As we close the books on the first quarter of 2024, we are once again struck by the contradiction between careful data analysis and changing narratives regarding market direction.

As we enter the second quarter of the year, market participants appear to be performing a balancing act on a tightrope amidst the crosscurrents of the macroeconomic data flow.

Japan had been hiding in the same place where it was last seen in 1989 off the coast of north east China; but apparently while no one was watching (or at least no one in the American financial press) the Japanese stock market’s bell weather index, the Nikkei 225, surpassed its historical high set in 1989.

In December 2023 Tina Byles Williams, Founder, CEO and CIO of Xponance, hosted 24 CEOs from among the firm’s currently funded sub-advisors to participate in a roundtable discussion on the most pertinent challenges to emerging and diverse investment management companies.

The failure of the returns-based approach, along with some interesting dynamics observed in factor contributions, opens an extremely interesting avenue for future analysis. What role did the macroeconomic regime (inflation, top line growth, and interest rates) play in the “defensiveness” of strategies, and what can be done to avoid misclassifying strategies during sharp regime changes?