadline day for the latest Argentina bond restructuring bond proposal, with US bond markets set to close early ahead of Monday's Memorial Day holiday, with the UK also closed for the late spring bank holiday. The corporate earnings schedule has a number of key or anecdotally interesting reports, including Alibaba, Burberry, Deere & Co, Marriott and Royal Mail.

The news flow from China's National People's Congress, be that the pledge to impose a very restrictive security on Hong Kong, or numerous initiatives to improve food and energy security, in other words create less dependence on supplies from the rest of the world serve as a reminder that the US/China trade deal was more a distraction in the broader fight between China and the US to dominate the world economy, which is not re-escalating at a rapid rate, even if Trump appears to be more motivated by playing electoral blame games, than having a genuine vision and plan for how the US might be more self-sufficient (with a reminder that trade accounts only for 13% of US GDP). In turn for markets which are starting to suffer a case of vertigo in the face of very high equity valuations, tighter credit spreads amid record volumes of issuance, and perhaps a grudging acknowledgment that the economic recovery from the epic hit to activity from COVID19 will be slow. That any such recovery remains very much contingent on a vaccine that will take at least a year to develop, and any number of risks of a setback, be that rising geopolitical tensions, or second waves of infection.

Outside of the news flow from the China and the US, the 'off meeting' 40 bps rate cut in India was above all justified on their view that the Indian economy will not see any recovery gaining significant traction until H2 2021, and indirectly that the latest fiscal package will have at best a marginal impact. Per se the simplest observation is that along with China (sensibly) abandoning its growth target, and with India facing a protracted period of stagnation, the world's two most populous economies are unlikely to contribute much to the recovery in the global economy, which given dire expectations for Latin America and a likely very uneven, and stuttering rebound in Europe and North America, says that the economic reality highlights a gargantuan disconnect relative to current market valuations. UK Retail Sales were dire, though the ex-Auto Fuel reading was closer to forecast than headline, but that is all rather moot, given the scale of m/m and y/y falls in both cases. The key concern in the UK remains that whether it is the inability to implement 'track and trace', which has been deployed successfully in many countries, and clearly critical to easing lockdown in the absence of a vaccine, not to mention other areas (such as care home fatalities), the govt appears to be frittering away public trust, and thus exacerbating an already uncertain outlook, that is heightened once again due to the impasse on Brexit trade negotiations.

========================== ** THE DAY AHEAD ** ===========================

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