Podcast: Inversión durante las guerras comerciales de Trump
Descubre cómo las tensiones comerciales globales y el temor a una recesión en EE.UU. están afectando a los mercados. Nuestro expertos Vera German y Abbas Barkhordar revelan las oportunidades en Europa, los mercados emergentes y Asia.
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[00:00:01.360] - David Brett
The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up, and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Past performance is not a guide to future performance. The information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation of any funds, services or products, or to adopt any investment strategy. This pod is marketing material issued by Schroder Investment Management Limited, registered number 189-3220 England. Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for informational purposes only. Please contact your financial adviser before making any investment decisions.
[00:00:40.500] - David Brett
Welcome to the Investor Download, the podcast about the themes driving markets and the economy now and in the future.
[00:00:54.100] - David Brett
I'm your host, David Brett. With trade wars erupting around the world between the US and its competitors and tariffs being thrown around like confetti, some investors are predicting recession in the US. While Schroders' economists feel that that view is a little too extreme, the sentiment towards the world's largest consumer economy is having an impact on markets globally. We're going to look beyond major markets in the US and UK today and more towards Europe, emerging markets, and Asia, to see how the current situation is affecting them and where opportunities might lie. In this show, my colleague Vera German, a value investor, will give her perspective from an emerging markets point of view, while Abbas Barkhordar will talk to us about the opportunities being presented in Asia.
[00:01:55.070] - Announcer
On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, your listening to the Investor Download.
[00:02:02.140] - David Brett
Vera, welcome to the show. It's been quite a ride for investors since the beginning of 2025, in particular since the official start of the Trump presidency. What's your take on what's been happening?
[00:02:12.860] - Vera German
I think the most interesting thing from our standpoint is in market performance, everything is relative. There are all those trends playing out. But ultimately, what we've seen in the run up to Trump's election is that there was one dominant narrative that if he is to be elected, then the US exceptionalism continues, the dollar strengthens, the US economy does wonderfully, emerging markets get absolutely whacked. Those are the market movements that we have seen. Emerging markets being relatively cheap got even cheaper. US being expensive got even more expensive. And there was very little descent from that narrative, which we always thought was quite interesting and not particularly intuitive, given that the world economy and the world geopolitical order is such a of complex mechanism that it's very, very difficult to distil something especially so unpredictable and in some ways, incoherent as the second Trump administration to one particular set of consequences. And so what we've seen year to date, I think, is more of an unwinding of the confidence behind those market moves. So we see the moves on every tariff announcement, as has been said before, even though it's not final and we don't know how long it might last for.
[00:03:33.140] - David Brett
From the perspective of a value investor and someone interested in emerging markets, what's standing out for you?
[00:03:39.300] - Vera German
What we see is in relative terms, US is becoming a less certain bet, which is why it selling off. China, for example, and other EMs is becoming, in relative terms, a more interesting proposition. The Chinese market has had a bit of a rally year to date. It's largely driven by AI names. But there's definitely a bit of a repricing of what investors see as attractive. It's natural, it's normal, it happens in all markets. Then, of course, there's the Russia-Ukraine question. I think Eastern Europe is... Various Eastern European exchanges are the best performers, again, in 2025 so far. So the Polish stocks, Czech stocks, et cetera, are up anywhere between 20 and 25 % in dollar terms this year only. It is because people are pricing the possibilities that some of those stocks will be able to go, will be able to will be able to resume their Russian operations in one way or another. And so as such for us as market participants, volatility is interesting because it means that we have better entry points, we have better exit points. Of course, for us as EM investors, it's wonderful that there is some momentum behind the asset class today.
[00:04:59.260] - David Brett
Europe has faced many issues over the last few years with Britain leaving the EU, Russia invading Ukraine, a stagnating economy, and splintering politics. How do you view Europe as an asset class, given all the uncertainty?
