Weekly Market Report: April 22, 2022
Market drivers last week included a more hawkish tone coming from central bankers, the first big slate of Q1 corporate earnings reports, and continued concerns surrounding inflation and supply chain issues due to CoVid protocols in China and the war in Ukraine. Global equity markets fell over 2% taking the S&P 500 back into double digit loss territory on the year. Interest rates pushed higher, particularly on the short end, on inflation data and hawkish central bank comments while commodity markets traded down on a 4.5% drop in oil prices.
Market Anecdotes
• Comments from the Fed and the ECB both leaned into more of a hawkish tone last week with Powell signaling comfort with 50bps in May and Joachim Nagel noting the possibility that QE may be concluded in the current quarter.
• The US 10-year inflation break-even climbed to over 3% on Friday, the highest level in at least two decades.
• Fed comments have firmed up market expectations of the pace and scale of rate hikes over the past two weeks with 325bps currently priced in over the next twelve months. In response, the Bloomberg Aggregate bond index (YTD) has experienced its worst return in history.
• Q1 earnings season thus far has S&P 500 blended earnings growth at 6.6% and beat rates and margins of 79% and 8.1%. Revenue growth of 11.1% would mark the fifth straight 10%+ quarter.
• Technology and shadow technology stocks (FAANGs) are clearly facing some headwinds with the easing of Covid restrictions and rising interest rates. Facebook and Netflix have fallen the hardest, but Google and Amazon are meaningfully underperforming as well.
• The French election victory of Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen gave markets a dose of familiarity and certainty with respect to France’s role within the EU and globally.
• Data releases from China last week reveal a mixed bag of moderate growth countered by CoVid-19 related drag on economic activity at a time with depressed private sector demand and weak housing market. Shipping congestion in Chinese ports is also clearly on the rise.
• The complexion of the REIT industry has changed notably over the past ten years with cell towers, data centers, industrial, and self-storage gaining at the expense of retail, office, hotels, and health care.
• A weak Yen in 2022 hasn’t translated to strong performance by Japanese exporters as evidenced by Japan’s equity market being down approximately 14%. Several forces factoring in with a rebound/reversion opportunity seemingly still in wait.
• Gold is finding itself in an interesting tug of war between inflation and global uncertainty on one end and a strong dollar and rising real rates on the other.
