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.
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.
The US equity markets exhibit observable biases over time, alternately favoring one group of stocks over others: large cap vs. small cap; value vs. growth; defensive vs. dynamic; sector rotation, etc. We questioned whether there was a longer term benefit to favoring one group of stocks over the others.
Yields have fallen precipitously since 2018 on weaker economics, driving Momentum stock leadership, and the underperformance of Value and more-shorted names. These trends reversed in September on positive macro headlines and a pickup in yields.
