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Good morning, Bull Sheeters.
Yesterday’s U.S. stocks rally is lifting overseas markets on Tuesday. In Europe, just about every sector is in the green—even banking, where Credit Suisse has been forced to slash dividends and shake up its executive ranks in the wake of the Archegos Capital Management saga. Meanwhile, both the Stoxx Europe 600 and cryptocurrencies have hit fresh records.
In today’s essay, we go back to examine an old favorite for you bulls: the FAANGM stocks.
But first, let’s see what else is moving markets as more investors return from the Easter break.
Markets update
Asia
- The major Asia indexes are mostly lower in afternoon trading. The Hang Seng and Shanghai Composite reopen tomorrow.
- Singapore, that bastion of the free markets, is warning investors again about cryptocurrencies. They’re “highly volatile,” and “their value is typically not related to any economic fundamentals,” the chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore told parliament yesterday.
- Crypto bulls, meanwhile, have sent crypto market cap above $2 trillion. It’s doubled in value so far this year.
Europe
- The European bourses were solidly higher on the first trading day back from the Easter holiday, with the Stoxx Europe 600 hitting an all-time high at the open, erasing all pandemic losses. Telecom was the lone sector in the red in early trading.
- Shares in Credit Suisse were down 0.4% at the open, before recovering. That’s after the hobbled Swiss banking giant cleaned house, with big names in its investment banking and risk divisions departing. The lender had to sell off $2.3 billion worth of soured Archegos trades as the fallout of its ties to the stricken hedge fund continue to emerge.
- Shares in EasyJet and IAG, parent of British Airways, were higher this morning even after Boris Johnson warned his fellow Britons to hold off on booking overseas holiday travel.
U.S.
- U.S. futures have been trading sideways all morning as Treasury yields widen.
- Shares in Norwegian Cruise Line were down 0.7% in pre-market trading on Tuesday. That’s after a rally of 7.2% on Monday following news it asked the CDC to relax COVID rules so it can resume cruise operations in July. 🛳️🛳️🛳️
Elsewhere
- Gold is up, trading above $1,730/ounce.
- The dollar is up.
- Crude is up a touch with Brent trading above $63/barrel.
- Bitcoin is trading above $58,000.
***
Rethinking FAANGM stocks
Even before yesterday’s victorious Supreme Court decision, Alphabet’s Google was getting some serious buzz on Wall Street. Just before Easter, Bernstein equity analyst Mark Shmulik slapped a $3,100 “bull case” price target on the search giant.
Don’t get too excited. It was one of those sum-of-the-parts calculations. Still, GOOG shares have jumped 8.3% in the past week, to close yesterday at $2,225.
Google’s recent surge has helped the Nasdaq 100 to climb more than 10% in the past month.
Does this mean big-cap tech is back? Not so fast.
As you know, big tech has been a big snooze for months. Apple, Netflix and Amazon all closed out Q1 in the red, buffeted by the great “reopening” trade. Investors have taken their tech chips off the table, and moved on to trade in financials, energy and small-cap “value” stocks where valuations seem more sensible.
In fact, the rotation trade—out of growth and into value—that we just witnessed was the biggest since 2001, BofA Securities calculates. “We continue to like GDP-sensitive cyclicals, small caps and value until positioning and valuations normalize, and earnings growth peaks,” BofA analysts write.
On cue, in a separate BofA Securities note, last week’s equities outflow report marked the biggest exit from tech in nearly eight months. Not a good way to close out the quarter.
Still, investors see plenty of value in some of the FAANGM names—particularly, the last two letters in that mashup of an acronym. MSFT and GOOG are the most widely held stocks by ESG funds, for example, a huge force in the investing world. According to BofA, Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google are ranked numbers one and two in ESG holdings, edging out Ecolab, Visa and Home Depot.
Big tech is still vulnerable to inflation and rising bond yields. And that’s true for Microsoft and Google as well. But there are also some big tail winds that could lift some of the FAANGM names in the near future.
For example, the reopening could prove to be a boon for the likes of Facebook and the social media platforms. As UBS chief economist Paul Donovan notes this morning, “U.S. data is confirming the pattern of economic bounce back. As restrictions ease, spending on restaurants and other personal services are increasing. People are switching spending to having fun (fun means something that you can post about on Instagram). For the most part, there is the supply capacity to meet this increased service sector demand.”
Another factor to watch is that other I-word—infrastructure.
Should the Biden Administration push through its epic $2.2 trillion spending bill, tax dollars could go to investments like 5G, ultra-fast broadband, among other goodies, that would prove a lift to cloud, gaming, mobile, plus some software and hardware sectors.
This a big reason why the FAANGM collective, as an investment strategy, looks very different in 2021. The FGM Facebook-Google-Microsoft component is outperforming the broader market, while the AAN Apple-Amazon-Netflix chunk is underperforming.
We cautioned at the start of the year that investors should watch out for a bit of a decoupling on the Nasdaq as the everything-tech rally fades in favor of select names.
A quarter into 2021, and we’re starting to see which names bear watching.
***
Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com
As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.
Today's reads
"Face-ripper rally." The S&P 500 is off to a fast start in Q2, rising to yet another all-time high yesterday. Tom Lee, co-founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors, tells CNBC the markets are set for a massive rally. How big? It'll be a "face-ripper." 🤔
Godzilla v. the box office. Godzilla v. Kong opened in the cinema on March 31 and crushed it, amassing $48.5 million in domestic box office receipts, the best opening weekend since the start of the pandemic. That showing is giving investors hope that movie-theater stocks are no longer going to be trampled under foot.
Yuan-a-be. The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating read on China's pilot program to introduce a digital yuan. Yes, most of our transactions are already the electronic variety, but a digital currency goes beyond that. It's legal tender based on code, not paper, that's distributed by the central bank. It gives users a quick and easy way to transact. It also gives the central government real-time information on how people spend money—a bonanza for economists, but a bit frightening for data-privacy watchdogs.
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Market candy
Quiz time
The United States is a land of 600,000 bridges. That's a lot of concrete and steel. Today's riddler: How many of those 600K spans are in clear need of refurbishment/upgrade/replacement?
- A. 600,000
- B. 60,000
- C. 6,000
- D. 600
The answer is B, 60,000, according to BofA Securities, citing American Road & Transportation Builders Association data... And, yes, most of them are on your morning commute.
