China

Nominal household spending growth in China will slow in 2024. Strong headwinds will arise from a slower household income expansion, falling house prices, a downbeat employment outlook, and shrinking exports. Spending on healthcare services will post solid gains but durable goods consumption will experience anemic growth in 2024. We favor consumer staples and healthcare stocks versus the domestic benchmark.

Our 2024 outlook can be encapsulated into just 39 words and three key views. Key view 1: The end of China’s housing boom means the end of the world’s main growth engine. Key view 2: If the Fed and ECB don’t kill the economy, they won’t kill inflation. Key view 3: The AI gold rush will struggle to find any gold. We go through the investment implications for the year ahead.

Global Investment Strategy predicted the surge of inflation in 2021/22 and the immaculate disinflation of 2023. Now their unique framework is predicting a recession in the second half of 2024.

Democrats are favored to win the election until recession materializes. But recession risks are high. Investors should adopt a defensive and conservative strategy in 2024 amid extreme US policy uncertainty.

The overarching macro theme for China in 2024 will be deflation and its impact on the economy, macro policies, and financial markets. Widespread deflation, in combination with high debt levels and falling real estate prices, has unleashed debt deflation and balance sheet recession dynamics. The latter are rendering monetary policy inefficient.