Monthly Performance November 2021
October experienced a spectacular rebound from the September Effect drawdown, with the S&P 500 gaining 7.0% along with long-dated Treasuries returning 1.8%. This momentum was aided by President Biden’s massive stimulus expected from the Infrastructure Bill, above consensus corporate earnings, and the market’s expectation of a softer landing in rate tightening. Equity market gains were concentrated on growth and momentum factors not commonly dominant during extended secular economic recoveries.
Monthly Performance October 2021
October experienced a spectacular rebound from the September Effect drawdown, with the S&P 500 gaining 7.0% along with long-dated Treasuries returning 1.8%. This momentum was aided by President Biden’s massive stimulus expected from the Infrastructure Bill, above consensus corporate earnings, and the market’s expectation of a softer landing in rate tightening. Equity market gains were concentrated on growth and momentum factors not commonly dominant during extended secular economic recoveries.
Monthly Performance Report September 2021
To the casual eye equity markets led by the S&P 500 index-free climbs past another record gain of 2.38% in July was anything but routine. With close scrutiny as the undertow from the economic skepticism from the delta variant and emerging markets uncertainty with China’s sudden stock market crackdown temporarily splintered the global recovery. What should have been a choreographed global economic recovery instead behaved like an economic slowdown from the composition of the equity and bond markets.
Monthly Performance Report August 2021
To the casual eye equity markets led by the S&P 500 index-free climbs past another record gain of 2.38% in July was anything but routine. With close scrutiny as the undertow from the economic skepticism from the delta variant and emerging markets uncertainty with China’s sudden stock market crackdown temporarily splintered the global recovery. What should have been a choreographed global economic recovery instead behaved like an economic slowdown from the composition of the equity and bond markets.
Monthly Performance Report July 2021
To the casual eye equity markets led by the S&P 500 index-free climbs past another record gain of 2.38% in July was anything but routine. With close scrutiny as the undertow from the economic skepticism from the delta variant and emerging markets uncertainty with China’s sudden stock market crackdown temporarily splintered the global recovery. What should have been a choreographed global economic recovery instead behaved like an economic slowdown from the composition of the equity and bond markets.
Monthly Performance Report June 2021
As the economy continues to gain steam, the transitory inflation debate continues to be the juggernaut for the markets, creating disproportionate gains for growth stocks not seen since Q3 2020. The S&P 500 Index produced a return of 8.6%, while the S&P 500 Growth index returned 11.9% over the S&P 500 Value index return of 5%.
Monthly Performance Report May 2021
Inflation pressures amid an economic re-opening continued to spook the markets intra-month in the wake
of GDP seen expanding at 7% this year and 2022 forecast at 3.3%. As a result, the S&P 500 fluctuated for most of May, ending the month with a gain of 0.70%.
Monthly Performance Report April 2021
The S&P 500 Index posted its best monthly return in 2021 of 5.3% certainly with the help of the FAANG stocks but not entirely. FAANG is an acronym referring to the stocks of the five most popular and best-performing American technology companies: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Alphabet (formerly known as Google). The five FAANG stocks which account for 16.9% of the S&P 500 by index weight also had the company of the Real Estate sector and importantly the Retail and Financial sectors delivering outperformance outpacing the broad index. This surge was certainly in the wake of strong first quarter corporate earnings results and from the expectations of surging consumption demand over the next several years fueled by innovation. TSMC, the world’s largest manufacturer of advanced semiconductors, plans to spend an additional $100 billion to expand its chip capacity on top of its already planned record capital expenditure of as much as $28 billion this year. At the center of the global chip supply bottleneck is innovation occurring from smart refrigerators to smart cars and everything in between – it is not all about the FAANGs.
Monthly Performance Report March 2021
As we have been echoing throughout Sowell’s weekly commentary, the economy continues to rebound from the covid pandemic woes and unlike 2020 much of March and most of 2021’s equity markets are riding the Value and Interest Rate wave, a market phenomenon not seen since the 2000-2005 timeframe if this continues. The S&P 500 posted strong gains of 4.4% in the month of March but underneath it all tells a much different story. Value stocks (underpinned by Financials and Industrials) trounced Growth stocks (underpinned by Technology and Consumer Discretionary) by 4.4% in March as reflected by the table below and the accompanying StyleAnalytics report.
Monthly Performance Report February 2021
Fueled by improving economic conditions and market liquidity from the expectation of Biden’s pandemic stimulus, on the surface equity markets measured by the S&P 500 again posted another month of strong gains returning 2.76%. However, the composition of those gains extended over the last six-months tell a vastly different story from the last several years which was largely led by high growth stocks. Unlike 2020 where over a period of 8 consecutive months growths stocks (i.e., Technology and Consumer Discretionary) outperformed value stocks (i.e., Financials and Industrials), over the last 6 months value stocks outperformed growth stocks by a cumulative margin of