Skip to content

Green Book January 2025

january 2025 Green Book Featured Image

Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader?

A year ago, we wrote “We’re not as cautious on the stock market as we should be, because it is going up.” We’d never make such a silly argument to a fifth-grader, but we somehow felt it appropriate to share that rationale with our audience of seasoned market professionals.

Login

For full access, please enter your credentials.
Subscribe

Featured Articles

Stock Market

A 25-Year Bubble-versary

Commemorating the Y2K Tech bubble today is not necessarily premature, since December 1999 was the valuation peak of that bubble—and indeed of all U.S. stock market history. Buying the S&P 500 at the end of the last century might therefore be considered the worst-timed stock market entry ever.

Macro Monitor

2025 Time Cycles—Nothing To Worry About?

Overall, most patterns suggest a decent year for global equity markets. Expectations are already very high, though, and that leaves much less room for error. We strongly caution against extrapolating U.S. equities’ 2024 performance into 2025.

Stock Market

A 2024 Technical Retrospective

One can’t blame the stock market for not hinting that 2024 was going to be a barn burner. It did. On January 2, 2024, a critical “breadth-thrust” signal was triggered and, true to historical form, SPX delivered a 20%-plus gain through the next twelve months. Notably, an impressive aspect of the breadth-thrust track record remains intact: The index has never registered a 12-month loss after any these signals.

Stock Market

2024 Asset Allocation Recap

In the theme that’s reminiscent of all but a few of the last 16 years, the optimal strategy for equity managers and asset allocators in 2024 was the same: Buy the S&P 500, and then hit the links. There is statistical support for doing exactly same thing in 2025. 

The Leuthold Refresh

Factor Tilt Update

Our previous update reported that eight of ten factors outperformed the S&P 500, leading us to hope that maybe, just maybe, the market was broadening out from its narrow focus on mega-cap growth. Those hopes were dashed in the fourth quarter, as only two of ten factors managed to outperform the index.

Equity Strategies

Leuthold’s Industry Group “Dreams” And “Nightmares”—Annual Update

Over the entire history of this study, the momentum plays of our “Dreams” and “Nightmares” have worked both ways. Like everything else, our Dreams fell short of the Cap Weighted S&P 500 in 2024. However, the spread of Dreams over the Nightmares was fairly impressive.

Quant

2024 Factor Performance

Momentum was the best performing factor for 2024 - and it wasn’t really close. Growth continued to perform better within large caps compared to small caps. Sentiment and growth were also positive while, no surprise, value was negative again.

Table of Contents

Stock Market

Of Special Interest

Macro Monitor

The Leuthold Refresh

Equity Strategies

Quant

Market Internals

Portfolios

Major Trend

Estimating the Downside

At Random

Interested in Investing in a Model?

Contact us if you are interested in investing in our ETF models.
Contact Us