Market Analysis: July 2026

🌍 Macro in 5 Sentences The macroeconomic situation shows gradual disinflation alongside resilient growth, fueling hopes for a soft economic landing. Key interest rates are in a plateau phase, with markets pricing in initial easing for mid-2025, while central banks communicatively insist on data dependence. Inflation expectations remain anchored despite geopolitical uncertainties and energy price risks, limiting the scope for rate cuts. Market sentiment is characterized by selective risk appetite, supported by strong corporate balance sheets and AI investments, but dampened by valuation extremes in US tech stocks. The yield curve has normalized but signals no imminent recession, rather a phase of moderate slowdown. Overall, a constructive but cautious stance dominates, with a focus on quality and duration. 📈 Stock Markets & ETFs Global stock markets are moving through a phase of heightened valuation dispersion: While US tech indices like the Nasdaq-100 mark the upper end of the historical range with a forward P/E of over 28, European and Asian indices trade at discounts of 15-20% relative to their long-term averages. This divergence reflects concentrated earnings expectations in a few sectors, structurally amplifying cluster risk in market-cap-weighted ETFs. Over the past decade, passive indexing has led to a self-reinforcement of the largest stocks, causing the correlation between index performance and fundamental breadth to decline. For investors, this means that pure market beta exposure increasingly depends on a few individual stocks, while the dispersion of single-stock returns remains historically high. Robust portfolio construction therefore requires active review of factor and sector allocation, as the efficiency of market-cap weighting diminishes under concentration conditions. The current risk premium for global equities relative to bonds is near 2021 levels, increasing sensitivity to interest rate and earnings revisions. 🧾 Funds Active fund strategies are structurally struggling against the burden of costs and transparency in the current market environment characterized by index concentration and efficiency. The majority of active managers fail to …