Sectors

Much like the blue-chip indexes themselves, the cap-weighted S&P 500 sector indexes generally resisted the market mayhem erupting beneath the surface in September.

• Read more

In December, we declared the market was likely entering into a cycle where High Quality stocks would shine. Unfortunately, market action since then reminds us of the virtue of being humble.

• Read more

Important characteristics of the broad sectors of the S&P 500 along with the S&P Mid Cap and Small Cap indices.

• Read more

There are some substantial deviations in sector performance depending on your constituents and weighting scheme while, simultaneously, betas are converging toward one another.

• Read more

Each of these effects has diminished in importance over time, but it’s still worth taking a look. Momentum is best at capturing the Industry effect, while Valuation works best at the Country level.

• Read more

Correlations have been extremely elevated over the past few years when compared to historical levels. The question is, which parts of the market has this impacted the most?

• Read more

In our framework, Health Care is the number one performer year-to-date by almost five percentage points.

• Read more

Health Care and Consumer Staples valuations don’t look as dangerous as widely assumed. Utilities look expensive; conversely, the big corrections in the Industrials and Materials sectors have yet to create truly compelling valuations. The best sector for contrarians is Energy.

• Read more

A look at how to “Sell in May” without actually selling.

• Read more

Momentum has proven to be an effective factor in emerging market sector rotation strategies. Even better than in U.S. markets.

• Read more

The best strategy has been to buy not the prior year’s top performing sector or asset class, but to buy the runners-up—or “Bridesmaids”— of the prior year.

• Read more

An examination of both near term and longer term historical profit margins broken out by sectors is presented in this month’s “Of Special Interest” section.

• Read more

The Leuthold Group has always been a big proponent of sector rotation strategies. In this month’s “Inside The Stock Market” section, Jun Zhu examines sector rotation in emerging markets and presents a series of ETFs that facilitate this strategy.

• Read more

Jun Zhu examines Chinese companies with Variable Interest Entity (VIE) structures. Investors shouldn’t be completely turned off by concerns over these structures, but it would be wise to heed the risks.

• Read more

“Of Special Interest” takes a look at sector valuations through the lens of our GS Scores.

• Read more

This month’s “Of Special Interest” takes a stab at debunking the “Sell In May And Go Away” anomaly. Instead, we have come to respect this annual strategy.

• Read more

While Low Quality stocks have been beating High Quality, performance was on par in Q1. High Quality cheap relative to Low Quality and the tide may be turning.

• Read more

In this month’s “Of Special Interest” section, Jim Floyd updates the broad sector profit margins charts. Information Technology now producing 15% margins, the highest levels ever. Energy and Materials sectors still relatively low, but rising commodity prices will support higher margins in 2011.

• Read more

Factor analysis shows that Momentum continued to be effective in November. Also, aggressive equity sectors have been outperforming the defensive ones. Both of these factors bode well for a continuation of the bull market.

• Read more

Relationship of Momentum stocks and Value stocks has historically demonstrated that at market tops, Momentum does best while Value lags. That pattern is occurring now, but based on prior history the top would not come until Q1 2011.

• Read more