The US recession is coming - you have 18 months

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How does David Buckle know that the recession in the US is coming?

"The bond market is saying recession," explains Fidelity's head of investment solutions, referring to the pattern of historical bond data. "It has called the last three recessions and it is calling another one now. The bond market is never wrong."

But before you rush to sell your risky assets such as shares, you still have a year or two of good equity market performance before the recession hits.

recession

"It is too soon to get out of equities and too expensive to get out," says Buckle.

He says that investors are likely to do well in equity markets in the lead up to the recession. This has been the historical data pattern in the past when bond markets flatten.

Thanks to recent sell-off in the US sharemarket and lower US share prices, the long run forward price earnings in the US are below fair value, says Buckle. This is counter to other investment managers such as Russell Investments who believe that US valuations are looking stretched and there is heightened uncertainty.

Buckle says European markets are even further below fair value than the US and are actually cheap.

"Equities aren't too expensive," he points out. "Earnings have been rising and equities are actually cheap."

What does the US recession mean for the Australian sharemarket?

Certainly there are plenty of headwinds for Australian equities such as the rising US dollar strength and late US cycle fears. Australian credit squeeze fears, post royal commission, is impacting on housing-related companies and bank shares.

But Australia is a low beta economy, meaning it is a "nice safe place to hide" in a recession, explains Kate Howitt, portfolio manager of Fidelity Australian Opportunities Fund.

"Australia, on a relative basis, has done well," says Howitt.

But there will be plenty of volatility among Australian equities. Some of the traditional sectors such as REITs and utilities will be in demand but it is hard to generalise about certain sectors.

"Some scary companies are not so scary," says Howitt.

For example Howitt says that while banks are under pressure, she likes the Commonwealth Bank because it has a powerful franchise that is still delivering.

While insurance groups have been under pressure, Howitt likes insurance group QBE because the group's systematic business turnaround process is now gaining traction and she doubts there will be any ugly surprises.

The strong US dollar has triggered a sell-off in emerging markets this year, but Buckle says it would be unusual for the US dollar to continue to strengthen given rising US interest rates.

"I am relaxed about equity markets," he said. "Yes, there will be a material slowdown in global GDP but there will be reasonable equity performance."

Buckle sees opportunities in Chinese stocks which look "bang on fair value" and have been reasonably stable. He says broadly speaking investors don't have enough exposure to Asia.

Of the debt markets, Buckle says he likes emerging market debt over other debt. He is wary of high yield corporate bonds because corporate debt levels are high because interest rates are low.

He predicts there will be more defaults as slower growth and rising interest rates kick in.

"We will be moving from lower levels of defaults to average levels of defaults. Increasing defaults isn't going to be so good for high yield debt."

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Susan has been a finance journalist for more than 30 years, beginning at the Australian Financial Review before moving to the Sydney Morning Herald. She edited a superannuation magazine, Superfunds, for the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, and writes regularly on superannuation and managed funds. She's also author of the best-selling book Women and Money.
Comments
David Wright
November 14, 2018 6.32pm

Right now while interest rates are historically low you have the best opportunity you are ever going to get to pay off debt. When a loan repayment is 8 parts principle and 2 parts interest you make much better headway then when it's the other way around!

It might be really tempting to buy some bright shiny object right now when money is cheap, but when recession bites and interest rates rise, the shine will definitely NOT be so attractive.

Peter Ralph
November 15, 2018 9.09pm

The U.S. is raising interest rates faster than any other developed economy. Given this I don't understand the premise "Buckle says it would be unusual for the US dollar to continue to strengthen given rising US interest rates." We must have gone to different schools of economics as I believe It would by unusual if it did not continue to strengthen.

Groundfinance
November 22, 2018 3.33am

We have had almost 10 years of stable growth now and the cheap money period is coming to an end. The latest turmoil in markets and commodities shows that something is happening. The tech giants could be the trigger this time, not the investment banks.