Equity Strategy: US vs International convergence remains one of the main regional calls, along with OW UK and OW China

Speaker: Mislav Matejka, Head of Global Equity Strategy

Big picture, we believe that the equity rally that we hoped would be driven by peaking bond yields/CPI, China reopening, and the fall in European gas prices, is unlikely to get the fundamental confirmation for the next leg higher as the year progresses. Once the positioning recovers, Q1 is in our view likely to mark the high point of the market. Given this setup, the question is why not do the traditional regional shift, out of International plays and back to the US. We do not believe that the best way to position for the upcoming risk reduction that we envisage is to favour the S&P500. We argued for a convergence trade entering 2022, out of the US and into International, and would advise to keep it, even with potential equity weakness from here. US might not be a good place to hide this time around, as Technology is moving from secular to cyclical. Despite our view of peaking bond yields from October, when we advised to close the shorts on Tech, the sector is unlikely to be a sustainable leader; it is still priced not far from all-time highs. This is not a great starting point. Further, we do not believe that Tech will be immune to any potential earnings disappointments in a downturn, in contrast to the past decade. Valuation differential remains clear, with US trading at 18x questionable earnings, compared to Eurozone and Japan at 12-13x, and FTSE100 at 11x. Eurozone is trading at a bigger discount than typical vs the US, even when adjusting for the different sector composition. On margin, China reopening and lower gas prices favour Europe, while politics could be a problem for the US this year, especially with respect to the debt ceiling. We are certainly not calling for a decoupling. Having said that, it is notable that in the 1970s there were long periods when European markets performed much better than the US, even when the US was down materially. In our regional allocation, we held OW on Europe vs US through the last 12 months, with the preference for FTSE100 within Europe. We keep this regional bias, for now, despite the 25% relative outperformance of Eurozone since September, in USD terms. There might be a time coming up to take profits on Europe vs US trade, perhaps closer to the China reopening getting more fully priced it, but we do not advocate it just yet.

This podcast was recorded on 12 February 2023.

This communication is provided for information purposes only. Institutional clients can view the related report at www.jpmm.com/research/content/GPS-4331948-0 for more information; please visit www.jpmm.com/research/disclosures for important disclosures. © 2023 JPMorgan Chase & Co. All rights reserved.