TwentyFour Blog

In the last few days the World Health Organisation has declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the Italian government has imposed a nationwide lockdown on 60 million people, and President Trump has banned all travel to the US from Schengen Area European countries for 30 days.

We noted with interest two headlines yesterday: Italy to suspend mortgage payments amid outbreak and RBS and NatWest offer mortgage breaks for customers affected by coronavirus

Our take on all of this is that the central bank has acted in a very targeted and timely way, adding large volumes of liquidity at even lower rates, along with significant capital to the banking system.

Monday was one of those days investment professionals will remember all their lives, and compare with similar standout days from the past.

Companies, even earnings pressured ones, now need to seriously consider the negative impact on their long term cost of capital from short term decisions to shore up P&L.

The big question for us now is how long the impact of the virus may last, and how much of a supply and demand shock will there be as a consequence of the various efforts to stall its spread.

While there has been a rally in risk-off assets since January over coronavirus fears, credit markets have been largely resilient given strong technical demand, driven by huge inflows for bond funds and the wall of cash sitting on the sidelines.

Given where asset prices are at the moment, we would categorise inflation as a low probability, but high impact, risk.

Next month’s budget now has the green light to be Johnson’s fiscal bazooka, with tax cuts, housing schemes and infrastructure projects already mooted.

After a year of over 100 rate cuts around the world in 2019, we felt that 2020 would see major central banks engage wait-and-see mode.

This deal may well perform in the short-term, and we sincerely hope Alpha’s plan works, but we also recognise there is a high degree of execution risk and the domestic economy still has considerable headwinds.

Perfect timing is practically impossible in situations like these, but one way to tackle this risk is to gradually reduce ‘good’ duration by moving to the shorter part of the UST curve, which would be less sensitive to a move higher in yields.