J.P. Morgan Global Asset Allocation Outlook – No Direct Leads to Misconduct

Global Asset Allocation The J.P. Morgan View 28 March 2013 Jan Loeys (1-212) 834-5874 jan.loeys@jpmorgan.com Local issues must be monitored and understood, though, to decide how to allocate capital and risk. Just to review a few, Japanese policy makers continue to present a concerted plan to reflate their economy through monetary, fiscal and structural measures. The strong control of the government and its high approval rating are steadily raising the chance of success. We stay overweight Japanese equities and grow wary of the short yen trade, as capital inflows and rising growth expectations (chart of right) are ultimately bullish for the currency. Watch next week’s BoJ meeting, led by newly appointed Governor Kuroda, for new reflationary measures. The Euro area economy remains in recession, while policy makers are making little effort to reverse the contraction. We monitor signs of any large deposit flight post Cyprus over coming weeks and months to judge whether the bailout may actually be worsening conditions in the Euro. Economic forecast momentum remains negative (chart of right). These are good reasons to underweight the Euro area, if not all of Europe, across asset classes, against the rest of the world. The US, in contrast, is seeing better spending from both corporates and consumers than we could have expected post Fiscal Cliff and sequestration. But given the huge amount of fiscal drag, which is a fact, we want to see another 1-2 months of data before extrapolating the good news. It did support US equities in recent weeks, which continue to benefit from US corporates issuing debt to buy their own shares and others', through M&A. This corporate rotation from debt to equities is almost exclusively a US flow, which helps explain US equity outperformance. Across risk assets, we are similarly seeing huge delinking, with equities rallying greatly and commodities and credit seeing no gains (chart p. 1), very much unlike last year. Commodities are delinking as there are no growth upgrades in EM, and inflation concerns are concentrated on two countries, UK and Japan. Credit is delinking as most investors are massively overweight credit versus equities, as evidenced by the disparity in buying flows in 2011- 12. Relevering by US corporate and the Fed debating the end of QE are signaling that the 3-decade long rally in bonds is likely over. Investors are starting to dollar-average away from bonds to equities. Fixed Income Bonds rallied again, except for Euro area peripherals, the source of this week’s market concerns. The imposition of capital controls on Cypriot deposits is to be sure a watershed moment, but for now not one we expect to spark significant deposit withdrawals elsewhere. Meanwhile, the most likely outcome to the Italian impasse appears to be new elections in the autumn. With seemingly little prospect of a material rise in yields on the safest assets, we think the search for carry evident across the full gamut of asset markets will see peripheral spreads narrow over time. Ten-year JGB yields have rallied to within a few bps of their all-time low, ahead of next week’s inaugural meeting for the new BoJ leadership. We do indeed expect aggressive easing, with JGB purchases out to 30 years, but think this will be trumped by profit taking in JGBs after the fiscal year end. Our latest Inflation Expectations Survey (F. Diamond, K. Gupta) was out yesterday. One interesting result is that almost 90% of respondents believe the BoJ has less than a 50/50 shot of hitting its 2% inflation target in two years, a reflection of the formidable challenge of sparking inflation expectations after two decades of falling prices. J.P Morgan 2013 Japan GDP growth forecasts: JPMorgan and Consensus 2.0 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 Jan-12 9 Apr-12— Jul-12) = Oct-12. Jan-13 Source: J.P. Morgan, Consensus Economics. Consensus Economics forecasts are for regions and countries that we averaged using the same 5-year rolling USD GDP weights that we use for our own global growth forecast. Consensus JPM 2013 Euro area GDP growth forecasts: JPMorgan and Consensus 1.0 Consensus 0.5 0.0 Jar-12 Jul-12 Oct-12 Apr-12 -0.5 -1.0 Source: J.P. Morgan, Consensus Economics. Consensus Economics forecasts are for regions and countries that we averaged using the same 5-year rolling USD GDP weights that we use for our own global growth forecast. More details in ... Global Data Watch, Bruce Kasman and David Hensley Global Markets Outlook and Strategy, Jan Loeys et al. US Fixed Income Markets, Pavan Wadhwa, Matthew Jozoff, and Srini Ramaswamy Global Fixed Income Markets, Fabio Bassi Emerging Markets Outlook and Strategy, Joyce Chang Key trades and risk: Emerging Market Equity Strategy, Adrian Mowat et al. Flows and Liquidity, Nikos Panigirtzoglou et al. Description of YTD Chart on p. 1: Returns in USD. “Local currency. ““Hedged into USD. Euro Fixed Income is iBoxx Overall Index. US HG, HY, EMBIG and EM $ Corp are JPM indices. EM FX is ELMI-+ in $. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_030849