This Week In Markets: 3rd - 6th May 2022 (BoE & Fed Preview)

Okay, very good morning to you, and I hope you had a lovely long bank holiday weekend if you're based in the UK. But let's delve straight into what we've got for you then in this briefing. And as much as we're going to look at the week ahead, where we've got of course the likes of the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve interest rate decisions, also got non-farm payrolls on Friday, we've got the OPEC monthly meeting, we've got local elections happening in both the UK and Northern Ireland. So I'll give you a bit of a preview of what to expect for all of those, but But first, let's just jump into some of the major headlines from the weekend and this morning to kick off this new week. And I thought I would start with the heat map of the S&P 500 on as we closed on Friday, because it'll probably help explain a little bit for the slight bounce that we've had, a little bit of a pickup in some dip buying in technology names in the overnight session, prompting futures to open up a little bit higher this morning. And this was just looking on Friday session. And probably the one company that really stands out here is Amazon actually finished down 14%. That was after, of course, those earnings that they had last week with the mega-cap tech names all coming out. But putting this in context, of course, we're into a new month now. It is the month of May. And so how did April fare? Well, the Nasdaq was the main casualty, of course, but as you would expect with the rampant move that we've seen in the yield curve, just given the expectations then of much more aggressive tightening coming by way of Federal Reserve, which of course we'll see initiated later on this week by the Fed. And the Nasdaq fell about 13.3% in the month of April, and that's actually the worst monthly performance since October of 2008. Of course, we all remember what was going on then. Of course, that was right in the depths of the global financial crisis at the time. The S&P 500 lost 8.8%, the worst month since really the onset of COVID So in that March 2020 dip, to put it into a bit of perspective. So a bit of dip buying this morning, probably not too untoward, just given the end of the month and where we're at at the moment. Wouldn't really read too much into that at this point. But yeah, just giving a bit of context. But in terms of headlines and news to be aware of this morning, quite an interesting one in the overnight session. HSBC shares a little bit higher in Asian trade in Hong Kong. That was after the Chinese insurance giant Ping An urged a breakup of the London-headquartered bank in a bid to to improve its returns. Sources familiar with the situation said on Friday that Ping An had called on HSBC to look at options including spinning off its Asian business, where it earns two-thirds of its pre-tax profits, or taking other steps in order to boost its valuation. Of course, the bank's still headquartered, after a 10-month review not that long ago, still in London, even though they derive, as I said there, two-thirds of their pre-tax profits coming out of Asia. So interested to see how that story plays out over the coming week. Other things then, major FTSE names. We've had BP, they boosted their share buyback by $2.5 billion as cash flows surged, offsetting some of the discomfort caused by the $25.5 billion charge linked to its planned exit from Russia. Shares actually trade a little bit higher this morning on the London Stock Exchange. Their first quarter adjusted net income was $6.25 $1.2 billion, and that in fact was more than double the amount from a year earlier and well and above expectations on the street of $4.43 billion. Of course, then encapsulating that big rise that we've seen in energy prices through the onset of the Ukraine crisis. The other corporate news, um, for big companies is Apple. EU regulators have charged the tech company with breaking competition law by abusing its dominant position in mobile payments to limit rivals' access to contactless technology. So yeah, interested to see how Apple open up a little bit later. And then elsewhere, just an update on the gas front. I thought I would mention this because gas prices in Europe have been declining for a fourth consecutive day. And of course, this was after we saw Russia, who was trying to get payments in rubles, threatening to tamper, if you like, or at least concerns in the market and anxiety about the potential disruption of flow given what we've seen to the likes of Poland and Belarus. But prices have kind of reverted back to norm, if you like, to a certain extent. And part of the rationale here is higher than usual temperatures are expected across much of Western Europe in the period ahead. The region has also imported huge amounts of LNG on the back of muted consumption coming out of Asia, which is also helping at this present point in terms of bringing prices back down. In the Dutch gas market. Other things, China COVID, where we continue to watch that very carefully because of the nature of the supply chain being so global and the impact that disruptions in China could have and reverberate across the global economy. The latest here is some of