What are you saying?
The biggest debate concerns how long the reflation trade will continue: Having completed an extensive round of marketing in the US and Europe, we note that many clients believe we are early cycle and thus want to stick to being overweight cyclicals. We disagree: labour market tightness in the US, UK, Japan and China is characteristic of a later-cycle phase. In general, the reflation trades, manifesting in value vs growth and cyclicals vs defensives, continue to be seen as plays on higher yields. Clients remain bearish on bonds, but see only a small rise in bond yields from here. In our view, the risk is that bond yields rise more than the consensus expects (remembering that US yields hit 3.0% during the taper tantrum), and thus financials continue to outperform. Non-financial cyclicals have, by contrast, priced in a US bond yield of c.3% (see our recent piece Four areas of complacency). The consensus is very long the dollar (which looks vulnerable on a 12- to 18-month view, in our opinion) and modestly bullish on global GDP growth and equities.