Lagging Cyclicals Show Caution Is Back in Play
With global stock markets' recent run-up, you'd think many investors would be putting their foot on the gas and buying cyclicals, or companies best poised to benefit from an economic upturn.
Not so. During January, the worst-performing industry groups of the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index were mostly cyclicals -- led by gold mining, metals mining, airlines, construction and autos.
"Cyclicals have become sicklicals," says Michael Belkin, president of Belkin Ltd., a Bainbridge Island, Washington, investment-advisory firm that forecasts financial-market trends. Noting how investors last year reaped the rewards from betting big on high-risk/high-return assets, he says, "The year 2004 theme should be the return of risk. Last year was reward."
In other words, many big investors think it's time to put on the brakes.
In stock-market parlance, it's known as buying defensive companies -- such as food and beverage concerns, supermarkets, utilities, health care -- stocks that lag behind the market during rallies but don't fall as much during downturns.
So far this year, consumer staples are up 2.8%; health care has risen 4.7%; energy is up 3.9%; and insurance companies are 9.3% higher. That compares with a 4% rise in the S&P 500, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average's 2.5% gain. As for cyclicals, materials are down 1.7%, and industrials are up about half the index at 1.4%. Consumer discretionary stocks -- things like autos, retailers and airlines -- are 0.7% higher. Technology stocks are up 2%, with semiconductor shares down 1.6%.
The rewards of 2003 were indeed plentiful. After three years of negative results, developed-world stock markets rallied 23% in local-currency terms, according to Morgan Stanley Capital International. German stocks rose 33%; Canadian equities were up 25%; and markets in Spain, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sweden climbed 28% to 33%. Japan ended the year 22% higher, while in the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 25% and the Nasdaq Composite Index closed the year up 50%.
To an American investor, who tallies wins and losses in dollars, the sinking greenback was an added bonus. It transformed a 33% Swedish-market advance into a 61% rally, Japan's 22% gain into one of 35% and boosted the MSCI World index's increase to 31%.
Meanwhile, MSCI's Emerging Markets Free index rose 52% last year, measured in dollars. Leading the index were Thailand, Turkey and Brazil -- which, respectively, soared 134%, 122% and 103%. As for bonds, developed-country government debt struggled to perform. Not so emerging-market government bonds, which returned 27%, according to Lehman Brothers. Ditto U.S. and euro-area high-yield -- or junk -- bonds, which returned 29% and 30%, respectively.
But that was all, well, last year.
Now "stocks and bonds remain stuck in a state of stasis," while investors await stronger signals about the global economic recovery and major central banks' intentions concerning interest rates, says David Brown, chief European economist at Bear Stearns in London.
At UBS, economists acknowledge that economic growth is going gangbusters and that 4.5% world growth in 2004 will be the best since 2000. But they warn of sizable financial imbalances: For one, the U.S. and China, which account for an inordinately high 55% of global GDP growth, could slow during the second half. And within the U.S., a budget deficit bordering on more than 4% of GDP -- and which is mostly financed by Asian central banks -- hangs over markets like a sword of Damocles.
Clive Mc Donnell, European strategist at S&P in London, says one of the key issues in 2004 will be managing risks -- or knowing when to apply the brakes -- whereas in 2003, "it was simply a matter of increasing exposure to high-beta sectors." (High-beta is professional lingo for stocks that tend to rise -- or fall -- more than the market as a whole.) He observes that bond investors are demanding higher returns on telecommunication-company bonds relative to government securities, while in equity markets, telecoms are underperforming the S&P 350 European stock index by one percentage point.
Mr. Mc Donnell's advice to investors: "Lock in profits and adopt a more-defensive short-term asset-allocation strategy." Even so, he believes European shares could climb another 6% to 8% this year.
Optimists see this switch into defensives as the normal rotation that occurs during investment cycles. To pessimists, it signals a change in investors' tolerance for risk. A card-carrying member of the latter group is James Montier, London-based head of global-equity strategy at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. He contends that the Fed's removing the words "considerable period" from its January statement concerning how long it would keep interest rates at their current four-decade lows helped trigger a change in investors' appetite for risk.
The evidence: the rotation out of cyclical sectors, the move into large-capitalization stocks and out of small caps, the softness in commodity prices and the selloff in emerging-market debt and high-yield corporate bonds. So far, these shifts have been contained within individual markets. But Mr. Montier warns: "Beware of this rising risk aversion spreading across asset classes."
