As we move into the second half of 2020, we can only look back on the first half in amazement. In fact, 1H20 was a tale of two halves, for markets generally and the fixed income markets specifically. As we noted in our commentary for 1Q20 March was one of the worst months for…
When this year began, no one could have predicted the path we would travel in just six short months. While the first quarter of 2020 was one of the worst on record, the second quarter was one of the best. Equity markets have experienced wild swings…
Having troughed in May, high frequency economic data snapped back sharply in June, albeit not to pre-virus levels. One such indicator – the Global purchasing managers’ index (PMI) markedly improved in June from 42.4 to 47.8; but remains in contractionary territory…
The recent past has seen extreme divergence in the performance of small cap stocks versus their large cap counterparts. We take a closer look at this underperformance and discuss the impact of different market environments on the returns generated by small cap stocks. …
As people of good conscience raise their voices in response to the killing of George Floyd and a justice system whose impartiality too often excludes black and brown peoples, Dr. King’s words 60 years ago should haunt us all…
Growth managers have been outperforming core benchmarks and value managers by a wide margin the past 3+ years (Chart 1). In this analysis, we dig a little deeper to see what investment approaches …
Small caps have enjoyed a structural size premium (Chart 1 and Chart 2). Moreover, we have long maintained that high active share strategies are best deployed in less efficient market segments such as…
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As we ponder what has transpired since the beginning of 2020, and as we look back at the first quarter, we are struck by a plethora of thoughts given the monumental difference between how the year began and the quarter ended. To begin, the economic situation in which we find ourselves is…
The new decade of 2020 began in an unprecedented way. There were two distinct phases to the first quarter of the year. The first was characterized by an equity market surging to all-time highs despite concerns about a manufacturing slowdown, geopolitical tensions, and US political uncertainty.
Widespread social distancing has been akin to emergency sedation of global economic activity while the extensive fiscal and monetary stimulus has provided life support.
PHILADELPHIA, PA – FIS Group and its wholly owned subsidiary, Piedmont Investment Advisors, announced today that, effective April 1, 2020, they are rebranding into a newly formed combined corporate entity, Xponance®. The company has $9.5 billion* in assets under management, remains 100% employee owned, and maintains the existing ownership structure…
We are in strange and scary times. We are at war with a virus which is all the more deadly in that it cannot be easily discerned but it is metastasizing geometrically. Moreover, COVID-19 and the measures required to contain…
In the last post in this series, we update and expand on our analysis to explore the impact of rising and falling interest rates on the performance of various capitalization tranches. Finally, we now look at the performance of the “Sweet Spot” in different interest rate regimes.
For global equity investors, the decade ending on December 31, 2019 was undoubtedly the American decade. The performance of U.S. equities more than doubled and in many cases tripled other countries and regions such as emerging markets…
While the U.S. continued its decade-long run, surging ahead another +31% in 2019 to lead all major developed markets (except Switzerland, +32.5%), three emerging markets did even better last year. Taiwan gained +36% as investors reevaluated the “moat” of its market champion, …
The coronavirus outbreak in China, named COVID-19 by WHO, is understandably dominating news coverage and depressing Chinese risk plays. Since 12/9/2019 when the first coronavirus case was announced from the City of Wuhan, confirmed cases have risen rapidly to over 40,000 as of this report.
In our previous post, we sought to identify and quantify the investment opportunity or edge within various market capitalization segments. We found that the top 1000 names in the Russell 2500 benchmark constitute a sweet spot across the entire Russell 3000.
As the secular bull market in long term treasury bonds approaches its 40th year, the consensus around falling interest rates has morphed from a shared opinion to an accepted reality. Reputations and fortunes have been made and lost by adherents and skeptics respectively.
