Investors looking for value in equities and currencies

Global investors are pursuing value strategies, having moved away from the strongly positive business cycle stance that they embraced in the first quarter of this year. They are buying sectors with low relative equity multiples that have underperformed over the past 12 months, such as IT, consumer staples and healthcare. In this context, investors are viewing energy, materials, industrials and utilities as high risk. Investors are not anticipating economic growth in 2005. The US 2/10-year yield curve is the flattest since March 2001, when the economy was in recession. Another 50-75bp...