March 29, 2024

Strategies: How Long Can the Stock Market Forget About the Pain?

Despite a ho-hum week, the Standard Poor’s 500-stock index has already gained more than 4.6 percent in the young year, and emerging markets have done even better. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong has risen more than 11 percent, even counting time off for the Lunar New Year holiday.

In the United States, some strategists’ year-end targets are already at hand. Jim McDonald, the chief investment strategist for Northern Trust, for example, projected that the S. P. would finish the year at 1,330. It briefly surpassed that mark last week.

“The market may have front-ended its returns for the entire year,” Mr. McDonald said. For the moment, he is not upgrading his forecast.

Others are similarly cautious. Jeff Applegate, the chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, expects that both “Europe and the United States will slip into recession this year.” Therefore, he said, “we think there’s risk of more downside” in the market, so the firm has recommended that clients cut their exposure to stocks.

In short, despite the buoyant returns so far this year, it may not be time for investors to whistle, “Don’t worry, be happy.”

While there has been some good news, the economy isn’t really on firm ground. No less an authority than Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, shares that view. “I don’t think we’re ready to declare that we’ve entered a new, stronger phase at this point,” he said on Wednesday.

Fed policy makers last week underscored their fundamental pessimism about the outlook through late 2014. They said they expect to keep interest rates near zero until then — one year longer than earlier indicated. And for the first time, the central bank issued detailed long-term predictions. The purpose of this exercise, Mr. Bernanke said, is to convince investors that interest rates will remain very low, thereby stimulating growth.

But the new information adds color to the central bank’s grim assumptions, with Fed officials anticipating economic growth that will be too weak to make much of a dent in unemployment. The Fed evidently believes that a true recovery from the Great Recession and the global financial crisis is still years away.

The European sovereign debt crisis may have receded from its dominant position in the headlines, but it remains a global flash point, capable of exploding at a moment’s notice. The European Central Bank, under Mario Draghi, its president since November, is providing ample liquidity to the region — helping to keep financial markets lubricated and the yields of crucial Italian and Spanish bonds at manageable levels. The bank has been buying time.

Despite numerous summit meetings, conclaves and agreements, the underlying problems in Europe are unresolved. In an essay in the New York Review of Books, George Soros, the financier, compared Europe to a car in a dangerous skid. First, he says, to avoid a catastrophe, European leaders need to steer in the direction of the skid — toward the draconian fiscal policies that are plunging the Continent into recession. Once a modicum of control has been regained, though, Europe needs to shift to a more sensible course, he says. He recommends economic stimulus, as do many economists. Mr. Soros is calling for bonds guaranteed by the European Union, but many other options have also been proposed.

At best, avoiding a greater calamity will entail an extraordinarily difficult series of maneuvers. Consider that there is no single driver at the wheel but rather dozens of politicians and administrators from 27 governments in the European Union, and numerous multilateral institutions, financial entities and closely linked non-European countries. Most have strong views about what needs to be done.

No wonder, even in this period of relative calm, that fear remains so close to the surface.

Researchers at HSBC in London and at Oxford University have been studying the phenomenon. They say world financial markets have been dominated by a “risk-on, risk-off paradigm” since the onset of the global financial crisis. I wrote about their research in April. Global financial assets were moving in lockstep. Since then, says Stacy Williams, an HSBC strategist in London, correlations have tightened much further. They reached “absurdly high levels” shortly before Christmas.

The new year has brought a relative lull, to be sure, and correlations have dropped somewhat. Even so, he said, the United States equity market is very highly correlated, both with other markets and internally. Late last year, he said, the correlation of individual stocks within the S. P. 500 “exploded to insane, never-seen-before levels, so that all stocks look and behave almost the same.” For old-fashioned stock picking, this is a nightmare, at least over the short term, he said, since the nuances of any particular company are being overwhelmed by broader market forces.

The situation also makes it very hard to execute hedge fund strategies aimed at exploiting the differences between equity sectors — bets that utilities, for example, will outperform industrials. Such strategies require a higher degree of sophistication than many such traders can manage, he said.

Over the last few weeks, “risk on” trades — embracing stocks, which Mr. Williams called the “quintessential risk-on asset” — have generally been in favor. At some point, if the “risk-on, risk-off paradigm” prevails, investors will move en masse to dump stocks, and bid up safe-haven assets, that for now include Treasury bonds and United States dollars.

What is an ordinary investor, one with no claims to financial sophistication, to do under these circumstances? The same thing he or she should do under most circumstances: maintain a well-balanced, diversified portfolio while trying not to worry too much about day-to-day market noise.

Of course, investors trying to save enough for retirement or for a house or for a child’s education need to assess the amount of risk they can bear and the amount of time that they can wait for a return on their assets. Right now, Mr. Applegate advises investors to “underweight” equities and to add some riskless ballast like cash and short-term Treasuries.

