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The outlook for 2025 will be heavily shaped by the return of President Trump and his myriad of policies and their implications for US and the rest of the world. Bottom-line, the impact of Trump’s various policies is likely to be inflationary with mixed effect on growth. And of great interest and potentially the most impactful to the rest of the world is Trump’s trade tariff policies, which we assume staggered implementation of tariffs from as early as 2Q 2025 and fully completed by 1H 2026.
We remain overweight on Equities in our asset allocation due to supportive earnings against a backdrop of falling interest rates. We maintain neutral on Fixed Income with an eye on buy-on-dip opportunities. We stay overweight on Alternatives as less correlated alternatives offer diversification benefits. Cash remains an underweight as the benign macro backdrop remains supportive for risk assets.
We upgrade the US equities to Neutral from Underweight with growth driven by good fundamentals, cyclical tailwinds, and policy shifts. We keep European equities at Neutral as the stagnation reflects persistent domestic and external headwinds. We maintain our overweight on Japan, characterized by economic normalization, wage growth, and corporate reforms. We downgrade EM Asia equities to Neutral from Overweight on a mixed but cautiously optimistic outlook amid structural challenges.
For Developed Markets (DM), we stay overweight on DM IG as quality premia remains a key focus and favour lower beta issuers with strong credit profiles. We stay underweight on DM USD HY and remain wary of credit pitfalls. We stay overweight Emerging Markets (EM) IG, preferring select ASEAN champions, strategic quasi-sovereigns and defensive consumer names.
We keep our positive view for gold as long-term safe haven demand needs will likely stay strong amidst further rise in geopolitical risks and economic risks from Trump 2.0 policies. We forecast gold price to reach USD 3,000 / oz by 4Q25. In comparison, we acknowledge the further downside risk from negative impact from Trump 2.0 tariffs on China and global energy demand, and we adopt a negative outlook for Brent crude oil forecasting USD 75 / bbl for 1H25 and USD 70 / bbl for 2H25.
We expect USD to strengthen further against most Major FX peers in 1H25 as tariff uncertainties dominate. In 2H25, USD strength may start to moderate and as most of the repricing for Trump’s tariffs (base case) may have already been done and our downward trajectory in US rates could start to exert downward pressure on the USD. In terms of front-end rates, we forecast the 3M compounded in arrears Sofr and Sora drifting lower across 2025 to 3.61% and 2.27% by 4Q25 respectively, in tune with our expectations of a further 75bps rate cuts from the Fed by 3Q25.
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