Shanghai's 25 million people came out for a brief walk and grocery shopping in the overnight kind of session, if you like, during their daytime on Tuesday, enduring what has been more than a month of a very harsh COVID lockdown. China's capital Beijing embarked on another round of mass testing to control a nascent outbreak. And so not really too much there to read into implications for the markets right now, but certainly we'll continue to monitor the stringency of that lockdown as we go through the coming days. Then in the overnight session, we did have then taken us into some of the central bank talk before the Bank of England and the Fed, we've had the Reserve Bank of Australia come out. They've increased interest rates more than economists were expecting. They hiked rates by 25 basis points. Analysts were only looking for a hike of 15 basis points, uh, and they also sent signals that further hikes are to come. And to give you a bit of a flavor of that, the Governor Philip Lowe said the board is committed to doing what is necessary to ensure that inflation in Australia returns to target. He also said that this will require then further lift in interest rates over the period ahead. And as such then, the Aussie dollar strengthened, Aussie bond yields rose, Aussie stocks came under pressure on the back of those comments. The central bank also decided against reinvesting the proceeds of bonds that mature in the coming months, in effect now gradual of quantitative tightening being underway. Now that leads us into then, let's stick with the, the various central banks and kicking things off with the Bank of England, which will happen later this week. Markets, investors, economists all expect the committee now to vote for another 25 basis point rate hike to take rates to 1%. That would be the fourth increase in a row, matching the level that we last saw in February of 2009. A quarter point rise symbolically is very important for the reason of 1% would mean the threshold of which policymakers have said they would start to consider, um, active sales of their gilt portfolio, which peaked at £875 billion at the end of last year. To make that, make a little bit more sense, in March £28 billion of gilts matured and rolled off the balance sheet. The thing that investors have expressed concern about is about the nature of active sales, so starting to kind of shrink down the balance sheet by being a little bit more proactive. The questions are as to what type of size and what type of timing that that might happen, And the bank is expected to launch a consultation and review into active sales alongside their rate decision, which will take place this Thursday for the UK. Alongside this, of course, just given the way the calendar meetings fall for the Bank of England, we're also going to get their latest forecast for both inflation and growth. Inflation, I'm sure, will generate a lot of headline media buzz as it continues to ratchet up as we go forward, close to double-digit percentages in the UK. Looking at the Fed, of course, here he is, the main man, Jay Powell. Uh, the yield on the US 10-year Treasury note touched 3% for the first time, um, in more than 3 years on Monday ahead of this meeting. Money markets are now fully pricing in 50 basis point hikes, not just for this meeting but in pretty much each subsequent meeting thereafter. Certainly has moved much more aggressively in that direction of late following some of the recent comments that we've had from Jerome Powell. And actually, if you were to take the CME FedWatch tool out, which is looking at the kind of implied probability from market pricing of where rates will be, and you can see here now nearly 50% probability that we're going to be at 300 to 325, so 3% to 3.25% in US Fed funds rates by the end of the year, which is quite incredible when you think about where we're at at the moment with rates at 25 0.25 to 0.5% at this present point in time. So really very aggressive calls at the moment. Of course, this all comes on the back of the fact that remarks from officials entering before the kind of blackout period have framed the Fed's task as firmly tackling inflation, with Chair Powell stating that it is absolutely essential to restore price stability, which has kind of triggered these latest moves that we've seen in the rates market. So the actual act of hiking 50 is very much expected from the Fed coming out later this week. Sticking with the US, we also get non-farm payrolls. As I mentioned, the consensus estimate is for the headline figure to remain at 400K, which is not too dissimilar from the previous number of 431,000. The Fed, of course, is much more concerned, um, on the inflation part of its mandate rather than the employment situation at the moment, albeit one kind of leads into the other to a certain extent. Average hourly earnings metrics, of course, as per usual, will be watched quite closely as a kind of precursor then of potential, um, kind of purchase power and subsequent demand for, for goods, or ability at least in this, uh, cost of living crisis that we're feeling at the moment, uh, to get an idea and handle on the timings of when inflation might peak. And the average hourly earnings is seen rising by 0.4% month