Research.LeutholdGroup

An unprecedented number of companies are still deep in the red, even while the economy is shrugging off the impact of the pandemic. Small-cap growth companies are showing no sign of a quick recovery.

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The performance derby between actively managed portfolios and passive benchmarks is strongly influenced by market conditions.  Active manager success rates are cyclical, but not random, and are driven by slippage created from style, size, and weighting considerations that result from the imperfect slotting of active portfolios into single style boxes.  Moreover, this slippage can be defined and measured, and shows a clear correlation with relative return spreads between benchmarks and their opposite boxes.

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Top decile valuations are often the result of unduly positive investor sentiment that leads to inflated multiples. Bullishness comes in varying strengths: optimism, enthusiasm, exuberance, and, at the extreme, the mania of crowds. Because bullishness manifests itself in aggressive valuations for speculative companies, we believe the prices being applied to such companies - for which intrinsic value is dependent on a future that looks significantly different than today - are an excellent measure of investor sentiment. In that spirit, we examined past cycles of extreme valuations with the goal of understanding how they relate to investor sentiment and what they might tell us about market conditions and relative returns.

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Top decile valuations, such as those in place today, are usually the result of excessively positive investor sentiment that leads to inflated multiples. Bullishness comes in varying strengths: optimism, enthusiasm, exuberance, and, at the extreme, the mania of crowds. Leuthold research typically tracks valuation sentiment by examining median P/E ratios, but in this study, we are taking the opposite tack. Rather than looking at medians, we are focusing on the outliers in each tail of the valuation distribution.

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Investors looking for the long-awaited rebound in the Value style point to the potential for rising interest rates as a possible driver of style rotation. Higher rates would benefit many Financial companies, a sector closely linked to the Value style. In fact, many commentators believe that the Value style cannot experience a major run without the participation of Financials. We launched a research effort to examine the link between Financials and Value, seeking to understand whether there is truth in this old saw, or whether this connection is more properly classified as market folklore.

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Investors looking for the long-awaited rebound in the Value style point to the potential for rising interest rates as a possible driver of style rotation. Higher rates would benefit many Financial companies—a sector closely linked to the Value style. In fact, numerous commentators believe that Value cannot experience a major run without the participation of Financials.

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Presidents and the popular press have become obsessed with performance over the “first 100 days” in office. That prompted us to see if there have been any persistent stock market effects related to this 100-day window. There are many ways to slice the data, and the more we sliced it, the fewer the observations.

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Often, what market pundits like to pass off as bold, contrarian forecasts are merely rationalizations and extrapolations of trends that have already been in place for some time.

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If there’s an emerging bubble in Growth stock investing, it certainly doesn’t apply to Small Caps. The “usual” premium for Growth over Value within the Small Cap space is nonexistent—both segments look historically cheap.

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Growth investing is in the midst of a spectacular run this year, extending its decade-long dominance over the Value style. Chart 1 depicts the Growth / Value relationship over the last 25 years through July 31^st, with key turning points marked by vertical lines.

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Growth investing is in the midst of a record run this year, extending its decade-long dominance over the Value style.

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The strong market rebound in the second quarter lifted the relative return of Growth vs. Value to an all-time high by the end of June. Chart 1 reveals that the cumulative S&P 500 Growth / Value return spread hit a new record last month, surpassing the previous high reached at the end of the Tech bubble in June 2000. 

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Late last year, we presented data showing that profitability has become more elusive for small companies despite a record-long period of economic expansion. We discussed the potential causes underlying this phenomenon.

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Style rotation! Regime change! Market action of the first two weeks of September coaxed the few remaining Small Cap Value managers off ledges from New York to San Francisco.

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As the market rebound has extended, we’ve noted its striking similarities with the rally of 1999—one that might have been the most speculative in U.S. history.

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We thought Jerome Powell’s “Christmas Capitulation” would be tough to beat, but he accomplished that two days ago with what could be called his “Spring Surrender.” That, in turn, has rekindled hopes of a stock market melt-up along the lines of 1998-99, which, as old-timers will remember, followed a late-cycle correction that was nearly identical to the one seen last year.

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Today’s market is barbelled regarding company size, with the mega-cap Tech stocks and the S&P 600 Small Cap index both outperforming the middle of the S&P 500.

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Value is the philosophical cornerstone of many legendary portfolio managers and is widely recognized as one of the most robust quantitative investment factors. Yet, despite its compelling conceptual merits and long-term record of superior returns, recent years’ underperformance of Value has lasted long enough to weigh on even 10-year performance records. 

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Growth has trounced Value over the past year, continuing a decade-long trend of outperformance...

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Despite cyclicality, over the longer term, investing in lower valuation countries ekes out better performance in an EM portfolio, and Dividend Yield showed the most consistency in terms of value factor effectiveness.

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Investment factors experience performance cycles just like every other asset and index. The Value factor is robust across definitions, as all eight versions produced positive excess returns under long/short and long-only methodologies.

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The impact of atypically-high current valuations has become a challenge for style-box investing. High quality, mature dividend payers have habitually resided in the Value and Blend boxes, but investors have bid up those valuations as they look for alternatives to low bond yields.

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Signs of a leadership change are starting to spring up between Growth and Value. Since mid-2015, Mid and Small Cap Value stocks have outperformed Growth.

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Small Cap Growth stocks have gotten off to a rotten start in 2016—down almost 12%. On a relative basis, the segment has also been lagging Small Cap Value—underperforming by 9% since last July.

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Our current view is the lift-off will be December or later. Assuming inflation will pick up and the Fed hikes the rate by the end of 2015, stocks will perform relatively well, with international stocks a better bet than U.S. stocks.

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Will Rogers said, “It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, but what we know that ain’t so.”

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Big cap growth stocks appear to be in the early stages of regaining leadership from the “tired” cyclicals and “overvalued” value stocks.

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Growth stocks have been out of favor over the past 3-4 year, but look poised to regain leadership over the next 6-12 months.

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A glance at the popular market averages made April look like a pretty good month in the stock market. But if your equity performance in April matched those numbers, you must have had a well-oiled portfolio of deep cyclicals.

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Secondary stocks’ August performance, growth vs. cyclical and growth vs. value performance, S&P and DIJA historical valuations and the Royal Blue Index.

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This month we added three new stocks from Jim Floyd’s “Undervalued & Unloved” screening work, boosting our current commitment to value stocks to 16% of portfolio assets. We now believe Value's downtrend has reversed and this view seems to be confirmed by the relative strength line.

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Are Value Managers an Endangered Species? Some observations and analysis. Also, a critical look at the S&P Mid Cap Index and have you ever been in Voice Mail Jail?

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If you have major positions in the select list of 1990 “Hero” stocks (those big growth names that are up on the year), when should you start trimming back (if ever)? When should you start looking at cyclicals (if ever)? When should you start looking at cheap value stocks (if ever)?

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This month, we are featuring a chart appearing regularly in Jim Floyd’s Quantitative Themes quarterly publication. About 20% of The Leuthold Group’s clients are subscribers to QT, but we thought the other 80% might find this study of interest.

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Quality Growth stocks led the market in November and are now also outperforming the market year to date. Now that we have so many value players, is the stage set for an extended period of big growth stock leadership?

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