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Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheats, head of Corporate Credit Research at Morgan Stanley. Today I'll be discussing the lessons we can learn from 2024, a remarkable year that also may be easily forgotten. It's Friday, January 3rd at 2pm in London. In 2024, I celebrated my 20th year with Morgan Stanley. Among my regrets over this time was not keeping a better journal. It's notable how quickly events in the market that seem large and remarkable at the time can fade in one's memory as the years merge together. How markets that seem easy or obvious in hindsight were anything but. I say this because many Years from now, 2024 may end up being one of those relatively forgettable years. Another year where, as usually happens, the stock market went up. Another year where stocks outperform bonds, the US dollar strengthened, and US stocks beat those abroad. Yet what is significant about 2024 is the scale of all these trends. For anyone managing money, the question of stocks versus Bonds, US versus Rest of world, large versus Small or growth versus Value are some of the most fundamental strategic questions one faces. These calls don't always matter, but last year they did to a very large degree. Global stocks outperformed bonds by about 20%. Growth outperformed value by practically the same amount. US stocks beat their global peers by 13%. In short, one's experience in 2024 in relative performance could have varied significantly based on just a few relatively simple decisions. Related to that is a second lesson. 2024 was a reminder that while valuation is a powerful long term force, it can be a much more frustrating 12 month guide. All of those relative relationships I just mentioned, stocks versus Bonds, growth versus Value, US versus International all worked in favor of the market that was historically richer entering last year. For our third lesson from last year, we'll focus on credit, where investors earn a premium over safer government bonds by lending to riskier corporate borrowers. Notable for this asset class in 2024 was, for the most part, it did its own thing, showing some encouraging independence from other markets and highlighting the value of digging into a borrower's details. Specifically, I think this independence showed up in a few different ways. Credit showed low correlation to government bonds, for example, delivering good excess returns despite very large swings in yields or central bank expectations. It also even more impressively bucked some of 2024's biggest trends. For example, while the outperformance of the US economy and US assets was one of the biggest stories of 2024, that wasn't the case in credit, where Europe and Asia actually did marginally better. In contrast to the equity market, smaller companies in credit outperformed as spreads in high yield, and loans outperformed larger investment grade spreads even after adjusting for risk. And this was true at an even more granular level. Rise in corporate activity alongside more aggressive strategies for companies to deal with their own borrowing created very dispersed outcomes driven by bond level documentation. Far removed from the macro machinations of politics and monetary policy. This somewhat weaker connection to the broader world is central to how we think about credit looking ahead. While big economic and political questions certainly loom in 2025, we think the credit for now will be driven by more micro company level trends and show somewhat lower correlation to other assets at least through the first half of this year. From all of us at Thoughts on the Market we wish you a very happy New Year and all the best for 2025. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, leave us a review wherever you listen and share thoughts on the market with a friend or colleague today.
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