Navigating Sectors Globally In 2024

Last week, ahead of earnings, we updated our thoughts on sectors for 2024 for both the US as well as other geographical regions under RBC’s coverage, Europe, Canada, and Australia. The work was based on our own top-down quantitative analysis on earnings revisions, valuations, and macro fundamentals, as well as the results of a survey that we conducted of RBC’s industry analysts in late December and early January.

Three big things you need to know: First, across the globe most of our analysts are optimistic on performance in the year ahead, with favorable views on the impact of potentially lower interest rates and, to a lesser degree, favorable views on valuations. Second, in the US, the only region where we do formal strategy sector recommendations, we remain overweight Financials, Energy, and Health Care. We downgraded Tech to market weight, upgraded Consumer Discretionary to market weight, and upgraded Utilities to overweight. Third, in Europe, Canada, and Australia our analysts’ top sectors according to the survey varied, but Utilities was among the top sectors in the eyes of our analysts in each.