EUR/USD likely to find a peak near 1.25: UBS
Investing.com -- JPMorgan’s quant strategists reaffirmed their positive view on equities, highlighting supportive financial conditions, renewed foreign inflows into U.S. markets, and valuation models that point to stock prices broadly in line with fair value.
While macro hedge funds remain cautious, equity long/short funds “appear to have rebuilt their equity exposures from April already, thus benefiting from the past months’ V-shaped recovery,” strategists led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said in a Wednesday report.
They pointed to equity beta levels and futures positioning to show that macro managers’ caution is reflected in higher short interest in the SPY ETF (NYSE:SPY) versus Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ).
“We continue to view the gap between the short interest of SPY and QQQ ETFs as a bullish equity market signal,” the strategists wrote.
Financial conditions remain loose across the U.S. and the euro area. Surveys from both the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB) showed a reversal of earlier tightening, with banks reporting easing standards.
Meanwhile, loan growth has accelerated, JPMorgan notes. U.S. bank lending expanded at an annualized pace of just over 6% in the second quarter, while euro area lending grew 3.3% in the first half of the year.
The slowdown in corporate bond issuance has been “more than offset by the increased pace of loan creation,” strategists said, reinforcing the supportive backdrop.
Foreign investors also turned more aggressive buyers of U.S. stocks. Net purchases of equities reached $163 billion in June, up from $116 billion in May. Sovereign wealth and state pension funds accounted for $47 billion of the inflows, while hedge funds contributed around $39 billion.
By contrast, retail-driven ETF flows into U.S. equities have “largely flatlined since February 2025,” suggesting foreign ETF investors remain on the sidelines.
Meanwhile, euro area equities saw strong inflows in June after several months of stagnation, though the pace no longer exceeds that of the U.S., consistent with the “flatlining of the Europe minus U.S. equity ETF impulse,” the report states.
On valuation, JPMorgan’s fair-value framework puts the S&P 500 at around 5,560, with the index currently trading about 15% above that level.
Looking ahead, the model projects fair value by late 2026, roughly 15% higher than today’s fair-value estimate, implying markets are already pricing in much of the expected improvement in earnings.
“For the S&P 500, our long-term fair value framework suggests a year-end 2026 projection that is close to the current price,” the strategists said.
For bonds, the framework estimates 10-year real U.S. Treasury yields at just over 1.7%, modestly cheap by 10–20 basis points.
With JPMorgan forecasting four consecutive 25 basis point Fed cuts, real yields could face about 35 basis points of downward pressure over the coming year, though term premia may offset part of that, the strategists said.