Tiho Brkan | May 29, 2013 08:22AM ET
If you are experiencing a rough financial market environment, you are not the only one. Do not let the media like Bloomberg and CNBC business channels fool you into thinking that this has been a wonderful year for assets.
Chart 1: Apart from US equities, assets have under performed
However, outside of Uncle Ben's and Abe-nomics backyard (yes, believe it or not there is a world outside of US stocks and bonds), global asset classes have not performed all that well. Interestingly, this also includes US government and corporate bonds too, especially on a relative basis to the S&P equities. Global stocks like Emerging Markets and Frontier Markets are down for the year. Furthermore, foreign currencies in many, if not all, of these regions are also down - magnifying those losses even further.
Chart 2: Central banks and accommodative monetary policy
Chart 3: Managers are extremely underexposed commodities
I know... I know... it is not a very popular view right now, as almost no one expects inflation. But that is precisely when the trend beginnings to emerge, especially as bullish bets on the US Dollar (pro-deflation trade) are approaching record highs.
More global macro discussions can be found in the up-and-coming Short Side of Long Newsletter Issue 6, which should be released sometime in early June. I plan to cover the recent price movements in all major assets from Equities, Bonds, Currencies and Commodities.
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