全球投资者开始回归风险意识
同开车一样，投资也应意识到风险，并清楚在何时刹车。
在股市中，这种风险意识表现为买进抗跌类股，如食品、饮料、超市、公用事业、医疗等公司的股票，这类股票在大盘上涨时往往落在后面，但在股市低迷时，其跌幅却较小。还有就是抛出风险较高的资产，如周期类股或表现与经济基本面密切相关的股票。
周期类股的表现究竟如何？今年1月份，标准普尔500指数中表现最差的类股多为周期性行业，主要有黄金开采、金属采矿、航空、建筑和汽车类股。与此同时，垃圾债券及新兴市场债券与美国国债之间的收益率之差开始扩大，而此前一年中其收益率之差曾大幅收窄。
投资顾问公司Belkin Ltd.的总裁麦克尔?贝尔金(Michael Belkin)称，周期类股已开始走下坡路。他说，去年投资高风险/高回报资产的策略获得了回报，而2004年的市场基调会是风险意识的回归。去年的基调则侧重于投资回报。
2003年的投资回报的确可观。据摩根士丹利资本国际公司(Morgan Stanley Capital International Inc., MSCI)统计，发达经济体股市在经历3年下跌后，以本币计算，去年的涨幅达23%。德国股市上涨33%，加拿大股市上涨25%，西班牙、香港、新加坡和瑞典股市分别上涨28%-33%。日本股市全年上涨22%，而美国道琼斯工业股票平均价格指数上涨了25%，那斯达克综合指数则上涨50%。
对以美元计算盈亏的美国投资者而言，美元下跌更是一种额外的投资回报。瑞典股市33%的涨幅经汇率转换后就变成61%的涨幅，日本股市则从22%的涨幅变为35%，MSCI全球指数的涨幅也因此达31%。
与此同时，受泰国、土耳其和巴西股市分别上涨134%、122%和103%的带动，以美元计价，MSCI的新兴市场自由指数(Emerging Markets Free index)去年上涨52%。债券方面，发达国家的政府债券表现基本持平。而据雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.)的数据，新兴市场政府债券的收益率为27%。高收益率的美国及欧元区垃圾债券的收益率分别为29%和30%。
但就目前而言，贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns Cos.)驻伦敦首席欧洲经济学家戴维?布朗(David Brown)称，股市和债市仍将维持静态平衡的格局，而投资者将会关注于更为明显的全球经济走强的迹象以及主要央行的利率政策意图。他说，随著美国经济的增长率达到6%左右，资产配置从债券向股票转移将会是显而易见的事情。
他说，基本面依然不利于债券，如经济复苏速度加快、利率可能上调、美国财政赤字扩大、美元走软及资金流向股市等。但美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve)承诺维持低利率、美国通货膨胀率处于38年来的低点以及亚洲央行大量购买美国国债等因素都对债券形成支撑。布朗还表示，Fed继续维持低利率也令股市投资者感到不安，对经济复苏的可靠程度心存担忧。
瑞士银行(UBS AG)的经济学家承认全球经济将会强劲增长，并称，2004年全球经济4.5%的预期增幅将是2000年以来最好的。但他们也警告说，全球经济存在著严重的金融失衡：如对占据全球GDP增长55%的美国和中国来说，其增长率可能会在下半年放缓。而在美国，预算赤字占GDP的比例超过了4%，这就像达摩克里斯之剑一样悬在金融市场上方。
标准普尔驻伦敦的欧洲策略师克里夫?唐纳(Clive Mc Donnell)称，2004年的关键问题是控制风险。而在2003年，最主要的是增持高beta系数类股（高beta系数类股指涨跌幅度都高于大盘的股票）。他注意到，债券投资者希望电信类公司债券的收益率高于政府债券，而在股市上，电信类股的表现要比标准普尔350欧洲股票指数落后1个百分点。
唐纳给投资者的建议是：锁定利润，采取更为防御性的短期资产配置策略。尽管如此，他仍认为欧洲股市今年将上涨6%-8%。
持乐观看法的人士认为，投资抗跌类股是投资周期轮回中的一种正常现象。而对悲观人士而言，这意味著投资者风险承受能力的变化。德累斯顿银行(Dresdner Bank AG, G.DRB)旗下Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein子公司驻伦敦的全球证券策略负责人詹姆斯?蒙蒂尔(James Montier)就是后者中的代表人物，他称，Fed在1月份的声明中将在"相当长的时期内"维持低利率这一措辞去掉，这导致了投资者风险承受能力出现变化。
投资者风险承受能力出现变化的迹象比比皆是：远离周期类股，买进大型股、撤离小型股，商品类股走软以及抛售新兴市场债券和高收益率公司债券。迄今为止，这些变化还只是出现在个别市场中，但蒙蒂尔称应警惕日益浓厚的风险规避意识会在不同资产类别的市
