1Q 2019 Market Letter The bull market that began in early March 2009 passed its 10th birthday last month, something no one expected when the S&P 500 bottomed at 666. The economic expansion that has accompanied it — as usual, the market led the beginning of the expansion by about 6 months — will become…...
For the S&P 500 (SPX) it proved to be the week that investors went to sleep, as the benchmark index logged a .08% drop in the holiday shortened trading week. S&P 500 Review While the trading proved relatively unchanged even with a significant data dump on Thursday that included monthly Retail sales, Jobless Claims, Leading…...
One of the issues with suggesting that the S&P 500 (SPX) over reacted to a growth slowdown in Q4 2018, is that is merely a human assessment, something that has an increasingly insignificant role in the equity markets. The equity markets are increasingly underpinned with programmed algorithms and found with less and less active fund…...
Did anything change during the trading week to reinforce our bullish outlook on both the economy and equity market for 2019? That’s the question we should all be considering, given the S&P 500 (SPX) is only 1.5% off its all-time trading high level. The benchmark index has rallied roughly 23% from its December 2018 lows…...
After a lackluster week for equities in the middle of the month and heading into the end of the quarter, last week equities found their footing once again and finished higher for the week once again. The S&P 500 (SPX) finished higher by 1.2% for the week and is now up some 13% year-to-date. Although…...
It’s not the way bulls desired the week to end, especially after a strong Thursday performance, but when algorithms kick into high gear, they generally work toward extremes. The S&P 500 (SPX) was up for most of the week and had broken above 2,850, but that was before the German bund fell into negative yield…...
There are two more trading weeks remaining in the Q1 2019 period. The S&P 500 (SPX) is up some 12.5% already this year and has managed to express this rally with net outflows and with outsized participation to the most defensive sectors. Seriously folks, the Utilities Select Sector Spiders (XLU) hit an all-time high last…...
Coming into the trading week, most every index and index ETF was expressing overbought conditions. With all the major indices falling greater than 2% to complete the trading week, indices and index ETFs have now worked off some of their overbought conditions. (Table from Bespoke Investment Group) You’ll notice within the table that all index…...
Leading up to the Friday trading session, the markets appeared to be expressing exhaustion and have been with overbought conditions for the better part of the last 10 trading sessions. Nonetheless, the YTD rally carried forward on Friday. (Table from Bespoke Investment Group) From Monday through Thursday, the S&P 500 (SPX) and its peer indices…...
Volatility Review 19 February 2019 Equity Derivatives Strategy Bram Kaplan, CFA AC, Marko Kolanovic, PhD Positioning update, RTY and NDX structured product issuance & dynamics, trading commodity sectors Despite the remarkable V-shaped market recovery since December, equity positioning remains light across systematic and macro investors. CTAs, Volatility Targeting portfolios and Hedge Funds’ equity exposure…...
