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Five insights in five minutes

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

diese Woche möchten wir Ihnen mit folgenden fünf Themen Anregungen für Ihre Investmentstrategie bieten:

China-Aktien: Im Jahr des Ochsen ist Optimismus angebracht
Innovationen: Über das Produktivitätswachstum Aktien und Bonds stützen
Emerging Markets: Warum Smalls Caps aktuell besonders attraktiv sind
ESG-Ansatz: Soziale Faktoren wirken sich stark auf das Unternehmensergebnis aus
Ölpreise: Nachfrage nach Elektroautos könnte Rohölbedarf deutlich senken

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Viel Vergnügen bei der Lektüre!

Ihr Team von HSBC Global Asset Management

1. China equities

Who doesn’t want to be bullish on Chinese equities in the year of the ox? Okay then, so here is another reason to be. Last week, China released producer prices for January that were back in positive territory for the first time since the pandemic – rising 0.3 per cent year on year. As can be seen in the chart below, rising input prices bode well for industrial profits, as upstream businesses pass on higher costs which boosts margins. According to Bloomberg data, materials and energy sector shares are most correlated – over 60 per cent or so – with producer price inflation. Meanwhile, if China’s rebounding economy also translates into firmer consumer prices, financial stocks have the strongest positive correlation to those. And indeed, consensus estimates have financial sector earnings growing at their fastest rate this year since 2013. That is good news for the market as a whole, as financials account for about 40 per cent of the MSCI China index.

China producer prices and industrial profits growth

Themes: China equities, Asia equities

2. Innovation and SPACs

Plato said necessity is the mother of invention. So too bubbles. Innovation requires lots of capital and booming markets allow investors the financial flexibility to take on risky projects, according to a Harvard Business School paper. In fact, a recent Texas A&M University study reckons 70 per cent of the major innovations over the past two centuries have occurred during equity bubbles. Today’s desire for flexibility is being met with a surge in special purpose acquisition companies, an alternative route to traditional initial public offerings. Around 250 of these so-called ‘blank-cheque companies’ were launched in America last year (more than the past decade combined), raising $83bn to fund disruptive technologies from finance and e-commerce to electric vehicles. This total could be exceeded this year by next month. Why does all this matter for investors? Because innovation powers productivity growth, which ultimately supports both equity and bond prices.

Themes: US equities

3. Emerging market small caps

As you were distracted trying to bribe your kids with a cute lockdown puppy last August, we’ll forgive you for missing our note on attractive Asian small caps. They have jumped a third since then, but there are still plenty of adorable little companies right across the emerging markets to take home with you. That’s because small cap EM equities remain at a 40 per cent discount to the broader EM index on a price-to-sales basis, while Taiwan and South Korea are trading respectively three and two standard deviations below their five year averages on this ratio. Better yet, if you believe in a vaccine-fuelled global recovery, cyclical sectors such as materials, industrials and financials account for more than a third of the MSCI EM small cap benchmark, as opposed to the more tech-heavy main index. The latter two sectors in particular have helped lift consensus growth estimates for smaller company earnings above the EM top dogs this year, as can be seen below.

EM small and large cap estimated earnings next 12 months, rebased

Themes: EM small caps, Asian small caps

4. Expanding the S in ESG

Often opaque and hard to touch, quantifying the impact of social factors on corporate performance is a challenge. Yet market valuations are increasingly based on intangibles – now comprising 90 per cent of total assets of S&P 500 companies, for example. The challenge is worth it. A recent McKinsey study found that firms with the highest levels of gender diversity on executive teams are 25 per cent more likely to deliver above-average profitably. And those with greater ethnic diversity outperform by a third. ESG considerations are expanding to more prominently include race. The Black Lives Matter movement has put ethnicity in the spotlight, as has the fact that in countries such as America, minorities were four times more likely to be hospitalised from Covid-19. Similar inequalities persist in workforce pay and advancement, per the chart below. Savvy investors will start pressuring companies to disclose more of their social data.

US hourly wages by race and level of educations

Themes: ESG funds, global equities and credit

5. Oil prices and cars

For all the hoo-ha over this latest rally in oil – global energy is the best performing MSCI ACWI sector year to date – a $61 WTI price only takes us back to the levels of January last year and is seven dollars below the average for the past decade. Of course a normalising economy will revive oil demand in the short term. But consider that a quarter of the current daily demand of 100 million barrels goes to powering passenger cars, and another one-fifth to trucks. If the penetration rate for electric passenger cars rises from the current 4.2 per cent to say, a quarter, the world would need roughly five million fewer barrels of crude. This might happen sooner than we think, as many traditional carmakers have recently pledged to go ‘all-electric’ within the next decade or two. Trucks won’t be too far behind.

Global passenger-electric-vehicle sales, % of total sales

Themes: global equities, commodities

Bei Fragen zu den Themen wenden Sie sich gerne an uns.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

HSBC Global Asset Management (Deutschland) GmbH

Königsallee 21/23

40212 Düsseldorf

Telefon: +49 211 910-4784

E-Mail: fonds@hsbc.de