U.S. Equity Strategy: Buybacks to Remain Strong Amidst Uncertainty Buybacks have been a key theme through this cycle with S&P 500 companies returning ~$5 trillion to shareholders since 2009 and contributing ~2% to annual EPS growth (S&P 500 divisor has fallen to 1999 levels, see Figure 30). Despite the recent market volatility, buyback activity has…...
In the following video, Wayne Nelson discusses the Technology Select Spider ETF (XLK). He offers some technical analysis that may be bombarded with some near-term fundamental earnings headlines from the tech sector. Some of those earnings will come from Apple Inc. (AAPL) after the closing bell on 1/29/19 and Microsoft (MSFT) in the days to…...
The trading week commenced with a degree of frenzied selling pressure on Tuesday and within the context of slowing global growth and geopolitical uncertainty. Highlighting fears of a slowing global economy was the IMF downgrading its global growth outlook. With a failed Brexit vote and a U.S. government shutdown inside its 4th week, investors took…...
The S&P 500 (SPX) and its peer indices have had quite the bullish move off of the Christmas Eve 2018 lows and finished the week with it’s strongest daily move of the week. Technically speaking, the S&P 500 has repaired a good deal that had broken down during the 20% drawdown, which occurred during the…...
Narrative vs. Flows, Liquidity-Volatility-Flows Feedback Loop, QE/QT and Liquidity Narrative vs. Flows By Marko Kolanovic, PhD and Bram Kaplan, CFA Since our last note, the market continued moving higher from heavily oversold levels and low investor positioning. Positioning has somewhat increased but still remains subdued (all HF beta: ~9th %ile, Volatility Targeting Beta: ~1st %ile,…...
We are off to a spectacular year in the markets with the S&P 500 (SPX) up roughly 3.5% since January 2nd… and that would be the bare naked truth if it weren’t for the fact that we began the year with a bear market that began late last year. The current snap back rally for…...
Posted on January 3, 2019 by Andrew Thrasher, CMT There’s a saying that market tops are a process and bottoms are an event. This is meant to imply that tops are formed over drawn out periods of time, often several months, while the market will find a final low in a quick v-shaped pattern. While…...
Languishing over the 2018 market won’t do investors any good, but it is important to reflect on what made for a rather unique investing/trading atmosphere. 2018 could easily be characterized as the year that volatility came back into the market place due to Quantitative Tightening and geopolitical/macro concerns. Prior to 2018, the “buy the dip…...
Market and Volatility Commentary December Post-Mortem, Signals from Fund Flows, Role of Systematic Flows and Reversion December Post-Mortem Over the past month, the confidence of equity investors virtually collapsed. The month of December proved us wrong in the view that the market would rise into year-end and in 2018 overall. Our call for a year-end…...
U.S. equity markets demonstrated another remarkable turnaround on Wednesday as investors returned from the New Year holiday. At its lows the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was negative by nearly 400 points, but rallied to finished in positive territory. Volatility, as gauged by the VIX, declined significantly as buyers stepped in to buy what was…...