[00:05:11.780] - Vera German
I think Eastern and Central Europe has been on quite a ride since February 2022. Of course, all of those regions were under a lot of pressure when the war in Ukraine started. People had concerns that perhaps the war will move further east, sorry, further west from the Ukraine, we have then seen that that didn't happen. Those markets are repricing constantly. But I think in the end of the day, it's that part. European equities have been one of the cheapest asset classes in the world for quite some time, actually.
[00:05:46.850] - David Brett
Since President Trump's infamous meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, European allies, and particularly Germany, have signalled an intention to increase spending on defence. What impact has that had on markets?
[00:05:59.230] - Vera German
The defence companies have repriced a lot. Banks have repriced a lot in the expectation of more stimulus and more spending. We're seeing genuinely quite an interesting paradigm shift, I would say, in terms of 12 months ago, if somebody said to you, European equities are super attractive, China is having a rebound, people are selling the US, no one would believe you because 12 months ago, it didn't seem like a possible scenario to a vast majority of financial commentators. I think we live in very interesting times, that's for sure.
[00:06:34.550] - David Brett
For those looking to invest in emerging markets, what's the one piece of advice you would have?
[00:06:39.690] - Vera German
I think just that one should always be prepared for paradigm shifts. If everybody tells you that something is certainly going to happen, it's usually prudent to hedge just in case it doesn't happen.
[00:06:51.450] - David Brett
That's it for part one. In the second part of the show, we'll focus on Asia.
[00:06:56.100] - Announcer
Get in touch with us by email at schroderspodcasts@schroders.com or visit our website, schroders.com/theinvestordownload.
[00:07:08.140] - David Brett
Abbas, welcome to The Investor Download. China is a big part of the investment theme in Asia, particularly because of the competition it poses to the US. But Asia is far more than just about what's going on between China and the US. What's your take on what's happening right now?
[00:07:24.070] - Abbas Barkhardor
Yeah, I mean, one thing I'd say is Asia is an incredibly diverse region. It's got a hugely heterogeneous driver. So What's going on in India is really very loosely connected to what's going on in Taiwan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Singapore. So we talk about it as an asset class, but in reality, it's probably three or four different areas with very different drivers. There's always different dynamics going on in those markets. We touched on a few of them. I think the story of this year in particular has been China's resurgence, and that's on the back of a couple of things. One is a bit more optimism about the government, certainly since about September last year, has been a little bit more on the ball in terms of reacting and showing that the market that they are aware that the economy is weak and there are levers that they have available to pull. Yes, they've probably been a bit hesitant to pull all of those levers at once, and they wanted to wait and see what the eventual relationship with the US would settle down into, if it ever does settle. But that's one thing that's helped in China.
[00:08:25.890] - Abbas Barkhardor
The other point is, I think most people are aware of the emergence of Deep Seek, which is the Chinese-developed AI model that came out earlier this year and really shocked the markets, not just in Asia, not just in China, actually across the world, and had a really big impact on US tech stocks because it hinted at this possibility that this AI model development might be subject to innovation and cheaper methods of training these models. Just like everything in tech historically has been, things do get cheaper, but that really shocked the market. That's been a couple of the drivers that have driven the market. But as I said, it's heterogeneous impact. So in China, that's been positive, more AI development and more potentially domestic use cases for AI. But Taiwan has suffered, as you said, as the corollary of that, as the beneficiary of a lot of AI spend by the US tech giants. So yes, hugely different impacts. But the nice thing for us, again, as active managers, is having that variety variety, having that volatility and having the ability to, therefore, survey that whole landscape and focus on the areas where we see those mispriced opportunities.
[00:09:38.700] - David Brett
You've put a lot of emphasis on the developments in tech around the turn of the year. How do you expect that to play out?
[00:09:45.390] - Abbas Barkhardor
A lot of the tech spend that's going to happen in China, and a number of the leading platforms have announced that they're going to massively increase CapEx into AI servers and development. Now, the jury is really very still out on the return on that investment that eventually they'll see. I mean, that's the case in the US. There's a live debate amongst investors about exactly what return investors will see from investment in these massive data centres and AI servers that is going on from all the big US tech firms with very little revenue backing that so far. Now, the bet is that will come through in the future. In China, that's an even bigger question because it's a much more competitive market in terms of the cloud and internet services. There's a very different culture in terms of how much they can price and charge for those services. It's viewed in this context, as we've been saying, it's viewed as a bit of a national priority, and therefore, any hint of trying to maximise profits on the back of that. It's very much viewed as this is a priority. This is something that we need to develop as a national capability.
