Articles by Scott Opsal, CFA Chief Investment Officer

The Major Trend Index has shifted to Neutral as technical and cyclical conditions soften, while geopolitical risks and rising cross-asset correlations add new uncertainty to the outlook. In this webcast, the team discusses how conflicts, liquidity trends, and evolving risks across AI, private credit, and crypto are shaping today’s investment landscape. They also review current portfolio positioning, sector themes, and the disciplined approach guiding allocation decisions in an increasingly volatile market.

The launch of Operation Epic Fury on February 28th triggered a 51% surge in WTI crude in just three weeks, reigniting investor fears of economic disruption reminiscent of the 1973 OPEC embargo. As tactical investors, we were curious to see what the historical impact of sharp oil price spikes has been on the stock market and on important macro indicators. This analysis evaluates 15 distinct oil price shock episodes since 1985, each characterized by a greater than 20% price increase within 30 days, to assess the historical impact on equity markets, GDP, inflation, and interest rates.

The final quarter of 2025 produced blockbuster sales growth of 9.4% for S&P 500 companies. This strength was broad based, led by the Technology sector’s 22% sales gain and an 11% jump in revenue for Communication Services.

We tackle the challenge of appraising an investment that doesn’t produce income or cash flow by weighing the price of gold against other familiar investments and concepts that can be quantified—like home prices and inflation.

AI disruption-hysteria sent a stock market scare across waves of industries, with headlines pointing to serious adverse consequences for those firms’ business models. We examine the impact on prominent industry victims to ascertain if stock prices are still distressed and/or the extent to which any have recovered.

The Leuthold Major Trend Index tracks eight sentiment surveys; four from the Conference Board covering consumer confidence and four industry measures of investor convictions. Each of these are contrarian signals, meaning that negative sentiment often relates to stronger equity markets while positive sentiment leads to weaker markets. We periodically review the effectiveness of each signal in the MTI, and this study takes a fresh look at a group of indicators related to consumer confidence and investor expectations.

Financial markets mimicked Mother Nature in the fourth quarter, drifting into a kind of hibernation. Style returns were rangebound around zero, and the spread between returns was about as narrow as we can recall. Active portfolio performance shows there wasn’t much to pick from to add significant value.

A small-cap bounce in January is arguably the best-known of all stock market anomalies, but for much of the last decade it’s been a flop. This year, it was back in full force... until it faded. Despite giving back some of its sizzle in late January, the Russell 2000 ended the month with a 4% advantage over the S&P 500—its best January since 2023.

Annual style rebalancing triggered a sizable trim to IT exposure in the S&P 500 Value Index, but it is still the largest weight, followed closely by Financials. Revisions in the S&P 500 Growth Index caused its top-heavy concentration to become even more pronounced: Tech and Comm Services comprise 65% of the total weight. If counting the Mag 7 from Discretionary, tech titans make up 71% of the index.

Wise investors have long understood that fear and pessimism often create excellent buying opportunities, while exuberance and greed often produce an environment that leads to poor future returns. Sentiment is one of the four pillars of our Major Trend Index, and a wide variety of approaches to gauging the mood of investors have evolved over the years. One set of metrics within our Sentiment category focuses on the level of volatility implied in option prices, and our research shows that option volatility is a reliable, contrary indicator of sentiment, which in turn is a useful regime indicator for future returns.

The humdrum fourth quarter was not enough to derail the full year’s storyline, which goes into the books as a clean sweep for aggressive, bullish investment factors.

Investment management requires making decisions between alternatives, and the goal of fundamental analysis is to compare “what you pay” with “what you get.” We evaluated factors using metrics like valuation, profitability, and growth to lay out a menu of tradeoffs in the factor world heading into 2026.

Sentiment, traditionally a contrary gauge of stock performance, was acutely bullish entering 2025—the 3rd most optimistic level in history, and therefore worthy of concern. Nevertheless, SPX’s 2025 return logged the 3rd best outcome for a year starting with such elevated confidence.

The timeline of American economic development is punctuated by episodes of intense capital spending to build out a new and revolutionary concept that transforms the entire country.  The investment plans of hyperscalers Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta have captured the public’s attention this year as the release of ChatGPT in November 2022 ignited a quantum shift in capex spending, with the third quarter of 2025 coming in at a run rate of $97 billion, or nearly $400 billion annualized.  The astronomical amounts being spent to build AI capacity are almost hard to fathom, and today, we take a closer look at the data center phenomenon.

We examine several baskets of equities focused on distinctively speculative, high-risk market segments. Such traits are apt to be qualities investors try to avoid—but when animal spirits are running high, they can generate prodigious returns during short but powerful speculative outbursts.

The third quarter of 2025 produced the strongest earnings results in recent memory, paced by revenue gains in all eleven S&P 500 sectors. Sales registered 8.7% growth over 3Q24, leading to improvements in profit margins across the income statement.

Whenever the market’s thematic leadership hits an air pocket, it is instructive to discover where investor interest shifts. In November, those evacuating big tech found refuge in the Health Care sector, which staged a remarkable comeback from its extended weakness this summer.

Tracking revenue and earnings beats to identify conditions where the Equal Weighted S&P 500 may outperform the Cap Weighted S&P 500 (or vice versa). Original study by Brian Weisenberger, guest contributor, along with Scott Opsal.

Q3 was characterized by two traits that typically favor a passive investment process while creating a drag for active portfolios: Convincing leadership of growth stocks and high absolute returns.

Halloween’s eerie vibe came early for investors in regional banks, as there were several reports of large and disturbing credit issues on October 16th—a frightful day that drove the group to a cumulative 14.3% shortfall versus the S&P 500.