Name: Global Market Outlook 2021
Uploaded: 2022-08-23T10:17:56+0000
Description: Vaccinating Against Valuations

DATE	2 JANUARY 2021
Title	Global Market Outlook 2021 – Vaccinating against valuations
Moderator	Ng Shin Seong Head, Investment Strategy and Advisory Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia
Speaker	1. Manpreet Gill Head FICC Strategy, Standard Chartered Singapore 2. Boon Yan Taw Managing Director, Director of Research (Asia) and Co-Portfolio Manager, Neuberger Berman 3. Christopher Wong Client Portfolio Strategist, South East Asia, Fidelity International.
Key Takeaways	1. Vaccine distribution, fiscal and monetary policy support, bond yields, the US Dollar weakening, and the Value vs Growth debate are five factors that are likely to define financial markets in 2021. We expect these to benefit equities, credit and multi-asset income strategies, ‘vaccinating’ them against optically elevated valuations. 2. The rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines suggests 2021 is likely to be a better year than 2020 a) We expect most major equity markets to perform well. Within equities, Asia ex-Japan ranks highest in our preference order, followed by the US. b) Within bond, Asia USD, Emerging Market bonds (the USD and local currency) and Developed Market High Yield bonds are attractive. c) Within currency markets, we expect the USD downtrend to gain momentum. The EUR and AUD are likely to be prime beneficiaries of the USD downtrend 3. Potential risks include hiccups in vaccine distribution and/or any virus mutation. There is also the risk of policy mistakes through tightening too early and the future of trade relations. Besides the regular annual outlook, we have come up with specific investment themes under cyclical and structural categories, these seven key themes we believe should offer investors opportunities to help plan and rebalance their portfolios for 2021 and beyond. For more details of these themes, please refer to our Global Market Outlook 2021 publication HERE.