This podcast first appeared and was originally published at https://www.bfm.my/podcast/morning-run/market-watch/usd-euro-parity-currencies-euro-monetary-policies on July 21, 2022.
Currencies have been in a flux with the US dollar gaining strength on the back of the rising Fed fund rate. Our CEO and founder, Tony Nash tells us if there are actually investment opportunities from this.
Show Notes
SM: BFM 89 nine. You are listening to the morning run at on Thursday the 21 July I’m Shazana Mokhtar with Wong Shou Ning. In half an hour, we’ll discuss the emerging market economies that are at risk of going the way of Sri Lanka. But as we always do, let’s recap how global markets closed overnight.
WSN: While I haven’t seen this in a very long time because every market that we’re going to report pond is actually in the green. So the Dow was up 0.2%, the S&P 500 up 0.6%, Nasdaq up 1.6%. Meanwhile in Asia, Nikkei was actually up 2.7%, hong Kong up 1.1%, shanghai up 0.8%, Singapore street times up 1.7% and our very own FBM KLCI was up 0.6%.
SM: These days are far and fewer between indeed when the board is completely green. But for analysis on what’s moving markets, we speak to Tony Nash, CEO of complete intelligence. Tony, good morning. Thanks as always for joining us. So another choppy session on wall street, but the SP 500 posted its first back to back gains in two weeks. Do you think markets have bottomed and is there a sense of relief that results season so far has been pretty decent?
TN: I think the result season has been okay. It’s still a slowdown from the previous quarter. I think it’s really people taking a sigh of relief about the Fed. They’re was fear last week that the fed was going to raise 100 basis points for a few days and that really led to dramatic falls. And what we’ve seen is a sigh of relief that that’s unlikely to happen. We’re likely to see 75, which although that’s elevated, it’s less than a 400 basis points. So I think it’s more that than earnings right now because there’s not a specific sector that’s necessarily doing dramatically better or dramatically worse. Of course tech, we have some tech gains, but we also had other areas where things gained, so it’s more broad than anything else.
WSN: Tony, what did you think of Netflix? Sorry, Tesla’s results that came out just a few moments ago. Did it surprise you in terms of how well they’ve done considering the shutdown that they experienced in China?
TN: Yes, it did. And they banked a billion dollars on bitcoin. So I think that I’m hoping that Tesla starts to get more focus on their performance and their actual market rather than speculating on cryptocurrency. I think every business, at least in America is having to come back down to earth and focus on their own operations now and Tesla is one that really needs to do so. The results were good and that’s great, but I think more focus is needed, especially with the opportunity they have right now in the US.
WSN: And another thing I want to ask you about is some of these leading tech companies. So we see in Google, we’ve seen Apple actually coming out to say that they’re stopping. They’re hiring. At this current juncture, does this make you nervous about the state of the US. Economy or is it actually pretty good because the job market was too high and inflation was a major concern?
TN: Does it make me nervous? Yes or no? I’ll tell you what’s been happening here in the US. If you’re under 30 and you work for a tech company, you know that if you work for a company for twelve months and you jump to another job, you’re going to get a 20% to 30% pay rise. So for the last few years, if you’re under 30 or say under mid thirty s, you would work for a tech company for a year, then switch jobs and get a significant pay rise. So because of that, these tech companies have over solicited jobs. We’ve heard about these millions of unfilled jobs in the US. Those aren’t real jobs, okay? Those are jobs that tech companies have been waiting for people to move on from because they know their employees are going to move on after twelve to 15 months. And so they’re prepacking the employment queue so that they don’t have disruption in their business. That’s what that’s all about. So Microsoft, Google, Netflix, all these guys saying, we’re taking all these jobs out of the market. It’s really just them seeing that the market is slowing down and their staff aren’t going to jump jobs as much as they have been.
WSN: And one other thing I want to ask you about is the aviation sector. So last night, United also reported numbers that were below street expectations a lot due to capacity constraints across the industry. Do you think it’s time to buy this if we really believe in the reopening theme, because these are just temporary blips.
TN: Oh, the time to buy airlines was like three, four months ago. I would be really careful right now if I were to go on airlines. I’d want to know the summer travel season, it’s halfway behind us. So I think if you were buying airlines, you should have done it excuse me? You should have done it a few months ago and then seen the rise as we went into the summer season and sold just before earnings. But as we’re seeing some of their earnings come in somewhat disappointing, I think that’s the real kind of warning for, say, Q Three. So these disruptions, they’re not necessarily getting any better. Disrupted flights are not necessarily getting any better. So corporate earning or stock market prices are about expectations. They’re not about actual performance. So we saw the expectations in Q Two disappoint. So that’s going to really erode expectations for Q Three. So I would be really wary of looking at airlines right now.
