The start of 2021 has been rocky for Britain. Its exit from the European Union unleashed a colossal amount of red tape that has left some industries desperate for help, and the country is under yet another lockdown because of a fast-spreading strain of the coronavirus.
But there has been a glimmer of hope. More than four million people in Britain have been partially vaccinated against the coronavirus, a promising pace of inoculation.
Investors looking to ride a wave of optimism about a vaccine rollout have turned to Britain’s stock market, which has posted a strong start to the year, jumping more than 6 percent in the first week.
Overall, in the first two and a half weeks of January, the FTSE 100, Britain’s benchmark stock index of large companies, gained 4.3 percent — outstripping the S&P 500 index, which rose 2.6 percent, and the Stoxx Europe 600 index, which was up 3 percent. Even when the gains are converted to U.S. dollars, the FTSE 100 still has a clear lead.
Beyond the vaccine rollout helping to ensure an economic rebound, another factor is drawing investors: the relative cheapness of British stocks.
Britain’s FTSE 100 index is benefiting from an investment strategy in which traders buy so-called value stocks. These are companies that are perceived to be trading below their true value because their business has been disrupted by a recession, especially in the financial and energy sectors, and the FTSE 100 has a large share of these stocks.
Analysts at Citigroup have ordained Britain’s stock market their “favorite” value trade.
“I would emphasize the very much unloved and horrible dreadful U.K. market might be worth a look this year,” Robert Buckland, a Citigroup equity strategist, said in a presentation last week. “We all know it’s been a place to avoid for many, many years.”
The British stock market has been a laggard for years.
Once converted into dollars, the annual returns of the FTSE 100 have been the worst of the three indexes for the past nine years.
Why are investors betting on a turnaround now? For one, many of them are ready for a bargain. The equity bull market has been dominated by shares of American tech companies that are expensive, which makes some investors nervous about how much they can keep rising. Cheap stocks in industries that tend to do well during economic boom times are offering an alternative.
And then there is Britain’s free-trade deal with the European Union. Some investors have put aside whether it’s a good or bad deal in its detail, in favor of relief that an agreement was reached in late December.
The deal “reduced that overhang people had of uncertainty,” said Caroline Simmons, the U.K. chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management.
The new Biden administration will get its first dose of economic reality Thursday morning when the Labor Department reports the latest weekly data on initial jobless claims.
Last week, the government reported a surge in demand for unemployment benefits, with more than one million new claims, as pandemic-related restrictions and lockdowns took a fierce toll on employment.
The virus has hardly abated since then, with the death toll topping 400,000 in the United States, and few economists expect any significant letup in layoffs. Although job losses have been concentrated in service industries like restaurants and leisure and entertainment, the broader economy has also shown signs of a slowdown recently.
“I think it’s going to be another bad number, but some of what we saw last week was catch-up after the holidays,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton in Chicago. “I think we will be able to see Thursday how much was catch-up and how much was deteriorating economic conditions.”
The beginning of vaccinations in December provided optimism about a quick turnaround, but the slow rollout in many parts of the country has set back those hopes. On the other hand, the passage of a $900 billion relief package late last year and the prospect of more aid under the Biden administration have allayed fears of a double-dip recession.
An additional $300 a week in supplemental unemployment benefits may encourage more people to file for benefits, said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago. The increased assistance was part of the new stimulus effort.
Over all, the best bet for the economy is more vaccinations, Mr. Tannenbaum said.
“There is no better economic stimulus than a successful vaccine rollout,” he said. “It will reduce the risk of human interaction and provide a basis on which different types of businesses can open more durably.”
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Stocks on Wall Street were set to open higher on Thursday after the S&P 500 index closed at a record high after President Biden was sworn in the previous day.
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The benchmark U.S. index was heading for a 0.2 percent increase as investors await the latest data on weekly unemployment claims. It will give the new Biden administration its first signal of how the American labor market is responding to new fiscal stimulus as the pandemic rages on. Last week, the number of claims jumped, though some of that was attributed to a catch up in the data from the holiday period.
