Global economy seems to be stabilising off late: JP Morgan

Geoff Lewis, ED, JP Morgan Asset Management sees global economy stabilisng off lately. He feels that economies in countries like US, China and Brazil are stabilizing and growth is picking up there.

"China should be growing a little bit faster in the fourth quarter and going into next year. Brazil should also be picking up a little bit and the US will be on a 2-2.5% growth trend," he said in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

Further, he said that investors who have invested in equisties should notice that despite the macro uncertainty, negative news from Europe and short term volatility they have done well.

"We think that’s the message that investors should really be taking with them. If you are in cash you are not going to earn anything," he added.

Lewis also shared views and expectations from the  European Central Bank's policy meeting scheduled today.

Below is the edited transcript of Lewis’ interview with CNBC-TV18.

Q: What are you expecting from Europe? There is a whole range of expectations from S&P, funds being used to buy bonds of distressed sovereigns, to all the way perhaps a rate cut and an LTRO as well. What are you going with as your base case?

A: If I tell you that would be my guess and it is anybody’s guess. Mario Draghi certainly raised people’s expectations last week and he will come up with something substantive. But, even so it is not going to solve the longer term structural problems of the eurozone.

What the ECB can do if it does come in with something which is a bit of a game changer say reconstituting the ESM as a bank, which it can then leverage from funds supplied by the ECB then that would quite markets down. It would prevent some of the speculative attacks.

He needs to do something because he has raised the bar with expectations.

If he comes in with something which is like just reopening the security markets purchase program as was relatively small purchases of Italian Spanish debt then that would be a disappointment. Or if it seems that the Bundesbank is still calling the shorts and is still holding the ECB back that will also be seen as a disappointment.

He set things up for some kind of market reaction. It will be interesting to see. We would hope that the ECB is going to be more aggressive in its monetary expansion.

Q: How high is the probability that the ECB will come out with a game changer type of a solution, something as you just pointed out in ESM getting the bank license?

A: I would think that is actually not on the cards at this stage. I don’t think there is agreement for that. Certainly, you would have to have the Bundesbank on side for that. What we could do though is that the ECB could cut rates again, but it could also say that because of the dysfunctional nature of the markets it will be intervening more heavily towards restored degree of normality with larger purchases of sovereign debt.

Now that would change things. If the ECB was seem to be an enthusiastic purchaser in terms of expanding its balance sheet by taking on holdings to Italian and Spanish debt. At the moment he is only holding 4.5% of system assets compared to the Fed sitting on 12-13% of system assets. So, there is plenty of scope for a more active intervention of ECB if Mario Draghi now feels it is appropriate to do so.

Q: How are you reading the subtext of the FOMC statement?

A: Very few words were changed. They recognized that the economy is going through some kind of soft patch in the second quarter. So that was acknowledged, but there was very little else that was new. Nor did we expect anything.

The US is still in a recovery mode, GDP was a bit disappointing in the second quarter, but the private sector components of the US economy is actually growing at a rate of over 3%.

So if you get less contractionary impetus in the second half from government particularly state in local spending then the US is firmly on a 2% growth trend. In that situation further QE at this point in time is really not justified in our view.

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Q: What is your view of what the medium term outlook for the equity markets is?

A: If you look at the bond markets, they seem to be signaling that there is going to be no growth in earnings for the next 10 years. They seem to be signaling a very gloomy outlook.

We believe that the outlook for the global economy if you look at the growth that we have in emerging markets, it looks like China is stabilizing, China should be growing a little bit faster in the fourth quarter and going into next year. Brazil should also be picking up a little bit and the US will be may be on a 2-2.5% growth trend.

That is not so bad and valuations are quite reasonable there on most matrix around 3 quarters, standard deviation below average for the last 5-10 years. So stock markets are up. The world’s MSCI index is up about 5-6% the half way point this year. S&P 500 a little bit more than that.

So despite all the macro uncertainty and negative news from Europe, if you have stayed invested and apart from the short term volatility, you haven’t actually done so bad to be in equities. We think that’s the message that investors should really be taking with them. If you are in cash you are not going to earn anything.

Q: Are you suggesting that some of the emerging markets at least have troughed out and therefore you could see equity flows incrementally in the current or the next quarter and where does India fit in this picture?

A: Over last 3 days we have seen a pickup in equity inflows into the emerging markets that’s the start of an encouraging sign. We have also seen an upturn in the economic surprise indices for the Asia pacific region.

It also looks like the US economic surprise index is churning up as well and typically that tends to be coincident with the direction of equities. Equities are also likely to turn up at this point.

Whether it is going to be a sustainable rally I am not sure. Turning to India I think India’s macro problems now are well known. We have been talking about it for some time. The RBI is in a difficult situation.

It cannot join in with aggressive easing because inflation is to a degree structural and is embedded in quite high inflation expectations. But nevertheless a lot of these problems have been talked about for quite some time. It would not take too much good news now to see the Indian market recover a bit.

Q: Would you buy into the equity markets hoping for a positive surprise or would you prepare yourself for a negative surprise?

A: That is like asking me if I’d like to gamble on the flip of a coin. So that is not worth investing but for what it is worth I would go for some upside. Draghi will pull at least one rabbit out of the hat.