FLQH News and Press, Franklin LibertyQ International Equity Hedged From 08/03/21

A marked fall in business optimism in July hints that companies could become reticent to expand capacity while the pandemic continues to hit supply chains. Output growth continued to run behind the growth of new orders for a fifth straight month, meaning backlogs of work rose sharply ...

The Delta variant of the coronavirus is rattling markets and poses real risks, but we should not be distracted from the successful impact of vaccinations. The effectiveness of vaccinations is the reason U.S. real GDP is back to pre-crisis levels amid this still-raging pandemic. Gl...

If not for the crisis, global current account balances would have continued to decline. Global current account balances are set to widen even further in 2021 but this trend is not expected to last. Despite the shock of the crisis and possibly due to its worldwide impact, excessive...

Our newly released findings from the second quarter of 2021 indicate that the volatility surrounding the recent reversal in market sentiment is creating additional opportunities for skilled managers. We expect this to remain the case in the months ahead as concerns over inflation and ...

Global growth is expected to accelerate over the course of 2021. Despite steadily rising equity prices, these strong earnings numbers have acted as a counterbalance to valuations. While the market signals we follow generally point to constructive economic and market conditions for...

In the tug of war between the impressive acceleration of economic growth due to global re-openings and fears of a resurgence of COVID-19 case counts, we believe economic growth will win out. Corporate earnings growth, which has been impressive thus far in 2021, remains underestimated....

The historic valuation gap between global Value and Growth stocks finally began its reversal. Despite pockets of outrageously overvalued Growth stocks being de-rated in Q1 and Q2, we still believe we are in a Growth bubble. Speculative behavior is rampant. We firmly believe that v...

Given the fuss about the goods buying mania, if the whole domestic system were to match or even approach it, one would think this alleged inflationary boom would have to keep something like the CFNAI far above 0. However, the latest reading for June 2021 at just 0.09 indicates growth bare...

Some central banks are currently debating whether to tighten monetary policy to fight inflationary pressures, after having eased decisively in response to the COVID-19 shock. New IMF staff research has found ever larger and more powerful companies are making monetary policy a less pot...

We’ve moved past the early-cycle environment that predominated risk taking in 2020, post the pandemic lows, and we’re moving really into a mid-cycle environment, which tends to be constructive for risk. This mid-cycle environment is still going to be expansionary, albeit...