Market Perspectives

Coronavirus Market Outlook

Last month we shared our thoughts on the outlook for the global economy and financial markets as the spread of COVID-19 was exploding around the world. Events have continued to unfold at a frenzied pace.  At times like this, it’s important for investors to not overreact, but remain objective and thoughtful, while also being nimble enough to act if conditions warrant action. Zevin Asset Management’s guiding principle has always been to invest in high quality securities that can endure during times like these, in an attempt to minimize major losses in our clients’ portfolios. To that end, we are closely monitoring this global health crisis, the numerous policy responses and financial market reaction, all within our longstanding investment process of assessing the macroeconomic, company and ESG risks.

A Tale of Two Sectors

2019 played out to be a year of extreme dichotomy in the U.S. and to a lesser extent the rest of the world. On the one hand, consumer confidence remained high and consumers continued to spend their growing wages, thanks to extremely low unemployment and rebounding real estate activity. On the other hand, the manufacturing sector fell into recession during the year as the global slowdown spread and intensified, and trade tensions continued to beat down manufacturers’ confidence (see Chart 1). To counteract the slowing economy and prolong the economic expansion, central banks worldwide provided huge amounts of monetary stimulus by cutting interest rates. The U.S. Federal Reserve cut policy rates three times in 2019, helping to right the inverted yield curve and, so far, appearing to have successfully avoided an economic hard landing. Likewise, a total of 35 central banks globally eased monetary policy in 2019.

5G Rising

At this point, you have likely heard the term “5G” thrown around in sim­i­lar fash­ion to AI (arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence), autonomous dri­ving, and IoT (inter­net of things). The evo­lu­tion of fifth-​generation (hence, 5G) cellular/​mobile net­works will pro­vide a host of oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­nesses, con­sumers, pub­lic enti­ties, and investors alike in the years ahead as the new mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tion super­high­way will facil­i­tate the faster trans­mis­sion of increas­ingly large data vol­umes. While increased data flow brings with it incre­men­tal cyber­se­cu­rity and per­sonal infor­ma­tion shar­ing chal­lenges, if man­aged respon­si­bly the ben­e­fits of 5G stand to out­weigh the risks.

Deficits and Mar­ket Churn

As we pro­ceed through the fourth quar­ter of 2018 we are expe­ri­enc­ing one of the most intense peri­ods of equity volatil­ity since this long bull mar­ket began in 2009. There are mul­ti­ple con­tribut­ing fac­tors at play includ­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions, expen­sive stock val­u­a­tions, ris­ing inter­est rates, and trade dis­putes. Region­ally, the Euro­pean Union exper­i­ment is start­ing to crum­ble with BREXIT sched­uled to hap­pen (or maybe not?) on March 29, 2019. The Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank is on the verge of revers­ing their unprece­dented mon­e­tary eas­ing pol­icy. Emerg­ing mar­kets are expe­ri­enc­ing their worst period of insta­bil­ity since the cur­rency crises of 1997. Chi­nese growth is decel­er­at­ing as author­i­ties strive to achieve a consumption-​based econ­omy. And in the U.S. eco­nomic and polit­i­cal uncer­tain­ties abound. As a result, we here at Zevin Asset Man­age­ment rec­og­nize that the out­look for global equity mar­kets has become increas­ingly risky through­out 2018 and par­tic­u­larly so in the third and fourth quar­ters of the year.