Articles by Phil Segner Sr. Research Analyst & Co-Portfolio Manager

A nice, round -20% Q1 haircut for the S&P 500 took most of the stuffing out of our downside-to-median estimate.

• Read more

With the markets in freefall, we’ve seen a dramatic spike in interest in our monthly “Estimating the Downside” vignette. We think a mid-month snapshot is in order to give some idea as to how much meat has been taken off the valuation bone.

• Read more

February’s “Coronavirus Free” CPI data came in a tick hotter than expected. The massive downdraft in risk assets will be extraordinarily deflationary and we question whether the Fed can ride to the rescue once again.

• Read more

It took just the last week of February to wipe out the gains of the last four months, as investors fretted about a virus causing a ruinous financial contagion. The invitations for the Bull’s 11th birthday party had already gone out—maybe market participants will be gathering for a wake instead?

• Read more

Russell 2000 Small Cap Value is the worst performing style box YTD, down 15%. Its underperformance is nothing new, returning -2% since the start of 2017.

• Read more

Our Ratio of Ratios now sits near the lows experienced last summer. More interesting though, our Small Cap trailing P/E ratio is at its lowest absolute level (16.1x) since May of 2012.

• Read more

As we roll in the second month of Q4 earnings, our Up/Down Ratio reads 1.31. While still below average, this is the highest “two-month” figure for 2019 earnings. Our 2018 lookback hurdles are not what they used to be.

• Read more

The last week of February generated a lot of interest in the vignette.

• Read more

In the immortal words of Lloyd Bridges, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking.” Let’s put aside this week’s market turmoil and concentrate for a moment on... “concentration.” Market concentration, that is. Close your eyes and think back to those carefree days of mid-February.

• Read more

In the immortal words of Lloyd Bridges, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking.” Let’s put aside this week’s market turmoil and concentrate for a moment on... “concentration.” Market concentration, that is. Close your eyes and think back to those carefree days of mid-February.

• Read more

Read this week's Major Trend.

• Read more

A late-January swoon resulted in the first monthly loss for the S&P 500 since August.

• Read more

January’s minuscule loss could have been worse if GAMA (Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple) hadn’t continued its incredible run. The single-digit gains from those four names, now 16% of the S&P 500 market cap, buoyed the index by a little over 1%.

• Read more

January’s outperformance gap (6%) between Royal Blue Growth versus Royal Blue Value was the largest in four years. After showing signs of life in late 2019, the Value-comeback story seems all but dead.

• Read more

Another month of Large Cap outperformance helped push our Ratio of Ratios back down to a level we haven’t seen since last summer. Since going decidedly into the Small Cap discount zone at the end of last March, the S&P 500 has outperformed the Russell 2000 by 10%.

• Read more

Our Up/Down Ratio reads 1.52. This figure is inline with the first three “one-month” readings of 2019, but remains well below the historical average. We’re still two months away from escaping the long shadow of the 2018 earnings bonanza.

• Read more

Headline and Core CPIs both post slower than expected gains in their month-over-month figures. The Fed’s laissez-faire attitude for 2020 seems appropriate for now. Interesting movements in commodity indexes may signal future upward price pressure.

• Read more

The S&P 500 plowed through the dour narratives of 2019 and came within spitting distance of its best yearly performance since the Tech Bubble. Microsoft and Apple, a combined 9.1% of the index’s market cap, punched above their enormous weights and contributed +15% of 2019’s total return.

• Read more

Those institutionally-loved Large Cap stocks—our Royal Blue Growth and Value indexes—were both up 35% in 2019. Another sign of the affection for these stocks is showing up in their deviation from historical valuations.

• Read more

After a handful of years dancing around the long-term average, our Ratio of Ratios got off the fence in 2019. The current gap in valuation has been driven by performance; 2019 became the third consecutive year of small cap underperformance.

• Read more