Tellsons Investors: What does the soft-landing look like?

Record bearish levels

As some head off for summer breaks, investor sentiment and portfolio positioning are at record bearish levels with many investors nursing historic losses across both bonds and stocks.

Recent fiscal and monetary support is being unwound across the world over at a rapid pace as economies have rebounded sharply following the pandemic and, together with the sequential supply shock of war in Ukraine, inflation has surged. The Federal Reserve has done an industrious job of managing financial conditions - flagging the rate hiking path, the withdrawal of emergency QE, driving a stronger dollar and a lower stock market with associated wealth effects. The sum of all this appears to have worked harder and faster on confidence and activity levels than traditional policy tools ...