Latest Research

A performance rundown for our equity market sectors (and other measures) ranked by June 1991 performance.

This has been a vintage “bounce” period, the best ever! Relative strength lagged in June for the first time this year. Per our monitoring procedure, it is time to take profits.

We did it. We took an initial 6% position in our “Clean Energy” (natural gas) sector this month, a move that has been under consideration for some time. The Leuthold Group has yet to be bagged by the natural gas bubble, so here is our chance.

Polling the Pros at Leuthold Group Luncheons...Derivative Markets Still Swing the Stock Market Up and Down

The stars of May, at least the last half of the month, were the stocks and groups most sensitive to the business cycle.

Last month this publication noted that “deep cyclicals” were intriguing but unimpressive from a technical standpoint. Then in the last two weeks of May, the cyclicals exploded on the upside, especially in the last week of the month.

A performance rundown for our equity market sectors (and other measures) ranked by May 1991 performance.

This has been a vintage “bounce” period, the best ever! We know that some of our smarter clients did play this game. Here’s a monitor for those fortunate and gutsy few.

We have surveyed the record of the S&P 500, examining performance in the first half and second half of each year. We focus here is on years with truly outstanding performance in the first half. What happened to the index in the subsequent six months?

By our tabulations, 57% of the industry groups are still below their 1987 peaks even though the S&P 500 is 16% above its 1987 peak. Which industry groups are leading and which are lagging?

In early May, the bond market was hit hard by a post Treasury financing sell off. It spent the rest of the month recovering.

In April, the media staged a Dow Jones 3000 celebration, but the stock market didn’t. After the April 17 close of 3004, the DJIA beat a hasty retreat with the S&P 500 following suit. By the end of April, the post 3000 decline took the market averages back down to where they started the month.

This could prove to be a very rewarding investment sector, assuming the market continues to favor technology and an economic recovery gets underway in late 1991.

This has been a vintage “bounce” period, perhaps the best ever! We know some of our smarter clients did play this game. The following section is a monitor for those fortunate and gutsy few.

The moving average was broken on the upside in March and relative performance was flat in April. In anticipation of this basic change in market focus our equity model has built up secondary stock exposure.

A performance rundown for our equity market sectors (and other measures) ranked by April 1991 performance.

The surge so widely advertised in the press and in financial circles primarily reflects a loss of investor and speculator confidence in Europe, not massive new respect and confidence in the U.S. dollar. Also, for the U.S. investor in German bunds or other European bonds, there are really two sets of currency considerations, the specific European currency and then the U.S. dollar.

In April, polls were taken at the South Florida Financial Analysts Society and at Leuthold Group luncheons in Minneapolis, Chicago, Baltimore and Toronto.

The concept of a “real” rate of interest is widely held, but it does not appear to be a natural law. It is not a truism that has prevailed forever. Like many investment concepts and theories, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

For the month of April, higher quality long bonds turned in small fractional gains. The economic tea leaves were mixed, inflation numbers were good, the dollar held up and short term rates came down. However, a big pick up in new fixed income offerings seemed to satisfy investor demand.