As I wait for the September update of the OECD leading indicators—producing data for July and August—I thought I’d introduce another chartbook I've been working on, this time focused on equity sectors. It replicates a variation of a Bloomberg function I used to rely on when I had access to a terminal, the Relative Rotation Graphs - RRG. Since transitioning to Macrobond as the main source of data in my day job, I no longer look at this tool as frequently as I’d like. To that end, I’ve built my own version using the SPDR S&P 500 sector ETFs, and the SPY along with the VEU, to capture the relative performance of sectors and global equities. The total return data comes from Investing.com, where I have a personal premium subscription.
Read MoreI am still in a quant-mood at the moment, so today I will go through some work I’ve done on portfolio optimization with US large cap equity sectors. I am doing this to augment my current MinVar framwork, which I use for my own investments. A quick re-cap on the basics of portfolio optimization, with advance apologies to PMs reading this and lamenting that I’ve missed something. Finance has two workhorse models; the tangent portfolio, which places the investor on the efficient frontier, where risk-adjusted return—or the Sharpe ratio—is maximised. Or the minimum variance portfolio, which offers exposure to the combination of assets with the lowest variance, or standard deviation, regardless of return. These portfolios often are estimated given a set of constraints, as I explain below. Assuming most portfolio allocation decisions start with one of these ideal models in mind—you either want to achieve the best risk adjusted return or the lowest volatility—the difference between the textbook models and real-time allocations is governed by the following layers of complexity.
Read MoreApologies in advance; it’s been too long since my latest report, mainly because I think observing markets has been a bit like listening to a broken record. To re-cap; central banks—mainly the Fed and the ECB—made a dovish pivot at the start of the year in response to the swoon in Q4 18. Whether they meant this to be a relatively modest shift or not, investors ran with the story. Within a few months, markets were bullying Powell into rate cuts and by September, and pricing-in rate cuts and QE by the ECB. In other words, the multiple-expanding support from a firm central bank put—perhaps even with a sprinkle of fiscal stimulus hopes—has reigned supreme in equities, and driven yields lower, even as fundamentals have deteriorated. Against this backdrop, the Fed and ECB have delivered, by and large, forcing markets to consider a shift in the Narrative™ that is now too persistent to ignore. I’d break it down into three separate themes.
Read MoreThat screeching sound you heard in equities last week was caused by a train wreck underneath the surface of a steady uptrend in the market as a whole. The hitherto outperformance of growth and momentum reversed sharply, a move that coincided with a steeper curve and a tasty outperformance of value and small caps. The dramatic rotation across equity sectors, and the steepening yield curve, vindicate the story peddled on these pages recently. But the question is whether this is the beginning of a sustainable shift in markets, or whether it’s merely an invitation to buy the dip in an eternally winning strategy? It’s difficult to say. Robert Wiggleworth’s expertly written overview of the flurry in the FT certainly suggests that strategists have taken note, equating last week’s gyrations to the so-called “Quant Quake” in 2007. Apart from the fact that the event is significant enough to merit at least a small footnote in modern finance history, the quotes garnered by Robin indicate that strategists are at least mulling the idea that the shift has legs. This, in turn, presumably means that they’re advising their clients to run with the reversal, which almost surely would do nicely for the portfolio.
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