Outlook 2020: Soft landing, earnings returning

After a year of renewed monetary policy expansion, and despite trade war disruption, we expect the world to avoid a global recession in 2020. However, several of our CIOs raise the issue of negative bond yields, which are now of systemic concern. With central bank rates at their lowest levels and US Treasuries at their richest valuations in 100 years, we appear to be close to bubble territory, but we don’t know how or when this bubble might burst. 2020 could be that inflection point, or current conditions could persist for a bit longer.