Active Management

A decade of central bank easing and the resulting low-volatility environment have made many investors complacent about risk management. We believe the next 10 years will be more volatile than the last 10 years, and risk management will be central to the delivery of consistent alpha.

Good things are happening, too, and will keep happening as we move through the 2020s. Occasionally I like to note them, and that’s what we will do today.

Among the biggest contributors to the bitcoin rally is the hope that 2020 could finally see institutional investors move into the digital field en masse, prompted by growing client demand and more attractive ways to get exposure.

Now is the season for forecasting as one decade turns into the next. Pundits and market prognosticators too often treat nowcasts as true market forecasts, which can be very dangerous for investors’ financial health. Our forecasts for the decade ahead rely on empirically driven quantitative models.

Almost by definition, value investing rarely performs well in the short run. This is especially true when you are in a strong bull market like we’ve been in since March 2009. Most companies as represented by the S&P 500 are currently trading at fundamental multiples that are significantly above historical norms.

As the worries mount, it’s worth addressing whether these concerns are truly warranted, or overblown to an extent. Let’s dive right in and tackle this, as well as look at how much of a handbrake such a high level of debt may have on Chinese growth.

Quantitative value investors have traditionally relied on price-to-book as the metric to classify stocks. But new research shows that price-to-enterprise value is a more powerful tool to construct portfolios. That research also sheds light on the question of whether the value premium is risk- or behaviorally-based.

Every year, the markets provide us with lessons on prudent investment strategies. Many times, markets offer investors remedial courses, covering lessons it had taught in previous years. That’s why one of my favorite sayings is that there’s nothing new in investing, only investment history you don’t yet know.

As Mark Twain once said, history never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme. The House vote to impeach President Trump coming in mid-December of 2019 certainly feels like a couplet with the Clinton impeachment, which occurred in mid-December 21 years ago. Indeed, there are similarities, but also key distinctions.

Despite Sauron and Einstein’s failed attempts at unified theory, 2019 was simply the tenth year whereby interest rates were low and went lower, credit remained both cheap and plentiful, the economy was “good enough,” and those who can print money re-dedicated themselves to a willingness to print money. The logical conclusion to this set of events is to buy and hold U.S. equities. Drop the mic—again.

One of our favorite financial writers is Bloomberg’s John Authers. He recently wrote a tongue-in-cheek article about an investment company by the name of Hindsight Capital. In hindsight, or in the company’s case, Hindsight Capital, he talked about what the firm did and what you should have done over the last ten years to produce outstanding returns.

A new decade, seismic shifts and the importance of diversification.

Research Affiliates provides its outlook for 2020 and discusses where it sees attractive return opportunities across the globe.

The substantial economic calendar features inflation reports and housing, but also includes Michigan sentiment, the Fed’s Beige Book, and NFIB sentiment survey. We will also get the first earnings reports for the Q4 season.

What really is a bet? How does one make decisions under uncertainty and with imperfect information? In his latest memo, Howard Marks weaves his own life story to discuss the process of thinking in bets, parses the world of gambling, and draws parallels between investing and games of chance.

With markets continuing their upward trajectory, it is easy to assume central banks are in control and things are going well. Some insights from how people interact with their environment in traffic reveal a very different perspective, however.

Foreign trade ends up being cleared through international money – a currency that the world accepts as final payment, even in places where it is not legal tender.

Value investing is an active management strategy that considers company fundamentals and the valuation of securities to acquire that which is undervalued. But as Graham and Dodd defined it, passive strategies are not investing; they are speculating.

For nearly three years we’ve been tactically recommending overweighting large caps (S&P 500) and underweighting small caps (Russell 2000)—time for an update.

With simmering trade tensions, sputtering growth worldwide and a historically long, but slow, U.S. economic expansion, investors will have to brace themselves for a challenging investment environment in 2020. Change, adaptability and diversification are the key words. Here are steps you can take early in 2020 to position your investment program well for the rest of the year.

The US economy is not in an economic boom, but growth has been consistently faster than during the Plow Horse phase from mid-2009 through the end of 2016. Real GDP has grown at a 2.6% annual rate since the start of 2017 versus 2.2% beforehand.

We expect European investment grade bonds to post slightly positive excess returns in 2020. We believe the sector stands to benefit from healthy supply and demand balances, likely offsetting tight valuations and weakening fundamentals.

This is the year-end letter I sent to our clients. Feel free to adapt it for your own use.

In Part 1 of this forecast I described my relatively benign outlook for the next 12 months. The calm may last into 2021 and even beyond. But beneath the surface, pressure will still be increasing. It will grow slowly, almost imperceptibly, but eventually explode.

The best environment would be moderate U.S. growth, a sideways U.S. market and a weaker U.S. dollar.

With this article I am going to present several ways that investors, especially retired investors, can beat the market without fail. However, what I will be presenting may not be what you are expecting, particularly if you have a narrow notion of what beating the market means.

