Investment outlook with Fed and ECB rate cuts
Investments
Posted by MoneyController on 23.09.2024
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The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have now entered a phase of interest rate cuts. In the face of these central bank decisions, many professional investors are now wondering what the best strategy is for the coming months.
With a 50 basis point cut in interest rates, Jerome Powell's Fed started a phase of lowering interest rates. One of the consequences of this was a further fall in the value of the dollar. In ‘Affari&Finanza’ (‘La Repubblica’), some considerations by Luigi Stefano Gianti, analyst at Swissquote, are mentioned in this regard. The dollar's trajectory has so far been determined by expectations linked to a) the rate cut, b) the US economy's performance.
Still on ‘Affari&Finanza’ (‘La Repubblica’), Luigi dell'Olio outlines some considerations starting from the current phase of falling interest rates: lower financing costs tend to favour the equity segment of the market, he writes, in particular companies such as utilities or technology companies, characterised (usually) by a marked financial leverage. But small-cap companies are also typically favoured by lower borrowing costs.
During the ‘SpeechBox’ programme, Antonio Cesarano, Chief Global Strategist at Intermonte, talked about some prospects for the coming months: a liquidity drain (with profit-taking) until October, and then a relatively positive phase for equity markets for November and December. The US elections, Cesarano explained, remain an element of uncertainty for the markets; but their outcome should only affect the markets in the short term (‘abundant liquidity,’ he explained, ‘should favour a good year-end for the markets’).
From the point of view of bonds, when rates fall, it tends to happen that outstanding bonds increase in value, as new issues offer lower interest rates. Cesarano believes that, in the short term at least, the volume of new issues should cause rates to rise; over the next few months, however, explains Intermonte's Chief Global Strategist, rates (especially medium- and long-term ones) should start to fall.
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