“The End Of The QE Trade”: Why Bank of America Expects An Imminent Market Correction
Last Friday, when looking at the historic, record lows in September volatility and the daily highs in US and global equity markets, BofA’s chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett said that the “best reason to be bearish in Q4 is there is no reason to be bearish.”
That prompted quite a few responses from traders, some snyde, a handful delighted (some bears still do exist), but most confused: after all what does investors (or algo) sentiment have to do with a “market” in which as Hartnett himself admits over $2 trillion in central bank liquidity has been injected in recent years to prop up risk assets.
To explain what he meant, overnight Hartnett followed up with an explainer note looking at the “Great Rotation vs the Great DIsruption”, in which he first reverted to his favorite topic, the blow-off market top he dubbed the “Icarus Rally”, which he defined initially nearly a year ago, and in which he notes that “big asset returns in 2017 have been driven by big global QE & big global EPS.”
But mostly “big global QE.”
As a result, Hartnett’s “blow off top”, or Icarus, targets for Q4 are: S&P 2630, Nasdaq 6666, 10-year Treasury 2.85%, EUR 1.15. At this rate, the S&P could hit BofA’s target in about 3-4 weeks, and thus Hartnett lays out the following 11th hour trade recos for Q4
- long US$ vs EM FX,
- long oil,
- long barbell of uber-growth (IBOTZ, DJECOM) & uber-value (BKX) = Icarus trade;
- further unwind of extended “long disruptor, short disrupted” trade likely (i.e. death of old Retail, Media, Autos, Advertising by Tech Disruptors);
- rotational outperformance of oil>credit, EAFE>EM,
- value/growth
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