On April 19, Heng An Standard Life (Asia) announced its latest analysis of macroeconomic outlook for the second quarter of 2024, predicting that the global economy has resilience but slow growth, with a decreased likelihood of a hard landing, overall declining inflation but still sticky, and the expectation that the United States will delay interest rate cuts until the second half of this year. At the same time, due to the limited space for interest rates to continue rising significantly, the current yield level of interest-bearing bonds has potential value for allocation. According to the latest World Economic Outlook from the International Monetary Fund, global economic growth is expected to remain at 3.1% this year, rising slightly to 3.2% in 2025. Compared to the previous forecast, the economic growth rate for 2024 has been revised upward by about 0.2 percentage points, mainly reflecting the lagging impact of stronger-than-expected data on the US economy in 2023. However, the global economic growth forecast is still lower than the average annual growth rate of 3.8% from 2000 to 2019. Heng An Standard Life (Asia) pointed out that global supply chains have improved, with overall inflation and core inflation recently declining to levels close to the pre-pandemic average. It is expected that in 2024, the overall inflation rate and core inflation rate of around 80% of the global economies will decrease year-on-year. Harriet Zhang, Chief Investment Officer of Heng An Standard Life Asia, believes that in the short term, inflation data still have stickiness, with US inflation data generally higher than expected. In the case of consistent expectations for an "soft landing" economy, the US core inflation rate in February exceeded expectations for the second consecutive month, with a month-on-month increase of 0.4%. The February Producer Price Index saw the largest increase in six months, indicating that the path for the Federal Reserve's fight against inflation is not smooth. After the data was released, market expectations for interest rate cuts have also been pushed back, with the first rate cut now expected in the second half of this year.