Latest Research

Our overall view toward credit has turned decidedly cautious over the last couple months and that includes our long-term favorite.

While concerns about a trade war might be easing and the credit market has been largely unaffected by the surge in Libor rates, we have to recognize the fact that Trump’s policy focus has become increasingly market-unfriendly while global central banks are in a liquidity-reducing mode.

Isn’t a trade war more bark than bite? We think a full-blown trade war may be eventually negotiated away but the process is not necessarily painless to investors.

Air Freight & Logistics is now Attractive for the first time in two years; Managed Health Care has scored in the top tier dating back to 2009; Trading Companies/Distributors provides an option with oil exposure at a time when the GS Scores remain decidedly anti-oil overall.

The Consumer Discretionary index has also managed to outperform the S&P 500 by about 100 bps since the market’s January 26th peak, and in late March it was just a hair away from surpassing its previous relative strength performance high recorded in late 2015.

The index had a quarterly loss for the first time since Q3 2015. Volatility—which had been pretty much non-existent for all of 2017—returned and even had the nerve to persist. With mega caps teetering in March, the Equal Weighted Average scored its fourth monthly win in the last year.

Growth has outpaced Value in each market cap tier for five quarters in a row. Our Royal Blue High P/E Tier was the strongest performing segment of Q1 and outperformed the Low P/E Tier by a spread of 6.7%.

Small Cap outperformance helped boost the Ratio of Ratios up from a 2% premium at the end of February. This is the first month our Large Cap P/E ratio has been below 20x since the end of April 2016.

Our Up/Down Ratio sports a towering reading of 1.79, which is the highest our “three-month” ratio has been since the exit of the Great Recession.

The Leuthold Core Portfolio and the Leuthold Global Portfolio both handily outperformed their respective benchmarks during the second down month in a row.

After performing amazingly well in the record-setting bull market run since 2009, defensive equities are once again drawing attention for their traditional role as hedges against a continuation of recent market declines.

Read this week's Major Trend Index.

Volatile markets in 2018 have lent to relatively subdued mutual fund (MF) and ETF inflows.

Our monthly stock-slump streak has extended to two.

Based on data for the week ended March 30th, the Major Trend Index recorded a second consecutive reading in negative territory.

The Major Trend Index fell into its negative zone last week and we trimmed the already below-average net equity exposure in tactical accounts by a few more points, to a current 41-42%.

The Supply/Demand work plummeted last week with three unrelated “smart money” measures all showing an institutional urgency to sell into the market weakness. Such behavior is atypical of this generally “countertrend” crowd, and a decisively bearish sign.

The deterioration in stock market liquidity remains at the forefront of our concerns and is a key reason that the Major Trend Index is hovering just above its bearish threshold of 0.95...

We’ve always emphasized the “weight of the evidence” rather than individual MTI category developments, but we have to concede we’re troubled by the steady deterioration in the two categories that propped up the MTI during the bull’s rally off the February 2016 lows: Momentum and Economic.

After a brief respite last year, EAFE has reverted to its old form by falling 300 basis points behind the S&P 500 so far in 2018. EAFE’s main transgression might simply be that it represents good relative value in a market that’s been rewarding only momentum...