Thursday, February 6, 2014

ECB Interest Rates Unchanged

Though Draghi stands ready to 'take further decisive action if required', interest rates in the Eurozone remain unchanged today:

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As for the €...

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A quick look at our factor scoring model reveals that companies more correlated with the € tend to have performed poorly when compared to companies that are less correlated.  Overall, however, the admittedly weak correlation has fallen steadily over the last year:

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Does this relationship give us any insight into sector performance?

The sectors with the highest 65-day correlation to the € are Consumer Staples and Utilities, while the sectors with the lowest association are Consumer Discretionary and Information Technology:

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In general, those sectors with the higher correlation have underperformed while those sectors with lower correlation have done better over the last few months:

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However, with a slightly above average correlation to the € (and, therefore, an expectation for less robust performance), the Health Care sector's domination would seem to indicate that, at least for now, the strength in the currency holds little influence over the average MSCI Europe stock.