SM: Okay. And if we take a look at Europe, the European Central Bank meets today to decide on whether or not to raise rates. What do you think they’re going to do?
TN: Look, Europe is pretty rudderless the ECB is pretty rudderless. They’ve got negative real interest rates and they don’t have a way out. So they’re kind of either already entered or about to enter a recession. So if they raise rates or tightened too much, they’ll steepen the negative slope of the recession. They’ll make it worse. If they don’t raise rates, then the recession will be a bit easier. But they’ll weaken the euro. And as they’re importing all of this power gas and oil and same natural resources, it’s just making those things more expensive in euro terms. So if they tighten, it’s likely about the purchasing power of the Euro more than anything else. The other part that they’re likely to do is look at things like demand destruction, which is what the Fed has been focusing on for about four, five months. They’ve been raising rates so fast that people feel less purchasing power and they stop buying as much. And so if the ECB raises, say, 75 basis points, which I doubt they will, what they’re really signaling to people is they want them to stop buying so much. But we really think the ECB is going to kind of have a moderate tone to the meeting and really not surprised the upside.
WSN: Okay, I want to stay in Europe and I want to talk about the week euro. I mean, at one point you said parity with the US. Dollar. But do you think that actually a weak Euro does provide some stock picking opportunities?
TN: Yeah, it can. I mean, if you look at those European companies that export a lot, let’s say to the US. That would give those companies opportunity to expand their margin in local currency terms while keeping their US. Prices either constant or raising them right. So I would look really hard at European countries who are exporting to places, dollar nominated locations to where they can absorb some of the same gains. For example, not a European company but Pepsi, okay, they make snacks and drinks and this sort of thing. Last quarter they raised their prices by 12% and they had a 1% volume expansion. So American consumers are accepting price rises, double digit price rises and they’re continuing to buy. Okay, so European companies could look that European companies that export a lot to the US. Could really look at this market and put that into their strategy for US. Exports. The problem in Europe right now, a big part of the problem is the expansion of energy prices. German producer prices rose by 30% last month and so they have a real problem with productivity or with profitability. Their costs are rising so fast they have to find a way to raise prices.
And they can only do that into a strong dollar market. It’s very difficult for them to do that elsewhere.
SM: Okay. And speaking of energy, currently, how much correlation is there between oil and natural gas prices and which one do you see undergoing more price volatility in the coming months.
TN: It’s almost zero, actually, over the last month. The correlation is zero point 607, to be precise. Okay.
WSN: It’s a real number.
TN: No, I actually did the calculation. I did the math. So that’s what I do all day long. So normally that’s kind of a zero seven to eight, which is a significant correlation. Right. What we’ve seen is that we’ve seen crude prices, downward pressure on crude prices over the past month. There’s been a lot of pressure, especially in the US. With the Biden administration really kind of bullying crude prices down now that gas prices have been pushed up because of the issues of gas exports out of Russia. Okay. And so you’ve had a disintegration or disconnection sorry. Of those correlations. Where do we expect more volatility? Well, we expect crude oil to be kind of range traded, say, between 95 and $115 for the next few months, that gas can continue to rise, especially if Russia does not turn the gas back on the pipelines. Which decision is, I think tomorrow or the next few days? If they decide not to turn those prices back on, the price of gas continues to rise pretty dramatically.
SM: All right, Tony, thanks very much for speaking with us. That was Tony Nash, CEO of Complete intelligence, giving us his take on some of the trends that he sees moving markets in the days and weeks ahead. Ending the conversation there with just a look at how natural gas and oil prices are expected to trend in the coming months. Crude oil to trend within the range of natural gas. Now, that’s where we could really see some price volatility if geopolitical situation in Russia and Europe doesn’t, I guess, stabilize.
WSN: Yeah. All this is going to feed into inflation. Right? And we are already seeing that in UK numbers. So it came out yesterday, hit a new four year high as food and energy prices continue to so. The consumer price index there rose 9.4% annually. It’s a lot, and it’s mainly due to fuel and food prices, which were the most significant contributors to the rising inflation rate that we’ve seen. So as a result, the bank of England might actually consider a 50 basis point high at its August policy meeting.
SM: Something to keep an eye on, and I’m sure something that the incoming prime minister, whether it’s Rishi Suna or Liz Truss, will need to start strategizing from now 718 in the morning. We’re heading into some messages and when we come back, does the antisexual harassment bill that was passed in parliament yesterday pass muster? Stay tuned. BFM 89 nine.