Articles by Greg Swenson, CFA Director of Equities

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

On a performance spread basis, most of the factor categories we monitor worked as intended during July.

Insider buying and selling is the only factor that worked during June.

The worst performers are the first sell candidates for investors looking to shed assets.

A new dividend growth screen and another that additionally incorporates dividend growth at a reasonable price are explored.

Correlations stabilized during March and remain below the record levels of last fall.

Valuations are sliced and explored from a different angle.

January performance was nearly opposite that of 2011… Shifts in factor performance and volatility are discussed.

Even though the major indices ended the year flat for the most part, volatility measures paint a different story.

A detailed look at quantitative factor performance for 2011. What worked and what did not?

Factor performance continues to flip-flop, one-year correlations hit all-time high, Earnings Revisions remains the strongest factor in 2011, which prompts a deeper look.

Correlations finally drop during the October market rally. Both Value and Growth factors outperformed during the month. Some momentum factors have diverged… each is an atypical occurrence.

Industry groups and stocks continue to set records with performance correlations. Defensive groups have seen the largest percentage gain to current correlations relative to the last five years. There truly has been no place to hide in this market.

Industry groups and stocks are now trading at record correlations.

Some steps are being taken to enhance our Global Group framework. This process, which was formally launched in late 2006, is the basis for our Leuthold Global Industries Fund.

Insider Activity measures finally additive in July after six months of negative results;  other factors’ performance deteriorated, however.

The month of June brought more of the same, with profitability, size and momentum continuing to work reasonably well.

Graphical representation of the difficulty since the March 2009 market bottom. Not many factors have been effective.

Very little to show for a month of solid market performance. Breaking the market down by capitalization yields some interesting results.

Are the Dow Industrials benefiting from trivial weighting? Slicing our Leuthold 3000 universe into market cap deciles shows different performance results than commonly followed market indices.