Latest Research

Read this week's Major Trend

For at least the last year we have argued that late bull market conditions would tend to reward momentum strategies over mean-reverting ones. That’s played out not only during the market’s melt-up phase, but also (to our surprise) during the recent two-week air-pocket, at a time when we would have expected to see at least a temporary setback in the ratio above.

Read this week's Major Trend.

Our ongoing research into the relative performance of Active vs. Passive fund styles is based on the belief that just as market conditions cycle, so does the active-passive return spread..

Things were bigger when you were a kid. Like that enormous sweatshirt your aunt gave you for your birthday or that hand-me-down ten-speed bike with the cross bar taller than your shoulders.

Bond market strategists remain hell bent on identifying the key yield level on 10-year Treasuries at which one can finally declare an end to the 1981-20XX secular bond bull market.

In the past few years, we’ve shared our concerns that traditional market breadth measures may have become compromised by several developments.

The market’s stumble in early February was so abrupt that there was no time for us market numerologists to bask in the limelight of the bullish January Barometer.

While there are many parallels between recent action and that of 1999-2000, stock market leadership is not one of them.

Historically, leadership and breadth accompanying an upside market move is far more predictive than the pure momentum of the move. But when intermediate-term momentum is not just strong but exceptional (as it was until just recently), there has usually been even more upside to follow.

Last month we detailed a handful of economic and monetary measures that were approaching critical thresholds from a stock market perspective.

Our Dow Bond Oscillator (chart) issued what looks like an increasingly prescient SELL signal on January 26th.

In the last couple of months, we’ve come across a handful of economic “check lists” purporting to show the relative absence of recession harbingers as the expansion closes in on its ninth anniversary this summer.

We believe the decline from the broadly-inclusive market highs of late January is a yet another late-cycle correction and not the first installment of something more sinister.

So, what happened to the January Barometer—the old analyst’s maxim that a market gain in January portends a gain for the full year?

The Leuthold Core Portfolio and Leuthold Global Portfolio both lagged their respective all-equity benchmarks in a very strong month to start the year. 

Read this week's Major Trend.

Airlines rebounded after a brief dip to High Neutral; Health Care Distributors is scoring well across the board (other than Technical factors); Specialty Stores is cheap due to the changing retail landscape.

While the Materials sector overall still isn’t looking stellar based on our work, we think with the Metals theme heating up, it’s a trend worth watching. 

January 2018 lived up to the hype in a big way as the S&P 500 turned in its best January performance since 1997.