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Australian small companies outlook for 2023

Having not long finished the festive season and commenced a new year, many of us take the moments shortly after to reflect on the year that was, and also…

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Having not long finished the festive season and commenced a new year, many of us take the moments shortly after to reflect on the year that was, and also consider what we would like to see in the year ahead.

With that in mind I thought I would take a look back at 2022. Last year will likely be remembered for three key events, firstly it generally saw the world exit the pandemic cloud of COVID-19. Secondly, we saw the commencement of the war between Ukraine and Russia. Thirdly, we saw inflation return with a vengeance being quickly followed by one of the fastest tightening cycles in history by Central Banks. The official cash rate in Australia increased from 0.1 per cent in April 2022 to 3.10 per cent by the December meeting of the RBA.

This mix of events led to one of the strongest risk-off years we have seen since the Global Financial Crisis, there are few places for investors to find sanctuary with losses occurring across both growth and defensive assets alike.

Investor sentiment was broadly very negative during 2022, it is always a challenge for any growth (or risk) asset to perform well when the market doesn’t have an appetite for risk of any kind. 

 If we look specifically at the Australian small ordinaries index, its return for the calendar year of 2022 was negative 20.7 per cent. To give this context the ASX 100 declined by 3.9 per cent and the ASX 300 return was negative 6.1 per cent. It is fair to say that the risk on trade in Small Companies over the last few years moved into reverse in 2022. This was a consequence of the above macro factors, coupled with a more bearish investor and market.

What to consider for 2023?

In moving to our outlook for 2023 we need to initially consider the 3 points above and ask where we see them today and where they may evolve to over the next 12 months. With the final question being what impact this will have on equity market performance?

As a starting point it is fair to say that the impact of COVID-19 continues to pass and become more of a memory than a current issue. Even China who were the final strong hold have now moved to accept an existence with COVID-19 and they cope with re-opening and reintegrating with the rest of the world. As it stands today, we would expect the impact of COVID-19 to continue to diminish from here. One datapoint that has been interesting to follow over the pandemic has been a UBS Composite Supply Chain Indicator which is now in a strong downward trend and moving closer to pre-pandemic levels.

Supply chain stress

Source: UBS

A second example where we can see this is in spot indexes for international container freight costs which are now off roughly 80 per cent from their peak 18 months ago. This is interesting as it was one of the early contributors to the increase in inflation. As a leading cause it is positive to see this returning to more normal levels.

Next, we move to the war in Ukraine, which continues to grind along, and will no doubt continue to influence energy prices and broader speculation. Having said that, although the outcome is unknown, this is what at times in markets is called a known unknown. We are all aware of what is happening, many governments and countries are working around it. This is best seen in Europe where they continue to diversify their sources and supply of Energy, along with continued fast tracking of non-Russian dependent infrastructure. Short of a shock surprise, this event we can largely say has been priced into markets.

Finally, inflation and interest rates have been a biproduct of the above two events. These two arguably caused the most disruption to equity markets in 2022. At the time of writing the most recent inflation data for Australia was released last week and came out higher than consensus expectations with trimmed inflation (removing the most volatile items) coming in at 6.5 per cent against an expectation of 6.1 per cent.

At this point most major market commentators have the belief that we are likely to see two further interest rate increases in the first quarter of this year. Post this timeframe the speculation begins to grow; a portion believe inflation is going to be more stubborn and require further effort from Central Banks. Other market commentators believe that the remaining two expected rate increases will be sufficient to manage inflation, particularly given the delayed transmission mechanism we have here due to the nature of Fixed Rates and their term to reset.

Some also believe we may see interest rates start to fall in late 2023, which would become a tailwind for equities, in particular some of the growth names which had the toughest performance over 2022.

What can we expect from small caps?

Looking through all of this noise and to our outlook for Australian Small Companies for 2023 we think as always the starting point is important. At a market level we started 20 per cent cheaper than the same point in the prior year. Further to this we have seen some earnings downgrades in some parts of the market, where others have proven to be far more resilient than expected. Sectors like the Resource sector managed to grow their earnings over 2022. So in some pockets, we find valuations from a fundamental perspective to be very attractive.

While there is a belief that interest rates have further to go, we still see some significant risks in the more speculative parts of the market. This is mainly around companies that will have little control over their earnings power in the next 12 months, or are less mature and as a result less capable to weather the economic conditions ahead. Increasing interest rates are also not favourable for building stocks, or some consumer stocks (although some of the high-quality names will be resilient and based on valuation look interesting).  