Long-term investing in the stock market requires some confidence “in the future economic health” of capitalism, Mr. Williams said, which may seem a tall order on some days. Still, he has been making such a bet in his own retirement account, “like just about everybody else,” and hopes that the unusual market movements of the last several years will ultimately abate.

“If you are trying to be sophisticated, be sure that you are being really sophisticated,” he says. Otherwise, consider taking some risk off the table.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=eca7f08042b99ee6901e0e64710297d0

With Economy Slowing, the Indian Rupee Tumbles

The value of the rupee has fallen nearly 14 percent, to 52.21 against the dollar, since the end of August as investors have stepped back from the Indian economy and many traders have stepped up bets against the currency. Less than three months ago, the rupee was trading at 45.79 to the dollar.

Foreign investment in India, which has a big need for foreign capital because it imports more than it exports, has been falling sharply since June, when the country took in $6.5 billion. In September, it took in just $616 million.

During that time, many analysts and investors have grown more concerned about the growth prospects of the Indian economy. Some analysts now predict the country might grow 7.2 percent in the current fiscal year, down from 8.5 percent last year.

Partly in response to the concerns about growth, the cabinet of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh voted on Thursday to allow foreign retailers to invest in stores in the country in spite of significant political opposition. Analysts said the long-delayed proposal should help lure more foreign investment into the country, though not right away, especially given the stringent conditions that policy makers imposed on foreign investors.

The rupee was up just 0.3 percent against the dollar Friday after the decision to open the retail market.

While many currencies have recently depreciated against the dollar, the rupee has fallen more than most. It is the worst-performing Asian currency this year, and some analysts are predicting that it could fall further. Strategists at HSBC said in a note issued Thursday that the rupee could fall to 58 against the dollar.

“We do not yet see light at the end of the tunnel,” Paul Mackel, the head of Asian currency research at HSBC, wrote.

Analysts say the depreciation of the rupee could worsen inflation, which has been at or above 10 percent for more than a year, by sharply increasing the cost of oil and other commodities that India imports and has to pay for in dollars. That would also deepen the government’s already large fiscal deficit, because the country heavily subsidizes imported fuel and fertilizers.

For Indian exporters, including software outsourcing companies like TCS and Infosys, a weaker rupee could help increase sales because it would make their products and services cheaper. But analysts say those gains would be muted because Western customers are not spending much. Moreover, higher exports would not fully offset the rising cost of imports because India has an annual trade deficit of more than $80 billion.

Ayush Lohia, the chief executive of Lohia Auto Industries, a maker of electric bikes and scooters, said his costs for components like motors, controllers and plastic had shot up 15 percent in recent weeks. He has not yet raised the price of his products, which sell for 25,000 to 31,000 rupees ($480 to $590) in New Delhi, because he is worried about losing sales.

“We are just waiting to see if it will come down from the current level so that there will be no reason to increase prices right now,” he said. “I am just praying to God that the dollar can go down below 50 rupees.”

Analysts say investors have bet heavily against the rupee in recent weeks after officials at the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, suggested they would not intervene to limit the currency’s slide.

“The Indian rupee’s fall has been too much, too soon, and R.B.I.’s own guidance has added to the depreciation pressure by giving a green light to speculators” to bet against the currency, said Rajeev Malik, an economist at the investment firm CLSA.

The central bank, however, has since stepped in to try to check the sharp depreciation by selling dollars and buying rupees, analysts say. The bank has also said it will sell dollars to state-owned oil companies so that they will not have to buy them on the open market, which would further drive down the value of the rupee.

In the longer term, the government’s decision to allow foreign retailers in the country should help, if companies like Wal-Mart, Tesco and Ikea inject money into the Indian economy to set up new stores, warehouses and other facilities.

But the flow will be measured and drawn out, analysts said. India’s commerce minister, Anand Sharma, told reporters in New Delhi on Friday that foreign retailers that sell multiple brands of clothing could set up stores only in cities with more than one million people; there are 53 such cities in the country.

Mr. Sharma also said those retailers would have to invest a minimum of $100 million, put 50 percent of their investment in back-end infrastructure and buy 30 percent of the goods they sold from small companies. Also, each of India’s 28 states would have to individually allow foreign-owned retail stores in their territory.

“The step which we have taken is an investment in the present and the future of this country,” Mr. Sharma said.

Retailers have welcomed the move. Ikea, the Swedish furniture and home furnishings retailer that had previously said it wanted to set up stores here, said in an e-mail that it would “expect to present more information shortly about our intention to establish retail operations.” Because it sells only one brand of products, the company would be able to own 100 percent of its Indian operation under India’s new rules.

Rajan Bharti Mittal, a vice chairman of the Bharti Group, Wal-Mart’s Indian partner, said in an interview that the conditions imposed by the government on retailers that sell more than one brand were acceptable. He said Bharti and Wal-Mart would soon start discussing how best to take advantage of the new rules.

Heather Timmons contributed reporting from New Delhi.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=90b38a4b6c03c46feb2834a73c169a27