Archives: Reports
Stocks were hit early on the back of the hotter inflation print in the US overnight, the ASX down ~100pts at its worst, before a spirited/impressive recovery played out, underpinned by the resources & energy sectors while the Staples also played their part. This sort of market action is indicative of a strong market, where negative news gets a short sharp reaction, but ultimately the weight of money remains on the buy side.
The weakness across the Lithium Sector has lost its place in the financial press due to the strong rallies in copper and gold. Usually, more “clicks” are achieved from bad news and crash-style stories, but the lithium bear market has grown old in the tooth. However, as we’ve seen with other commodities and related stocks, this year is starting to look exciting for the commodity space, and we believe lithium can join the party, at least for a while. We aren’t as bullish towards lithium as copper, for example, with the supply & demand dynamics far from clear, but we can see them enjoying a strong finish to this FY.
A reasonable session for the ASX today, underpinned again by a recovery amongst the miners, Coal stocks the standout following multiple broker upgrades. In the past month, the materials sector is +2.4% vs IT which is down -3.98% showing how sectors are coming in and out of favour, a market for active investing. Eyes will be on the US CPI tonight with the latest set of numbers expected to fall to 0.3% from 0.4%.
Overnight, the influential former Federal Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said he’s expecting three rate cuts in 2024 as inflation moves towards the Feds target even while the economy remains resilient, i.e. the “Goldilocks” scenario for stocks. Bullard’s outlook echoed the Fed’s messaging as opposed to the increasing market expectations that two cuts have become more likely than three, e.g. Treasury yields made new highs for the year on Monday night. Mr Bullard is indirectly quoting the old adage of “don’t fight the Fed”. However, it wasn’t the ongoing commentary from the central banker that caught our attention but rather the market’s reaction following the relatively Dovish interview—gold surged over $US30 to another all-time high while bond yields hardly moved. This has been the story of 2024, which has seen gold surge around $US300/oz while bonds have drifted lower (yields higher).
A good session from commodity stocks underpinned a positive day for the ASX. Iron Ore held onto recent strength, while Citi was out with a bullish note on Copper saying…we believe copper’s second secular bull market this century is taking hold, 20 years after China urbanization and industrialization-led secular bull market. They think recent strength has further to run in the short & longer term and they revised up their price assumptions across the board. A very bullish note on Copper that is aligned with MM’s view.
BHP and RIO are two stocks most closely followed by MM subscribers; just look at Saturday’s Q&A. Hence, it caught our attention when one of the leading stories in yesterday’s AFR was “Brokers go all in on RIO tipping 20% annual share price jump”, i.e., at MM, we’ve preferred BHP over RIO over recent years. They believe that RIO is better positioned for a boom in industrial metals, and they also think it has a stronger balance sheet. A glance at the two stocks shows they’ve pretty much danced in tandem since COVID, while so far in 2024, BHP is down -12.2% and RIO -10.3%, with iron ore weighing on both miners.
A positive session to kick off the new trading week and while the index was fairly subdued, a lot was happening under the hood as we edge towards US quarterly results that kick into gear on Friday.
Gold surged to new all-time highs last week, shrugging off a pullback in bonds (higher yields). The trend of precious metals is usually determined or significantly influenced by interest rates, but not at the moment—higher interest rates make zero-yielding assets such as gold less attractive from a relative perspective. There are arguably three main drivers of gold at the moment, with two very bullish and one mildly bearish short-term.
With so much conflicting data and rhetoric, it’s not surprising that volatility is increasing. MM still believes global interest rates are set to fall through 2024/5; hence, we remain optimistic about equities. However, the ongoing speculation around the timing of these said cuts looks set to keep both investors and traders on their toes. We continue to believe stocks/sectors will dance to the “three steps forward, two steps back” tune over the coming months until the future path of rate moves by the RBA, Fed, et al. becomes set in stone. As we’ve pointed out a few times recently, every month of 2024 has delivered a 210-310 pullback for the ASX200, with an average of the last three pullbacks taking the index to ~7650.
A soggy day in Sydney and the market was very similar, weakness from the get-go saw all sectors finish lower. Some pockets of strength in Gold, Energy was solid and a few Healthcare stocks held up okay, but other than that, it was a fairly bleak Friday across the board.
