US

The epidemic situation in both the US and Europe remains severe, but uncertainties in the US elections cleared, coupled with claims by two pharmaceutical companies on their near 95% efficient vaccines, market sentiment stayed positive and US equities continued their upward trend. Over the past 5 days ending Thursday, all three major equity indexes rose 1.27% to 1.67%. As for the US elections, Trump has yet to admit defeat, but according to mainstream media, Biden has already secured a victory, and had reportedly called for a formal transition process, he has also decided on his choice for the Treasury Secretary. With daily infection figures in Europe and the Americas staying elevated, the International Monetary Fund warned that the new epidemic restrictions will hamper the global economic recovery. In addition, US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated that the epidemic continues to pose a short-term downside risk to the economy, and it is still too early to withdraw emergency lending facilities. In fact, US retail sales grew at the slowest pace in the past six months, reflecting the weak momentum of the recovery. Next week, the US will be releasing more economic data, including the consumer confidence index, as well as the minutes of the November interest rate meeting.

EUROPE

Following the earlier rally, European equity markets have stabilized. Over the past 5 days ending Thursday, German, French, and UK equity indexes posted varying results ranging from -0.07% to +2.09%. Although there has been positive news on the COVID vaccine, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde said the bank will make no changes to its monetary stimulus plan. She expects a strong stimulus package to be ready in December, and also urged EU governments to roll out additional epidemic relief measures as soon as possible. On the other hand, the UK's Brexit trade talk deadlines are closing in, but the talks have recently been suspended due to a key official contracting COVID. Next week, the Eurozone will release its manufacturing purchasing manager index.

CHINA

After digesting the vaccine updates, Hong Kong and mainland Chinese stock markets tapered off, the CSI 300 Index rose 1.78% this week and the HSI gained 1.13%. As of Friday, the number of new COVID infections in Hong Kong was on the rise, fears of a 'fourth wave' of epidemic weighed on certain local property developers, while epidemic beneficiaries gained ground. Premier Li Keqiang chaired a meeting on Wednesday, stating the importance of expanding domestic demand, driving optimism in the domestic consumption sectors such as home appliances. Next week, China will announce the industrial profit figures in October.

In most of the key emerging market economies such as India, Brazil, South Africa, and numerous Southeast Asian countries, the covid epidemic is losing steam with new daily cases falling. This provides further boost to market confidence, concurrent with the solid improvement in economic fundamentals, Brazil and India PMIs in particular have hit new highs in over a decade. With gradual improvement in the local economy and anticipating global demand recovering, we anticipate EM equity performance to follow.

As one of the largest concerns in form of US elections are going to be settled over the coming month, the level of uncertainty should gradually ebb out with the roadmap for the 4 upcoming years mapped out. At the moment, it seems we would likely see a split Congress, suggesting a more or less status quo in terms of policy direction, which should be positive for emerging market performance. However conservative investors could consider to remain on the sidelines until the smoke clears, as the current closely contested elections would likely result in recounts and court cases, which could still drive volatility in the market.

We are excited to have Vanessa from GAM Investments partnering with Toby from Harris Fraser to dive into the matter!

Covid remained the centre of attention as the situation rapidly deteriorated in numerous European countries. Towards the end of the month, daily covid cases in many countries has far exceeded the 1^st wave, resulting in local governments re-imposing full on lockdown measures. As the economy has just started its recovery, the newly ordered month-long lockdown threatens the weak recovery.

Fundamentally, Europe saw improvement in some of its fundamentals, Eurozone manufacturing PMI figures hit a recent high, yet services PMI saw a continued contraction, which is expected to further worsen with the imposed lockdowns. The market remains vulnerable to external shocks, which is compounded by the Brexit uncertainties. The scheduled deadline for a trade deal was delayed, but due to the fundamental divergence on several key issues, the risk of a no-deal Brexit by the end of the year remains high. With all the uncertainties arising from various factors in the European equity market, we expect to see a relatively larger downside risk compared to the upside potential.

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee was held in late October, where the policy direction for the short, mid, and long-term are outlined. Analysts have tallied the usage of certain keywords in the official circular, which signalled that China will prioritise domestic economic and technological development over an international political fight for power. Economic stimulus is expected to be limited for the short term, and the recurring theme of “dual circulations” is once again key to the upcoming 5 years, vying to shed external reliance on a multitude of products and services. Henceforth, with the positive support for domestic new economy sectors, relevant themes such as semiconductors, clean energy, electric vehicles, 5G, AI alike should see continued growth in the mid to long-term.

As for fundamentals, the Chinese economy is doing well, the Q3 GDP YoY growth continues to recover, which far outpaces other major economies such as the US and other European peers. Other fundamental indicators such as various PMIs and other investment/consumption indexes continued its steady recovery since the height of covid in China. With the elections in the US concluding soon, we expect there to be more clarity in the 4 years to come, which are expected to be supportive of the Chinese markets as uncertainties fade.

The US elections were held at the beginning of November, although the final results have not been officially announced, according to multiple media outlets, former Vice President Joe Biden have seemingly won the presidential race, but incumbent President Donald Trump have yet to admit defeat and allegedly claimed voter fraud. With the races staying tight till the very end, we don’t expect to see final results until later, but there is a very good chance that we will see a Biden administration along with a split Congress.

