Eye On The Market

Listen to Michael Cembalest, Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy, Monica Dicenso, Head of Global Investment Opportunities Group, and Kathryn Pasqualone, Client Advisor, North America Institutional, discuss the current situation in Russia and Ukraine, and the implications for investors.

Topics: Tracking the market risk unwind; Supply chain update; Ukraine; Invasion of the COVID Body Snatchers

On equity markets, the Lombards, SPAC investors, Bone-setters, George Washington, COVID bots and Omicron.

Some things just cannot be talked about. So in this year’s Thanksgiving piece, I wrote about something else.

“Help Wanted”. We expect semiconductor, vehicle and other goods bottlenecks to resolve themselves in the months ahead, and interpret declining business surveys as the result of a temporary supply shock and not a sign of inadequate demand. As a result, growth should rebound in 2022, and positions that benefit from reflation should benefit (energy, value and cyclicals). However, while goods bottlenecks will dissipate, the US will still face tight labor markets and rising wages that are at odds with current Fed policy

The global supply chain mess will require increased global vaccination and acquired immunity, semiconductor capacity expansion and the end of extraordinary housing/labor supports to resolve. We expect all three to occur over the next few months, leading to a global growth bounce in 2022

Topics: if people avoided SPACs instead of avoiding COVID vaccines, the US would be both wealthier and closer to herd immunity.  An update on our SPAC analysis from last February, and a look at the strange mathematical paradox that ends up understating some critical COVID vaccine efficacy data

 Politics, vaccination resistance and the Delta variant; US economic recovery update; big tech reliance on acquisitions to fuel growth

COVID and the Delta variant; the Fed as firefighter and arsonist; US-China economic divorce picks up steam; and the pig-snake inflation timetable (how long until we know if there’s a permanent wage/price rise).

Every two years, we take a close look at the performance of the private equity industry given its rising share of institutional and individual portfolios.  Our findings this year: the private equity industry is still outperforming public equity, but this outperformance narrowed as all markets benefit from non-stop monetary and fiscal stimulus, and as private equity acquisition multiples rise.  We examine manager dispersion, benchmarks, co-investing, GP-led secondary funds, the torrid pace of industry fundraising and manager fees in this year’s piece.