JPMorgan: The Business Cycle No Longer Exists As Central Bank Have Taken Over
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Mon, 04/08/2019
The amount of mental acrobatics that Wall Street analysts have to perform to justify continued buying of stocks even as bonds scream deflation, the yield curve screams contraction, Europe and China are already one foot in a recession, and earnings are set for their first profit contraction in 3 years, is simply staggering.
One week ago, we reported that in keeping with its now traditional “good quant, bad quant” strategy (profiled most recently here), just hours later, JPMorgan’s “other” quant, Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou published a report in which he said that while he maintains a risk-on and pro-cyclical stance (the alternative is risking being dubbed “fake news” by Kolanovic), he warned that “investors should start building up hedges against the risk of a repeat of the past two weeks’ yield curve inversion episode.”
Picking up on what he said two weeks ago, the JPMorgan strategist noted that “yield curve inversion has been generally a bad omen for growth and recession risk, though with variable lags to risky asset prices historically.” And while not news to those who read our latest recap of Panigirtzoglou recent report, at the macro level the “other” JPM quant warns that “despite the improvement in the Chinese and Asian PMIs in this week’s releases the global growth picture is not out of the woods yet” adding that “these cyclical risks are still manifesting in our global manufacturing PMI, which has failed to rise in the latest release despite better Asian PMIs”.
Then over the weekend, in order to dispel fears that stocks have levitated too high, one strategist came out with a “novel” interpretation, claiming that there is no reason to worry as, drumroll, equity investors have been worried about the wrong yield curve. That strategist: Mislav Matejka who works for JPMorgan, and is a co-worker of the far more skeptical Panigirtzoglou.
That’s right, one bank, two diametrically opposing takes on what the yield curve means for investors.
According to the “other” JPM strategist, while there’s concern that the recent inversion of the yield curve is a sell signal for the market, he notes there’s an average 18-month lag between such a move and the onset of a recession, Matejka said in a note to investors Monday.
His solution? Ignore the “bad omen” for stocks highlighted by JPMorgan’s Panigirtzoglou, and inatead please just look at the spread between the 10-year and 2-year Treasury yields – which is about 18 basis points away from inversion – instead of using the inverted 10-year and 3-month Treasury yield difference that has stock traders – and his own JPMorgan co-worker – on edge.
The Rest…HERE
