Can 2023 still finish strong? Cues from Wall Street to Main Street

Our Top Market Takeaways for August 29, 2023.

Market update

What’s next? Cues from Wall Street to Main Street

The summertime swings continued last week. With bond yields at Global Financial Crisis-era highs, stocks struggled to find their footing.

To help give us a sense of what’s next, we surveyed the economy through the lens of four key players: central banks, Wall Street, Main Street and the C-suite. Here’s what we learned, and what we think it means.

[1] Central banks: Chair Powell and his peers took the mic last week at Jackson Hole, the Fed’s annual get-together of central bankers around the world. This year’s address felt pretty different from last year’s—when headline inflation was tracking above a roughly 8% pace in the U.S., and Powell signaled the Fed would march on with rate hikes…without any suggestion of how many more might follow. With fears over what this could mean for the economy, recession obsession was mounting. Consumer sentiment was already battered, and the U.S. housing market was feeling acute pain.

Fast forward to this year. While Chair Powell stressed the job isn’t done, it’s promising that inflation has cooled this much while growth has stayed this strong. Fed staff members aren’t penciling in a recession anymore, and consumers aren’t as worried about the future. This means the policy debate has shifted from “how high” rates should go to “how long” the Fed and other central banks should hold them there.

But if inflation continues to cool at the same time central banks hold rates, this actually means the real policy rate (the nominal policy rate minus inflation) is actually getting more restrictive. Barring something unexpected that catalyzes inflation to reaccelerate, this could set the stage for the Fed to cut rates down the line (even if Powell didn't outright say so). Markets are penciling in the first Fed cut for next summer, while the ECB, and especially the BOE, are several steps behind given still problematic inflation.

[2] Wall Street: Much of Wall Street is still hung up on recession. Bloomberg’s median probability for a U.S. recession over the next 12 months stands at 60%. Recessionistas seem resolute that the weight of the most aggressive hiking cycle in decades is bound to break something. But not everyone on the Street is as convinced as they were last year. A handful of others (including us) have shifted to a “softish landing” that sees a slowdown, but not a stop, in economic activity.

Either way, this shift is starting to show up in fund manager positioning. According to the latest survey from Bank of America, fund manager sentiment (while still low) is its least bearish since February 2022. Cash allocations have fallen under 5% of assets under management to their lowest since November 2021. And it looks like at least some of that cash has gone into risky assets, with managers now the least underweight stocks since last April (even if they’re still ~11% underweight).

[3] Main Street: To be sure, there are some pain points: 30-year fixed mortgage rates made fresh 22-year highs in the U.S. last week, credit card delinquencies are ticking up (from a very low base) as some consumers turn to debt to finance their purchases, and the end of the American student debt moratorium stands to squeeze millennials’ pocketbooks.

But even with those challenges in mind, folks haven’t changed their behavior all that much. The most recent U.S. retail sales gauge showed spending is still pretty solid, and earnings from big retailers such as Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s and TJX (home of brands TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods) signposted the same. Rather, more of the changes seem to be happening at the margin, as consumers are shifting away from brand names and toward some thriftier options, and reorienting back toward goods (e-commerce is actually accelerating) after a red-hot year for services that were disrupted by COVID.

[4] C-suite: Corporates across the globe don’t seem all that worried. The resounding takeaway from the Q2 earnings season has been “better than expected”. All in all, S&P 500 earnings look set to contract just over -4% from the year prior, a ways away from the -7.3% heading into the quarter. The biggest worries from the last year also seem to be fading. Mentions of things such as “inflation” and “economic slowdown” have fallen meaningfully, and most management teams seem pleasantly surprised by the durability of demand. Next 12-month earnings expectations for the S&P 500 have also been climbing consistently since March.

So can 2023 still finish strong?

We think so. While there are still things we don’t know, the read from the key players—central banks, Wall Street, Main Street and the C-suite—suggests that the outlook feels brighter today than it did a year ago.

After the late-summer swoon in stocks, valuations look less stretched than they did before, offering another chance to rebuild equity exposure—especially for those pockets of the market that haven’t rallied as much this year. And while our timing to start legging into bonds last year was tough, higher interest rates today offer a better entry point and even more protection against any unexpected spikes. For those willing to take on more risk, private credit might offer an opportunity.

From our perspective, it feels like a constructive time to be a multi-asset class investor, and creating a thoughtful plan to consider the range of possible outcomes is the most important step you can take.

Reach out to your J.P. Morgan team if you’d like to discuss any of these insights and how they may impact your portfolio.

All market and economic data as of August 2023 and sourced from Bloomberg Finance L.P. and FactSet unless otherwise stated.

We believe the information contained in this material to be reliable but do not warrant its accuracy or completeness. Opinions, estimates, and investment strategies and views expressed in this document constitute our judgment based on current market conditions and are subject to change without notice..

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