Latest Research

Is it too late to tilt a portfolio toward foreign stocks?

Read this week's Major Trend Index.

To use the old cliche' for lack of a better term, the bond market backed and filled in December.

Last July we published a study titled Active vs. Passive: A Three-Club Headwind that examined the recent performance advantage of passive indexes over actively managed funds.

Read this week's Major Trend Index.

The Boom/Bust Indicator, combines a market-based measure (commodity prices) with a weekly government report on the employment situation

Read this week's Major Trend Index.

We are pleased to announce that James Paulsen, PhD, a leading investment strategist whose commentary is widely followed on Wall Street and across the country, has joined The Leuthold Group as our Chief Investment Strategist.

Anticipating prolonged weakness of energy prices, we advise avoiding two segments within the Energy sector: companies with high balance-sheet risk, and special Energy investment vehicles called Energy Royalty Trusts.

We revisit commentary we published in 2015 regarding the late-2014 oil price crash and review why, at that time, we believed oil prices could stay at depressed levels for a longer period than most expected. Additionally, we advise avoiding two Energy sector segments: companies with high balance-sheet risk, and Energy Royalty Trusts.

The last year has been a difficult one for any person or theme tied to the “establishment”—including mainstream Republicans, mainstream Democrats, EU commissioners and lobbyists, and, yes, even one of the established leaders of the cyclical bull market—the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats.

We wrote a year ago that the Energy sector’s 2014-2016 decline of 47.3% was the worst-ever sector decline occurring outside of a cyclical bear market.

After laying an egg in 2016, momentum-based stock selection strategies have acquitted themselves better through the year’s first half.

If one manipulates the data correctly, one can make the size effect—whereby Small Caps earn excess returns over the long pull—look instead like a beta effect.

We’ve generally spoken of the market’s “broad participation” as a good thing. And from a purely technical point of view, it is.

Low Volatility stocks have been the darlings of this bull market, and Low Vol is now considered a long-term “alpha generator” alongside such Hall of Fame quant factors as Low P/E and Price Momentum.

While the S&P 500 remains below our 2,550-2,600 summer target zone, we can’t help but be impressed by the quality of its recent highs—including confirmations by all of the “Red Flag” bellwethers except the S&P 500 Financials (which barely missed a new high on July 7th).

Two years ago, we played the role of the bull market’s mortician, preparing it for burial after a six-year run that had taken it to valuations on par with those at the 2007 top.

In April 1964, the Beatles simultaneously held the top-five spots on the Billboard Hot 100, a unique feat in the history of modern music.

Factors were impacted in June by: 1) Information Technology underperformance; 2) Financials’ renewed strength; and, 3) defensive and low volatility stocks lagging.