As we kick off the new year, market prognosticators are busy making their 2020 predictions. David Mann, our Head of Capital Markets, Global Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), offers some thoughts on trends and milestones within the ETF industry he thinks could come to fruition in 2020.

The US investment grade (IG) corporate bond market is coming off an exceptionally strong year. Declining interest rates coupled with sharply narrower credit spreads contributed to strong absolute and relative returns.

Four reasons for optimism about emerging-market stocks despite their general underperformance and higher volatility over the last decade.

Always being alert and anticipating the next inflection point in the business cycle can help you actively manage your investments while taking advantage of emerging profit opportunities and more importantly protect your wealth from the inevitable cyclical declines. This exceptionally long business cycle appears set to emerge from its third growth slowdown and has now reached the stage where a cyclical bull market in commodities can be expected.

Franklin Equity Group’s Jonathan Curtis explains why he thinks businesses will need to invest significantly more in digital technology in the coming years to better understand and service their customers and to reduce costs.

A few months ago, I wrote about the mechanics of value investing and the many decisions that go into building value portfolios. Many investors believe that all value-based strategies will produce a similar performance. But in reality, the many portfolio construction decisions that value managers make...

TIPS outperformed in 19Q4, gaining 0.5% vs. a 1.4% decline for Treasuries. The average TIPS yield declined by 19 bps to 0.24%, while Treasury yields rose 13 bp to 1.87%. The average breakeven spread rose 32 bp to 163 bp.

The outlook for the global economy has improved over the past three months, but there may be less capacity to combat a recession when it comes. We discuss seven key macroeconomic themes we expect in 2020 and implications for investors.

Continued modest global growth in 2020 may be the best we can hope for.

The S&P 500 ETFs tracked include State Street Global Advisors’ SPDR (SPY), iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV), and Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF (VOO).

DC plan sponsors are increasingly using TDFs that blend active and passive strategies to seek lower fees and enhanced alpha potential.

Market forecasters know their fallibility, which is why they rarely offer predictions with specific timeframes – it would make it too easy for fact-checkers like me to hold them accountable. When one prominent forecaster – John Mauldin – boldly attached a five-year horizon to his predictions, it gave me an opportunity to look back and do just that.

Welcome to the 2020s. Some weren’t sure we would make it this far, but we did. Now we face a new decade and new challenges. How we handle them will determine what kind of conversation we have in 2030.

I’m optimistic that the U.S. will stand as a beacon of freedom and opportunity in the 2020s and beyond, but with more and more younger Americans supporting socialism over capitalism, I believe it prudent to proceed with caution. That means making sure you’re holding some gold in your portfolio.

Valid until the market close on January 31, 2019.

The S&P 500 closed December with a monthly gain of 2.86% after a gain of 3.40% in November. All three S&P 500 MAs are signaling "invested" and all five Ivy Portfolio ETFs — Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI), Vanguard REIT Index ETF (VNQ), Vanguard FTSE All-World ETF (VEU), iShares Barclay 7-10 Year Treasury (IEF), and PowerShares DB Commodity Index (DBC) — are signaling "invested".

Hotchkis & Wiley is true value investor that has performed well in a growth-dominated equity market. It also has a large following among advisors. Its Small Cap Diversified Value Fund has strong numbers and a history of outperformance versus its benchmark. The fund has considerable exposure to micro caps, which has helped it to consistently outperform on a rolling three-year basis since its inception in 2014.

As we wrap up the decade. it is a good time to review the 7-impossible trading rules to follow in a bull market. These rules are not new, or unique, but they are the foundation of long-term investing success.

Today the National Association of Realtors released the November data for their Pending Home Sales Index. According to the National Association of Realtors®, "Pending home sales increased in November, rebounding from the prior month’s decline."

Great articles don’t always get the readership they deserve. We’ve already posted the 10 most-widely read articles for the past year. Below are another 10 that you might have missed, but I believe merit reading…

What were the top financial news stories of 2019? To answer that question, Frank looks back at his five most visited articles from the year that was.

Our senior investment leaders have a cautiously optimistic outlook for 2020. They still do not see a global recession looming and believe there are plenty of reasons to remain invested.

Sustainable investing has come a long way. In its early days, investment managers, like Saturna Capital, created faith-based investment processes, focused on excluding companies or industries that conflicted with the tenets of an investor’s faith. This led to proactive investing, often referred to as advocacy investing, a process that encourages companies, sectors, and regions to engage in better business practices.

As we wave goodbye to the bull market of the 2010s, here are the rules for investing in whatever comes in the next decade.

Naturally, this is the time when market-watchers issue their forecasts for what may lie ahead, and my team is no exception. Simply put, we expect continued monetary policy accommodation with little fiscal stimulus. Therefore, we are more optimistic about capital markets than we are about the overall economy, and we favor risk assets over non-risk assets for 2020.

As we move into 2020, we find ourselves in an uncertain place. Economic trends have deteriorated, and growth levels have flatted. Plus, the impeachment process and election could have negative repercussions. Indeed, the risk of recession is real—although its impact may be much milder than many fear.

