Economic Insights

Over the past decade, there has been much debate between active and passive investing. Many modern-day investors, including fixed-income investors, have shifted to the passive investing approach. Although this approach has worked well for equities, it has generally fallen behind for fixed income as active fixed income managers generally outperform their passive counterparts.

At some distant point in the future, as memories of a tumultuous 2020 fade, stock market returns for the year will live on as data points in a long string of annual return data stretching back hundreds of years.

This weeks blog is a continuation from last weeks theme of a return to social gathering and normal consumption spending as we head into 2021. Mean reversions are one of the best opportunities in the investment business.

When one plots the full business cycle on a chart it looks a lot like a mountain range or a roller coaster. There are peaks and valleys and period of “goldilocks” in between. Unfortunately, as investors we have to take the boom and bust cycles together.

The tail end of 2020 has started to show signs of a potential end to the uncertainty and fear beset by the coronavirus pandemic. Most notably are upbeat FDA documents and early-stage Pfizer/BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine mass inoculations in the United Kingdom and authorization in Canada, upbeat peer studies on AstraZeneca-Oxford University vaccine results, and numerous other biotechnology firms in late-stage clinical trials.

Recently, Ed Yardeni discussed his view of why another “Roaring 20’s” may lie ahead. However, while I certainly can appreciate his always “bullish optimism,” there is a significant fundamental problem with his view.

Investors have a content problem. The constant barrage of information – mostly useless noise – can be overwhelming. At MAP, we spend much of our time reading. We want to point you to our favorite articles. Here is our weekly curation of our favorite reads.

In the midst of the Holiday season, our normal glee and excitement appear blistered. As the flu season approaches, the coronavirus pandemic has raged on, with cases steadily increasing since September. The new degree of normalcy seems to be settling into a constant or never-ending cloud of uncertainty.