Archives: Reports
Beijing has undoubtedly got its work cut out, July’s CPI fell by -0.3% year on year while the PPI fell -4.4% over the same period, the 1st time both numbers have been negative since November 2020 when COVID was the only story in town hence the deflation concerns are real and well-founded and MM firmly believes Xi Jinping et al must step up. However, it’s not all bad news with Chinese household savings continuing to rise illustrating that a significant part of the issue is consumer confidence which can be reversed with the appropriate action.
The ASX was hit today, weighed by growing concerns around the Chinese property sector as another large developer teeters on default – while earnings continue to dominate news flow locally. As of Friday, around 20% of the market’s total capitalisation had reported results, so far, so good with earnings beats outnumbering earnings misses by a solid ratio of 3:1, although we have seen adjustments lower for FY24 on softer outlooks.
China’s economy has been misfiring post its extreme COVID-zero lockdown which both failed in its objective and set their economy back many, many years. Last week we saw Chinese banks extend the smallest amount of monthly loans in 14 years illustrating the deflationary pressures weighing on the world’s second-largest economy. The number of new loans announced by the PBOC came in less than half of that forecast by the economists covered by Bloomberg.
The ASX200 ended the week up just 0.2% with much of the action unfolding on the sector level as would be expected during reporting season. The Consumer Discretionary Sector was the best on the ground closing up almost +2% as the market became more optimistic towards the global economy – JP Morgan & Bank of America both scrapped their recession calls this week i.e., the “Goldilocks” scenario. It was a rare week for this year to see the Tech Sector as the market’s worst performer closing down -1.6% as investors started to reposition themselves for a brighter 2H. On the stock level, the big moves were dominated by reporting season plus a sprinkling of general news:
A tentative end to a week that had a bit of everything, from company results here and overseas, important economic data, RBA testimony to parliament, a loss by Manly at Brookvale to end their season & now the biggest event of the week, the Matilda’s playing France on Saturday afternoon!
We are making multiple changes to the Flagship Growth Portfolio.
We’ve edged into what we see as the ‘deep value’ space, already buying a few beaten up stocks in Elders (ELD), Lendlease (LLC) and Magellan (MGF), looking for turnarounds to unfold on the stock specific level – encouragingly all of these positions are showing a small paper profit with an average of +5.5%.
A solid day for the ASX as reporting threw up some more interesting candidates from a broad cross-section of industries, some hits, misses and a few in between, while we saw some action amongst the energy stocks with Crude breaking higher and Coal prices finding some support.
We currently hold two property positions in our Active Income Portfolio which are unloved and priced accordingly while in our Growth Portfolio, we only hold Goodman Group (GMG) which is regarded by many as more of a growth play. Investors remain scared of property and other cyclical sectors however we think this pain, or at least the vast majority of it, is now priced in and we should be increasing our attention towards identifying the opportunities.
Shares started slowly today but found their mojo into the afternoon, finishing near highs on the back of strength in the banks. There was little change ahead of inflation data coming out of China mid-morning, but when that passed without concern, the focus returned to CBA’s record result.