Any companies that missed the market’s expectations on earnings were punished, if the company had to go as far as an earnings downgrade the market showed little mercy. We think this trend will likely continue into the February 2023 reporting season. These are risks we are aiming to avoid by assessing the quality of our investments and their earnings streams.

Looking further out, there is an argument that Australian Small Companies offer a significant investment opportunity for investors over 2023 if they wish to add some risk to their portfolios. They were the most sold down part of the market in 2022 so the valuation of this sleeve of the market looks attractive.

History tells us that once the economy has reached peak inflation, the peak of interest rates is usually not too much further into the future. If we do in fact only see two further rate rises from the RBA and inflation is contained then we will start to have a foundation that would be more solid and look to underpin a backdrop that would be conducive to a rally in equity markets.

As always we are not out of the woods and do expect some earnings challenges to come to the fore in February’s interim reporting season. Stock selection and active management will be critical to navigate this.

Should we see an improved outlook and also a reduction in interest rates later in the year we may start to see an improvement in investor and market sentiment. This is likely the final ingredient needed to see capital flows return more strongly to equities and in particular Small Companies.

Overall we continue to have a meaningful exposure to the Resource sector as we think that with China reopening and supply shortages still an issue for Europe in the medium term, coupled with the continued drive of decarbonisation that 2023 should be another supportive year for the sector.

We have quality exposures to structural growth companies that over a medium term investment horizon represent excellent value and are growing quality businesses. We believe we are closer to the end than the beginning of the inflation and interest rate story which over the course of 2023 we think will provide a favourable foundation for the market and the Montgomery Small Companies Fund.   

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Fighting the Surveillance State Begins with the Individual

It’s a well-known fact at this point that in the United States and most of the so-called free countries that there is a robust surveillance state in…

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It’s a well-known fact at this point that in the United States and most of the so-called free countries that there is a robust surveillance state in place, collecting data on the entire populace. This has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by people like Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower who exposed that the NSA was conducting mass surveillance on US citizens and the world as a whole. The NSA used applications like those from Prism Systems to piggyback on corporations and the data collection their users had agreed to in the terms of service. Google would scan all emails sent to a Gmail address to use for personalized advertising. The government then went to these companies and demanded the data, and this is what makes the surveillance state so interesting. Neo-Marxists like Shoshana Zuboff have dubbed this “surveillance capitalism.” In China, the mass surveillance is conducted at a loss. Setting up closed-circuit television cameras and hiring government workers to be a mandatory editorial staff for blogs and social media can get quite expensive. But if you parasitically leech off a profitable business practice it means that the surveillance state will turn a profit, which is a great asset and an even greater weakness for the system. You see, when that is what your surveillance state is predicated on you’ve effectively given your subjects an opt-out button. They stop using services that spy on them. There is software and online services that are called “open source,” which refers to software whose code is publicly available and can be viewed by anyone so that you can see exactly what that software does. The opposite of this, and what you’re likely already familiar with, is proprietary software. Open-source software generally markets itself as privacy respecting and doesn’t participate in data collection. Services like that can really undo the tricky situation we’ve found ourselves in. It’s a simple fact of life that when the government is given a power—whether that be to regulate, surveil, tax, or plunder—it is nigh impossible to wrestle it away from the state outside somehow disposing of the state entirely. This is why the issue of undoing mass surveillance is of the utmost importance. If the government has the power to spy on its populace, it will. There are people, like the creators of The Social Dilemma, who think that the solution to these privacy invasions isn’t less government but more government, arguing that data collection should be taxed to dissuade the practice or that regulation needs to be put into place to actively prevent abuses. This is silly to anyone who understands the effect regulations have and how the internet really works. You see, data collection is necessary. You can’t have email without some elements of data collection because it’s simply how the protocol functions. The issue is how that data is stored and used. A tax on data collection itself will simply become another cost of doing business. A large company like Google can afford to pay a tax. But a company like Proton Mail, a smaller, more privacy-respecting business, likely couldn’t. Proton Mail’s business model is based on paid subscriptions. If there were additional taxes imposed on them, it’s possible that they would not be able to afford the cost and would be forced out of the market. To reiterate, if one really cares about the destruction of the surveillance state, the first step is to personally make changes to how you interact with online services and to whom you choose to give your data.

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Stock Market Today: Stocks turn higher as Treasury yields retreat; big tech earnings up next

A pullback in Treasury yields has stocks moving higher Monday heading into a busy earnings week and a key 2-year bond auction later on Tuesday.

