Market Trends & Outlook

Absolutely no one knows what will happen in the future. When you come across a person or firm that says they can predict the future, ask yourself why they aren't sitting on a 100-foot yacht in St. Barts versus talking to the media or you about their knowledge of the future.

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.

While many commentators argued the dollar would go bust due to the excessive debt levels in the U.S., such has hardly been the case. In 2022, as the U.S. economy is the “cleanest shirt in the dirty laundry,” the dollar rose sharply.

Markets picked up in September where they left off in August, with rising interest rates wreaking havoc on stocks and bonds alike. For the month, the Core Large Cap Equity category returned -10.1% while the Core Fixed Income category lost 4.2%.

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."

The latest rate hike announcement by the Fed sent stocks tumbling to the year’s lows. While last week’s market action was brutal, the good news is the markets are set up for a rather significant short squeeze higher.

Although inflation has soared to levels not seen in forty years, expectations for future inflation have stayed remarkably low. This is evident in the bond market, where the spread between five year treasury notes and five year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS) is 2.4%, implying average inflation of that level. The forecast over ten years is similar. Inflation over the next year is clearly going to be higher. JPMorgan estimates around 4.5%. So one can infer that the bond market is forecasting inflation starting in one year of less than 2%.