'Reducing US stocks to +0%': Here's why Morgan Stanley just made a major tweak to its portfolio, and what it's buying instead

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'Reducing US stocks to +0%': Here's why Morgan Stanley just made a major tweak to its portfolio, and what it's buying instead

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Reuters/Toby Melville

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  • "We no longer recommend any US equity exposure above an investor's benchmark," said a team of equity strategists at Morgan Stanley led by Andrew Sheets.
  • They have shifted to a neutral weight and are adding to a corner of the credit market instead.
  • They also outlined the conditions that would move them to an underweight position in stocks.

Morgan Stanley is going to zero on US stocks - relative to its benchmark.

A team led by Andrew Sheets, the chief cross-asset strategist, has shifted to a neutral weight on stocks amid doubt the market can extend its rally from here.

"While our cycle models remain in 'expansion', a phase that has historically seen valuation overshoots, we are increasingly concerned that the bulk of this tailwind is already behind us," Sheets said in a note on Monday.

"We no longer recommend any US equity exposure above an investor's benchmark."

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The S&P 500 has already zoomed past Morgan Stanley's year-end target of 2,750, and it now faces "outright downside" risk, Sheets said.

This recent rally isn't a sufficient reason on its own for investors to shed stocks, and so Sheets offered a few other reasons for caution.

First is an unusual gap between how US stocks and risky assets elsewhere are performing. The "extreme divergence," according to Sheets, is notable in the face of the weakness in emerging markets, credit, copper prices (a gauge of global economic growth) among others.

According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, non-US equities have underperformed the US by the most since the recession, and investors must make a call on whether they think global growth can lead to a turnaround.

Sheets listed nearly a dozen material events this year that could answer that question, from potential US tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports to the US midterm elections.

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Beyond these headlines, earnings growth matters most to stocks. On that front, Sheets says companies are approaching their peak, judging by the consensus expectation for a top in the third quarter.

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Morgan Stanley

In the place of stocks, Morgan Stanley's strategists have added to securitized credit: pools of consumer debt that are packaged into assets investors can buy.

It goes without saying that these kinds of bundles - specifically of subprime mortgages - were instrumental to causing the 2008 financial crisis. However, Morgan Stanley is skewed towards the high-quality end of this market in three ways:

  • Senior tranches of collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) offer materially higher all-in yields relative to recent history, thanks to wider spreads and higher Libor.
  • Consumer asset-backed securities (ABS) and non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) benefit from relatively healthy consumer balance sheets (which stand in stark contrast to high corporate gearing).
  • Spreads on agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) have also seen material widening for a high-quality market.

Sheets is the first to acknowledge that this swing away from equities and into securitized credit could go wrong. In fact, he noted that Morgan Stanley was largely wrong on its earlier call that volatility would rise during the summer.

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However, the strategists are also ready to go from a neutral weighting in stocks to an outright underweight if a number of conditions are fulfilled. These include worsening labor markets and consumer confidence, tighter financial conditions, and signs of a bigger earnings slowdown than is currently expected.

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