Remember back in April when we noted how equity trends had completely flip-flopped during the first several weeks of the second quarter and we wondered aloud whether this was a trend change or simply a counter-trend rally? Well, so far in May the market is...
We noted yesterday that the US stock market took off after the Fed statement released (and the 2-10 year part of the yield curve came in significantly). So after the dust settles, which sectors led and which sectors lagged after the Fed statement?...
The recent focus of the financial world (including for us) has been on the massive currency moves going on in the forex markets. By this point, everyone and their grandma knows that the US dollar has been on an explosive move higher....
This year, especially in February, there has been something of a cyclical bounce in the developed country stock markets. Since the beginning of the year, counter-cyclical stocks have underperformed cyclical stocks by 75 basis points in the MSCI World Index....
Over the last several weeks, there has been a subtle change in the factors that have contributed most to performance trends for the MSCI World universe....
We have developed two indexes that are designed to track the world’s leading innovators based on our proprietary intangible-adjusted data We have a developed markets knowledge leader index and an emerging markets knowledge leader index. Both indexes are equal-weighted and are rebalanced twice a year...
On an equal-weighted basis, the energy sector has still been the best performing sector in February. It is nearly 7% higher this month, however, it has been the worst performing sector so far this week (-1.5%)....
We talk a lot about sector allocation. It is incredibly important for investors, especially over the long-term. The correct sector allocation can lead to massive outperformance while the wrong sector allocation significantly increases your career risk....
Banks, represented here using the KBW Bank Index, ended up underperforming the the S&P 500 by about 375 basis points in 2014. Since the beginning of 2015, bank performance has been much worse....
As we noted yesterday, the US stock market has been the only game in town recently. The S&P 500 is up about 8% over the year and the median stock in the MSCI North America is up 7%. Meanwhile the median stock in the MSCI...
Success in investing can many times come down to avoiding the major losers rather than always hitting home runs with one’s winners. Correct sector allocation plays an important role in sidestepping potential landmines that out there in the market....
The median year-to-date performance in the MSCI World Index with two weeks of trading left is -1%. The median stock was up 20% at this point last year and was up 13% at this point in 2012. The developed country with the worst median performance...
The MSCI World Index is only about 6% of it’s 200-day high as of the close yesterday. However, 55% of the stocks in the index are down at least 10% and 30% of the stocks in the index are currently in a bear market (down...
Two weeks ago we mentioned that over the past several years the last six weeks of each year has tended to either strongly favor cyclical stocks or counter-cyclical stocks. Today, we wanted to update that chart....
As we have noted before, this market has been somewhat unique in that counter-cyclicals have outperformed cyclicals since the market top in October 2007. As you can see in the first chart below, counter-cyclicals have outperformed by nearly 18% over the past seven years....
