May 14, 2020 | US Equities
The overvaluation from long-term averages for US stocks in recent years has been well known to equity investors. Unfortunately, valuations give you no information on timing – they tell you how far you’re likely to fall, but not when. The virus, specifically the...
Apr 30, 2020 | North America, US Equities
There have been five major bear markets in the S&P since the Depression, with each one experiencing rallies along the way that turned out to be false dawns. Each of these rallies felt real at the time, and there was a solid belief that the bad news that caused the...
Mar 27, 2020 | US Equities
Earlier this month, the S&P and gold both collapsed on the same trading day, which is extremely rare. The top-left chart shows that in the past 20 years, the only times gold was down more than 3% while the S&P is down more than 5% was last week and back in...
Dec 18, 2019 | US Economy, US Equities
The auto and housing sectors are two parts of the economy that are highly sensitive to interest rate changes. In light of the Fed’s dovish pivot at the start of the year, culminating in 3x25bps of interest rate cuts, we would expect activity in both sectors to surge....
Nov 13, 2019 | US Economy, US Equities
The S&P has been very resilient this year in the face of slowing growth, falling earnings and trade war uncertainty. However, underneath the surface, market rotations have been very bearish. Over the past year, high-yield credit has underperformed investment grade...
Oct 11, 2019 | US Economy, US Equities
With consumer confidence measures released a couple of weeks ago, we have observed an interesting divergence between the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index and Conference Board consumer confidence index (top-left chart). When we plot the spread and...
Sep 6, 2019 | US Equities
Falling yields across the developed market world have posed greater hurdles for investors with yield and income targets. As the spread between bond yields and equity dividend-yields diverge, these investors move up the risk spectrum to meet their targets. As such, we...
Apr 12, 2019 | US Equities
Short volatility positions are back at extreme levels once again, showing the growth of complacency among market participants. The more dovish than expected Fed has allowed volatility sellers to become more emboldened, and speculative VIX future positions are back up...
Jan 25, 2019 | US Economy, US Equities
This post was taken from our January 8th weekly report. We would characterise US equity indices today as being in a bear market. The official definition is a 20% decline from the recent high, close to close, but what does this mean in practice for investors? (The...
