For obvious reasons, everyone is focused now on the pandemic, the mitigation policies being put in place to control it
and the huge monetary, fiscal and medical implications.
“But there are other external factors worth discussing for the impact they could have on the world’s major economies,”
notes Jack P. McIntyre, Portfolio Manager, Brandywine Global.
“The first one is inventory levels. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen an overall decline in the growth rate of
inventories. Last year it was about uncertainty over U.S.-China trade. This year, it's about uncertainty over how the
pandemic is going to play out. Given that level of uncertainty, nobody is eager to build out a huge amount of capital
and inventory right now. This is a global phenomenon – we're seeing low inventories across the board. We see it, for
example, in the recent figures for U.S. as well as Chinese auto inventories.
“The point here is that when we start to see less uncertainty and the global economy gets a little better footing,
investment in inventory could be a source of additional growth, benefiting both the developing world and developed
world.
“Another potentially external positive influence is housing, a huge driver of the U.S. domestic economy. We look at the
combination of the year-over-year change in mortgage rates and the year-over-year change in unleaded gasoline prices.
These two key variables clearly influence economic behavior in the U.S. In the case of gasoline, it influences
consumption. In the case of mortgage rates, it influences housing.
“Right now, we've seen significant declines in both gasoline prices and in mortgage rates. So far, the shift in mortgage
rates has had a bigger impact. They have come down significantly, and housing is really starting to see signs of
recovery and is back to punching above its weight.
“On the gasoline side of things, things are taking a little longer to unfold. Initially, the big decline in oil prices
led to a significant pullback in CapEx in the U.S. around the energy industry. Energy has become a huge part of the US
economy, so that's meaningful. But the decline in gasoline prices ultimately more than compensates for that negative
impact. When I add these two together, given where we are today, it should actually be a net positive for consumption in
the U.S. around gasoline prices, and housing should continue to see improvement based on still very low mortgage rates.
“On top of all this, there are high cash balances across all aspects of the economy around the globe, reflecting high
levels of uncertainty. We expect that as we see uncertainty diminish, some of this cash will be put to work -- a net
positive for the underlying economy and also for markets.
“Not surprisingly, fund managers appear to be holding more cash as well. It’s important to note that there’s nobody on
this planet who has been managing money in the kind of pandemic environment that we're experiencing now. Still, the
fiscal and monetary response has chipped away at the uncertainty, and I think that that's sort of winning the war right
now, and should be the catalyst to get some of this cash to be put to work,” he says.