After enjoying stellar performance this year, moving into 2020, investors will increasingly ask whether the global economy will proceed towards a trade war-engineered recession or whether growth will stabilise at a low level and potentially rebound, meaning the cycle could extend even further. 

On 30 October the Federal Reserve cut the federal funds rate for the third time this year, while hinting at a pause over the next few months. The rate cut followed the Fed’s announcement on 11 October that it will address a liquidity shortage causing volatility in the overnight loan market by buying $60 billion per month in Treasury bills until Q2 2020 and support overnight repo operations through January 2020.

Our medium-term baseline scenario is that of a late business cycle slowdown supported by the dovish U-turn of central banks. We expect economic growth to move below potential for most developed economies in 2020, a trend that will be further exacerbated in 2021 by a deteriorating cyclical environment and still anaemic global trade. Nevertheless, growth is expected to stay in positive territory.

Soft landing and light policy support. In terms of Chinese growth, we see the rate continuing to slow. Chinese GDP growth rose 6.0% in the third quarter of 2019 (Chinese authorities forecasted a range of 6.0%-6.5% YoY), the slowest pace since the early 1990s. Moving into 2020, we do expect that the new growth target will be set around 6.0%, if not lower, at between 5.5% and 6.0%, and our current forecast is confirmed at 5.8% YoY. Exports unsurprisingly have been weak, private capex has slowed notably, and public infrastructure has not picked up as expected. Going forward, we expect public infrastructure capex to accelerate, and the tight real estate policy stance to potentially moderate. Chinese policy mix remains stimulative, though in a very limited way so far and far away from the massive stimulus implemented in recent years.