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Except right now I'm all short/bearish. I have no other equity investments, all the rest is medium term fixed income. I don't think European economies can really decouple, firstly, and secondly even if the shock is dampened compared to the US, it will still be a meat grinding in the euro stock market, for the following reasons:
  • one third of euro large caps are financials, with US credit exposure,
  • the industrial euro large caps are globalized companies with revenues in dollar, so their P/E in euros is bound to degrade,
  • one third of capitalisation of euro large caps is US mutual/pension funds and banks, which are about to become net sellers for the first time in 50 years (lock in the gains including forex, pay the retirees, the 401k raiders, repair the balance sheets...)


Pierre
by Pierre on Wed Mar 26th, 2008 at 08:54:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Agreed on all of the above, but where are the Chinese and Oil exporters going to put all their loot - the stuff they used to put in dollars? What about smaller caps and those Euro companies with almost no direct US exposure?

"It's a mystery to me - the game commences, For the usual fee - plus expenses, Confidential information - it's in my diary..."
by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Wed Mar 26th, 2008 at 09:45:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Small caps are not part of the headline indices.

In addition, if the financials do poorly it will strngle the credit for the real economy.

It'd be nice if the battle were only against the right wingers, not half of the left on top of that — François in Paris

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Mar 26th, 2008 at 09:52:06 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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