Central Bank Actions, Yield Curve Inversion, Earning Expectations 央行行动，收益率曲线反转，盈利预期

With the U.S. Federal Reserve well and truly doubling down on its dovish guidance this month, the global rate hiking cycle is at an end. There are exceptions of course but the big central banks of the developed world — the Fed, the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan — have all reacted decisively to the steady drumbeat of depressing economic data by pushing any policy tightening plans to the backburner. But instead of deriving any comfort from the pivot, some in the market are interpreting the moves as desperate measures to ward off impending recession. That fear is certainly evident on bond markets where the gap between three-month and 10-year U.S. treasury yields — one of the gauges the Fed uses to assess inflation risks — has inverted. European yield curves too have flattened and German 10-year government borrowing costs have slid back below zero percent for the first time since 2016.---Reuters

“We’re going at least for a 40% decline from the S&P’s top,” Otavio Costa, a macro analyst at Crescat Capital, a hedge fund that oversees $52 million, told MarketWatch in an interview.
The analyst of the investment firm, says the inversion of the yield curve, where short-dated yields rise above their longer-dated peers, signals an ignominious end to a 10-year bull run for the S&P 500 index, which bottomed in March of 2009 but has mounted a record-long rally, by some measures, since that point. In particular, Costa said the growing number of inversions in yield spreads across Treasury maturities suggested a bear-market for equities was at hand, in the face of a darkening global growth picture.Costa says investors shouldn’t focus on any one inversion, but rather Crescat looks at the total percentage of inversions across U.S. yield spreads, based off maturities as extended as the 30-year bond TMUBMUSD30Y, +0.00%  to something as short as the overnight fed-funds rate. In the chart below, this percentage of curve inversions jumped to 60% this week from around zero in early 2018. By measuring the number of inversions across instead of a single spread, the broader gauge would be less affected by individual idiosyncrasies that could muddy the economic signal of the bond-market recession indicator. ---Market Watch

Analysts, after cutting earnings forecasts for 2019, now expect a 1.7 percent year-over-year earnings decline in the first quarter, and some profit growth for the rest of the year, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. This year’s earnings growth already was expected to shrink dramatically compared with 2018, when steep corporate tax cuts fueled earnings gains of about 24 percent. Since the start of the year, the forecast for second-quarter profit growth has fallen to 3.0 percent from 6.4 percent, while estimated growth for the third quarter has dropped to 2.7 percent from 4.9 percent, based on Refinitiv’s data. The fourth-quarter growth estimate has come down as well, though it is still relatively strong, at 9.1 percent.---Reuters





美国联邦储备委员会本月将其温和的措施完全加倍，全球加息周期即将结束。 当然也有例外，但发达国家的大型中央银行 - 美联储，欧洲中央银行和日本央行 - 都对经济数据持续低迷做出了决定性的反应而暂停推动任何收紧政策。但是，市场中的一些人并没有从这种举动中获得任何安慰，而是将这些举措解释为避免即将到来的经济衰退的绝望措施。 这种担忧在债券市场上显而易见，其中三个月和10年期美国国债收益率之间的差距 - 美联储用来评估通胀风险的指标之一 - 已经倒转。 欧洲收益率曲线也趋于平缓，德国10年期政府借贷成本自2016年以来首次回落至零以下。---Reuters

“我们认为标准普尔指数从高位至少会下跌40％”，负责监管5200万美元的对冲基金Crescat Capital的宏观分析师Otavio Costa在接受采访时告诉MarketWatch。该投资公司的分析师表示， 收益率曲线反转，其中短期收益率高于其长期收益率，标志着标准普尔500指数10年牛市的可耻结局，该指数在2009年3月见底，从某种程度上说已创下历史新高的最长反弹。特别是，科斯塔表示，在全球经济增长前景暗淡的情况下，财政部到期的收益率差异越来越大，表明股市的熊市即将到来。科斯塔表示，投资者不应该只关注任何一次收益率反转，而是看美国收益率差价的总反转百分比，基于期限延长至30年期债券以至于短期隔夜联邦基金利率。 在下图中，这一曲线反转百分比本周从2018年初的零左右跃升至60％。通过测量众多反转而不是单一的反转，更宽的指标将不会受到个别特性的影响而误判经济。---Market Watch

根据Refinitiv的IBES数据，在分析了2019年的盈利预测后，分析师现在预计第一季度的盈利同比下降1.7％，而今年剩余时间的利润将有所增长。 与2018年相比（当时急剧的企业减税推动盈利增长约24％）今年的盈利增长预计将大幅缩水。 根据Refinitiv的数据，自今年年初以来，第二季度利润增长预测从6.4％降至3.0％，而第三季度的预计增长率从4.9％降至2.7％。 第四季度的增长预测也有所下降，尽管仍然相对强劲，为9.1％。---Reuters