Latest Research

Industry groups and stocks continue to set records with performance correlations. Defensive groups have seen the largest percentage gain to current correlations relative to the last five years. There truly has been no place to hide in this market.

This month’s “Of Special Interest” examines the bear market facts. Doug Ramsey doesn’t expect the current bear market to reach historical bear market medians in terms of decline or duration. Non-economic bear markets are usually much shorter than recession-induced bears.

A Risk Contagion is now underway, and we continue to stay defensive and favor higher quality assets within the fixed income space. A silver lining: When the Risk Aversion Index moves above 1, odds start to favor a decrease in risk aversion going forward. The bulk of the move is probably done.

An examination of both near term and longer term historical profit margins broken out by sectors is presented in this month’s “Of Special Interest” section.

Several U.S. indexes and world stock markets have already lost 20% or more from recent peaks, satisfying the parameter for a bear market.

The yellow metal itself celebrated 40 years of “independence” by pulling ahead of the S&P 500 on a cumulative, total return basis since the gold window was closed.

Doug Ramsey provides an analysis of non-recession related bear markets. Historically, non-recession related markets are shorter in duration than recession induced bear markets, but the decline is essentially the same magnitude.

Interesting development coming out of China recently that is getting little attention. The Chinese government is planning to allow ETFs with Hong Kong listed companies as underlying securities to be traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Exchanges.

Better understanding the behavior of equity market volatility is a prerequisite for making improved decisions either as a way to profit directly from the changing nature of volatility, or as a way to hedge equity market exposure.

Industry groups and stocks are now trading at record correlations.

The new deal reached by Congress has little substance and no impact at all until 2014 or beyond. More “kick the can down the road.” Long term debt/deficit issues remain unsolved.

As we expected, the U.S. downgrade was digested by the market fairly quickly and attention turned to the economy. This is a bear market in confidence, more than anything else.

Major Trend Index fell to Negative at beginning of August. Assumption is that we are now in the beginning of a cyclical bear market that may produce a 20%-25% loss within the next six months or so.

The 30-point collapse in the S&P 500 on Tuesday, August 2nd completed a bearish H&S pattern that has been several months in the making.

Select Industries equity portfolio established a new group holding in Fertilizer & Agricultural Chemicals.

The Leuthold Group has always been a big proponent of sector rotation strategies. In this month’s “Inside The Stock Market” section, Jun Zhu examines sector rotation in emerging markets and presents a series of ETFs that facilitate this strategy.

Doug Ramsey examines several once very reliable relationships between stocks, bonds, inflation, and commodities.

Chinese Pharmaceuticals have been sold off considerably in recent months, but look very attractive on a valuation basis. There are fundamental problems, but in light of China’s objective of universal health care coverage there is significant upside. See “Healthy Tigers” update in “Inside The Stock Market”.

Some steps are being taken to enhance our Global Group framework. This process, which was formally launched in late 2006, is the basis for our Leuthold Global Industries Fund.

Insider Activity measures finally additive in July after six months of negative results;  other factors’ performance deteriorated, however.