As the end of a decade of global quantitative easing starts roiling markets, financial shares could offer a haven, according to Algebris Investments.
“We’ve had 10 years of quantitative easing. This has, de facto, put higher earnings on industrial, and lower earnings on financials” stocks, Davide Serra, the founder of Algebris, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Bali, Indonesia, on the sidelines of annual IMF meetings. “This is about to change.”
Financial stocks around the world have had their earnings effectively “manipulated” by negative interest rates and bond yields held down by the trillions of dollars worth of liquidity pumped by central banks since the 2007-09 crisis, according to Serra. With those pressures beginning to ease, financials are poised to bounce back, his thinking goes.
The Federal Reserve has led the shift from QE to quantitative tightening, or QT, and started running down its bond portfolio a year ago. It’s also raising interest rates, in a campaign that will give space -- in the form of cheaper currencies -- to the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank to follow suit and tighten as well, Serra said.
Japanese financial institutions have been “crushed” by central bank stimulus, and could be a buy, Serra said. The losers will be stock sectors that benefited the most during the QE upswing, he said.
“We’ll see a rotation out of tech stocks into financials,” he said. “If you look on a 10-year cycle, 15-year cycle, this is just a blip,” he said of the recent outperformance of financials versus tech.
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