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The demand for safe spreads is still strong and we maintain our Favorable view on these bonds.

The real test for risky assets lies immediately ahead with central bank meetings, the Brexit vote, and the Spanish election later in the month. We continue to favor Higher Quality credits within fixed income.

A stronger dollar and a weaker Chinese yuan dented the prospects for higher inflation in May.

Throw anything at them and bonds can shake it off. The multi-decade march toward ever-lower yields seems unstoppable, not even by the zero line.

Materials leapt five spots to #3 in our broad sector rankings. Industrials remains the highest rated sector.

Are Glamour Growth stocks a good investment? Using data from the past 30 years, we found very different outcomes depending on the duration of investment. The best results are attained with a long-term holding period in mind.

Following a brief re-admittance to the “Four Percent Club,” the value of Apple declined by the equivalent of one General Electric or two IBMs in the span of just over 14 months.

Despite recent bounce among stocks in the Energy sector, the GS Scores still rate Energy groups poorly.

We’re tactically bullish, but among the twelve “Charts That Worry Us” published in the April Green Book, we’ll concede there are a few that still worry us.

We’ve said before that one of Wall Street’s great inventions is the “forward operating earnings” estimate for the S&P 500, because it results in a P/E ratio that invariably sounds reasonable (if not outright cheap). But this already-misleading EPS metric has become even more so in recent years because of the proliferation of non-GAAP “adjusted EPS” reporting practices.

Breadth underlying the 4-month upswing has been stronger than that observed during any other rally leg since 2013. Despite just a 14% correction in the S&P 500 from its peak, a new VLT “BUY” signal was triggered. Failed signals are relatively rare, the last one occurred in December 2001.

In conjunction with Materials’ solid rise in our sector rankings, we purchased Specialty Chemicals & Gases in the Select Industries Portfolio.

Commentators now label this cyclical advance the “seven-year bull market,” but that won’t be semantically true until the S&P 500 closes above its May 2015 peak of 2130.82.

We’ve boosted equity exposure twice in the past several weeks, fully cognizant that it’s not a “textbook” time to do so.

Our AdvantHedge gross composite fell 2.6% in May, lagging the inverse performance of the S&P 500 (+1.8%) and Russell 2000 (+2.3%), but outperforming the NASDAQ inverse (+3.8%).

Select Industries gross composite gained 2.4% in May, besting the S&P 500 by 0.6%.

Major Trend Index Positive: Net Equity Exposure Increased to 60% Early June

The Leuthold Materials sector jumped five spots to #3 in the June Group Selection (GS) rankings, its highest ranking in eight years and the first reading outside of the bottom four in almost four years.

The dark days of January and February seem but a distant memory. After three positive performance months in a row, the S&P 500 closed out May within spitting distance (1.6%) of its all-time high set almost exactly one year ago.

Our Deep Cyclical group took a breather in May but is still up almost 9% for the YTD. The Mid and Small Cap Value segments have also performed well this year.