What follows is an interview I conducted with an experienced financial advisor at an anonymous, major brokerage firm. It shows how easily someone can transition from a commission-based, stock-picking mindset to acting as a true fiduciary.

The economic calendar is very light and interrupted by the mid-week holiday. We can always see volatility when volume is low, but many market participants will be on an extended holiday. This includes much of the A-team punditry, but someone will be left to fill the airtime.

Investing is never easy, especially these days, as internal political factions and international relations are so divided and yet so important to predict. That said, despite all our stress and complaints, prior generations would say that relative to their experience, we actually live in calm and prosperous times.

David Ellison manages the Hennessy Large Cap Financial Fund (HLFNX) and the Small Cap Financial Fund (HSFNX), both of which have outperformed their benchmarks since their inception in 1997. Dave has been recognized by Morningstar as the most tenured mutual fund portfolio manager in the financial services sector. I spoke with Dave on December 12.

Our topic today is actively managed ETFs. On November 14, the SEC gave contingent approval for new proxy-based, semi-transparent active ETF structures to four fund families: Natixis, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity and the Blue Tractor Group. This overcomes a major impediment to active ETFs – transparency. No longer do those ETFs need to disclose their underlying holdings – their “secret sauce.”

Can Tesla become as successful as Apple, and can Tesla cars turn into an iPhone-like franchise, taking EV market share from nothing to 10% to 30% of the ICE car market?

Rates were unpredictable, central banks were active, trade was volatile but consumers were undaunted. We reflect on the major economic trends of 2019.

There is almost no willingness to face our top problems, specifically our rising debt. The economic challenges we face can’t continue, which is why I expect the Great Reset, a kind of worldwide do-over. It’s not the best choice but we are slowly ruling out all others.

Free from a house view on economies, markets or stocks, J O Hambro Capital Management’s (JOHCM) fund managers invariably see the world in different ways. We asked a number of our managers for their thoughts on the outlook for their asset class next year, what they would like to see and the possible surprises that 2020 could bring.

Last month we posted an update on the median household income for the 50 states and DC based on the Current Population Survey, a joint undertaking of the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics, which includes annual data from 1984 to 2018. Let's now look at the actual purchasing power of those median incomes. For this adjustment, we're using the "C2ER Cost of Living Index" produced by C2ER, the Council for Community and Economic Research.

Muni issuers are increasingly refinancing tax-exempt munis in the taxable market, but both areas offer potential benefits.

Rick Rieder and Russ Brownback argue that contrary to the many year-end outlooks foreseeing either a recession or a rebound in 2020, the most likely path for the economy and markets is more moderate, which can be encapsulated in their theme of “1.8.”

For the last several months we’ve been talking about the distinct possibility of a period of foreign equity outperformance that investors would be remiss to miss.

While US-China trade tensions and other concerns prompt a cautionary stance when it comes to risk assets, Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Solutions’ Ed Perks and Gene Podkaminer nonetheless remain positive about the US equity market in the year ahead, citing a number of long-term growth drivers that still remain in place.

A recent study by New York Life highlighted rising interest among institutional investors in alternative ETFs, which can help to reduce fees and offer better liquidity than traditional hedge funds. ETFs have other benefits as well: transparency, flexibility to efficiently increase and decrease target allocations, reduced manager oversight, and reporting simplicity.

Proponents of investing with an ESG mandate often claim that those strategies do not entail a performance sacrifice relative to an appropriate non-ESG benchmark. But new research shows that such claims are problematic.

If beta is a racehorse, many investors often assume it takes care of itself in the race toward investment objectives. But doesn't the skill of the jockey matter as well?

In a recent appearance on CNBC, we were asked about what we do with stocks we own which have run-up recently. They asked us how we plan to handle Disney (DIS), JPMorgan (JPM) and Target (TGT) after those stocks enjoyed strong price increases this year.

The economic calendar is especially important. Several housing reports, JOLTs, and the final estimate for Q3 GDP lead the list. Despite this, I suspect a powerful draw from the Gregorian calendar. It is time for those annual forecasts!

Two Invesco strategists debate the prospects of a value rotation in 2020.

Factor-driven investing, while highly popular among equity investors, has not been widely adopted in the bond market. But new research shows how to construct highly efficient fixed-income portfolios using factors, as well as the ongoing importance of reducing expenses.

The emerging markets (“EM”) equity asset class has evolved considerably over the past decade such that many active EM equity managers may find it challenging to create long-term alpha over the benchmark. Countries such as China and India are moving to the fore, historical drivers of growth are changing and technology, innovation and health care are becoming a larger part of the opportunity set. It has been difficult for EM investment teams to keep up with these changes. My guest today, David Dali, wrote those words in a recent commentary, and we discuss how he and his team are positioning to adapt to that changing landscape.

Predicting a major economic or financial event—whether that’s a recession, market downturn or even your own retirement—requires that you also take action. Otherwise your prediction was meaningless.

We expect to see flows back into UK equity and credit now that some of the Brexit uncertainty has been removed.