Investment outlook 2024: Balancing growth and inflation

Are monetary policymakers across North America and Europe done fighting inflation? While two years of interest rate hikes have continued to create ripple effects, growth has proved durable in the face of sticky inflation. Our investment outlook for 2024 examines the balance between these competing forces. Western developed economies may encounter ongoing disinflation as an economic slowdown in the first half transitions to a recovery in the second half. China and Japan face a different situation.

North America and Europe: We expect a slowdown, then recovery 

Despite rapid interest rate hikes over the course of 2022 and 2023, many developed economies continued to grow and have only recently begun to show signs of strain. As we move into 2024, we expect the global economy to slow marginally, with a bumpy landing for major developed economies materializing in the first half of the year. We expect outcomes will vary by country — the US has been the most resilient to the effects of tightening policy and credit conditions, while growth in the eurozone and United Kingdom is already flagging.

However, we expect the slowdown to be shortened by a turn in monetary policy as inflation gradually subsides. We believe monetary policymakers have now reached the ends of their tightening cycles. The next step is likely to be easing for major central banks in Western developed economies, which we expect to emerge late in the first half of 2024 as growth slows and inflation continues to move towards acceptable rates. This should help a recovery to take shape, in our view, returning the global economy toward trend growth in the second half of 2024 as real wages rise in response to lower inflation.

China: Policymakers seek to stabilize growth

Meanwhile, the Chinese economy is in a remarkably different position. Policymakers are seeking to stabilize growth after optimism around its post-COVID opening was tempered in 2023. We believe appropriate policies can improve the economic picture and expect Chinese authorities to marginally expand fiscal policy in 2024 to stabilize growth rates.

In our view, Chinese growth is likely to be subdued in the first half and improve in the second half, resulting in a year-over-year real growth rate of around 4.3% to 4.7% for the economy.

Japan: Some tightening expected in the first half

Japan is also in a very different place. We expect the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to continue to hold back on material tightening because there are significant uncertainties over the sustainability of rising inflation (after all, the BOJ has been faced with false inflation dawns in the past). However, the BOJ is likely to start tightening marginally during the first half of 2024, in our view. We also believe that the BOJ will likely tweak its yield curve management policy to prevent knock-on effects from outsized increases in volatility in global bond markets.

There is a modest risk that significantly higher inflation may force the BOJ to tighten significantly, which could drag up global bond yields and strengthen the Japanese yen.

Risks to our outlook: Geopolitics, commodity shocks, and financial accidents

Since the global pandemic, risks and uncertainty have remained elevated. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, events in the Middle East, and continued tensions over Taiwan have introduced greater uncertainty for global markets, supply chains, and prices. The ongoing conflicts could also trigger another commodity price shock that negatively impacts growth.

Political uncertainty in the US has also exacerbated concerns about the country’s fiscal sustainability, the potential for further government shutdowns, and even the possibility of default. Meanwhile, the rapid tightening of credit conditions across many major economies has raised fears about potential financial accidents, such as those witnessed in the first half of 2023.

Our base case assumes no material impact from these factors, but we recognize that they do present risks to our outlook.

Two alternative scenarios for the global economy

We see the potential for two alternative outlook scenarios that focus on the balancing act between growth and inflation and resulting reactions from policymakers: 

Downside scenario: Hard landing

We see two potential drivers for a “hard landing”: an already-committed policy mistake or persistent inflation that spurs more tightening.

• In the first instance, the long and variable lags of policy tightening could prove too much for Western developed economies to handle in 2024. In this event, we would expect weaker growth and faster disinflation.
• Or, more persistent inflation could require policymakers to keep rates higher for longer, resulting in a greater economic effect than we currently anticipate.

In either case, the investment implications would be similar, but near-term experience would likely differ — long duration bonds and equities would likely outperform sooner in the first scenario because we would likely see faster policy easing but underperform in the persistent inflation version. 

Upside scenario: Soft landing

We also consider an upside scenario for the United States in which supply-side shocks dissipate or are already gone, and mild cooling on the demand-side enables inflation to ease. In this “soft landing” scenario, we are already in (or even in the process of exiting) a mid-cycle slowdown, from which we reaccelerate in the first half of 2024.

In this case, we would expect core inflation to fall with more certainty and at a smoother trajectory versus the base case, enabling the Fed to ease sooner. Outside the US, we would expect surplus economies like the eurozone, Japan and China — as well as twin-deficit emerging markets — to benefit more robustly in this scenario, as US disinflation and growth boosts the world economy, helping offset recent softness in China and the eurozone.

Favored asset classes

Given our base case scenario, we anticipate global risk appetite increasing as 2024 begins, with markets experiencing some volatility as they start to price in a recovery later in the year. We believe this environment should favor equities, although fixed income is also poised to perform well given the likelihood of falling rates.

Equities outlook

• We see the greatest potential in emerging markets, although developed market equities outside the US also appear attractive.
• We anticipate that value, cyclical, and small-cap stocks will outperform.
• In terms of sectors, we prefer consumer discretionary and technology. Consumer discretionary is closely correlated with the economic cycle, and so an economic recovery would likely be positive for this sector, especially since consumers are benefiting from low unemployment. We believe that as rates come down, earnings multiples for technology stocks may see a boost.

Bottom line: We prefer cyclicals and value in the first half as markets price in a second half recovery, but in the second half of the year, a return to trend growth rates and falling interest rates could benefit technology and growth stocks.

Fixed income and currencies outlook

• We favor high quality credit given short-term concerns about decelerating economies, along with the prospect of falling rates.
• We favor long duration and believe this is an attractive time to lock in rates on the long end of the curve.
• We anticipate nominal bonds will perform well as disinflation continues.
• We favor emerging market local currency debt in this scenario, as it should benefit from a weakening US dollar.
• We believe the US dollar will ease as markets anticipate rate cuts by the Fed.  

Alternatives outlook

• Within private assets, direct lending has been attractive given the asset’s high yields¹, floating-rate nature, and favorable lender terms and protections.
• The potential for modest default rates next year could also set the stage for distressed lending to outperform.
• We favor commercial real estate lending as a way to access real asset markets, which could fill a gap for financing left after recent regional banking failures. Higher interest rates may continue to pressure real estate assets, however we find fundamentals improving as there are pockets of strength in various sectors and markets.
• When considering private equity, we prefer assets that focus on cash transactions because we see opportunities for growth equity firms to provide capital to private companies that would historically have looked to access the initial public offering market.
• We recognize that, given the increase in geopolitical risks, gold could have periods of strong performance.