How a Weaker Dollar Could Boost U.S. Stocks

The dollar’s bearish run is likely to affect U.S. equity markets. Michelle Weaver, our U.S. Thematic & Equity Strategist, and David Adams, our Head of G10 FX Strategy, discuss what investors should consider.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Michelle Weaver: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michelle Weaver, U.S. Thematic and Equity strategist at Morgan Stanley. David Adams: And I'm Dave Adams, head of G10 FX Strategy here at Morgan Stanley. Michelle Weaver: Our colleagues were recently on the show to talk about the impact of the weak dollar on European equities. And today we wanted to continue that conversation by looking at what a weak U.S. dollar means for the U.S. equity market.It's Thursday, July 17th at 2pm in London. Morgan Stanley has a bearish view on the U.S. dollar. And this is something our chief global FX strategist James Lord spoke about recently on the show. But Dave, I want to go over the outlook again, since Morgan Stanley has a really differentiated view on this. Do you think the dollar will continue to depreciate during the remainder of the year? David Adams: We do, and we do. We have been dollar bears this whole year, and it has been very out of consensus. But we do think the weakness will continue and our forecasts remain one of the most bearish on the street for the dollar. The dollar has had its worst first half of the year since 1973, and the dollar index has fallen about 10 percent year to date, but we think we're at the intermission rather than the finale. The second act for the dollar weakening trend should come over the next 12 months as U.S. interest rates and U.S. growth rates converge to that of the rest of the world. And FX hedging of existing U.S. assets held by foreign investors adds further negative risk premium to the dollar. The result is that we're looking for yet another 10 percent drop in the dollar by the end of next year. Michelle Weaver: That's really interesting and a differentiated view for Morgan Stanley. When I think about one of the key themes that we've been following this year, it's the multipolar world or a shift away from globalization to more localized spheres of influence. This is an important element to the dollar story.How have tariffs impacted currency and your outlook? David Adams: Tariffs play a key role in this framework. Tariffs have a positive impact on inflation, but a negative impact on U.S. growth. But the inflation impact comes faster and the negative impact on growth and employment that comes a bit later. This puts the Fed in a really tough spot and it's why our economists are pretty out of consensus in calling for both no cuts this year, and a much faster and deeper pace of cuts in 2026. The results for me in FX land is that the market is underestimating just how low the Fed will go and just how low U.S. rates will go, in general. Tariffs play a big role in helping to generate this rate convergence, and rate differentials are a fundamental driver of currencies. The more that U.S. rates are going to fall, the more likely it is that the dollar keeps falling too. Michelle Weaver: Tariffs have certainly impacted heavily on our view for the U.S. equity market and it's something that no asset class is not impacted by really. Given the volatility and the magnitude of the move we've seen this year, are foreign investors hedging more? David Adams: We do think they've started hedging more, but the bulk of the move is really ahead of us. Foreign investors own a massive amount of U.S. assets. European investors alone own $8 trillion of U.S. bonds and stocks, and that's only about a quarter of total foreign ownership of U.S. assets. Now when foreign investors buy U.S. assets, they have to sell their currency and buy the dollar. But at some point, you're going to have to bring that money back, so you're going to have to sell the dollar and buy back your home currency again. If the dollar rises over this period, you've made a gain, congratulations. But if it falls, you've made a loss. Now a lot of foreign investors will hedge this currency risk, and they'll use instruments like forwards and options to do so. But in the case of the U.S., we found that a lot of foreign investors really choose not to hedge this exposure, particularly on the equity side. And this reflects both a view that the dollar would appreciate; so, they want to take that gain. But it also reflects the dollar's negative correlation to equities. So, what's changing now? Well, a lot of investors are starting to rethink this decision and add those FX hedges, which really means dollar selling. Now, there's a lot of factors motivating their decision to hedge. One, of course is price. If U.S. rates are going to converge meaningfully to the rest of the world – like we expect – that flattens out the forward curve and makes those forwards cheaper to buy to hedge. But the breakdown in correlations that we've seen more broadly, the ...