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The banks are one area of the market which generally likes higher interest rates unless they go too far which leads to bad debts, so far so good in terms of loans but mortgage stress is certainly on the increase as interest rates continue to rise. The next 6 months will tell us how badly the RBA is hurting the average Australian, especially with more hikes likely in the coming months, as we said earlier MM believes the pain is around the corner and the local economy is about to slow significantly if nothing else due to the uncertainty of what comes next in 2024.
While the ASX ended flat today, most of the early gains were surrendered from 11 am onwards as divergence opened up across sectors, Utilities were weak, offset by solid gains by IT stocks that keyed off a good session in the US overnig
What Matters Today: 4 stocks MM likes as yesterday’s CPI points towards a lower “peak interest rate”
One good figure obviously doesn’t mean its time to restructure portfolios but market moves such as Wednesdays should remind investors that the market is very skewed toward interest rates being higher for longer and the Australian consumer struggling at least well into 2024 but as we said yesterday “stock markets form bottoms, on both the index and sector level, when things look their worst”. Yesterday may not prove to be the ultimate inflexion point but it has made us consider that the “strong getting stronger” can only last for so long before stocks/sectors that have been out of favour will inevitably play some performance catch-up.
Shares opened higher this morning, but the real rally came following the 11.30 am print on inflation which was significantly lower than expected prompting investors to reduce bets on rate hikes – it now seems like the RBA’s aggressive move to tighten policy at an unprecedented rate is showing signs of working, boosting equities today. Most sectors finished more than 1% higher, and only one sector closed lower, but only marginally so.
With only 3 trading days remaining of FY23 the ASX200 is sitting up around +8% plus dividends, it certainly hasn’t felt like a standard solid year but when we stand back and look at the chart of the index it’s actually rotated in a fairly tight band for the last 2.5 years – as we keep trumpeting all of the action is unfolding on the stock and sector level.
Some respite from the recent selling today with the market snapping a ~300pt/ 4.1% pullback for the ASX 200 over just 4 trading days, as buying amongst the influential miners and the under-pressure property stocks drove the index higher, 3 days before we rule the books off on FY23. As we wrote this morning, the Australian bourse is up ~8% before dividends, a healthy result if we consider both the economic backdrop and geo-political headwinds in play.
We are amending holdings in the Active Income Portfolio.
MTS beat estimates yesterday sending the stock up +4.7% in the process, the full-year results were solid and slightly ahead of our expectations. The underlying profit of $307.5 million was up 2.6% YoY while the FY dividend of 22.5c fully franked was also better than expected (21.2c) which puts it on a yield of ~6% based on Monday’s close. However, it was the comments from Metcash chief executive Doug Jones that caught our attention, especially when we consider discretionary spending.
The bearish tone on the market continued today with any intra-day rallies being met with selling, though the ASX200 didn’t seem to want to travel too far south of 7100 at the same time either, finishing with a small jump on the close. No sector was down more than 1% today, though 4 sectors closed -0.5% or worse with Utilities the biggest drop but Financials weighing on the index the most.
Over the last few months, MM forecasted that the next market cycle would be one of the increased recession fears and the likes of the RBA, FED and BOE are certainly delivering. We believe the value-growth elastic band has further to stretch although we believe its too mature to chase at current levels i.e. tech stocks can continue to outperform the likes of resources but it’s now likely to be caused by pockets of weakness in the miners as opposed to ongoing runaway strength in tech.
