Inside The Stock Market ...trends, cross-currents, and outlook
A New Year, Or A Blast From The Past?
It was during the very first days of the great 2019 market rally that we noted its similarities to the bubbliest of all the bubble years—1999. Wow. We had it in our hands and frittered it away.
A Blast From The Past
With 2020 representing The Leuthold Group’s 40th year of publishing Perception For The Professional, we perused the first few Green Books for relevant nuggets from 1981, but the backdrop could not have been more different. Therefore, we instead turned the clock back 20 years, thinking it might yield insights more resonant with today’s environment.
A Spectacularly Average Thirty Years
In the spirit of good holiday cheer, we made a partial concession to the True Believers with a December “Chart of the Week” in which we narrowed our stock market valuation analysis to the historically elevated levels of last 30 years.
Charts Are In The Eye Of The Beholder
After last year’s 30% S&P 500 gain, many strategists are now suggesting that the real melt-up still lies ahead. We think a melt-up has already occurred, and the bulk of it has been booked.
Waiting For The Stimulus To Trickle Down...
Last year the Federal Reserve dumped historic stimulus onto a full-employment economy and an already richly-valued stock market. The stock market obviously loved it.
Stocks And GDP
Economists argue the best thing the stock market has going for it is the continuation of the U.S. economic expansion. Maybe.
It’s Not What They Borrowed, But How They Used It
Following the deflationary bust of 2007-2009, the last decade was expected to be one of deleveraging. Only U.S. consumers appeared to get that memo, however.
Are Earnings Set To “Gap” Higher?
We are troubled that the bullish optimism has spilled over into the 2020 estimates for S&P 500 earnings. Zero growth in 2020 is probably not a bad guess for NIPA figures, but S&P numbers don’t always follow suit.
Inflation: Not “If,” But “Where”
In the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, we reminded investors that it would be historically unusual for the thematic leaders of a bull market to repeat as the winners of the subsequent bull.
A Good Year To “Own It All”
It’s no surprise that U.S. Large Caps were the #1 asset class performer in 2019. We were surprised that last year was the only one of the decade in which the S&P 500 won the annual performance derby. Here we review the annual performance of “Bridesmaid” asset class and sector, “Perfect Foresight,” and Lowest P/E sector.
Rewarding “Perfect Foresight”
During the first five years of our career, we worked for a group of stockbrokers who, by each year’s end, seemed to have been gifted with perfect foresight on the major asset markets. Admittedly, we never saw their clients’ actual returns.
Momentum Across Asset Classes
For those not blessed with clairvoyant asset selection ability, we’ve developed a simple single-asset portfolio strategy that’s handily beaten the AANA Portfolio and the S&P 500 over the long-term.
Bridesmaid Track Record
Here are the historical annual performance results for the hypothetical Bridesmaid strategy.
Bridesmaid Strategy Risk And Reward
We know that risk measurements have become passé, what with the S&P 500 having annualized at +13.6% in the last decade without a single drop of 20%. But the Bridesmaid strategy looks great relative to the available asset classes on a risk-adjusted basis.
Bridesmaid Strategy For Equity Managers
Our work on the Bridesmaid momentum effect dates back to 2006, and was originally based on equity sectors rather than asset classes. Again, the hypothetical approach is to ignore macroeconomic trends, sector fundamentals, valuations, and the like, and to base sector selection solely on the prior year’s sector total return rankings.
Sector Bridesmaid Track Record
2019 was the fourth consecutive year of underperformance by the annual Bridesmaid sector pick. Those poor results have trimmed the annualized “alpha” of the strategy to just +2.2% since 1991.
For Value Investors Only!
With the possible diminution of “alpha” in price momentum strategies, we recommend that sector allocators consider approaches that are more countertrend or contrarian in nature.
Low P/E Track Record
The “robustness” of the “Cheapest Sector Strategy” concept is illustrated by strong results across all rebalancing frequencies.
How Will It Be Remembered?
A way to gain perspective on the present is by trying to view it from the future. Ask yourself, “What are the signs of impending decline, now ignored by investors, that will one day be memorialized by the same investors as the most obvious in retrospect?”
A Tough Tape To Read
Over the nearly two years since the stock market’s “momentum” peak in January 2018, the S&P 500 has gained less than 9%, while the Value Line Arithmetic Composite is unchanged. Mid Caps and Small Caps have made no upside progress during this period and most foreign markets are down.
Are Stocks And The Economy Disconnected?
The consensus among market pundits is that a U.S. recession will be averted and, as a consequence, domestic stocks remain the best game in town.
Lagging From Behind?
As Yogi Berra might have quipped, it’s not just the leading indicators that are lagging… the lagging ones are, too.
