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Marc-Antoine Collard (Rothschild & Co): Monthly Macro Insights - February 2023

10.02.2023 - An earlier and faster-than-expected reopening of China, as well as the easing of Europe’s energy crisis, have improved the global growth outlook. Meanwhile, investors strongly believe that central banks are almost finished with their tightening campaign amid a fall in global inflation, and that policy rates will be lowered as soon as the second half of 2023. Still, uncertainty around this Goldilocks scenario remains elevated.

(Already very low) Recession concerns have disappeared…

January business confidence data showed China’s service sector had a positive start to 2023, buoyed by hopes that the recent loosening of pandemic restrictions will feed through to further improvements in economic activity. Compared to its October 2022 projection, the January 2023 IMF projection for China’s growth forecast for this year increased almost one percentage point to 5.2 per cent. However, how strong and sustained the likely pick-up will be is an open question. The consensus belief is about a robust pick up, fuelled by pent up demand and financed by an excess of savings. Yet the latter is certainly not distributed evenly, as the relatively well-off captured the lion’s share and are unlikely to run down their savings meaningfully, their propensity to consume being both stable and not particularly high.

What’s more, uncertainty regarding the overall outlook remains elevated, with the implication that precautionary savings might very well stay high. The Chinese economy also still faces several headwinds, such as demographic and property market challenges. In Europe, natural gas price forecasts have been marked down significantly thanks to unusually mild weather and higher-than-expected gas storage levels, sharply reducing the risk of forced rationing. As supply chain disruptions eased and near-term energy market worries receded, businesses have become less pessimistic as the January S&P Global business confidence index in the Eurozone moved up to the neutral 50-threshold for the first time since June, adding to hopes that the upturn will gather steam in the coming months

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