On the heels of last week’s bullish turn for stocks, the market is off to a mixed start for Monday. Hong Kong stocks may be affecting the mood with a giant slump after China’s leader cemented his power.
And we’re entering Fed blackout period ahead of next week’s meeting that’s expected to deliver yet another three-quarters of a percentage point rate hike. As Miller Tabak + Co.’s chief market strategist Matt Maley tells clients, we can’t go back to 2021, when many were getting richer than they should have been.
“If we had tried maintain what we had a year ago, it would have been like getting drunk…and then trying to stay drunk…to avoid a hangover. What the Fed is trying to do is to keep a bad hangover from becoming a horrendous one…but they’re also trying to make sure we don’t get drunk again……….It’s a very tough job,” he writes.
That brings us to our call of the day from hedge fund Saba Capital’s founder Boaz Weinstein, who warns of a “real headwind” for investors from central bank tightening that could trigger a decades-long bear market, such as seen in Japan. And he lays the best bets in this gloomy atmosphere.
“I’m very pessimistic. There isn’t a rainbow at the end of all of this,” Weinstein said in an interview with the Financial Times that published on Monday. “There’s no reason that this difficult [economic] period will only last two to three quarters [and]..no reason to think we’ll have a soft landing or a shallow recession.”
Weinstein may be worth listening to for a couple of reasons. Firstly, his flagship fund reportedly returned 73% in 2020 for its bets against junk bonds. Trading credit default swaps, which insure against company defaults, remains a big part of his strategy.
The manager also reportedly won big by taking the other side of a trade in 2012 by JPMorgan’s “London Whale” trader Bruno Iksil, who racked up a $6 billion loss for the bank.
As for how he’s playing a lengthy bear market for stocks, Weinstein is putting his money on credit-default swaps because he thinks a recession will trigger more corporate defaults and lead to dramatic widening of credit spreads. He cautions against equity market options, which he said won’t pay off unless stocks dramatically plunge.
Weinstein says that big market plunge hasn’t come yet because because too many “problematic things are swirling around, some that are contradictory,” such as war, inflation, energy crisis and China woes. So investors have had time to slowly absorb the bad news, and reduce risk at that pace.
“This year has been like a horror movie but with five monsters — you don’t know what to focus on, so you deleverage.”
The markets
Stocks DJIA SPX COMP are mixed, as bond yields BX:TMUBMUSD10Y BX:TMUBMUSD02Y edge up and the dollar DXY trades modestly lower. Oil prices CL are softer.
The buzz
Tesla TSLA stock is down 5% after Reuters reported that the EV reduced starting prices for the Model 3 and Model Y by as much as 9% in China.
Hong Kong stocks HK:HSI fell 6% in worst-one-day loss since 2008 after Chinese Premier Xi Jinping was nominated for a third term and unveiled a cabinet stacked with loyalists who may be more focused on ideology than the economy. Watch U.S.-listed Alibaba BABA, JD.com JD and Baidu BIDU, all of which got crushed in Asia.
China data was mixed. Third-quarter growth of 3.9% was still the slowest in decades, home prices fell the most in more than 7 years, factory production sped up and retail sales slowed.
JetBlue JBLU reports Monday in a huge week for earnings, with Alphabet GOOGL, Twitter TWTR and Texas Instruments TXN on Tuesday, Microsoft MSFT and Meta Platforms META on Wednesday and Apple AAPL and Amazon.com AMZN on Thursday.
Read: Big Tech has been an earnings refuge for years, but safety is no longer a sure thing
S&P purchasing managers index data showed the rate of inflation in the sector was the tamest in two years. The rest of the week will see data on the housing market, third-quarter GDP, and Fed-favored inflation gauges. The European Central Bank, along with Japan and Canada’s central banks are due to meet this week.
Former U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak will become the country’s new prime minister, with U.K. bonds rallying as prospects for Boris Johnson to return fade.
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The tickers
These were the top-searched tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m. Eastern:
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