Hi everyone, Dan Cassidy here. Welcome back to Viewpoints on the UBS Market Moves podcast channel. We are excited to be back with our first episode of Viewpoints for 2025. This after a fairly long and hopefully enjoyable time off. With that, Burkhardt, it's great to be back on the mic with you. I hope that you were enjoying some sun, snow, and skiing on the slopes of Switzerland.
Well, thanks for asking, and absolutely, Dan. I mean, in fact, this has been the best winter we've had in many, many years that I can recall. There was beautiful snow and lots and lots of sun, cloudless skies and pristine skiing slopes. What's more, it was quite obvious that global tourists still love Europe and Switzerland and that they have lots of money to spend.
I think that actually also vindicates our Roaring Twenties scenario, where my family and I spend our Christmas and New Year's season every year. It was just absolutely impossible to find a hotel room unless you had booked one far in advance. Need I mention that booking a dinner table was equally challenging? In fact, for much of Europe, this winter so far,
seems to be the best winter tourism season for long. Whether that's in any way related to the fact that European markets and the outperforming US markets this year, I wouldn't dare to claim. But I do know that in many of my first meetings with European investors and business owners, the mood and momentum looked much better than it did last year.
Well, that all sounds very exciting, Burkhardt, and glad to hear that you enjoyed some time on the slopes. Since we're on the topic of the Swiss Alps, I must, of course, ask you about the World Economic Forum in Davos this year. Now, tomorrow, Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump is going to deliver his keenly awaited keynote speech to some of the most influential, opinionated,
Well, indeed, Dan, I have. The West End Davos is one of its kind every year. It's beautiful. It's powerful. It's unusually upbeat this year, I must say. Many of the people who are in Davos are from the West End.
Maybe even a bit of a bonfire of vanities. In fact, I cycle to Davos as I usually do. It's a scenic ride and only takes a few hours from where I am to reach. What's fun every year is that for the last couple of miles, I have to overtake a seemingly endless queue of limousines to face the bottleneck of a tight security checkpoint.
Those, can I say, are the rare delights for a cycling nerd like myself. But then the topics at the West this year I found, frankly, somewhat predictable. It's all about AI plus more of the same global issues we faced last year.
So my take is that the key role of the West is really for global leaders to network incredibly discreetly and efficiently. I think that's really why it's been going so strong for more than 50 years now since 1971.
And then, of course, it really showcases Switzerland at its best, let's be very clear. And it offers opinion leaders an unrivaled platform to broadcast to auditoriums packed with journalists from all over the world.
So, you know, it's great to have the weapon Davos, but frankly, I can't deny a sense of deja vu and admit that it doesn't seem to change the world as much as it claims every year. Well, Burkhard, thank you for that boots on the ground perspective. Very interesting firsthand commentary. Now, as you mentioned, Burkhard, President Trump's highly anticipated speech. We have
yet to turn to his inauguration, which was clearly the most followed and globally discussed event of this week. So would you have any first takes on the new era? Well, look, Ben, I mean, much has been said. So let me just mention three brief thoughts. First, clearly, the current market momentum just looks very hard to stop.
I mean, while it's not our main scenario, we do acknowledge that the odds of a 1990s-style melt-up have risen, if anything. I mentioned this before already. Several preconditions for that are in place. Among them, one, an equity risk premium that's still high, depending on your view of future productivity. Two, investment.
Investor equity holdings still moderate, while interest rates, especially in the US, have room to decline. And third, valuations, while stretched, could still rise substantially higher compared to the 1990s meltdown. My second thought is that Trump 2.0 looks highly supportive of our roaring 20s scenario, which
Suggests, as I mentioned to you a couple of times last year, to stay invested at all times for the rest of this decade, because this is history in the making. And my third thought really follows my contrarian bias, if I can say so.
You know, I think there's a good chance that in 2025, global energy prices, especially LNG and oil, could decline, not least to offset tariffs, which Trump is threatening. Now, ask yourself, which countries in the world have most to gain from lower energy, especially power crisis? Clearly, the answer to that question is Germany and much of Europe's industrial base.
Because the almost universal reaction of European corporates to its recent increase in power prices, and bear in mind power prices in Germany are around two and a half to three times higher than they are in the United States since Putin invaded Ukraine, the
The answer of most German corporates to these high power prices has been to bite the bullet, essentially, and to allow margins to shrink in order to retain their staff and continue to differentiate their products on quality, not price like Chinese usually do.
Add a second thought to this, which is that European markets are easily the most unloved markets today. They're cheap as chips, while some European fundamentals have actually improved. To name just a few, European governments over the last decade or so have delevered
rapidly and taken government debt to GDP ratios down from 165 at peak to now 124%. So they're in a very different fiscal position than the U.S. government is for the next few years. Private households, gloomy as they have been, have raised their savings rates from 13% to 16%, giving them plenty of pent-up
or at least room to fund it. And banks have never had higher capital ratios since the financial crisis in 2009, which is highly relevant because European companies borrow about three quarters of their debt from banks, which is about three times as much as their US peers who borrow much more from capital markets. So the bottom line to my third thought is that I
Ironically, and for fundamental as well as contrarian reasons, Front 2.0 may actually invigorate European stocks after years of underperformance.
at least since the start of 2025, the Europe trade actually did work beautifully well so far. Well, Burkhard, thank you very much. It's great to be back on the mic with you, and I'm sure 2025 will deliver us a lot to talk about on future episodes. Though a great way to kick off the series for the new year, and do look forward to picking back up with our conversation next week. Thank you, Dan. Likewise.
Looking forward to speaking to you again next week then. Thanks and bye for now.
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