3000? Ancora fake news!

Non c’è media, dalle TV al Web ai quotidiani, che non abbia dato spazio questa settimana ai nuovi record di Wall Street. Pur giudicandolo, per le nostre performances ed i nostri portafogli, un evento di importanza pari a zero, siamo però costretti a produrre un commento.

In precedenti occasioni, abbiamo già scritto del ruolo dei media oggi all’interno dei meccanismi che determinano, nel breve termine, il comportamento dei mercati finanziari.

Fare notizia è un imperativo, per i media di tutto il globo, e le cifre tonde degli indici di Borsa aiutano ad aumentare il numero dei click sui siti dei quotidiani, e colpiscono l’attenzione di chi sta facendo zapping tra i canali della TV.

E lo hanno compreso bene i politici, a partire da Donald J. Trump, che tempesta i social media di messaggi sui rialzi di Borsa, e in particolare quando gli indici raggiungono i “numeri tondi”.

Per lui, è importante fare credere che il rialzo degli indici di Borsa è un segnale forte che “tutto va bene”, anzi che stiamo beneficiando della “greatest economy ever”.

Il clamore mediatico poi è di aiuto alle banche globali di investimento che, in quanto grossisti, si augurano disperatamente che il superamento della “quota 3000” rimetta in moto i flussi di acquisto, flussi sui quali le banche di investimento accumulano commissioni.

Ovviamente, celebrano “quota 3000” anche le Società di Gestione dei Fondi Comuni, che a loro volta guadagnano più commissioni e soprattutto hanno un argomento, che oggi è anche l’unico, per spingere quei Fondi Comuni che a loro portano le commissioni più elevate.

Ed ecco spiegato perché anche un piccolissimo rialzo, come in effetti è stato nelle ultime settimane quello della Borsa di New York, viene celebrato ed amplificato dai media: le fake news, in Finanza come negli altri ambiti, fanno comodo a chi ne approfitta per aumentare i propri guadagni.

Per completare questo Post in modo più analitico, e quindi per parlare di cose che per noi investitori finali sono più serie e più rilevanti, Recce’d ha scelto di riprodurre, qui di seguito, un commento apparso proprio nelle ultime ore sul Financial Times. Vi offre una messa a punto che vi sarà utile per comprendere quello che vedrete nelle prossime settimane. Buona lettura.

US stocks have soared to records this year despite earnings remaining flat. This is just one paradox stalking markets that should unnerve equity investors. Stock indices reached milestones this week with the S&P 500 hitting the 3,000 mark and the Dow Jones Industrial Average breaching 27,000 points. The best June since 1955 capped a surging first half of the year that has returned 17 per cent to investors, its best showing since 1997. Yet the jubilation may soon fade.

The second-quarter earnings season begins next week but the outlook offers little to excite investors. Growth in earnings per share, one of the most widely watched gauges for the health of US stocks, risks slipping into negative territory. This would mark the second consecutive quarter of shrinking earnings for US stocks — the technical marker of an earnings recession, according to FactSet data. Poor earnings will squeeze profit margins, forcing investors to ask whether stocks have any more room to rise. Emily Roland, head of capital markets research for John Hancock Investment Management, anticipates a “war on margins” as companies report to investors this month. “A lot of sectors will be under margin pressure,” Ms Roland said. Fund managers would be wise to position portfolios for defence, she adds. “Boring is beautiful — it’s not a great time to make bold bets with this uncertain growth backdrop.” Dimming data from America’s manufacturing sector, the China-US trade conflict and a slowing in US gross domestic product are testing the nerves of equity investors. Andrew Sheets, a strategist at Morgan Stanley, has recommended clients cut the weighting of equities in their portfolios due to the dismal outlook for economic growth and earnings. “We think the market is too optimistic on 2019 earnings and is underestimating the pressure from inventories, labour costs and trade uncertainty,” Mr Sheets said. Tech companies are particularly vulnerable to the tightest employment market in half a century. Labour costs account for 16 per cent of annual revenue for tech companies, according to Morgan Stanley, the second-highest proportion across sectors after industrials. Even the rosy prospect of monetary easing has its limits.

The Federal Reserve is expected to trim interest rates in July, but that dovish tilt will be offset by the negative impact of weakening growth in the US and abroad, adds the bank. “We think a repeated lesson for stocks over the last 30 years has been that when easier policy collides with weaker growth, the latter usually matters more for returns,” Mr Sheets added. Herein lies another paradox: economic expansion is necessary to drive stocks higher, but too much frothiness among equities risks stifling the Fed’s appetite to lower interest rates. If the central bank were to even delay a rate cut, it would certainly trigger a pullback in US stocks given the overwhelming expectations for multiple cuts this year.

The prospect of falling rates has become a crutch for US stocks. Lower rates will reduce already inexpensive borrowing costs for companies, allowing them to continue to binge on cheap debt to fuel growth. One way companies are spending this money is on their own shares. While growth in capital expenditure has come off the lofty highs reached last year, when the lower corporate tax rate encouraged companies to spend, share buybacks have blossomed. US companies spent $206bn on share repurchases in the first quarter, broadly in line with the $805bn spent in the whole of 2018, a record year. Credit Suisse analysts expect share buybacks to add a full 2 per cent to the earnings-per-share total for the S&P 500 in the second quarter, which may be just enough to nudge it into positive growth territory and stave off an earnings recession. “That’s the impact of stock buybacks,” said Patrick Palfrey, senior equities strategist for the bank. “The trend remains anaemic regarding earnings but we don’t see an earnings recession.”