May 18, 2017

Current Financial Market Signals

Below is the latest colourful dashboard updated on 5 May 2017 by one of our research partners, Ineichen Research & Management (IR&M). You may recall, IR&M is one of several research sources that guide our investment decision making. They are Swiss based and provide a detailed global view of the many drivers of investment markets. Like us, they believe that in the long run investment returns are driven by the fundamentals (the prices today will ultimately revert to what various things fundamentally ought to be worth) but in the short term may be driven more by sentiment and momentum (otherwise known as “technical” signals).

Observations

In the the IR&M dashboard, green is good, red is bad. Markets respond mostly to change, so the dashboard in isolation means little as it needs to be compared to a previous dashboard.

This month the picture (Table 1) is almost all green. Almost all global regions remain very strong on a fundamentals and momentum basis and whilst there are a couple of negative changes, most of the signals are positive. When compared to the dashboard in January 2017 (Table 2), the good news is it seems little has changed from an economic, financial market valuation and risk measure perspective.

Table 1

Table 2

A refresh on the columns

Looking at each of the factors, broadly from left to right, the first five columns set out IR&M’s interpretation of various recent economic data released in those counties and whether it is generally improving or deteriorating. The EPS change column in the middle is a very important indicator of whether profits estimates for the next year are rising or falling. The final three columns look at the momentum (or technicals) in the various global share markets.

Are there any Risks?

Broadly there may be a few more risks, but the increase is ever so small the number are nothing compared with early 2016, illustrated in the top right hand corner of Table 3 which as you can see was lit up with ‘time bombs’.

Table 3

What about Australia?

It may not feel like it, but according to Ineichen, economic momentum remains strong and long term momentum in the equity market is generally positive.