THE OTHER TIP OF THE SCALES. GOLDMAN SACHS ON TECH STOCKS
Dear clients,
According to Goldman Sachs strategists, strong earnings results to be released soon could reverse the decline in technology and growth stocks, which have been hurt by rising Treasury yields and, according to one report, are trading at their lowest levels in six years.
The so-called "Magnificent Seven" — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Alphabet, Nvidia, Tesla and Meta Platforms — have fallen 7% over the past couple of months, compared with a 3% decline for the S&P 500 index as a whole, as Treasury yields jumped more than 60 basis points to 16-year highs.
Those declines have caused forward price-to-earnings ratios for companies to fall 20% over the past two months, leaving them trading at the largest discount to the market based on long-term growth since January 2017, Goldman Sachs said in a note on 1 October. At the same time, group sales growth is expected to be 11% in the third quarter, compared with 1% for the S&P 500 index, the company said.
Goldman strategists said the "megacaps" have collectively beaten consensus forecasts for sales growth 81% of the time and exceeded earnings expectations in two-thirds of the seasons since the fourth quarter of 2016.
"The divergence between lowering estimates and improving fundamentals presents new opportunities for investors," they wrote.
The S&P 500 index has fallen nearly 5% over the past 10 trading days, but is up just over 11% since the start of the year.
MARKET JUSTICE
Dear clients,
Growing fears among bond investors about US government spending and the ballooning budget deficit are fuelling a sharp sell-off that has seen Treasury bond prices fall to 17-year lows.
So-called "bond vigilantes" — investors who punish profligate governments by selling their bonds and driving up yields — were a feature of markets in the 1990s, when concerns about US federal spending drove Treasury bond yields as high as 8%.
The expectation of a sharp increase in the US government budget deficit and the issuance of debt to cover those costs alarmed investors and brought the term back into Wall Street's everyday lexicon.
Fitch Ratings recently downgraded the country's credit rating, predicting that the US budget deficit will rise to 6.3% of gross domestic product this year from 3.7% in 2022 due to higher debt service costs, new spending initiatives and lower federal revenues.
While the Fed's hawkish interest rate outlook has been a major catalyst for yields and price impact, market participants attribute part of the decline in longer maturity bond yields to investor concerns about rising costs.
Yields on 30-year US Treasuries, which change inversely with prices, jumped to 5% on Wednesday for the first time since 2007 in a broad global bond sell-off before stabilising. Budget concerns have been mounting since the summer, when the Treasury announced plans to increase debt issuance.
Strategist Ed Yardeni, who introduced bond vigilantes in the early 1980s, has commented:
"Bond vigilantes are defying (Treasury Secretary Janet) Yellen's policy by raising bond yields to levels that threaten to trigger a debt crisis," he wrote in a Financial Times article Wednesday. "In this scenario, rising yields crowd out the private sector and trigger a credit crunch and recession."
Determined investors in the UK bonds last year helped bring about a policy reversal after a tax cut plan caused borrowing costs to soar, showing that bond vigilantes are still a force to be reckoned with.
However, not all investors believe that the "vigilantes" will be able to influence the $25 trillion Treasury market.
Experts believe the key driver of the sell-off is rate fears, not the supply of Treasuries. They believe some fund managers are waiting for yields to peak before acting. The recent sell-off has brought yields back to pre-financial crisis norms, which has increased the attractiveness of bonds in general and boosted investor returns.
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