2024 | Monthly Outlook | Multi-Asset
Summary:
The US economy, driven by a resilient consumer, has been the most important source of growth in the global economy post-Covid, and there are reasons to be confident that this will continue through 2024.
Real wage growth has driven buoyant consumption.
Interest rate rise still only impacts a minority of consumers.
Fiscal largesse likely to be maintained through the election cycle.
Economic Summary:
April data reveals a shift in macro momentum away from developed economies in favour of emerging markets, led by strong (manufacturing) data from Brazil, India and Greece.
Macroeconomic data in Europe, the US and Japan kept surprising to the upside, the magnitude of those surprises clearly declined compared to March. Most incoming macro data points towards continuing recovery (Eurozone) or persistent resilience (US), while global manufacturing PMI at 50.3 showed the fourth consecutive month of expansion - the pace of expansion, however, declined somewhat.
Some leading indicators of the developed markets manufacturing cycle, like South Korean semi-conductor exports, showed re-acceleration.
Chinese manufacturing data is starting to look more promising with the Caixin PMI signalling expansion for the smaller and medium sized companies since November 2023 and accelerating in April to 51.4.
From the US labor market there are also signs of a firming manufacturing cycle and restocking - the transportation and warehouse sector in the US added 22K jobs in April.
Retail sales in the US came in above consensus at 0.7% m-o-m.
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