November General Market Comments
“Loser” – Beck, 1993
In November 2024, the loser was Mrs Harris and the winner Mr Trump. Equity markets reacted by designating the bulls as winners and the bears as losers. But they already made that choice prior to the US elections, so it is fair to assume that November’s party was more about this uncertainty about the outcome of the polls being cleared.
For the whole year 2024 so far, it was quite a challenge to be a loser: equity markets have been very strong, credit spreads are almost as low as they can be, and Gold and cryptos soared. Only long duration Government bonds struggled, while Oil slightly fell.
How to explain investors’ insatiable thirst for risky assets (equities, credit, cryptos among others) ? Although the craze about Artificial Intelligence is clearly part of the explanation (think about Nvidia’s 179% increase), the fact that the US economy has proven much more resilient than expected certainly gave equity and credit markets a solid reason to post pleasant returns. When it comes to cryptos, a combination of Mr Trump’s favorable stance, ever-increasing levels of Government debt everywhere and political as well as geopolitical uncertainties (also valid for Gold) must be the multiple causes for the spectacular performance of these assets in 2024.
If November has been strong, there were nevertheless different classes of winners: the US stock market and Growth stocks led the charge (+5.73% for the S&P 500 and +5.26% for the MSCI World Growth), while Europe was slightly up (+0.96% for the Stoxx 600), the broad dollar index and the Itraxx Crossover respectively gained 1.69% and 1.27%. And there were losers: the Japanese Topix abandoned 0.55%, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index fell 3.66%, Oil and Gold receded by 1.82% and 3.67%. Long-term Government bonds yields headed down across the board, certainly providing another tailwind for Growth versus Value.
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