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Updated at 11:52 am EDT U.S. stocks turned higher Monday, heading into the busiest earnings week of the year on Wall Street, amid a pullback in Treasury bond yields that followed the first breach of 5% for 10-year notes since 2007. Investors, however, continue to track developments in Israel's war with Hamas, which launched its deadly attack from Gaza three weeks ago, as leaders around the region, and the wider world, work to contain the fighting and broker at least a form of cease-fire. Humanitarian aid is also making its way into Gaza, through the territory's border with Egypt, as officials continue to work for the release of more than 200 Israelis taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 attack. Those diplomatic efforts eased some of the market's concern in overnight trading, but the lingering risk that regional adversaries such as Iran, or even Saudi Arabia, could be drawn into the conflict continues to blunt risk appetite. Still, the U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six global currencies and acts as the safe-haven benchmark in times of market turmoil, fell 0.37% in early New York trading 105.773, suggesting some modest moves into riskier assets. The Japanese yen, however, eased past the 150 mark in overnight dealing, a level that has some traders awaiting intervention from the Bank of Japan and which may have triggered small amounts of dollar sales and yen purchases. In the bond market, benchmark 10-year note yields breached the 5% mark in overnight trading, after briefly surpassing that level late last week for the first time since 2007, but were last seen trading at 4.867% ahead of $141 billion in 2-year, 5-year and 7-year note auctions later this week. Global oil prices were also lower, following two consecutive weekly gains that has take Brent crude, the global pricing benchmark, firmly past $90 a barrel amid supply disruption concerns tied to the middle east conflict. Brent contracts for December delivery were last seen $1.06 lower on the session at $91.07 per barrel while WTI futures contract for the same month fell $1.36 to $86.72 per barrel. Market volatility gauges were also active, with the CBOE Group's VIX index hitting a fresh seven-month high of $23.08 before easing to $20.18 later in the session. That level suggests traders are expecting ranges on the S&P 500 of around 1.26%, or 53 points, over the next month. A busy earnings week also indicates the likelihood of elevated trading volatility, with 158 S&P 500 companies reporting third quarter earnings over the next five days, including mega cap tech names such as Google parent Alphabet  (GOOGL) - Get Free Report, Microsoft  (MSFT) - Get Free Report, retail and cloud computing giant Amazon  (AMZN) - Get Free Report and Facebook owner Meta Platforms  (META) - Get Free Report. "It’s shaping up to be a big week for the market and it comes as the S&P 500 is testing a key level—the four-month low it set earlier this month," said Chris Larkin, managing director for trading and investing at E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley. "How the market responds to that test may hinge on sentiment, which often plays a larger-than-average role around this time of year," he added. "And right now, concerns about rising interest rates and geopolitical turmoil have the potential to exacerbate the market’s swings." Heading into the middle of the trading day on Wall Street, the S&P 500, which is down 8% from its early July peak, the highest of the year, was up 10 points, or 0.25%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which slumped into negative territory for the year last week, was marked 10 points lower while the Nasdaq, which fell 4.31% last week, was up 66 points, or 0.51%. In overseas markets, Europe's Stoxx 600 was marked 0.11% lower by the close of Frankfurt trading, with markets largely tracking U.S. stocks as well as the broader conflict in Israel. In Asia, a  slump in China stocks took the benchmark CSI 300 to a fresh 2019 low and pulled the region-wide MSCI ex-Japan 0.72% lower into the close of trading.
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iPhone Maker Foxconn Investigated By Chinese Authorities

Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that manufactures iPhones on behalf of Apple (AAPL), is being investigated by Chinese authorities, according to multiple…

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Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that manufactures iPhones on behalf of Apple (AAPL), is being investigated by Chinese authorities, according to multiple media reports. Foxconn’s business has been searched by Chinese authorities and China’s main tax authority has conducted inspections of Foxconn’s manufacturing operations in the Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu. At the same time, China’s natural-resources department has begun onsite investigations into Foxconn’s land use in Henan and Hubei provinces within China. Foxconn has manufacturing facilities focused on Apple products in three of the Chinese provinces where authorities are carrying out searches. While headquartered in Taiwan, Foxconn has a huge manufacturing presence in China and is a large employer in the nation of 1.4 billion people. The investigations suggest that China is ramping up pressure on the company as Foxconn considers major investments in India, and as presidential elections approach in Taiwan. Foxconn founder Terry Gou said in August of this year that he intends to run for the Taiwanese presidency. He has resigned from the company’s board of directors but continues to hold a 12.5% stake in the company. Gou is currently in fourth place in the polls ahead of the election that is scheduled to be held in January 2024. The potential impact on Apple and its iPhone manufacturing comes amid rising political tensions between politicians in Washington, D.C. and Beijing. Apple’s stock has risen 16% over the last 12 months and currently trades at $172.88 U.S. per share.  

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