Latest Research

We are contrarians at heart, but learned quickly that successful contrarian investing is far more complicated than simply buying assets that are down the most in price.

While our Group Selection (GS) framework hasn’t yet warmed up to commodity-oriented industries, our macro work suggests perhaps it should.

We impatiently published this study two months ago instead of properly waiting for full-year numbers.

The first few trading days of the new year have been a seamless extension of 2017—a low-volatility, “measured” market melt-up.

The remarkable stock market breadth and momentum chronicled in these pages doesn’t come without a price.

If stock market breadth and leadership look nothing like they typically do at cyclical peaks, neither does momentum.

Inaction has been a richly rewarded trait throughout the current bull market, and especially in 2017.

During the first four trading days of 2018, the S&P 500 managed to match its 93-year average annual real price gain of +2.6%.

Of the 110 industries in our framework, the top seven are all Consumer Discretionary.

With an abundance of year-end updates in this edition of Perception for the Professional, we plan to release the content for this “Of Special Interest” section separately in mid-January.

The Leuthold Core Portfolio and the Leuthold Global Portfolio both lagged their respective all-equity benchmarks in another strong month for domestic and international equity markets.

No volatility and only one (barely) down month—it was easy living for the S&P 500 in 2017. It was also a top-heavy year for the index. The largest five firms: AAPL, MSFT, AMZN, FB, and GOOG accounted for nearly a quarter of the index’s gain.

The pendulum swung Growth’s direction in 2017, erasing Value’s 2016 relative gains in the Large and Mid Cap tiers. Cyclical stocks also performed very well.

Read this week's Major Trend.

After spending most of the year below our median long-term premium of 3%, our Ratio of Ratios has sprung back to where it started twelve months ago.

Cumulatively, mutual funds (MFs) and ETFs (ex-money market funds) captured more money in 2017 YTD than any other year over the same period (data through November).

Our Up/Down Ratio sports a “three-month” reading of 1.43—the worst full quarter figure of 2017. Above-trend earnings growth has not translated into above long-term average readings in our ratio.

2017 was a great year for factor performance. We track seven factor categories and Value was the only one to produce a negative return spread.

The new tax bill will be another tailwind for these bonds as Corporate bond issuance is likely to be reduced going forward.

Our Risk Aversion Index turned lower in December and reached an all-time low. We remain favorable toward higher quality credit within fixed income.