Market Musings 16/10/11

The demands of college work have kept me away from this blog in recent days, which is a pity given how much newsflow there has been. In this entry I’m focusing on the financials in particular, along with some troubling (and inter-related) European macro indicators.

 

As I said in the introduction, we’ve seen a lot of troubling macroeconomic indicators. S&P downgraded its credit rating on Spain by one notch, while its negative outlook suggests that there’s more to come. Turning to the UK, in terms of the housing market, a survey revealed that more and more British homeowners are cutting asking prices, while average selling times are lengthening. Hardly something that recommends UK-focused financials and housebuilders at this stage of the cycle to investors I would think.

 

Speaking of recommendations, legendary investor Jim Rogers warns that bonds are in bubble territory and that the US is in for a period of stagflation. I would concur with that – see this blog post of mine from late August in which I warned that bonds were overvalued and argued that equities were too cheap – while that trade has been playing out in recent weeks, in my view it has further to go. Speaking of which, my fellow Irish equities’ blogger John McElligott sees value in some ISEQ stocks.

 

(Disclaimer: I’m a shareholder in Bank of Ireland plc) One sector that I’m very cautious on is the financials. And why shouldn’t I be, with research such as this note from Credit Suisse. After taking a chainsaw to the Chinese financials a few days ago, Credit Suisse sees two-thirds of European banks failing a renewed EBA stress test. It should be highlighted for my domestic readers that Bank of Ireland scores quite well, which is as expected given that it was recently recapitalised. Interestingly, that the French and German banks score particularly badly tells you all you need to know about why Merkel and Sarkozy have been so unwilling up to now to contemplate haircuts for bondholders.

 

I’ve written about the myth that is austerity in Ireland before. Now you can read of the myth that is austerity in Greece. But moving from myths into reality, I was struck by a really good piece by Mark McCutcheon a few days ago which illustrates the tax advantages to employers that arise from hiring unemployed people in Ireland. This is something that really needs to be highlighted at this time. Speaking of Ireland’s unemployment issues, I note that Ajai Chopra, our IMF Viceroy, says that Ireland will not be able to pop the champagne corks until after it gets its jobless crisis under control. Might I suggest that one way that the Irish government should not attempt to achieve this is by recycling privatisation proceeds into job creation efforts – you only have to look at Fás to see what happens when Irish politicians attempt to create employment. Reducing the tax and regulatory burden on businesses is the best way forward.

 

A couple of times this year I’ve been accused, not undeservedly (!), of being extremely bearish. To mitigate against the above economic doom, gloom and ka-boom (to use a line from an email I sent to my MBA classmates earlier this week), here’s a video that shows that not everything is bad, at least in Ireland.

 

Finally, looking ahead, it’s going to be a busy week for Irish corporate newsflow. The main highlights are First Derivatives’ H1 results (Tuesday), C&C’s H1 results (Wednesday) and Dragon Oil’s IMS (Thursday). If I can tear myself away from the books I’ll provide you with some “musings” on them.