Morgan Stanley: Sell Into Strength, The Tightening Has Begun
What's amazing is how the start of the tightening cycle seems to have completely caught investors by surprise. Two weeks ago it was hardly an issue. Now it's here.
Morgan Stanley analyst Teun Draisma:
Sell into strength, as authorities have switched from "all out stimulus" to "let's start some stimulus withdrawal". Tightening measures are coming in thick and fast around the world. We always thought that the start of tightening was not the first Fed rate hike, but could be many other things including higher taxes, less spending, more regulation, Chinese/Asian tightening, or Fed language change. Recent initiatives include Obama's banking initiatives, and several Asian tightening measures. In the next few months this theme is set to intensify, and we expect positive payrolls, a Fed language change, and the start of QE withdrawal. This willingness of authorities to move away from crisis mode is an important change and means that the tightening phase in the broad sense of the word has now started. Thus, indeed, 2010 is shaping up to be like 1994 and 2004, as we expected.
The start of tightening is hardly ever the end of the growth cycle, and normally the accompanying dip needs to be bought, but it typically is a serious double-digit dip lasting 2 quarters or more. The sector rotation has of course already started in October-2009 and is set to continue. As a result we move 2% from equities to bonds in our asset allocation, going to +5% cash, -2% UW equities, -3% UW bonds. We think short-term strength is quite possible, and we have not quite gotten anoutright sell signal on our MTIs either, but the 6 month risk-reward of being long is worsening, and we recommend to sell into strength. Our 12 month MSCI Europe target of 1030 implies 6% downside.
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