[00:10:55.530] - David Brett
There appears to be some uncertainty. How do you approach that as investors?
[00:10:59.950] - Abbas Barkhardor
For us as investors and people who are interested in seeing a return on that investment that's being made, we have to take a very critical look as to actually is this the best capital allocation? We've talked about a lot of sectors in China where there's been overcapacity, and we've seen it in the last few years, in solar panels and lots of other areas where the government is very keen for China to develop that capability. If AI is going to be similar, the results suggest the return on investments have been pretty poor in those areas where there's been overcapacity and need to export that. So I think it's a mixed picture. What we can say and what we try and do our approach is to look at those hardware names in tech which stand to benefit from that increased tech spend, and particularly those where they're a bit more agnostic about who is the eventual customer, where the eventual winners of the race are, because as we've already suggested, just even this year with the emergence of Deep Seek, it completely can flip the idea of who's going to lead this race for AI, whether it's going to be the West, which firms in the West, whether it's going to be more broad than that.
[00:12:08.870] - Abbas Barkhardor
But what we can say is if we look deep into the supply chains, it comes down to a few companies in Asia who are absolutely critical to the manufacturing of all of these chips, all of the memory that's used in these applications. So once you focus on those top quality companies who are interested in generating return on investment, that's where we see the better opportunities.
[00:12:31.570] - David Brett
Investors notoriously in the main stick to their local regions, or at least the regions they know best. I know one of the concerns some investors have with parts of Asia is corporate governance. As a stock picker in Asia, what are your thoughts on the shareholder relationships and the treatment of shareholders across that region?
[00:12:50.070] - Abbas Barkhardor
I think there's structural factors behind some of them, and SOEs is a clear one where there is always going to be a difference in incentives and alignment. But there's also been areas where there's no real good reason for some of the poor corporate governance to persist. There are areas outside of our exact investment universe, but Japan was one where we've obviously seen a huge amount of change in terms of the government finally pushing companies to take shareholder interest more seriously using a mixture of carrots and sticks, and that's had some impact. And you've seen one country, in particular in Asia Korea, which has persistently had this huge discount relative to the rest of the region because of corporate governance concerns. So they've seen what's happening in Japan. They've tried to emulate some of those factors with a obviously customised spin as to the exact issues in Korea. And there are different issues. Korea has a lot more family ownership where the incentives are quite different, and there's a whole boring issue about inheritance tax, which I won't go into. But there are lots of levers that could be pulled to try and improve it. We've seen baby steps in that direction, but it's a long haul.
[00:14:09.980] - Abbas Barkhardor
This is not going to be an overnight transformation. It speaks to culture, it speaks to board composition, all of those things. But yes, we are definitely seeing some movement in areas which desperately do need improved governance.
[00:14:24.210] - David Brett
If you had one piece of advice for anyone looking to invest in Asia.
[00:14:28.100] - Abbas Barkhardor
Post the US election, there's been a lot of negativity on emerging markets on Asia relative to the more developed markets in the US in particular. I think a lot of that negativity has reflected in prices and leaves us where we are now, which is looking relatively attractive.
[00:14:46.650] - David Brett
That was the show. We very much hope you enjoyed it. You can subscribe to the investor download wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to get in touch with us, it's schroderspodcasts@schroders.com. And you can find out much, much more at schroders.com/insights. New shows drop every other Thursday at 05: 00 PM UK time. In the meantime, keep safe and go well.
[00:15:13.020] - David Brett
The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up, and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested. Past performance is not a guide to future performance. The information is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation of any funds, services or products, or to adopt any investment strategy. This pod is marketing material issued by Schroder Investment Management Limited, registered number 189-3220 England, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for informational purposes only. Please contact your financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
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