For instance, if the economy and consumer spending remain strong, companies will flex their pricing power and expand margins and profits. But this will lead to resurgent inflation, or at the very least, sticky inflation, not rapid disinflation. And sticky Consumer Price Index (CPI) — not falling back to the US Federal Reserve’s 2% target rate — in a resilient economy with near-record-low unemployment rate means there is little reason for the Fed to aggressively cut interest rates. Alternatively, if the Fed does start cutting interest rates sharply, it would likely be because the economy and job prospects are deteriorating too quickly, which would be bad news for sales, margins and profits.
US interest rates appear set to remain higher for longer. And equity markets are, finally, coming around to accepting — and pricing in — this scenario (which we had long believed in and written about in past articles). Investors started the new year on what we thought were wildly optimistic expectations — that is, for the first rate cut to happen in March and for a total of up to 1.5% reduction by end-2024. This bullish outlook sent stock prices sharply higher. Risk appetite returned as investors abandoned recessionary expectations and jumped on the “soft landing” bandwagon. The S&P 500 index made 22 new record highs in the first three months of the year, gaining 10.2% in 1Q2024 alone.
As we explained several weeks back, the problem is that the pieces of this puzzle — the combination of rapid disinflation (and sharply lower interest rates), soft landing (moderating economic growth and resilient job market) and double-digit earnings growth (margins expansion) — simply can’t fit together. These factors are inherently incompatible — they cannot all happen at the same time.