If the projected result turns out to be true, we could infer 3 key implications out of this. First off, the fiscal stimulus will likely be smaller than the original estimate, as a split Congress should put a cap on the Democrats’ wish list, which might result in less buoyancy to the patchy economy. Secondly, the more controversial policies such as a variety of tax raises will likely be postponed or withdrawn altogether, potentially alleviating the downward pressure on the investment markets. Lastly, an expected normalisation of foreign relations, including a possible rollback of tariffs and sanctions, should support the global economic recovery. That said, the current market is still on the higher end in terms of valuations, yet the US market should see positive gains on the longer term as corporate earnings recover.

US

After the US election, the recent vaccine news has been one of the most influential market news. Shortly after the media reported that the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden surpassed the 270 vote threshold, US pharmaceutical company Pfizer also announced that its in-house COVID vaccine is more than 90% effective in preventing infections, which drove global stock markets up, all three major US indexes hit new highs, crude oil soared, while safe-haven assets such as gold and US bonds came under pressure. On the hopes of a “game changer” vaccine, sectors that have been long under pressure due to COVID, such as airlines and movie theatres, saw strong rebounds; whereas sectors that have benefited from the epidemic, such as Internet video communication services, saw their share prices plummet, capital rotated back to old economy sectors. The US presidential election is still not fully resolved, incumbent president Donald Trump has indicated that he doesn’t accept the results of the election and said that lawsuits have been filed in six key states, which is expected to hinder any transition of presidential power. On one hand, the vaccine news is encouraging to the market, but on the other hand, the number of new COVID cases in the US has reached a record high of over 150,000 per day. Facing the worrying development of the epidemic, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell admitted that the economy is expected to face challenges in the coming few months. Next week, the US will release retail sales data for October.

EUROPE

Badly hit by the latest COVID outbreak, European stock markets were the big winners on vaccine news, both the UK and French equity indexes gained more than 7% over the past five days ending Thursday, and Spain's IBEX 35 even went up by more than 10% over the same period. Nevertheless, the governors of both the Bank of England (BoE) and the European Central Bank expressed caution on the positive vaccine news. The BoE's Governor Andrew Bailey also mentioned that any news on the UK's future relationship with the EU will likely influence the bank's policy direction in December, but at the moment, there is no clear timeline for implementing negative interest rates. The Eurozone will release the final CPI for October next week.

CHINA

China A-shares had a relatively weak performance over the week, while Hong Kong stocks fared better, the CSI 300 Index was down 0.59%, while the Hang Seng Index (HSI) rose 1.73%. Although the HSI rose this week, the Hang Seng Technology Index (HSTI), which reflects the performance of HK listed technology stocks, recorded a 2.6% drop. This was mainly due to the reported introduction of anti-trust guidelines in Mainland China, heavyweights in the HSTI drove the index down. As for economic fundamentals, China's inflationary pressures were further eased in October, with the CPI only growing 1.2% YoY. Next week, China will release data on retail sales, production, and fixed investment for October.

Mortgage refinancing can be used like a magic tool to unlock the hidden capital that don't usually come across investors' mind. Utilizing it for either investment or purchasing properties can give investors more opportunities for wealth appreciation.

Envisioning “Passive Income”

One of the more popular terms we hear these days is ''passive income''. Not sure if everyone has a different understanding of the term, but “passive income” should mean income that doesn't require any effort or time on your part, something so simple and mindless that you can sit at home, and watch your bank account balance grow by the day. Sounds good, so how does it work out?

Getting the money to work with

Given there is room for carry and passive income generation, we can construct the passive income generating engine. First and foremost, everything requires capital. Where does the capital come from? In Hong Kong, often complain that they don't have enough capital, but the truth is, many Hong Kongers' assets are held up in real estate. You can release the capital with mortgage financing, it doesn't matter if your property is fully paid up or if you are still paying off your mortgage, you can always organize a carry trade with your asset in hand.

Building the engine

We’ll take an example of mortgage refinance carry to illustrate it better. If your property is valued at $7 million, under the current HKMA guidelines, you can take out a mortgage of up to 60%, which means that you get a refinanced mortgage of $4.2 million at if it is fully paid up, which can be used in the carry arbitrage trade. Of course the mortgage will be smaller if you are still in the midst of paying off, but the whole process is the same except the value being proportional to the net value of the property.

The arbitrage carry can be self sustaining

For mortgage terms, on average, a person aged 45 or below could typically apply for a 30-year repayment period. Based on the highest reference mortgage rate of 2.625%, the $4.2 million mortgage shall be repaid over 30 years, and the monthly repayment would only be $16,869. If the entirety of the $4.2 million is invested with an annual return of 6%, the monthly gains of $21,000 will be sufficient to cover the monthly mortgage payments. Bear in mind that mortgage payments also include repayment of the principal, the actual income actually reaches an estimated total carry potential as much as HK$11,000 per month.

To sum up, that’s how a passive income engine could be constructed in a very simplified way. As for the investment part, what is the most suitable investment for such a carry trade? We will discuss this in the next article.