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Is this the “Superbubble’s Final Act?” Such was a fascinating piece of commentary recently from Jeremy Grantham, famed investor and co-founder of GMO.

Is this the “Superbubble’s Final Act?” Such was a fascinating piece of commentary recently from Jeremy Grantham, famed investor and co-founder of GMO.

We have all heard the adage, “the stock market is a discounting mechanism”. Stocks tell a story of the future long before the facts confirm it. Most growth stocks peaked in late 2021 and have experienced significant drawdowns ever since.

We have all heard the adage, “the stock market is a discounting mechanism”. Stocks tell a story of the future long before the facts confirm it. Most growth stocks peaked in late 2021 and have experienced significant drawdowns ever since.

There is no right or wrong way to build an investment portfolio. Rather than spreading money across style boxes simply using backward looking performance data, which is a typical approach, we think there's a more thoughtful strategy that can add attractive diversification benefits and enhance returns over time. Loosely, this strategy is named, "thematic investing."

So far in 2022, equity markets have been extremely volatile with a bearish trajectory amid economic uncertainty, monetary policy tightening, recession fears, inflation, and geopolitical tensions. Despite all these macro headwinds weighing on equity underperformance across market capitalizations, there remains one word that investors must keep top of mind to recover equities’ losses: “change”.

As the Fed continues to push interest rates higher to combat inflation (today announcing a 0.75% increase), investment professionals from across the Catalyst Funds and Rational Funds network weigh in on what this could mean for investors:

In last week's blog, I highlighted the positive long-term track records of a handful of the most admired brands to show how important the consumption thematic is for investors. I also showed the corrections that happen along the way as a reminder that stocks do not always go straight up, nor does a basket of stocks always outperform. Over the long-term, however, the data is very clear. The Consumer Discretionary & Tech sectors have a very strong track record versus the overall market as measured by the S&P 500. Today, it's important to widen the lens as the Consumer Discretionary & Tech sectors struggle with rising rates and a difficult macro environment. The important point, however, is to not get shaken out of owning great companies when they are underperforming. If you loved these companies and sectors when they were outperforming, you should love them even more now that they are experiencing a rare period of underperformance.