Fidelity’s Director of Global Macro, Jurrien Timmer, starts off today’s show touching upon equities, the United States Federal Reserve, and emerging markets. Jurrien remarked that there is always a concern about corrections in bull markets and notes that the market is now up 110% from its bottom in March 2020. He also notes that he is seeing strong earnings especially with the S&P 500 profit margin which is now at an all-time high of 14%, which he believes demonstrates a much faster recovery than anticipated. In terms of the United States Federal Reserve tapering, Jurrien shares that the bond market tapering is starting this month, but the market is not reflecting an expectation of a neutral policy, which he expects may lead us into a period similar to the 1940s with the Fed accepting higher structural inflation as collateral for a healthy economy. When asked about his response to fears of a market crash if the Fed stops being so accommodative, Jurrien indicates that market internals are improving quite a bit, and instead of fretting about slight downturns, he said to remember that even though markets go down 40% of the time, we still see compounded annual growth at 11%, and that’s where he believes staying invested carries a prize. Lastly, Jurrien believes that we are not going to see outperformance in emerging markets (EM) or Europe, Australasia, and the Far East (EAFE) without a relative earnings story to back it up, also noting that these regions are now showing negative earnings momentum.

Recorded on November 8, 2021.

Transcript (PDF): https://www.fidelity.ca/cs/Satellite/doc/transcript_webcast_timmer_08nov.pdf