Barclays: Expect economic growth to accelerate in the second half of next year, with structural growth areas emerging in the stock market
1min read Michael Kelly, Global Multi-Asset Head at Barclays, released the 2025 Multi-Asset Outlook. He expects the economy to accelerate in the second half of 2025, with noteworthy sectors including US large banks and mid-caps, as well as UK and Taiwan stocks, which will be core investments in structural growth areas after themes such as productivity improvement, new energy transition, US high-quality stocks and the Indian market.
For fixed income, credit spreads of US bonds of all categories generally narrowed, but the Asian high-yield bond market and US mortgage-backed securities were exceptions, as they were not affected by the general market conditions and their spreads remained normal.
China is shifting its reserves from US Treasury bonds to gold to reduce its reliance on the US dollar, and the People's Bank of China has taken steps to stabilise the yuan, further solidifying gold's role in the international market. Moreover, as economic links weaken and geopolitical risks increase, gold is becoming an increasingly important strategic hedge.
Barclays said that while President-elect Trump's tariff, immigration and tax policies are currently viewed as "hot" policies, which may add inflationary pressure, there are other policy areas that show a pro-business and supply-side improvement tendency, so the market situation next year may be a tug-of-war between inflation populist measures and deflation, pro-business and supply-side dominant policies.
