Market Musings 10/04/11

Since I last offered my thoughts on the markets on Thursday morning we’ve seen some interesting developments, especially where interest rates and commodity prices are concerned.

 

Thursday brought news that the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street – The Bank of England – was, as expected, keeping rates on hold for now. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a hike at the next meeting, assuming that the Q1 UK GDP reading on April 27 doesn’t throw up any surprises. One central bank that did hike was the ECB, which raised rates (by 0.25%) for the first time since July 2008. The market is bracing itself for further rate increases over the coming months, and we could well see the ECB base rate hit 2.00% by year-end. This is bad news for the 400,000 tracker mortgage holders in Ireland. As I’ve said before, Ireland has had an inappropriate monetary policy on the way up, and now we have an inappropriate policy on the way down too.

 

The main culprit behind these rate increases is, of course, inflation. We got a few reminders of how frothy commodity prices have gotten this week with silver breaking the $40 level for the first time since 1980, brent crude hitting a 32 month high and gold reaching another record level. Indeed, China reported its first quarterly trade deficit for 7 years this week, as soaring commodity prices have added massively to its import bill. With the Federal Reserve’s QE2 programme scheduled to end in June, it will be interesting to see what the consequences of this will be. Bloomberg economist Michael McDonough wrote an interesting piece showing a strong correlation between commodity prices and Fed Treasury purchases, which is worth a look.

 

Despite all of the talk of austerity here, I was surprised to see that subsidies for flights between Dublin and Galway will be maintained until the middle of the summer. The PSO has, in my view, had absolutely no justification for the past few years given the major investment by the State in both road and rail infrastructure between the two cities.

 

Speaking of austerity, some eye-popping numbers – the US incurred a budget deficit of $830bn in the first six months of fiscal year 2011, some $113bn than in the same period in the previous fiscal year. Figures like that really show up the “historic” $38bn US budget deal for what it is – a complete joke which barely makes a dent in the deficit. On that note, Peter Schiff, as always, tells it how it is here. If you are looking for more details on the US budget, read this thought-provoking piece by Peter Tchir.

 

In terms of sector calls, Davy turned negative on UK housebuilders, which for me wasn’t a huge surprise given the scary updates coming out of firms exposed to the UK consumer in recent times. I was interested to see some predators looking at European debt too – BlueBay is buying Irish government bonds while SVP is attracted by opportunities in distressed debt in Euroland. Fisher Investments, whose insights I’m a big admirer of, released its latest guidance for investors.  It says that this year will be one where stock-picking skills are to the fore, a theme I’ve explored in my articles for Business & Finance magazine since the start of the year.

 

(Disclaimer: I am a shareholder in CRH plc and AIB plc) Turning to Corporate Ireland, the government confirmed that its stake in AIB is to rise to 92.8% – post the completion of this AIB will have 12.25bn shares in issue. Another plc that caught my eye was Fyffes. I was surprised to read that Fyffes (market cap €143m) paid its directors €2.7m last year, while Ireland’s biggest plc, CRH (market cap €12bn) paid its directors €8.0m in the same period.

 

In terms of the week ahead, I’ll be watching results from Punch and the IMS from Michael Page tomorrow to get more clues on the health of the UK consumer, while on Wednesday 3 Irish plcs – Tullow, Kerry and Fyffes – all go ex-div so watch out for some interesting price action there. All told my mood is bearish, I’m overweight defensives and see no reason to rebalance my portfolio.