Archive for category: News & Insights

Sadly, the title of our Symposium now seems all too prophetic.

Following the advice of the Australian government and health authorities, we’ve decided that the best option is to cancel the event.

Over 900 people were already registered to attend, but we all need to help ‘flatten the curve’ and prevent the spread as much as we can.

At this stage we’re not planning to re-schedule, but we’re working to make the content available to everyone who registered. We’ll provide further information on how to access these materials as it becomes available.

Who knows, we may all have plenty of time at home to watch and read!

We’d like to thank our event sponsors, AllianceBernstein, Fidante, Fidelity, Investors Mutual, Legg Mason, Pendal Group, Schroders and Talaria, and we look forward to continuing to work with them to keep you informed.

Feel free to put the Lonsec Symposium 2021 (Thursday 29^th April 2021) in your diaries, and we look forward to seeing you all there, if not before.

It has been a turbulent start to the year with Australia beginning the recovery process from the tragic bushfires followed by the threat of a global pandemic with cases of the coronavirus increasing across the globe. Despite these events markets did not flinch in January, with equity markets generating strong returns for the month as liquidity conditions continue to be supportive of markets.

If we look at previous incidents of viral outbreaks, such as SARS in 2003 and H1N1 (swine flu) in 2009, short-term corrections were within the range of 5% to 15%. These corrections were followed by strong rebounds. The consensus view is that global growth will be down in the first quarter of the year as a result of the coronavirus with the key variable being how long the threat of the virus persists.

While history is a useful guide in this case, it must be said that the effect of this epidemic is likely to be greater given China’s dominant presence in the global economy, given the faster spread of the disease and the measures taken to combat it. The extended closure of Chinese industry, restrictions on people movement, disrupted supply chains, declines in key commodity prices, bans on Chinese travel and the flow-on effect to confidence will severely hamper growth in China and the countries and regions most heavily reliant on China.

While at the time of the SARS outbreak China accounted for around 9.0% of global output on a PPP basis, it now accounts for 19%, and this proportion is only likely to increase in coming years, according to the IMF. China accounts for 18% of global tourism spending (up from 4.0% in 2008) while overall tourism (domestic and global) spending accounts for more than 10.0% of Chinese GDP and has been contributing almost 1.5% to annual GDP growth. To place China’s emergence on the global stage into perspective, in 2003 there were 20 million Chinese overseas visits and in 2018, 150 million. The Chinese economy accounted for about 30% of global growth in 2019. So a drop in Chinese GDP growth to 5.0% for the year, assuming the virus is contained within a short period, would detract 0.2–0.3% from global growth.

China now accounts for around 19% of global output

Source: IMF, Lonsec

From an Australian equities perspective, we are likely to see earnings outlook downgrades across a number of sectors, at a time of elevated valuations and a sub-par growth outlook. While earnings across the Healthcare, Consumer Staples and Infrastructure sectors should be relatively immune to recent events, based on Lonsec’s initial estimates, 2020 earnings estimates for the Resources (Energy, Iron Ore and Copper), Tourism/Travel and Consumer Discretionary sectors are likely to see significant one-off earnings revisions, capturing the impact of the coronavirus outbreak and the recent bushfires across Australia. However, such downgrades are unlikely to impact the long-term investment thesis for most companies and should be regarded as short-term headwinds, reflecting a series of one-off unfortunate events.

From an asset allocation perspective, Lonsec’s multi-asset portfolios remain very well diversified with only a small direct exposure to Chinese equity and bond markets. Consequently, our current focus is on the flow on effects that a sustained slowdown in Chinese growth may have on the domestic growth outlook given our close trading ties. As previously noted, our valuation indicators for Australian equities remain elevated, making them susceptible to a pullback should Chinese authorities’ attempts to stabilise growth fail. We have maintained our slight underweight positions in both global and Australian equities for the time being, however continue to monitor events closely.

While there is a high degree of uncertainty regarding the coronavirus outbreak, Lonsec notes that this event does pose a long “tail risk” for global markets should the outbreak get out of hand. These factors make it a challenging period for investors, where factors other than fundamentals are having a material impact on the trajectory of markets. In such an environment, we believe selective valuation opportunities will present themselves for long-term investors, however ensuring that your portfolio is diversified will be very important in navigating an increasingly volatile market environment.

Happy New Year and welcome back! It has been a tumultuous time for our country and our thoughts go out to those that have lost homes and loved ones due to the bushfires that have engulfed Australia.

Calendar year 2019 saw most asset classes generate very strong returns with many delivering double-digits returns. Australian equities, as measured by the S&P/ASX 300 Index, returned 23.8%, while global equities, as measured by the MSCI World ex Australia Index AUD, returned 27.6% for the year. At the other end of the asset classes spectrum, bonds also posted strong returns with Australian bonds, as measured by the Bloomberg AusBond Composite 0+ Year Index AUD, returning a solid 7.3% for the year. These returns were generated despite concerns over US-China trade tensions, Brexit, arguably high asset prices and mixed economic news.

A key factor contributing to this market strength has been the fact that interest rates appear to be on hold in the US and possibly heading lower in Australia. This is making investing in growth and interest rate sensitive assets, such as property and infrastructure, attractive when compared to holding your money in cash. Additionally, some of the economic indicators that were trending down, such as the PMI (Purchasing Manager’s Index), seem to have stabilised and the consumer seems to be holding up.

In 2020 we are paying particular attention to three key themes:

1. Valuations
   Asset classes are generally trading at fair to expensive territory with US equities appearing the most expensive based on most valuation measures. While interest rates are low these valuations may be sustainable in the near term. However, we expect that at some point valuations will come back into vogue. Timing turning points is difficult however on a forward-looking basis our expectation would be that ‘expensive’ asset classes will generate lower returns in the future. Based on this we retain our slightly underweight exposure to equity markets heading into 2020 favoring real assets and alternative assets.
2. The cycle
   Much has been written about being late cycle and we think that we are at the later stages of the cycle. There are signs that some economic indicators have stabilised, which markets view favorably. Key things to watch in 2020 will be the consumer and household savings rate, which has been rising, and the possible flow on effect on consumption.
3. X-factors
   Despite strong market returns, 2019 saw bouts of volatility caused by geopolitical issues including the US-China trade tensions. We expect this geopolitical environment to continue in 2020. Furthermore, we have seen geopolitical tensions rise in the Middle East with growing concerns over US-Iran relations. Such events create market uncertainty and market volatility in the short-term.

We wish everyone a prosperous and safe 2020.