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European stocks were mostly higher as traders anticipated more U.S. fiscal stimulus. The Stoxx Europe 600 index rose 0.4 percent, reaching an 11-month high. Most markets in Asia closed higher.
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Renewable energy stocks extended gains this week after Mr. Biden recommitted the United States to the Paris climate agreement. Shares in Orsted and Vestas, two Danish wind energy companies, are up nearly 6 percent and 8 percent this week. Siemens Gamesa, a Spanish subsidiary of Siemens Energy that makes wind turbines, rose more than 3 percent on Thursday. Shares in First Solar, an American company, were up 2.8 percent in premarket trading.
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Shares in the Canadian company TC Energy fell 1.2 percent on Wednesday, after it said it would stop work on the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Later in the day, Mr. Biden rescinded the company’s construction permit.
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Oil prices declined on Thursday. Futures of West Texas Intermediate fell 0.6 percent to just under $53 a barrel.
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The euro rose 0.3 percent against the U.S. dollar before the European Central Bank announces its latest policy decision, though traders were not expecting a change from the current stance of negative interest rates and asset buying.
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The pound rose 0.6 percent against the U.S. dollar and was stronger against most major peers after the Bank of England governor struck a cautious tone about the use of negative interest rates, diminishing some expectations in the market that the tool could be used soon. The central bank governor, Andrew Bailey, said that he expected the British economy to experience a “pronounced recovery” as the vaccination program is rolled out.
Suriname, Guyana and Brazil are the new areas of focus for oil companies, attracting more new investment than the Gulf of Mexico and other more established oil fields. They are helping to keep global oil prices relatively low, undermining efforts by Russia and its allies in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, like Saudi Arabia, to manage global supply and push up prices.
The recent pickup in interest in Guyana and Suriname is somewhat surprising because their promise as oil producers has often come up empty, reports The New York Times’s Clifford Krauss. Companies drilled more than 100 unsuccessful wells there, mostly in shallow waters, from 1950 to 2014. But after rich fields were found in the deep waters off Brazil, Exxon Mobil and other companies returned to take another look. Exxon struck a gusher in Guyanese waters in 2015, opening the current flurry of exploration.
In Guyana, oil companies have found more than 10 billion barrels of probable reserves of accessible oil and gas offshore, according to IHS Markit, the energy consulting firm. Production began in 2019 and is ramping up quickly. Guyana already accounts for one of the top 50 oil basins worldwide, according to consultants.
Suriname has at least three billion to four billion barrels of reserves, energy experts said, or up to half the new oil and gas discovered around the world last year.
Oil companies say they can make money in Suriname with oil prices as low as $30 to $40 a barrel because of lower costs. That is roughly equivalent to the threshold in Guyana and well below today’s oil price. It is also below break-even levels in many places, including some U.S. shale fields, where costs usually add up to nearly $50 a barrel.
United Airlines lost $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter, bringing its total losses for 2020 to just over $7 billion, its worst year since merging with Continental Airlines a decade ago. Despite that terrible loss, the airline said it expects 2021 to be a “transition year” as it prepares for a recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
“The truth is that Covid-19 has changed United Airlines forever,” the company’s chief executive, Scott Kirby, said in a statement. “The passion, teamwork and perseverance that the United team showed in 2020 is exactly what will help us build a new United Airlines that’s better, stronger and more profitable than ever.”
The airline reported about $3.4 billion in operating revenue in the final three months of last year, down more than two-thirds from the same period in 2019. It ended the year with access to nearly $20 billion in cash or cash-equivalent funds, not including federal stimulus loans.
Delta Air Lines last week reported a $12.4 billion loss in 2020, capping what its chief executive called the “toughest year in Delta’s history.”
In anticipation of a recovery, United has resumed major maintenance and engine overhauls so that planes sidelined by weak demand will be ready as more people start flying again, it said.
But that recovery is unlikely to arrive for quite some time. United said it expects to bring in about a third as much operating revenue in the first quarter of this year as it did during the same three months in 2019. Most analysts believe the airline industry will not fully recover from the pandemic for several years.