Europe offers a diverse, rich and complex equity market. With different cultures, political systems and economic profiles, it presents some compelling investment opportunities for active stock pickers.
Furthermore, we believe European equities are attractively valued on both an historic and regional basis and expectations are extremely low. This combination can lead to significant positive share price performance when news flow or data points surprise to the upside, even if only marginally so.
Europe has been a region of very low growth for a long time and as a result many investors overlook the opportunities here. Yet today we are seeing the macroeconomic data turn a corner, both in absolute terms but also relative to the US Purchasing Managers Indexes (PMIs), (a widely used economic indicator to assess a country’s health in manufacturing or services sectors). This appears to have bottomed.
As PMI Services data is improving, inventory levels are low, while de-stocking is seemingly at an end. Although inflation is coming down, real wage growth is good, leading to stronger consumer spending.
The credit cycle appears to be improving with demand increasing, too, and there’s a general acceptance that interest rates will normalise, which should further stimulate investment. The recovery may not be quick, more ‘U’ than ‘V’ shaped, but a soft landing appears to be likely and yet European share price valuations do not reflect this. Here is the opportunity.
This moderate monetary backdrop does not favour any one particular investment style bias over another, but instead should be highly supportive for fundamental, stock-picking.