Steno Signals #190 - Is Europe and China still the havens in macro? Not so fast..

Europe and China have so far been the safe havens in macro, but we are seeing signs that the light is starting to shut here as well.

Greetings from Copenhagen, and welcome back to our weekly editorial on everything macro and markets.

The tariff headlines are back in a more digestive fashion as the broad tariff scare seen over the past couple of weeks have been more or less cooled down by US officials late last week and over the weekend, which is very benign news for a market who feared that tariffs would hit right around everyone around the globe, which is the reason why businesses, households and consumers have changed behaviour and delivered a US growth scare over the past month - and it will likely continue going into April as trends currently persist rather than turn.

The tariff campaign will hence be a lot more targeted than previously communicated, which is probably what most people expected initially (until Trump went rogue), with the reciprocal part of the tariffs being a race to the bottom and vice versa - which evidently looks to be the case now.

However, setting aside the tariff jitters, all of our 3 main models covering the US, Eurozone and China are all starting to point south, which makes it hard to fully justify the long US equity case just yet (although we are starting to get there). More or less every single macro model you can find points to lower equity prices, but the key question here is: what will happen with economic activity if tariffs turn out to be more benign that we have priced in so far?

We saw how the constant flip-flopping on tariffs and economic policy led to a rapid downturn in US macro over the course of February and March, so what will happen if the table turns? Could lead to a September-like reaction across assets if tariffs barely come relative to expectations, but for now the arrow is still pointing towards further weakness in March (data released in April). It might therefore be time to put the narrative that Europe and China are shelters in the US equity selloff on the shelf.

We are hence still leaning long US Fixed Income in anticipation of a more global economic slowdown while staying more or less neutral equities, but looking to add soon as US macro will improve relative to peers (but still weakening).

Chart 1a: US Macro Model