A “Best Case” Bear Scenario?
We intentionally curtailed our discussion of stock market valuations the last few months to allow the “dead horse” to recover from the thrashings administered in recent years. Now we’re rested, refreshed, and ready to deliver a few more lashes.
Risks Still High In The “Median” Large Cap
The relative domination of Mega Caps might leave the impression that valuation of the “typical” (or median) Large Cap stock is reasonable. It’s not. The fall rally leaves all major valuation ratios for the median S&P 500 stock in the top decile of the 30-year history, and above the levels prevailing at the September 2018 market high.
More Good News For Small Caps
Our call for improved relative performance in Small Caps received another boost in November, when VLT Momentum for the S&P SmallCap 600 confirmed the prior month’s “low-risk” BUY signal on the Russell 2000.
A New Take On Small Cap Valuations
For valuation work, we’ve traditionally favored the 1,200 company Leuthold Small Cap universe over the S&P SmallCap 600 because we get almost a full additional decade of perspective. But figures for the latter shed extra light on just how significant the revaluation in Small Caps has been.
No Place Like Home For The 2010s
We thought we’d get a jump on all the “End of the 2010s” retrospectives you’re sure to see next month. Though not quite yet the official end of the decade, the changing of the “tens” digit definitely has a certain gravitas to it.
Capex Beneficiaries “Delivered,” But Only On Price Action
With optimistic views on capex in late 2017, we built a thematic group of companies that appeared to be potential beneficiaries of higher spending going forward. This group has outperformed the market; but, the capex trend is disappointing and quite concerning.
Can New Reins Take Hold Of An Old Bull?
Three months ago, Large Cap Growth and Momentum were the winning ways to play the market; the long-time resiliency of these entrenched leaders was a cornerstone of the bullish case. Suddenly it’s Value and Deep Cyclicals leading, anything possessing Momentum, of late, has turned toxic. Ironically, this “new” leadership is now the foundation for the bullish reasoning.
Monetary Musings
Among six major monetary gauges, five are now graded bullish, compared with just three a few months ago, and zero at the end of 2018.
VLT Complicates The Market Puzzle
At October’s close, a long-term BUY signal was triggered on the Russell 2000. The fact that some market segments are triggering “oversold BUYS” when blue chips are at record highs speaks volumes about the internal disparities that have developed during the last few years. The Russell BUY signal is not inconsistent with our belief that the action since the January 2018 peak remains part of a lengthy cyclical topping process.
Back To Y2K?
The bull market took out another old record last month when the S&P 500 topped the cumulative total return of the 1949-56 upswing. The total return since March 9, 2009, is now 468%. Since the highs of March 2000, the S&P 500 cumulative total return is actually a few basis points behind U.S. 10-year Treasury bonds.
A Short-Term S&P Top?
The short-term path for equities “looks” clearer than at any point in 2019, with economic data having stabilized a bit in the last few weeks, the Fed having cut rates again and resumed balance sheet purchases, and some type of trade deal finally looking more tangible than a 2:00 a.m. Tweet.
Simple Bond Model Says “SELL”
In our minds, the big story is not the nominal new highs in the blue chips, but rather the rapid changes now occurring on both an “intra-market” and “inter-market” basis. In the case of the latter, we have an important new signal from a simple correlation model we developed earlier this year.
Jury Is Still Out On EM
Emerging Market stocks have been swept up in the last month’s rally in all things cyclical and high beta. Nonetheless, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index is still down marginally from its level coinciding with its April 30th VLT BUY signal.
Labor Cost Observations
We take a look at different data sets reflecting labor costs. The main finding is that using Unit Labor Cost as the measurement for the true cost suggests that the labor market is very tight in terms of affordability for businesses.
The Last “Spoos” To Drop?
For many months, we’ve argued that global stocks have been tracing out a major cyclical top. But the global stock market “tape” has narrowed so much that it’s really only the U.S. blue chips that are left to do the tracing.
“Quant Quake” But No Market Quake
Value, High Beta, and Small Cap stocks all captured a few rays of sunlight for the first time in a long while. It’s too early to tell if last month’s leadership U-turns can be sustained, but major market trends are the most susceptible to reverse during cyclical bear markets.
Where Would You Rather Be?
On October 3rd, the S&P 500 briefly traded below the high it made in January 2018 before reversing to close the day higher.
Small Cap VLT BUY: Not Quite...
Small Caps came tantalizingly close to activating a major VLT BUY signal in September, with the Russell 2000 closing less than a half percent below the trigger level. A new bull signal from this indicator wouldn’t “fit” into our market and economic narrative, but we won’t sweep it under the rug if it occurs.