Weekly Market Update - 7 December 2015

Market Outlook

Equity Market Outlook

• Market activities are expected to be quiet ahead of the prolonged year-end holiday season.
• We expect some window dressing activities at the end of the year.
• We maintain our bottom-up stock picking strategy.

Fixed Income Outlook 

• The Federal Reserve continued its hawkish rhetoric, signalling it was on track to hike in the December meeting. Its European counterpart, the ECB, disappointed expectations during its monetary policy meeting when it cut rates by 10 bps and maintained its asset purchase amount. Post meeting, the euro rallied, followed by broad weakness in dollar assets. On Friday, the non-farm payroll posted a better than expected figure of 211k jobs, reinforcing the case for a rate hike. The dollar corrected after a weak trading session.
• In the local sovereign market, the benchmarks traded marginally stronger due to the stronger ringgit performance. There was also higher trading volume last week as a result of the stronger currency. In the coming weeks, we anticipate thin trading volumes ahead of the year-end holidays and Fed meeting.

Source: Lipper for Investment Management, as at 4 December 2015. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future performance. 

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