to month, which for the month of April would match that of what we saw in the March report. Then OPEC, yeah, not expecting any fireworks here at the moment, although we continue to see some gyration in energy prices by nowhere near the same kind of volatility scale or speed that we were seeing during the height of the Ukraine crisis. And so at this point in time, having seen them stick to their guns back then, very much expected to be the case this time. They're expected to stick to their output plans, which you see the June quota. So they're always planning for the months ahead, upped by 432,000 barrels per day under their existing agreement. That was according to sources over the weekend. And then just flipping our attention to the UK and the Northern Irish local elections, which are going to take place on Thursday. So the same day as the Bank of England happening this week. So Many voters in England, Wales, and Scotland will head to the polls for their new local representatives. So again, just to be clear, if there's anyone in the States watching this, this is not a general election, this is local level elections. A vast number of seats have been contested, and the reason why people have this on their radar is the sense that it's like to paint a pretty vivid picture of the national mood for the first time since we had the last general election, and which of course was back way back in 2019, and comes at a time that we've seen very testing for the government through the Partygate scandals, through Rishi Sunak kind of falling from grace more recently and so forth, and, and the movement that we've seen more in favor of the main opposition party, Labour. Results in terms of timing are expected in the early hours and throughout the day of Friday, and so obviously all the voting is happening on Thursday in itself. Some councillors may well declare as well on Saturday, but most likely is we won't need to wait that, you probably get a general gist of things on Friday morning. Leading pollsters in the UK, in terms of what they've suggested as how to interpret these local election results, have said that they suggest that more than 350 losses would be the figure that Conservative Party would not want to reach. The polls— pollsters suggest that 200 or more gains, which would be the party's best local election performance for a decade, would be seen as a triumph for for Sir Keir Starmer. So again, the kind of threshold here, the Tories probably expected to lose seats here, but how bad is the damage? If it's worse than 350, all the more problematic. If Labour gain more than 200, all the more problematic for the Tories. And if the Conservatives perform particularly poorly here, then that's going to just heap a whole new degree of pressure on Boris Johnson's leadership of the party because they will not want to go into the next general election on a weaker footing. And we'll see how that plays out. The other thing then is the Northern Irish local elections. Now, I'm just mentioning this because it potentially could be quite historic in a way where voters in Northern Ireland will elect their new assembly. And polls would suggest that the Sinn Féin could become the largest individual party. And in the polls at the moment, they're about 7 points ahead of the unionist DUP. That would mean that for the first time Northern Ireland could have a republican First Minister. And of course you start to see headlines like this, what you're seeing in the FT, the question marks coming of does this open the door to a united Ireland? And yeah, I'd say that's probably a conversation for a different video, yeah, because it's quite complex of an issue. Um, this, that, that type of talk is not going to happen immediately. And if anything, actually the IRA to have more success with a new demographic that they're targeting in the youth who were very much not around during the main bulk of the Troubles in the '70s. They've kind of pivoted away a little bit of that and more focused on the cost of living issues in order to just be more, I guess, realistic and to get more favorable votes in that sense. And so, yeah, it's just not going to be a done deal by any means in terms of we'll be heading in that direction because if the results do go as per the polls, the kind of key details here is the Assembly's power-sharing agreement means that two parties must govern together or not at all. So you can see where the obvious problem lies there if it does go as per what the polls are suggesting. The DUP has already made clear that they'd not provide a deputy to serve while Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill was the First Minister. But nonetheless, be interested to see how that unfolds as well. So yeah, look, a lot to unpack for the week. Remember to follow us on the various social media feeds. Look up Amplify Me on and hit follow on LinkedIn. We put out updates every day. We've got the Market Maker newsletter link in the video here as well. Feel free to join that if you're a student wanting to stay up to speed on markets and find opportunities as well with our corporate partners. All right, that is it. Have a great week ahead. Good to be back, and I'll see you next time. Thanks very much.