After last year’s false start, the prospects for a sustained reopening of economies through the second half of 2021 appear promising. The vaccination rollout as well as prior COVID-19 infections mean 60-70% of the population in most developed economies should have some immunity by early in the third quarter. This plus the large U.S. fiscal stimulus has shifted investors from worrying that growth will be too slow, to now fearing that growth will be too fast and put more upward pressure on interest rates.
We agree that economies are poised to rebound sharply as restrictions are gradually lifted, but we disagree that inflation pressures and interest rates are likely to increase significantly over the next 12 months. It’s going to take until at least the middle of 2022 for the U.S. economy to recover the lost output from the lockdowns, and longer in other economies. This means that broad-based inflation pressures are unlikely to emerge until 2023. It also means that market expectations for U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) lift-off in 2022 are premature, with late 2023 or early 2024 a more likely timing for the first Fed funds rate hike.
The vaccine rollout and large fiscal stimulus have upgraded our conviction in the cycle component of our cycle, value, and sentiment (CVS) investment decision-making process. Global equities remain expensive in early 2021, though the very expensive U.S. market offsets better value elsewhere. Sentiment is close to overbought, but not near dangerous levels of euphoria. The strong cycle delivers a preference for equities over bonds for the remainder of the year, despite expensive valuations. It also reinforces our preference for the value equity factor over the growth factor and for non-U.S. equities to outperform the U.S. market.
The $1.8 trillion American Rescue Plan of 2021 is set to supercharge the U.S. recovery as COVID-19 restrictions are lifted. This is equal to 8.4% of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and comes on top of the $900 billion stimulus passed in late December 2020. The United States is leading the charge in terms of fiscal support and as a result is likely to be the fastest-growing developed economy in 2021.
Although the rest of the world can’t match the U.S. fiscal firepower, other countries will benefit from the spillover effects of the U.S. stimulus. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) macroeconomic model, the U.S. stimulus is likely to boost growth in Japan, Europe, and China by 0.5 percentage points over the next 12 months and lift global GDP growth by just over 1 percentage point.